“I’m on a budget right now, but using the skills I have to continue to make music.” So goes Ellie Kokoro’s humble introduction to their newest release on nebulous in-house netlabel Wouldn’t Know (this quote is followed by a much lengthier discussion of audio quality standards and mastering techniques—long story short, the artist’s production paradigm leans minimal and laissez-faire, and stands in opposition to the still-snowballing loudness wars). The music comprising Curious Cryptids itself possesses plenty of humility as well, taking the form of six ragtime-influenced piano improvisations recorded outside at a gazebo in Sewickley, PA. Kokoro is clearly a talented and adventurous pianist, but neither virtuosity nor subversion are the focus here; each piece is a straightforward and often danceable bit of musical impressionism, no more and no less. Simply recorded with a smartphone, the rolling melodies and off-beat accents are frequently joined by the surrounding ambient soundscape of the park—birds chirp, leaves and twigs tumble in the wind, cars on nearby roads breeze by at audibly relaxed velocities—but it feels more incidental than intentional, i.e., I don’t hear the same co-emphasis on contribution and observance that characterizes the ostensibly comparable work of Áine O’Dwyer, Nick Keeling, or Natalia Beylis. Rather, the “point” of Curious Cryptids is purely that it is music that just happens to have been performed in a particular place, which ironically makes the unexpected moments of textural harmony all the more serendipitous. I am a big fan of Kokoro’s aesthetic credo, or perhaps the lack thereof… where else could you hear a track titled “Spitroasted by Mothman and Bigfoot” that sounds this cute?

Going into Bituminous Concrete Curb Detail I did not expect the level of fidelity and sound design that immediately and loudly makes itself known in distortion-wracked opener “Not to Scale” and remains, in various forms, throughout the remaining six tracks. I’ll admit I had expectations based on what I have previously heard on Ayurvedic, a small batch label initially launched by Seamus Williams to release his first recordings as TVE, which all seemed to worship the bottommost dregs of analog tape noise. And that was before I knew that the material for  fellow Worcester, MA resident Mickey O’Hara’s latest on the imprint was produced via a custom framework in SuperCollider. But it’s not that Curb Detail doesn’t belong on the venerable imprint, something that “14” Gravel Base,” one of two lengthier pieces, wastes no time in asserting with its expansive soundscape that could easily pass as scuttling basement concrète punctuated by fraught yawns of audible emptiness. Both the digital toolbelt and the CD-R format make room for a little less dust and a little more detail, and O’Hara takes full advantage of this with each enthralling composition; this is a well-structured and consistently engaging album. Even as it proceeds at a rather reticent pace there are always moments of surprise: the throttled, writhing textures of “Hey (Slab)” evoke those of a certain power electronics project, “330 Crickets” powers up into full-on glitch mode, and I swear those are humans making some of those sounds in “Musty Sheet no. c7.0.” There’s something for everyone, clearly, but in the interest of recommendation, fans of Christian Mirande, Mysterious House, or some of the more electronics-heavy Vitrine releases will definitely feel right at home. The more I play this one the more it’s shaping up to be a favorite of the whole year.

Ayurvedic orders are placed/fulfilled via email: seamusrwilliams@gmail.com.

Selving, the latest and perhaps greatest solo project from Dan Williams (a.k.a. Swarm Survival; member of Pyramid Dust, Culled, Ghoul’s Teeth, Rust Belt), first torched tape with 2021’s appropriately titled Willed Into Existence on the artist’s own imprint Structures Without Purpose. Though there was already plenty of cut-up DNA woven into the two mono-heavy blasts of that C20, those strands have grown like hungry vines through the thick analog churn of Guerrilla Bamboozlement Campaign and now thrive in the loamy ruins of Miniscula, cinch-amputating slabs of surging pedal-noise into jagged chunks with stretches of humid dead air in between. I hope I get to see a live set someday, because this is the kind of stuff that’s better witnessed than simply heard; every rumble and roar in “Bizarre Animalcule” sounds forced from a maxed-out effects chain by ruthless killswitch compressions—Caustic Pulse Rupture?—and one can almost see the knobs twisting through the soupy direct-action smog of “Muling.” There’s a (frequent) time and (large) place for the high-fidelity, stereo-lush shrapnel storms of audiophilic surgeons like T.E.F, Negation, Marion, and others, but I’m just as often in the mood for this blunt-nosed approach that is thriving in underground hotspots around the States and across the globe, a trend with aspects both fresh and classic that Fusty has been faithfully chronicling with many of these inspired recent tape releases. Miniscula has all the colorful density and textural eclecticism of Bamboozlement (one of my most played tapes in the box of noise-bags that lives right next to the deck), but here Williams also introduces a well-humored volatility into the mix, cross-contaminating currents and injecting left-field sample breaks with inflammatory irreverence. My sole complaint is that it’s too damn short.

Last time I reviewed an Everyday Samething release (Hydra’s Your Name), I discussed how the enigmatic imprint’s unique approach to tangible editions responds to “a point in time when physical music is much more ritual than utility to most.” That dialogue is only more relevant in the case of the newest entry in their catalog: Birdbath I, a brief bit of thoroughly DIY sound art by an unknown artist pressed as an “extremely limited” run of four business cards with the album artwork on the front and a QR code linking to a youtube upload of the music on the back, priced at a cool hundred quid each. By design, there is quite literally no incentive to own one of these objects other than the fact that only a handful were or will be made; they do not include a code for lossless download, nor is the youtube video solely accessible via the QR.

It’s a rarity parody that’s both amusing and incisive. Though scarcity in the underground music community is at its root simply a financial and logistical necessity, it has become some sort of benchmark for “legitimate” ownership and is now often intentional (read: artificial), an evolution with its bleakest results manifesting as limited digital NFT releases such as those distributed by Nina Protocol. Made-to-order imprints like Matching Head and experimental prank editions like those of Everyday Samething are deliberately dug potholes in that all-too-smooth road into the cancerous depths of capitalism—and the satirical aspect of Birdbath I lets us muse on what might be playing over the speakers in that cursed clown-car. The answer? Subliminal propaganda mutterings, dictaphone smear, sabotaged mass-media broadcasts, the best and brightest of this generation’s elevator music. A funereal radio play to score the most boring apocalypse imaginable. Hard to describe how desolate the sixth untitled section is: static-cracked sounds of idly tapped fingers and shuffled decks of cards, the dried-out signifieds of human presence passively decapitated from their referents. The material, which was anonymously submitted with next to no context other than the request for the unusual delivery method, could not be better aligned with it. Twenty-five minutes of that elusive superposition of forbidden revelation and utter uselessness that seems to be the only relevant art for our times… I will not rest until I own all four copies.