HALF-GIFTS: Cassette

Showing posts with label Cassette. Show all posts

8/08/2017

Review: Unable to Fully Embrace This Happiness - "The Morning Sun + The End of the World"

Unable to Fully Embrace This Happiness - The Morning Sun...

(2017 Self-Released)

Though the full title of UTFETH's first official album can't be contained by the horizontal confines of this blog post, the Austrian powerviolence trio seems to have no trouble squeezing 14 tracks' worth of scorched imagism/existentialism into an 18-minute timeframe. The Morning Sun rises from a series of split-releases and compilation tapes, spackling over any breathing room or vain experimentation with fast-drying static. Every square inch of aural space that exists within UTFETH's trusted dictaphone recorder is clogged with noise. The listener stands at the other side of a steel wall, peeking through a porthole as the band's gelatinous aggression presses against the glass, writhing as if undergoing a chemical change -- sometimes the mass adopts the vague lumpiness of a chugging blast beat or is tinted the pale green of a sickly clean guitar riff, but it always maintains its thick, uniformly ferocious texture. Think of bread dough so yeasty that it rises uncontrollably, threatening to burst out of the oven.

Thematically, the record is much less unified. Tounge-in-cheek song titles intentionally clash with their more somber lyrical counterparts: autobiographical vignettes syllabically frugal enough to have been clipped from John Porcellino's King Cat Comics, Hopper-esque snapshots of UTFETH's native Klagenfurt, and the occasional imagined premise for a sci-fi novel. The band is at their best when they freeze striking-yet-simple images in time. Case in point -- the stuttering cacophony of "I Quit My Job So I Could Play More RPGs" tempered by a surprisingly tender verse. "Forming a crucifix while riding my bike / without using my hands". You'd never be able to parse that together just by listening, though. It's the impenetrable sound of the record that sends you scrambling for a lyrics sheet, luring you into intimacy with the listening experience.

"The Happy End Overshadows the Forthcoming Drama" is the most ambitious offering here, knitting two sheets of black metal chord-mashing together with sampled audio from Twin Peaks' second season, a funeral procession of fingerpicked arpeggios, and drum machine handclaps that are so out of place that they're somehow welcome among the brutality. The cloud of sound formed here is so opaque that I can't help but be reminded of Jules Feiffer's drawing of the Awful Dynne -- a demon from The Phantom Tollbooth that feeds on dissonant sounds. Ironically, the song's about silence, narrated by a hermit. "The only interactions are while grocery shopping", they screech. "Speechless forever.

The Awful Dynne

"Thank You Very Much For Gathering Today" is The Morning Sun's strongest instrumental showing, stripping away some scuzz to reveal its chord progression (which kinda sounds like something The Cure would've cooked up in the early 80s) before ripping into its hardcore beatdown. Closer "Just When I Thought I Was Done Being the Mediator" is a close second best, flirting with post-rock melodrama atop sparse splashes of percussion. Even the pair of sub-30 second songs hit hard enough to satisfy. Only "The Journalist" fails to really sock me in the gut, but even so, its lyrics are pretty evocative, weighing the possibility of a livestreamed suicide before presumably choosing not to. ("Fourteen pages by the end of the week / You never know what this server will spawn)

I've written about UTFETH in the past, and continue to listen for good reason. Smashing their impressive chops into a harsh lo-fi filter, they're as subtle as a brick wall and just about as heavy as one too.

7/10/2017

Review: Johnny Utah - "Small Dogs"

Johnny Utah - Small Dogs

(2017 Bangkok Blend)

"Okay, why do little kids always draw the sun with a smiley face?" asks Johnny Utah, halting the folk-pop lilt of "deli platter". "We don't know where it stands, emotionally".

The Philadelphian singer-songwriter's an inquisitive guy with an eye for detail. The five tunes that make up his debut EP, Small Dogs, are carefully and intricately pressed into a Communion-wafer-thin canvas of sound, then inked with wheezes of acoustic guitar that seep sloppily into their host. Like Sentridoh and Julia Brown before him, Utah uses the fragile frame of his lo-fi soundscapes to create punchy contrasts. The aforementioned "deli platter," for example, toys with its levels of volume and saturation. flooding its initially parched heave of acoustic chords with a cool gulp of bass. Properly watered, the song's soil is fertile enough to cultivate steady thwacks of percussion and buzzing, three-part vocal harmonies. Occasionally, Utah presses pause on the cut altogether, interjecting with bits of director's commentary before hurtling back into regularly scheduled programming. Though one might expect a hiccup like that to disrupt the rhythm of a track, these interruptions are timed precisely enough to enhance the groove in progress, like a roller coaster's well-placed bend, yanking its passengers awake.

The following track, "angst", is another textural feast. As percussive chords throb out a 4-on-the-floor beat, Utah belts out mumbly bars of Alex G-inspired melody like signal flares fired through the canopy of a thick forest -- barely made out, but understood on a fundamental level. Drum fills are fashioned out of an overturned bucket, tickling the inner ear while hearkening back to The Velvet Underground's "Heroin". This is as poppy as Utah's songcraft gets, riding sweeping chords like waves that gradually increase in size.

"rhino mountain" closes Small Dogs with its most satisfying effort. A spoken word piece dissolves into pluckings of acoustic guitar before coming to a boil. A simple drum machine rhythm bubbles at the surface, dragging Utah's groaned lyrics through murky tape hiss. Twangy riffs tie knots around the arrangements to hold them in place, only to let things unravel into a climactic eruption of noise. Fade to black.

Johnny Utah's debut effort is best when it's at its weirdest. He's an eccentric with a calculated method to his madness, giving each experiment or jarring timbral shift its own purpose that adds to the album as a whole. Already a solid effort in its own right, Small Dogs gives me hope for even more lo-fi whimsy in the future.

7/14/2013

Half-Gifts Cassette Compilation Now Available

The first ever Half-Gifts compilation album is now available digitally and on cassette tape. Head on over to the brand new Bandcamp page, where you can stream, download and purchase a physical copy of the 32-track release. A big thanks to everyone who submitted a track; the compilation sounds fantastic.