Friday, May 15, 2009

Couple of new tapes in from Not Not Fun. I will drop them off at the Half and Half on Sunday.

High Wolf - Animal Totem - NNF 158
Terrible band name, miserable album title. Repulsive, embarrassing. But despite all the shamanistic, spiritual, blah blah blah posturing, this is a really nice tape and I'm glad to be stocking it. Fuzzy, hypnotic loop music made with restraint and patience. The songs build and dissipate subtly, and side-step the exaggerated dynamic swings that often stand in for substance or craft in this kind of music. Except when it comes to naming, this guy makes all the right moves. Really glad to have come across this tape. $7

NASA - Diamonds & Wood - NNF 161
No nonsense blast of in-the-red double guitar and drums (I think) that occupies the same baffling no-man's-land as Magik Markers (Are these guys artsy avant-noisemakers? Are they pesky, riff-crazed teenagers?). Nice balance of abstract stuff and more conventional heavy stuff, sometimes one on top of the other. I get the feeling that they recorded hours of basement freak-outs and then whittled the best ones down into this tape, which is probably why it's a cut above. The tapes themselves have a cool, metallic silver insert that is hard to describe but was worth trying to describe for a moment, I guess. $7

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Eggy Distro is now a physical reality at the Half and Half on SW Oak. I'll be curating a small and rotating selection of tapes from labels across the country, which I'm really excited about because outside of tracking this stuff down on the internet and forking a lot of money over to paypal and the postal service it pretty much doesn't exist. It's also tough to know what's even out there. The amount of amazing music being put to cassette tape right now is really exciting and I'm happy to be able to help get it in the hands of people who might not otherwise know it existed.
These are the tapes at the Half and Half right now:


DIM HOLYS - IS THERE HEAT RISING IN YOUR NECK - OSM-B 011
Brian Mumford's bliss-drones for sleeping. Brian has an amazing talent for turning harsh digital noise and homemade synthesizer howl into music that hits on a very emotional and intuitive level, which is what makes both Dragging an Ox and Dim Holys such remarkable projects. Really beautiful art by Dana Dart McLean. $5

DRIPHOUSE - SEWER MIST - GEL 03
Synthesizer fever-dreams from former Raccoo-oo-oon member Daren Ho. Very mellow krautrock vibe, like the soundtrack to a lost Herzog movie. Drifting arpeggios and hypnotic repetitions, sometimes beautiful and calming, other times ominous and unsettled. Excellent stuff, with art that looks like it was taken from a video game about Weimar Germany. $6