bee mask - neurasthenia - deception island - cass - 5$
Gross cold war-era peeling lead paint/submarine death downer vibes warped/wrapped into lo-fi cassingle-sized epiphany. First up is a handmade electronics side, in which something is totally going to shit at the end of the hall, like taking a circular saw to a bank of test equpiment in reverse, perhaps. On the flip is the tabletop guitar blissout that's going down as your lungs fill with water.
edition of 99
-di
bee mask - honey and salt - deception island - cass -5$
More homebrew synth damage from Bee Mask, this time featuring legendary Cleveland-area free drummer Nate Scheible. Side A's culled from profoundly fried spring sessions at Scheible's Zombie Proof studios, in which both parties exhale a massive, sustained sound like the interior of a giant bell and proceed to stagger about, running into walls and vomiting corrosive fluid and at least one pause-button suckerpunch. Side B returns to solo territory with a crucial collage of crusty/cranky improv blasts recorded live on WCSB. Lumbering, bleary, and pissed.
-di
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magic oneohtrix point never - betrayed in the octagon- deception island - cass - 5$
By now, Boston-native synth auteur Daniel Lopatin's reputation should precede him, whether as a result of his two cryptic solo dispatches as Dania Shapes or the superhuman focus he brings to his work with the neokosmiche trio Astronaut. "Betrayed in the Octagon" is his third solo release in as many years, which is as much an oddity in this era of enforced prolificity as the level of craft he brings to this tape. While the scene-at-large has had some time to catch up to Lopatin's longstanding fascination with the old teutonic masters of the sequencer and their ensuing private press diaspora, his ability to underscore with tact and subtlety the lines of sympathetic resonance between the Berlin school and Giorgio Moroder, John Carpenter, the tearstained pillows of the polysynth epoch, and the awful bliss of being really fucking drunk in a hot tub remains entirely his own, and the hallmark of a rare talent.
-di
hot air balloon ride - oktoberfest - deception island - cass -5$ sold out
Fuck do I ever have some explaining to do! Hot Air Balloon Ride is the cult-favorite duo of Emeralds synth ripper John Elliott (aka Lilypad) and Thursday Club electronics wizard Ryan Kuehn. This release documents an epic and utterly wasted gig that went down about a month back at Cleveland's Language Foundry, when our usual gaggle of stony customers undertook a voyage into the black heart of rust belt half-gentrification, and - unflinchingly, I might add - consumed its beers en masse. I seem to recall that in the midst of the Ride's setup, a consensus was reached to listen to the remainder of this epic Indians/Yankees jam and somehow the radio was running through Ryan's gear for a pretty heavy count of extra innings. This tape picks up like a looooong way into the process, fyi. Also, John wants me to write something in the description about how we saw a seriously fucking large spider that night while burning in an alley, but I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything. Flatteningly loud, at times even classically harsh black hole w/ radioactive gold leaf monosynth detail and shit-eating/knuckle-dragging posi vibes in equal measure. The fucking 1990s. If you think they kicked any kind of ass whatsoever, you weren't there, pal. This tape is a phenomenal wrench to the craw of any/all kollektor skum who claim to have Cleveland filth more than like 40-45% sussed.
Hand-numbered edition of 100.
-di