After a long hiatus, I’m going to try and revive the Down in the Bunker review column here on the website. It may not appear weekly, or even monthly at that, it’ll just be published as time and energy allow. These are simply going to be short reviews of releases that I’m listening through for the podcast over my morning coffee. It goes without saying that this isn’t going to be Grade-A music criticism by any stretch of the imagination, just formulating ideas and sharing information really. Honestly, it’s writing for the sake of writing, an attempt to exercise that part of the brain, especially during the summer months. Hopefully, though, at least a few people will find it useful. Anyways, here’s what I have for now…

The Bohman Brothers – In Their 70’s (Fort Evil Fruit)

This new tape contains two sound collage pieces drawn together from home recordings made by Adam and Jonathan Bohman during their pre-teen & teen years in the mid-70’s. As a youngster, I recall mucking around with a portable tape player: recording songs off of the TV, creating fake sports broadcasts, making heavy metal albums with no instruments, etc. It was good fun at the time, but I’m not sure I’d want to listen to the results today. Interestingly, the raw material heard on this release pretty much maps out the future sonic pursuits that these two would go on to explore over the next 40+ years. This, of course, is enhanced by Jonathan’s fine  sound editing work, but still you’ll be able to catch snippets of the grinding, bowing, and plucking of random objects, the fragments of half-formed songs, the bits of eccentric humor and other zany improvisational antics. For those, like myself, that may be more familiar with Adam Bohman’s solo output, imagine a super-condensed, less song-oriented version of Bunhill Row and you’re at least in the parking lot outside of the ballpark for what In Their 70’s sounds like.

Alexandra Spence & MP Hopkins – The Divine For Me Is Whatever Is Real (More Mars)

This is the debut release from this pair of Sydney, Australia-based sound artists. Hopkins’ solo work has been featured regularly on the FFF podcast show for years, along with his other projects and bands like Half High, Vincent Over the Sink, and Naked on the Vague. Alexandra Spence is a more recent discovery with her beautiful piece called Immaterial released on Longform Editions in 2019 being my introduction to her work. On paper, the duo’s tactics of amplifying various objects may read a bit like the aforementioned Bohman Brothers’, but the end results are entirely different, as I’m sure those who are familiar with Hopkin’s tape pieces would gather. Recorded with a pair of open-air mics in a “disused sports club hall” (is that a basketball court??), the space itself is an ever-present part of these recordings, as a ghostly drone drifts and blankets much of the duo’s rustling activity. The track titles themselves paint a fairly vivid picture of what’s taking place sonically – “Tone Mouthing”, “Piano Faint”, “Flute Static Crickets” – yet the duo displays a patient, unhurried approach, as though each sound they are creating is trying to transmit and communicate something with the room itself. The Divine For Me Is Whatever Is Real is a captivating start to a promising new collaboration.   

Rambutan – Parallel Systems (Sedimental / Tape Drift)

First, some slight one-sheet regurgitation is in order just to provide the basic context for this massive release: it includes 33 sound collage pieces that were mixed and arranged by Rambutan (aka, head Tape Drift’r Eric Hardiman) during the lockdown months of the pandemic that features original source material from 69 different contributors representing 9 different countries. In Hardiman’s words, “I imagine each track as being the result of a unique “group” of musicians, and pictured the various contributors working together as the tracks emerged. Each “system” exists in its own sound world.” Now, let’s just say the contributor list reads like a who’s who of the international cassette sub underground of the past two decades, think prime-era Foxy Digitalis mainstays in particular. Wait, am I reading that correctly? Did punk veterans Mike Watt and Guy Picciotto contribute to this project too?? Indeed, they did!! Hardiman’s musical roots stretch well beyond his upstate NY hub back to the D.C. punk scene, so it’s great to see him working with such a broadly talented crew of musicians and sound makers on this project. The range of sounds heard within these “systems” is difficult to fully convey in this capsule review format, but over the course of the 33 pieces you’ll hear ambling psych rock, industrial-tinged electronics, fucked with free improv, plaintive guitar excursions, mangled musique concrète and more. The key here is that Hardiman achieves what he set out to do with this project by creating pieces that maintain a distinctly group-like feel to them, yet his steady and assured production skills gives this sprawling release a remarkable sense of cohesion. Other bonus points include a) the very reasonable $15 for a double CD that you can get b) right now without having to pre-order and wait for the next six months to listen to. Go get yours!!

Drooling Clerics – Handful of Earth (Home & Garden) 

Here’s one of a handful of new releases to come out recently on the upstart Minneapolis imprint, Home & Garden, which by all indications appears to be a more psychedelic leaning offshoot of the Lighten Up Sounds label, but I could be mistaken. Drooling Clerics is the duo of Jason Millard and Levi Haga – Millard being a regular contributor to Lighten Up’s catalog over the years through his various solo and collaborative projects like Lighted, Myrrh, and Land. His 2017 solo tape, Tall Reeds, is one of the strangest collections of homespun psych folk that I recall hearing in recent memory. While that release featured its fair share of odd tape editing and tape manipulation, Handful of Earth is simply recorded and overdubbed straight to tape giving the overall sound a warm yet highly submerged quality. This is heavy basement psych – fuzzy & wah’d out guitars, howlin’ & tripped out vocals – with all the amps and drums muffled by blankets covered in mice droppings so as to not agitate the neighbors. Handful of Earth makes George Brigman’s Jungle Rot sound like Steely Dan by comparison.