ANALOG BECAUSE CASSETTES RULE HARD AND NEVER REALLY AGE, T HE ANALOG CAVE IS HERE TO BRING YOU SOME OF THE BEST IN UNDERGROUND TAPES A ND COLLECTED VISION. A CASSETTE IS LIKE YOUR BEST FRIEND, YOUR MOST TRUSTED TRAVEL PARTNER, AND A SPECIMEN OF IMAGINATIVE FANTASY AND OTHERWORLDLY DIMENSION. POP ONE IN AND TRANSFORM. RIDE THE HIGHWAY ETERNAL.
CHRISTIAN MIRANDE: EXERCISE: HANSON RECORDS
HAND OF GAVRILO: STATIC: FRESH POTS MUSIC San Diego’s Hand of Gavrillo is an amalgamation of feeling, a post-wave, punk trip into the new world. With song craft as their most galvanized weapon, the group yields a warm intimacy that’s layered in slinky riffs. Static, counts ’80s paranoia and ’90s alt-punk as its springboard, and lifts itself towards a sort of psychological communion. “D.L.” is hard and wide, showing little hidden pieces of Tiny Music-era Stone Temple Pilots - which is cool, seeing as STP is also a San Diego band - but the song morphs into neurotic goth-punk near the end, showcasing the group’s inner-core. “Together Forever” stacks arrangements atop one another niftily, with its chorus “nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,” the punk centerpiece. The song works well because nothing is overused, and the totality is wondrously crafted. Songwriting (at least in terms of rock or punk) seems like an ancient form these days: try and count the number of non-hip-hop songs made in the last ten years that you can sing the lyrics to. Not counting maybe Baroness, OFF! and Screaming Females, I’m not sure if I can. Hand of Gavrilo is out to change that. Their manner is communication and relation. Static is their starting point.
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SLIM G: ONE BULLET X BLOWIN’ SMOKE: NATURAL SCIENCES There are two recordings on this cassette from Slim G: One Bullet and Blowin’ Smoke. The latter, a wondrously crafted nod to ’90s underground hip-hop (the raw and artful kind), features some of the deftest mixing and grimy beats I’ve heard in some time. The former, a more polished, but no less effective, mystical ascension, features Steezy C weaving through street beats with constrained psychedelic undertones, flowing like the spring breeze on an urban oceanside, the blueness cold and warm, city lights as psychological spiraling. Slim G presents something of a classic here: its shape, punk and minimalistic, its centralization, postmodern and continuous. “Rot in Hell,” on One Bullet, moves like invisible cubes, with colors primed for extension. The repetition bold and honed, a natural reaction to the hardcore steely “Bloody Mess,” a pragmatic form of centrality. “Da Biggest Enemy,” off Blowin’ Smoke, is the perfect counterpoint to the tracks on One Bullet. It’s clear and formed, and still egalitarian, its heart a purposeful love to the art of rap and hip-hop. “You Can’t Catch Me” is multifarious, and still contains the simplicity that defines the power of Slim G: neutral, a giver of sound and individuality.
Recorded at a United States Air Force base in 2017, Christian Mirande’s Exercise is a work that illuminates the loneliness and oneness of being human. A great many sentient and inanimate wonders are pondered. The space is eternal, the night sky infinite in depth and sound. This is a field recording for the closely intimated. Presenting itself as completely pure: no overdubs, no special effects (at least I think), a field recording in its most singular form: alien, grotesque and stupendous. Listening to Exercise is a practice in the art of recognition, the art of meditation, the gathering of data and random perfection. When one considers the possibility of an endless universe, where each note echoes in eternity, reaching a destination that is simulation, then one can relate the soft breeze of a seashell with the terrors of a garbage disposal, the marriage of violence and tranquility. This tape is more about being human that anything I’ve listened to in quite some time. It is a testament to the power of research: a human trait that parallels the immensity of Jupiter.
DAMAGED CLOCK: THE ODISSY: SOIL Techno that is brisk. Dancing lights fluttering through the shadows: an acid mutation that suspends the notion of time. Damaged Clock’s The Odissy is painterly in its formation. It is continuous and abrasive, without ever impeding the listener’s space. It is contemporary, conjoining the hardest and lightest movements in electronic music, and this is its charm. Never afraid to wade in the waters of kitsch, moving from intensity to indifference with grace, David Restrepo’s performance is total, a live feeling emanates from the heart. Bending back, often contemplative, but always with resolve, it is the marriage of strength and weakness. “Humanity” is the counterpoint to the furious “Fast People,” a pulsing demon of dimensional turbulence. “The End is Near” is a brutal darkness that echoes the times we live in. Whether Restrepo wrote the track with the current pandemic in mind matters not, the song knows the path of humanity, something that started a long time ago. With each step, disaster and filth. But also hope, there is some light in there.
