Sloow Tapes – Agosto

Hildegard
Masterik
Sloow Tapes – Agosto
CS 50

Two sweating side-long jams along the itching lines of fellow mind-travellers Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Astral Blessing and Dredd Foole. Recorded smack in the middle of bible belt country, inspired by the wicked deeds of psyched Master Rick and his friends who used to be giving voluntary castrations in their own private creepy SM dungeon. Personnel: Daniel Presnell (pedal steel guitar, voice, drums), Jenni Pace (organ, flute, vocals, harmonica), Ed Yazijian (fiddle, drums), Bert Bacchus (guitar, drums), Wyatt Nicholson (bass, manipulation), Patrick Mulcahy (drums). Edition of 100 copies.

SOLD OUT

New cassette album from this great American/gothic free rock/drone group led by Daniel Presnell of Astral Blessing/Feed & Seed et al and now featuring Ed Yazijian (of Dredd Foole & The Din, Cul de Sac et al) on violin and drums. Waves of pedal steel and vocals from Presnell, Jenni Pace on organ, flute, vocals and harmonica, Bert Bacchus on guitars and drums, Wyatt Nicholson on bass and 'manipulation' and Patrick Mulcahy on drums. The overall feel is centred around the moment where hardcore tripped over into progressively extended jam-forms and improvised guitar blow-out, with aspects of Burmah, Boston basement bombs like The Din and The Girls and bass lines straight out of early Sonic Youth (circa "The Burning Spear"). Along with wildcard influences from Faust and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, it all makes for a beautiful parallel approach to free music that's more solidly grounded in alternative American rock traditions than many of their peers and all the more singular for it. Edition of 100 copies in full colour sleeves. Totally great. (Volcanic Tongue)

Great dirge rituals from this band based around Daniel Presnell (who runs the Feed & Seed label). The growling bass and street-preacher rants make you expect some scouring guitar to join it but the flute and scraping violin takes this into totally unexpected territory. (Boa Melody Bar)

All right! I finally got ahold of some Sloow Tapes! I can die happy now. Although all it took was me emailing the Belgium label's big cheese Bart and asking if I could just buy some...for some reason it seemed a whole lot more difficult than that. Maybe it's because all the tapes look so beautiful and are so limited (about 60-80 copies each) and the label has such a great rep (releases by Graveyards, My Cat is an Alien, Family Underground, Number None, Keijo, Larkin Grimm & more). So now every month I gotta check back for another one lest I miss out - look, there's a brand new one already! Actually, don't look. Because then you might buy it. Let me get mine first, OK? Hildegard's "Masterik" is August's Sloow Tape, a c50 and still available as of this writing. Features some lovely artwork, a green spraypainted tape, and even better sounds on the inside. I've never heard of them before but I guess Hildegard is a kind of regular unit featuring members of Astral Blessing, Dredd Foole & the Din and Cul de Sac. Side A cracks a very Vibracathedral Orchestra-type feel. Marching, militant percussion, violin acoutrements, flute spawns and a low dull bass throb. After awhile there's some muffled shouts and the appearance of some semi-regular vocals, at least for this side. Well they're more like shouts than vocals, and I can't really make any of the words out. One of the reviews posted on the Sloow Tapes blog says street preacher rants which is exactly what this sounds like but I don't know if that's the straight dope or just a homage. Anyway it reminds me a whole heck of a lot of Ya Ho Wa 13 (which is nuthin' but good news) but these vocals are a lot more obscured and not nearly as upfront as the Good Father's...which is also good news if you ever heard a Yod album and said "well, I like it, buuuut....". Maybe a better comparison would be Elisa from the Magik Markers and her bizarro stream of conscious mumbled ravings, albeit set against a decidedly more gnarly and psychedelic stoned jamming backdrop. The other side is thankfully more of the same but much more percussion based, a sturdier tribal drum beat with some bells for awhile and then a dual flute thing going on with some pretty malevolent church organ pipe vibes. The group locks into some seriously kraut grooves as showcased via Trad Grad Och Stenar, Necronomicon, Amon Duul, and all your favorites. I guess the preacher takes a breather on this one because it's all instrumental as far as I can hear. I realize everybody's in a New Weird band these days but when it's done so well like this, it just gets me right there...and if I was telling you this face-to-face you'd see that I'm actually pointing at my groin. (Matt McKeogh, Outer Space Gamelan)