One in a series of releases related to UC Davis’ KDVS radio station released by Sacramento’s Weird Forest, this split exemplifies all the diverse weirdness that one can get up to with the right admixture of ecological association and isolation. Dotting the beeline trajectory from UC San Diego to Mills College, Oakland like an i (with all the division that dotting implies), John Brumley’s Sagan Genesis is neither pre-married by theoretical dogma nor fucked-off for the semester, demonstrating care and craftsmanship to the multi-part feel-good “Mollusk in Water”, equal parts well-tempered synthesizer and obscenely-plundered phonics. The side-long track moves in stages of high-definition science-filmicisms, reversed midway like live-action made animation: first enchanting the documentary of an underwater scene – deep, impressionistic rumble and micro-tectonic shift – then documenting the enchanted other world with Growing-sized bass plumes, impossible baubles, and molecular trinkets. The side remains on high through loftier planes, less inner- to outer-space than outer- to inner-activity as we’re drugged into this dreaded new age. In stark contrast, Julia Litmer-Cleper’s Waxy Tomb is an ample audiograph of student union Noise: also a single track comprised of several entries, “Take One, Try All (Hormone Pills)” pulls down the crepe streamers of patrimony and wall noise to insert beat/mute space and a lady’s short-hairs. Submerged in long lapses of murky electronic rumble and watery vocals, the disaffection blocking much of this side bleeds new red when cut with a granular sequence of synthesizered swatches or full-bodied orbs of finger-tapped claps. At (the most successful) times just her beats, these trackettes span the post-sexual industrial throb of ‘Irreversible’ to the post-industrial sex of Liars to the irreversible sexual posts of a liar playing Blixa Bargeld at a land-grant university. Limited to 60 copies on imprinted tapes with a bright sleeve of collaged images. Recommended.
Weird Forest cassette
$5
HERE