Monday, June 14, 2010

Weird Forest:
Grouper - Wide - Weird Forest/Untitled
Grouper - Wide LP - Weird Forest
Really glad to have a few copies of this in stock. "Wide" is the Grouper LP preceding "Cover the Windows and the Walls" and a nice half-way point between the faraway drones of her early work and the more clearly song-based work she's doing now. It's definitely a slow, meditative listen -- the songs are there but still just shapes beneath the flow of sound. Beautiful stuff, it's easy to get lost in the drift. $10

Gift Tapes:
Oregon Painting Society - Radiant Dream Face - Gift Tapes
Oregon Painting Society - Radiant Dream Face - Gift Tapes
Plants and square waves. Strange recordings of a small army of DIY oscillators droning, squealing, burbling and drunkenly swooping. There's something appealing about the sound of a handful of people each in charge of a sound-making device that seems somewhat cumbersome to control, and the tape swerves from borderline-chaos to relative clarity. $6

Zaimph - Gift Tapes
Zaimph - Coast to Coast - Gift Tape
Beautiful, hazy, weathered, long-form guitar work. This tape has a great feel to it -- grainy, shimmering, warbling. Movement is subtle but constant. Nice, solid tape. $6

Concessionaires - Skyline- Gift Tapes
Concessionaires - Skyline - Gift Tapes
Concessionaires is a synth duo made up of Brad Rose and Pete Fosco who present some long-form pieces here. I'm digging their willingness to dabble in melody without getting cheesy and overly synth-y about it. Editing could have been a tiny bit more judicious in terms of focusing on the good parts, but it's hard to complain cause the good parts are good and in the big picture they do keep it pretty tight. Really nice, mellow listen. $6

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