REVIEW FROM BALTIMORE CITY PAPER: MICHAEL BYRNE - WWW.CITYPAPER.COM
Talibam! gave the world, like, a gazillion recordings in 2007, which is kind of par for the course for anything in the swelling little world of free-jazz-punk-deconstruct, the whatever and what have you music-y noise of sweat and basement anarchy. The only reason we catch most of this kind of stuff now is the CD-R, the technological enabler of the 25-run album pressing. The only reason we caught any of it then were tapes: A dual-deck with high-speed dubbing, and you too can make all of your friends’ ears bleed.
So, it’s fitting that Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Talibam!’s gazillionth release this year--the inaugural release of MT6 records tape-only offshoot, MT5 (natch?)--comes to us in a format that only about a third of us can actually play. And in fine Talibam! form--something like a rabid Don Caballero or circa-Homeboy Hella--it’s filled with music significantly less than a third of us will actually want to listen to. And that significantly insignificant portion of the music-listening universe had best lube up its ears.
It’s short and hard, some 15 minutes of cutting-room leftovers from last spring’s stellar Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts, the duo’s first "proper" (read: large run, real label, non-CD-R) release. Drums hit arrhythmically like the first drops of a rainstorm on a tin roof, slowed to half-speed and miked closely enough to tell just which drops are splashing and which are crashing; synths chase around in pitched squeals and organ-toned arpeggios. It all swirls around like that, eventually finding intermittent "grooves," where Kevin Shea’s drums catch a beat and Matt Mottel’s keys decide to play along. That is, until the Talibam! fellas get impatient and chase off for a few minutes into panicked megaracket. The flip is from one of Talibam!’s brothers-in-spirit, Italy’s Le Harmacy, dishing another 15 or so minutes of megaracket littered with impressive full-stops, teases of tribalism, brown-note bass throbs, and various sounds your computer would make OD’ing on coke. And, of course, there’s plenty of tape hiss to go around, too.
MT500002 - PALM TREES CASSETTE DUO / LEGLESS - Split C30
Virginia mutated tapes, junkpile electronics, guitar abuse member of Headmolt/Ratward
Baltimore Street Noise - ex New Flesh
LIMITED 66 COPIES
The Green Knight- The Eternal OM CS Bong-hit noise scrapple from Jeff Rahuba (Long Legged Woman) and Doug Patterson (Better People). Abrasive tape manipulations fall down the stairs and paranoid murmurs. A longing for times past when majik and pagan rites were employed in direct communion with the forces of nature. This is folk music, a lament.
First cassette for Thor's Rubber Hammer! Edition of 100 $5 PPD.
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