Week in Review #100

Happy New Year! Hopefully 2016 is off to a great start for you and yours. Thanks for all your support and input in 2015. We’ll be rolling out our 2015 year end coverage shortly, but in the meantime, hopefully you can also find a few interesting bits here… or on our recent highlights mix for the Free Music Archive, if not.

#1 – 12.20.2015 – Many that know me know that I spent a good part of this season transforming into a holiday leech, themed mixes and albums buzzing around my head — so I’m glad to open our holiday omnibus week(s) in review and our 100th installment with one final Christmas mix, in the form of Cabin Floor Radio episode #15, courtesy of proprietor Jordan Floor. It’s a corker, opened and closed by tracks from Garnet Mimms and Cults Percussion Ensemble respectively, so I am a little sorry to be sharing after Christmas… but oh well! Listen through at the CFR website. -DP

#2 – 12.21.2015 – t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 unveiled a free to download album, 星間性交, which my in-browser translator renders as “Sex between the stars” — a promise it keeps in its opening track’s starry palette of drone call and response, a la whale song, for a suitably Star Trek IV-style hook into what is otherwise a stoutly cosmpolitan listen. Check it out via Bandcamp. –DP

#3 – 12.22.2015 – Fire Talk unveiled a new single off The Big Ship’s upcoming cassette, Searchlight Casting (out January 8th.) The album sees the duo (Doug Kaplan of Chicago’s Hausu Mountain and Aeron Small of Philadelphia) exploring, to some extent, “what happens if Jerry & Jim O’Rourke were one dude.” Stream “The Boathouse Story” below and let its warm mixture of lush guitar and synth textures thaw your frozen bones, then head over here to pre-order the tape. –LP

#4 – 12.22.2015 – Wichita, KS-based This Ain’t Heaven Recordings unveiled a cassette collection of genuinely luminous guitar songs and experiments from Joel Cachero, aka Golden Living Room, recorded as Luminous Spirit. Cachero touches on a variety of veins, like the mellow picking of “PeeWee” or the esoteric march of “Как по Волге-матушке,” which I can only imagine as a rendering of the Russian folk song. Read more and order a copy via This Ain’t Heaven. -DP

#5 – 12.23.2015 – FL-producer Euglossine shared a new homemade visualization for “Variant 3 Set of 3,” a track on his Emotion’s Potions cassette for Phinery — watch that below and pick up one of the remaining few tape copies via Phinery. -LP

#6 – 12.24.2015 – Wasabi Tapes, the imprint of Japanese experimental producer Lil $ega (et al), unveiled a pair of wide-ranging compilations — with names that Decoder readers will recognize, like G.S. Sultan, Bataille Solaire, CORIN, and others — apparently cementing its ongoing expansion from in-house releases to more far-flung international collaboration. Titled Utsukushii I and II, both can be downloaded via Wasabi’s Bandcamp. -DP

#7 – 12.25.2015 – The New York Times’ recent, misguided op-ed against cassettes from Rosecrans Baldwin — “Rose Cross” Baldwin, while we’re on archaisms — received a due Christmas takedown from Tabs Out courtesy of writer Ross Devlin (a past Decoder contributor). -DP

#8 – 12.25.2015 – Plastic Response teamed up with Danger Collective Records to reissue Free Weed’s beloved self-titled cassette, originally released on Gnar Tapes back in 2012. The new edition features different artwork and freshly remastered tracks; hop over here to grab one while you still have the chance! –LP

#9 – 12.27.2015 – Tabs Out also reported that Oakland-based DNT Records are celebrating 10 years of dubbing with an outrageously good deal on their latest twelve tape batch that includes six genre-focused label samplers (including drone, Americana, pop, weirdo, skronk, and “Sir Tad’s Picks”) drawn from their back-catalog, all for $25 (and all in shells with light blue backing, zoot zoot). Sadly, a few days after unveiling the batch, DNT announced it would be their last. Click through to Tabs Out for more background and check out the new tapes at DNT’s webstore. -DP

#10 – 12.28.2015 – Germany’s Strategic Tape Reserve had a relatively slow 2015, compared to the preceding year, though they’ve resurfaced for a last-minute interjection in the form a of a vaped out, free to download re-rendering of “a popular Chris de Burgh ballad accompanying a video survey of schunkel-dancing, conga-lines and arrhythmic clapping” courtesy of label-regular VLK. Click through to YouTube for the full experience or download via Bandcamp. -DP

#11 – 12.29.2015 – Sadly, Jeff Gold at RecordMecca reported that multi-instrumentalist and recorder Bruce Langhorne’s health is beginning to fail. Fortunately he is receiving hospice care and as far as I can gather, he already has a well-developed website and a small range of merch plugged in to help with those expenses. Read the full report at RecordMecca and check out ways to offer support here. -LP

#12 – 12.31.2015 – Acts of Silence posted a mammoth introduction to experimental netlabels featuring at least a few of our favorites, including Toronto’s Power Moves Label and Chicago’s long-running Pan y Rosas Discos — check it out and gird yourself with free music at Acts of Silence. -DP

#13 – 1.1.2016 – Connecticut-based Landing shared a mellow New Year’s remix of “Across the Sky,” taken from their 2001 album Circuit, courtesy of Gnoomes — a psych trio based in Perm, an historically progressive polarity on the eastern fringe of the more heavily developed parts of western Russia. -DP

#14 – 1.2.2016 – Vaporwave imprint Elemental 95 — who you may recognize thanks to their spectacular The Vape Council box-set, which we mentioned in brief last October — dropped a stellar retrospective 2k15 sampler featuring tracks from their 20+ album catalog, released beginning near the end of last spring. Pay what you want to download via their Bandcamp. -DP