TRACEY TRANCE – ‘101’ C32 $6
This hand held saga of life on the road is comprised of multiple treatments of three distinctly different tunes, as well as several vignettes of other song skeletons. Heavily saturated locomotives rip holes through the tape heads and quick cassette deck to cassette deck edits act as the scene changers, as we follow Tracey Trance to the chiller zones of modern society, found under bridges, along the capes, the coasts and the rivers of the West Coast of the US. This cassette marks the transition from Tracey Trance’s mostly instrumental, hypno -circular modal compositions, to a more vocally structured form of songwriting, and these sketchy hog leg laden tunes are none the less infectious than previous riff oriented offerings. For those of you that have been following live and or magnetically captured sounds of Tyler Larson for a while now, think Tyler’s early 2000’s project Quincy Quartz and that’ll get you close to knowing what this may sound like. I might compare the root styling’s of Tyler’s vocal inflection to that of a less blues obsessed Jad Fair. Lo-fi, just as much because of the means at hand, as aesthetic value of the artist. Covers Risograph printed by Caroline Paquita.
Tracey Trance – ‘PYPER KUB’ LP $15
Denny Laine had a somewhat fresh and entergetic take on Buddy Holly’s songwriting, as did Fleetwood Mac on their earlier Lps. But the songcrafting that Tyler Larson of Tracey Trance carves out of a fascination for Holly comes off as a much more authentic yet original take on Rock and Roll’s roots, before they were strangled, and bled dry by modern musceled up parameters. This allows Tracey Trance’s work in particular to feel un-paralleled in the modern world, without ever feeling like some kind of retro throwback. Along with poignant lucidly plucked riffs and melodic hooks, is this totally sincere smoked out-law beachy exotica vibe that Larson has been working on for a long while now…….Whether he’s playing portable keyboards, dragging hammond organs outta the side of a mini bus, jamming flutes, guitars or banjo, Tyler pulls it off in a most chill and hypnotic fashion. Add some beautifully warm sky’s the limit tape saturation and Pyper Kub becomes one of the best experimental pop records to come out in quite some time. Previously self released on cassette.