Wolf Eyes—Mangled LSD Lines Flexi

Wolf Eyes
Mangled LSD Lines "Live in Chicago 2014" Flexi
AudiaLSD0000

This bright orange flexi disk contains about 5 mins or so of live Wolf Eyes from this year. Nauseous-inducing churning punctuated with some piercing excellence at the end. It's what you may expect from Wolf Eyes but I fucking love it. It's super weird as far as packaging goes which is usual for Wolf Eyes' releases. This one contained randomly cut pieces of a weekly. Possibly the Stranger. Limited to 100 copies. It's good. 

Ice Orgy—2 cs

Ice Orgy

2

Univos Workshop

borrowed photo. awesome work...

I was a big fan of the first Ice Orgy cassette. The music and packaging were all there. Beautifully done work that took my breathe away and gave me something to work towards with my own label, Dead Accents. This release, or sequel if you will, continues with that awe I felt two years ago. The drones are intense and unnerving while still holding onto this subtle beauty. The letterpresses packaging looks amazing and is really well printed. The attention to detail is superb and I can't recommend this enough to everyone who makes and enjoys cassettes as much as I do. This is the label/person I would most want to release a BLSPHM release because of how nice and tasteful this is. Bravo. 

Submissions—II cs

SBMSSNS (Submissions)

II

Skrot Up

This is pretty rad. If you dig the idea of a heavier Nadja that lives closer to the world of Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste-era Ministry and maybe a touch of Deustch Nepal then you will dig this. I sure did. I know a friend that would actually shit his pants for this. It's things like this that get me excited about doing this blog. Discovering something new and weird that I never knew existed. These guys are on the map for me now. 

The layout is okay. The type is clean and strong—they even knew to letterspace their capital letters. I sorta wish they did some art of some kind on the inside but it's pretty strong. I like the image of Jack Kerouac being attacked by a snake on the cover or whatever that is...

Auburn Lull—Hiber cs

Auburn Lull

Hiber

Geographic North

An excellent if not unusual drone/space-rock cassette from Michigan. I haven't heard any of this band's other work but this is just the right amount Music for Airports for me. That era of Brain Eno's work should be cast in bronze and shot to all ends of the universe. Auburn Lull could be right up there with him. It may be a little too on-the-nose for some but I can' get enough. This also has a slightly dirtier sound that I think really sets them apart. This is great…

The layout is very interesting. The typography is very interesting but it's also a little hard to follow if you aren't sure what the land is called to begin with. Maybe if they had messed with the weights of the type a little it could have helped someone like me that didn't know what I was receiving but it's still one of the better type treatments I have seen on a cassette here. I really like the artwork wrapping around all the places of the j card you would normally never see artwork. Well done. 

Humongous—Who Among Us cs

Humongous

Who Among Us

Blacktop Records

So I'm not really familiar with Open Hand but apparently this is the solo project of the frontman, Justin Isham. When I first put this in I got a real strong Future Islands vibe from it and that's pretty cool for me. As the tracks go by it moves towards straight hip hop before it moves back to synth pop but with a heavy vocoder vocal presense a lá Kavinsky. It's a pretty killer album all in all. I imagine a kid moving from Indiana to New York City may bring this as one of his only cassettes and he would be totally fine with that…

The layout isn't much to comment on. There is issues with the typographical hierarchy and there just didn't seem to be too much thought put into the looks at all to be honest. I think the picture on the cover is the same reference that Jake Bannon used for Jane Doe. I think Converge just owns that image now so it's weird to see it used somewhere else. Unless I'm mistaken*… The music on this record is varied, complicated and interesting and the look of this just doesn't convey that at all.

*It's not the same but it's darn close...