It’s not really drone – there’s way too much movement for that. But it does have a bed of droning organ. It’s lo-fi but it’s not mush – everything can be heard and has its place in both the sonic and spatial spectrums. There’s plenty of hiss and a lot of it isn’t coming off the actual cassette. It definitely sits in the neo-psychedelia spectrum, with its low wordless chants and tiny backwards percussion sounds. The lead instrument, if it can be called that in this kind of context, actually sounds like a tape player, but one that is able to be sped up and slowed down (old-school cassette 4-track recorder, possibly?) as the bleepy high end sounds that most often attract your attention jump in and out of hyperspeed, but far enough back in the mix to remain texture. There’s some very tiny fragments of speech, totally indecipherable, which, putting two and two together from the bio, could be LA Lakers interviewing himself on radio. There’s a sense of movement across the 20 minutes (split over 2 sides of a cassette) which gives this a much more considered feeling than pure improvisation. Even if the actual take was improvised, it was well though out beforehand. An intriguing release which belies its lo-fi æsthetic through the sheer force of mesmerisation. Uncharacteristically nice artwork for a cassette release as well – the nebulous pink blob painted on the plastic a slightly surrealistic touch totally befitting the sounds.
Adrian Elmer
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