Baked Tapes

Telecult Powers – ‘Zion Traveler’ LP
For the uninitiated, Telecult Powers is the superforce of Mister Matthews and Witchbeam, two weirdoes of the highest caliber, bred in Cleveland, nurtured in Brooklyn and now protecting a transdimenional wormhole connecting Crown Heights and New Orleans respectively.  They hit Brooklyn by storm, years ahead of the surge of the current synth infatuation, and clearly stood out by way of their sincerity to their art and most importantly, the substance that backed it up. With but a modest arsenal of mystical synth-gun boxes designed and meticulously hand-assembled by Mister Matthews, these two turned every shithole venue and divebar they graced into a hovering spacecraft that for moments took you away from the $7 beers, high rents and endless neon spandex that Brooklyn had become.  This is a definitively fresh perspective to the evolution of synthesized music in the modern era. This is not the rehashing of cliched 70s synth motifs passed off as “original” or “experimental”. This is the cusp. Mister Matthews and Witchbeam will be fondly remembered in the great Tome of 21st century Musicians as journeymen who actively moved electronic music beyond its overly-glorified past into a new age of enlightenment.  After countless tapes and cdrs, it is astounding that no one has given these two the wax they’ve so deserved. I am proud to be a positive force in getting this LP into the world. It’s the least I can do.  Housed in a full color jackets designed by Witchbeam, LP include digital download code as well as exclusive Mothers Third Eye issue cataloging key events of the next millennia, provided by their future selves, not unlike Biff’s Sports Almanac. Use at your own risk. Limited to 200.

Grasshopper – ‘Good Night Sweet Prince’ LP
“Goodnight Sweet Prince” is the culmination of 12 years of banddom for Jesse DeRosa and Josh Millrod. These somber trumpet soliloquies, bubbling electronic quagmires and rolling tides of feedback squelches have their roots deep in the woods of Long Island where the two met under the guise of learning classical trumpet at the same summer camp that launched Mariah Carey to stardom.  Over the years, they’ve toured the world with orchestras, studied classical music at two of the world’s finest conservatories and eventually landed in mangling the sounds of their polished trumpet tones to create throbbing walls of droning jazz noise.  “Goodnight Sweet Prince” is the bands most focused work with three improvisations that move freely between unadorned jazz trumpet tones, dense polytonal orchestration and harsh outbursts of noise all surrounded by a thick cloud of hazy smoke… a seriously hazy cloud that washes over the whole thing giving it a warmth that tempers the harsher moments.  These three improvisations are among the last recorded at The Bakery in Harlem. They were originally recorded for ESP Disk, but then rejected for “sounding too much like Miles Davis”. While there are moments that evoke “Sketches of Spain”, they are quickly engulfed by waves of harshness that would make Miles cringe and go back to smoking a jazz cigarette in hopes that it might make a bit more sense. Goodnight Sweet Prince is dedicated to the loving memory of Martin Dreiwitz, conductor of the Long Island Youth Orchestra and firm believer that Josh Millrod and Jesse DeRosa would never amount to much. Limited to 100. Co-released with Blood Fist Karate School.

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