New Tapes! Chad and Sam run Karamazov Tapes from up the ways a little bit in St. Johns. Looks like they do about a fifty-fifty-ish mix of locals and the cream of the Kansas City scene. I grabbed five, but more titles are available at Exiled and Mississippi. I dropped a few off at the Half and Half and will bring the rest by later this week.

STEPMOTHER - COLLAGE II - KARAMAZOV
Stepmother is the work of 19-year old St. Johns experimental-music wunderkind Forrest Wright. "Collage II" is an 18-minute journey that blends snippets of field recordings and found sound with meditative drones and howling electronic noise. A beautiful and evocative tape from an undiscovered local talent. $5

JERK - TROUBLE - KARAMAZOV 009
A strange and wonderful world unto itself, this tape is the "lost" L.P. of a 4-tracker bedroom weirdo, recorded 10 years ago. "Trouble" is equal parts ramshackle pop songs and audio experiments, both calming and disturbed, all radiating the aura of a found object. $5

SETH AND AMANDA - LYING TOGETHER - KARAMAZOV 014
Seth and Amanda might be a duo from Kansas City. This tape is a long-form exploration of homemade electronic noise, mangled synthesizers and strange radio transmissions. On the one hand, it's pretty harsh stuff, on the other, it's relatively restrained; each noise and texture has room to breath. Lots of cool sounds and moments of weird beauty on this tape. $5

WIERD MIX VOL. 7 - KARAMAZOV 012
What was it like to be 12 years old in the '90s? It's all here on this tape, the bona fide document of a pair of bored suburbanite kids. Bad TV, fart jokes, torturing monkey-faced little sisters, SNES, fart songs, Bart Simpson, yelling obscenities, farts themselves, and unfunny skits make up this 60-minute, low-brow, audio panorama. I find this tape oddly mesmerizing. The re-produced original art work is not to be missed -- a cut and paste collage of pop-culture detritus and inane ca-ca humor. $5

SNUFF GAMELAN - KARAMAZOV 015
Traditional Indonesian gamelan meets surprisingly funky jazz in this strange and charming showdown of musical opposites. $5