Split Infinities ,Volume 13 of our split tapes series, features two improvised, mind-melting, long-form psychedelic and kosmische odysseys by Toronto-based cosmic rockers MOONWOOD and STARGOON on sides 25 and 26 respectively.
Toronto psychedelic space-rock jam band MOONWOOD have been playing as a quartet since 2013 (husband and wife team Jakob Rehlinger, guitar/synths, and Jacqueline Noire, vocals/synths, backed by Matthew Fava, bass, and Luca Capone, drums). Their live shows consist of a few songs with standard verse/chorus structures, but also at least one extended mind-expanding and face-melting improvised jam. Though they’ve released some of these instrumental freak-outs on live mixtapes, “Cosmic Ghosts” is their first attempt to capture one of these singular experiences in the studio. Nine months pregnant with their baby, Jacqueline’s water actually broke while recording her overdubs for the track. Once her synth parts were duly completed, they called the midwife.
STARGOON
Named after an imaginary paint colour created by a neural network (it’s the same banal beige featured on the cassette’s J-card), STARGOON began as a collaboration between ambient droner Heraclitus Akimbo (aka sound archivist at theMechanical Forest Sound blog, Joe Strutt) and Moonwood drummer, Luca Capone (who also records sound-collages as Radio Samson di Maria). On this 20-minute track, cobbled together from an hour’s worth of improvisations, they’re joined by Moonwood guitarist Jakob Rehlinger on bass who also recorded the session. Like the name STARGOON itself, “Bylfgoam Glosd” is taken from Janelle Shane’s AI’s list of paint names.
CALL IT: Drone, psychedelic, noise, experimental electronics, free improvisation SONIC COUSIN TO: Throbbing Gristle, Merzbow, Tower Recordings, Reynols, VxPxC
LOST TRAIL is the ambient/dronegaze/experimental noise project of husband-and-wife duo Zachary Corsa and Denny Wilkerson Corsa. Based in the mysterious small city of Burlington, NC, The Corsas utilize lo-fi and obsolete recording technology in their music, aiming to capture a sense of atmosphere and landscape in both man-made and wild environments.
DOR is a more mysterious affair. Zachary of Lost Trail, who brought them to our attention, had this insight: “They’re two dudes (John Rutherford, Jacob Worden) from Charlotte, NC, our biggest city, about 90 minutes south of where Denny and I live and that’s about all I know about ’em! They’re mysterious.” And, really, does anyone need to know more about them than that?
We ended our split tapes series with Vol. 10 (sides 19 & 20) to focus more on full album releases. Seemed like the thing to do at the time. Now we return with Vol. 11 (sides 21 and 22) for no possible better reason than to release the conceptual split “Studies In Trance” by Montreal electronic dronesters Hazy Montagne Mystique and YlangYlang.
The title of this work could raise red flags for people. Cheesy house music budget compilation red flags planted in the sand of Ibiza beaches, that is. But rest assured the pair are long-time students of trance-inducing tones. For evidence see their collaborative project A Sacred Cloudwhose album, ENSOLEILLÉ, 1972, we had the pleasure of releasing in 2013. Clearly when they say “Trance” they’re talking “transcendental”; trance as in drone; trance as in cosmic youth and far out cosmic spaces.
“… two artists who excel in druggy, electronic trance music — but not that type of trance. Having already worked together under the name A Sacred Cloud, Montreal’s Hazy Montagne Mystique and YlangYlang manage to fill out Arachnidisc’s four-song Studies in Trance cassette with a rather epic sounding drone. Starting off with the 15-minute raga, “chant/il sera lointain,” Hazy Montagne Mystique channel late ’70s French Zeuhl music, as dramatic rumbles and tribal drums absorb mystic chants. YlangYlang contribute three brief compositions, keeping things less stagey but equally textured, as “Temple of Tears” melds field recordings with electronic hiss. “Smoking with Spirits” resembles a melted shoegaze single, while “In Da Zone” is the most rhythmic track of the lot. With Studies in Trance, Arachnidiscs have delivered an engrossing split release that feels like a fully realized piece of art.” ~ Exclaim!
“…with a soothing new symbiotic brain worm from two of the creative lobes responsible for Jeunesse Cosmique … if you only pick up on one eccentric Canadian split cassette series this season, make it [Studies In Trance].” ~ Decoder
“Hazy’s “chant / is sera lointain” is a beautiful car wash of white noise. The listener is placed at the center of the recording, with many objects and delights that flit across the stage for the entertainment of the ears. Initial voices, imitating chants of mystic quality, give way to static and throbbing bass synth notes. The piece is stripped, collecting nuances of natural disorder, and keeping things entrancingly not of earth. YlangYlang’s … highly pleasing “Smoking With Spirits” is a delightful collection of space debris, a wealth of synthesized sighs and melodic highs. Crowding the short minutes with a cast of drone-worthy characters, YlangYlang creates a fruitful cosmology, rich in contrasting tones.” ~ Grayowl Point
ROSS BAKER has been making music since he got a hold of a tape recorder at the age of 10. From early tape and radio abuse, his music has been linked by a love of contrast and collage.
A half-hour collage salvaged from at least three hours of recordings, soundtracking the countless distant landscapes and buildings glimpsed momentarily during 28 years of car, bus and train journeys. Sprawling farm and forest punctuated by sinister undentified buildings and distant motorways. Ambient washes and sci-fi movie memories with a synth-pop interlude.
SIDE 20 — TRANZMIT: Deep Video
TRANZMIT began as a radio wave sound-college side project of BABEL in the early 2000’s. In recent years it has moved with the times, “mashing-up” (in the contemporary parlance) audio material sourced from the internet.
Film dialogue and Star Trek sound FX. YouTube video collage and movie trailer audio. Retro television commercials. Public transit, elevator and busker field recordings re-mixed. Augmented vocoder demonstration video audio. Spam emails read by text-to-speech and modified Bach. Voice synthesized random phrase generator and Twitter and Facebook updates. Digitally synthesized zen monks.
C50 // edition of 50 // pro-duped // DL code // glossy accordion fold insert // cloth bag with hand stamped product tag.
SOLD OUT!
Side 15 – Chik White: I Am Muck. You Are The Wind.
CHIK WHITE is the recording alias of Darcy Spidle, star and co-writer of the Canadian cult film, Lowlife, and the guy behind Canadian indie institution Divorce Records. Playing almost like a possible alternative soundtrack to Lowlife, I Am Muck sucks you into a starfish licking world of bizarr0 psych improvisations and avant soundscapes created from “experimental jews harp and acoustic guitar”. Exciting and fearless stream of consciousness music/noise/sound making—like the wind and tides blowing and flowing.
Side 16 – Holiday Rambler: It Lasted A Hundred Years, It Will Last A Hundred More.
“More like coal than gasoline”, HOLIDAY RAMBLER (aka D. Alex Meeks of Hooded Fang infamy) is one of those young men you meet where you simply know they have a time machine buried in their backyard. They’re just too comfortable wearing the attire and diction of yesteryear for it to be entirely an act. The title of this set of songs and sounds, It Lasted A Hundred Years, It Will Last A Hundred More, could be a reference to the timeless/old-timey nature of the Rambler’s American gothic folk-blues. Despite being a relatively young sprout, there’s a lot of gravelly down-home wisdom woven throughout the set of bluegrass and gospel informed tunes with a decidedly end-times feel. Kind of like a Smithsonian Folkways recording from the backwoods of Virginia in an alternate universe where the Great Depression never ended.
C44 // edition of 50 // pro-duped // DL code included // 16 page full-colour mini-zine
SOLD OUT!
Side 11—Nick Kuepfer, Tape Test For A New Year / Audrey’s Asprin / Grackles: Grinding string harmonies drone from the celestial abyss. Birds sing, forests crumble. A ghost trains thunders across the prairies, hammers on tin roofs as it passes. Somewhere to the south, a bank robber dies in the tumbleweeds, clutching a satchel full of money with a dusty hand. An entrancing, cinematic soundscape; a travelogue of the spaces between light and shadow.
BIO:Montreal-based guitarist Nick Kuepfer weaves nylon string and electric guitar pieces with live-sampled tape loops, recordings of animals, and drones from various sources. His predominantly wordless music ranges from subtle and static to frantic and abrasive, with a methodical, vigilant sense of experimentation guided by the search for consonance and dissonance with the sounds of “nature”.
Side 12—Khôra, Foris: Ringing in the shadows of a European cathedral, tones weave behind a camel train on the spice road and twist like smoke beyond the bazaars of Turkey before erupting like an Icelandic volcano, black ash on white snow.
BIO:Matthew Ramolo’s Khôra project is based chiefly on acoustic/electric guitar and field recordings, with extensive signal processing and digital interventions conditioning these sources to create an immersive soundworld of drones, chimes, rings and other pointillistic sonics. His longform compositions contain lovely stretches of relatively unprocessed and fully recognisable guitar work, with picking patterns and chord sequences that evolve/devolve into more signal-bent and DSP soundscapes. The results are highly organic and meditative while retaining plenty of icy shards, bubbling distortions and passages of controlled monumentalism, making this anything but an ambient listen.
Here’s some visuals of sides 13 & 14 of the ongoing split tape series. This volume features Silent Land Time Machine from TX, Amurkah and Moonwood from Tranna, Canada. It’s going to have it’s launch in Toronto at 10pm on October 17th at the Tranzac. Also will be available at our table at Canzine 2012 the following Sunday. Web store release shortly there after.
C40 // edition of 50 // pro-duped // DL code included // hand-assembled window sleeves
SOLD OUT!
Side 9: Avant improv bassist Aaron Lumleyhas been making waves lately with his harrowing long-player Wilderness. Of which Foxy Digitalis said “…searching for new methods to escape the limitations of technique, the human body, and the physical science of acoustics. By accomplishing this without straying beyond the boundaries of man and implement, he’s shown mastery of a vigorous beast, a task not for the faint of heart. Furthermore, the album is as appetizing for casual listeners as it is for serious improv mavens – a gravity-defying feat that is as rare as it is welcome!”
We posit this improvised session goes one further, both visceral and teeming with expression in the traditions of Dave Holland and François Rabbath. Recorded by Matthew Dunn in Toronto who, in Lumley’s words, “brought the fuzz and grime to the fore.”
And we have to agree. In the middle ages, people were burned at the stake for playing music like this—he’s clearly possessed by some kind of demon.
Side 10: We’re pleased to present the debut release for The Knot, the duo of cellists Tilman Lewis and Nick Storring. With allegiance to both form and freedom, they embark on sonic explorations that draw on various folk traditions and experimental musics. The pair love to bend the instrument’s lyricism, drawing not so much on extended techniques as on an array of audacious contra-techniques: preparations/ apparati (practice mutes, hair-clips, clamps, wine corks, mallets, egg beaters, plectrums etc.). They still, however, permit the cello’s natural beauty to have its place.
Their large palette of sonorities is channeled and combined into single unified textures, and everything from improvised heterophony, to stark contrast.
Intertwining beauty and discord meeting somewhere between the gravel pit and the northern lights.
The first cassette of our SPLIT TAPES SERIES 2 is set to be released on 2012/08/21. 20 minute sides; pro-duped; hand assembled outer sleeves. Edition of 50. We don’t have pre-orders set up but if you want to reserve a copy, you should email arachnidiscs@hotmail.comto get put on a list.
Side 9 is avant improv bassist Aaron Lumleywho’s been making waves lately with his harrowing long-player Wilderness. Of which Foxy Digitalis said “…searching for new methods to escape the limitations of technique, the human body, and the physical science of acoustics. By accomplishing this without straying beyond the boundaries of man and implement, he’s shown mastery of a vigorous beast, a task not for the faint of heart. Furthermore, the album is as appetizing for casual listeners as it is for serious improv mavens – a gravity-defying feat that is as rare as it is welcome!” We posit this improvised session goes one further, both visceral and teeming with expression in the traditions of Dave Holland and François Rabbath.
Side 10 is the debut release for The Knot, a cello duo made up of composer/improviser Nick Storring and avant virtuoso Tilman Lewis. Intertwining beauty and discord meeting somewhere between the gravel pit and the northern lights.
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