We are very pleased to have Thomas D’Angelo joining our Free Form Freakout “team” for a semi-regular column of reviews and random music & art musings that he’s calling Mutually Assured Marginality. We always admired the level of detail and the razor sharp wit that D’Angelo displayed with his former print zine, Put the Music in its Coffin, and then later with his podcast called Difficult Listening Made Easy. In fact, he was a guest on the Free Form Freakout podcast show back in 2015 where we discussed at length his work running the label & mailorder outlet, Crisis of Taste, and some of his solo recordings that he was doing at the time. D’Angelo is getting ready to issue the final Crisis of Taste release in the coming months, while at the same time preparing to put out new material on a joint imprint that he’s starting up with Stewart Skinner called We Are One, so be on the lookout for more details on those in the weeks ahead.

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I don’t really know how to start this off, it’s a weird time to be doing anything right now. I had this all written (with a very different intro obviously) and ready to send to David awhile ago, just wanted to make a few tweaks, and then all of a sudden the entire fucking planet is on lockdown, threatened with an unprecedented health pandemic and attendant economic collapse. There’s not much to say, it’s obviously weighing on everyone’s mind, but it feels odd not mentioning it at all, either. I’ll save the paranoid, obsessive thoughts I’ve been having about the potential exploitation of this crisis and vast ideological space it opens up for the reemergence of a hard right authoritarian populist national security state, and all the misery that could entail for vulnerable people in my already bigoted, dogshit country, and instead wish that anyone reading this is healthy, safe and has what they need to survive for the foreseeable future. Hopefully you are with people you love and are having a lot of freaky sex and reading and making art and/or whatever makes you happy. Music seems trivial at the moment, but then again, holed up in the house for fuck knows how long, with day after day to ponder various nightmare scenarios, it is an absolutely necessary escape, and without a doubt a welcome reminder of why life continues to be worth living, even in such bleak and uncertain moments, against the odds.

Christopher David – ‘Various CDRs’ (no label, 2019)

Starting things off with a grip of privately distributed, micro-edition CDRs, like every Serious Music Journalist should (alphabetical order or fate?). Christopher David is a recent alias of Chris Donaldson, who records under a number of monikers, perhaps most notably as City Medicine, and also runs the Hologram imprint. After growing weary of the heavily edited, laborious method of his previous work (and I believe spurred on by a trip down the ole’ Sukora rabbit hole), Chris began experimenting with a dryer, more spontaneous approach, and these fine releases are the fruits of his labor. Describing them all in detail would be useless (and time consuming), as they are essentially the same, and yet seemingly unrelated and devoid of any meaning outside their particular sonic palettes. Some are slightly louder, some feature distant dub music, voices, metronome or what I believe is a children’s xylophone, and some are comprised of basically nothing but airy room sound and the occasional tap or shuffle across the floor, micro-details becoming epiphanies. As stated, Sukora is definitely a sign post, as are various aspects of Joe Colley, David Jackman and perhaps what a gruff, unpretentious take on the bloodless Wandelweiser/Erstwhile silence fetishization that was the rage in certain corners some year’s back would sound like. Whatever is going on here, it sounds good to me, and I hope these CDRs keep unexpectedly landing in my mailbox for the foreseeable future *wink, wink*. 

Doronco Gumo – ‘Oldtribe’ (Selection, 2019)

I’m not particularly tuned in these days, so it’s doubtful I’d have come across this excellent LP were it not for an enthusiastic recommendation from Philadelphia’s most convivial record store clerk/TD Bank merch enthusiast, Max Milgrim, so thanks buddy. Doronco Gumo is the duo of Hiiragi Fukuda & Takada Kiyohiro, the latter best known for his time in Les Rallizes Denudes, playing bass on the ‘OZ Days’ comp., ‘Naked Diza Star’ and massive ‘Double Heads’ box. They have a few previous releases in this current configuration, and although I am unfamiliar, it would appear they are of a vastly different order than what is presented on ‘Oldtribe.’ While previous Doronco efforts appear to be swimming in the sort of blasted garage muck one might expect from a person with first hand knowledge of not only “Deeper than the Night”, but also “Reapers of the Night” (to say nothing of LRD classic “Night of the Assassins”), the release in question is almost entirely electronic in nature, utilizing only analog synth, drum machine and vocals. Max evoked the hallowed name of that most hipster-cited imprint, Vanity records, when describing its contents, and for once the shoe fits, as ‘Oldtribe’ tracks closely to the R.N.A.O./Sympathy Nervous/Normal Brain wing of the Vanity roster, while somehow sounding totally modern at the same time. I could also list any number of 80s industrial obscurities I’ve only heard on YouTube with names like “Orgazm Gestapo” to drive the point home, but even I’m not that much of an asshole. This is a very good record of simple, hypnotic songs that are neither oppressively retro nor obnoxiously flash in the pan; some might even say “timeless”.

Ruda Vera – ‘Caus d’orella’ & ‘untitled’ (Sedicions, 2019)

More mysterious CDR-only (the format of the future!) releases, this time from a friendly Spaniard recording under the moniker of Ruda Vera. While both share a similarly crude and beguiling character, each disc is formatted differently, ‘Caus d’orella’ being ten short tracks of very direct, physical and organic-sounding explorations of a particular strange, typically recurring source, while the unlabeled CDR has two longer pieces with a bit more movement and composition. We are also assured, at least of ‘Caus d’orella’, that there are no overdubs (or hope) to be found here. I am quite fond of this granular, micro-focused approach to experimental sound, so it comes as little surprise that these appeal so much to me. I was often reminded, especially while listening to the untitled one, of that kind of not exactly harsh, but still totally alien sounding unmusicality of my favorite Hands To recordings, as well as other home taping greats like John Hudak, G*Park and Minoy. It is by no means a rip off or regression to some idealized past, but simply carrying the torch of grey shit sound towards an uncertain future. After all, when material conditions have in no way improved for most of us since those days, what the fuck else is one to do?

Slender – ‘Time on Earth’ (La Vida Es Un Mus, 2019)

While Max was spot on about the Doroco LP mentioned so enthusiastically above, he also recommended this one, which isn’t sinking in too well. It was described as a less downer exploration of the same territory as the first Pink Reason LP, which I still regard among the highlights of mid-00’s Siltbreeze revival, and while that is pretty accurate, the thing just never comes together in a way that sticks to the ribs für mich. There are hints of a lot of things I enjoy, be they Homosexuals/It’s War Boys-esque schizo genre cut up, Ego Summit style loose barn jam, or Brian Sands budget glam bullshit, but somehow the sum adds up to considerably less than its parts. The closest contemporary comparison I can think of would be Chronophage’s ‘Prolog For Tomorrow’, which similarly had lots of good ingredients but ended up tasting a bland brick of shit. I’d like to think that weird rock music can still be interesting, and perhaps my bias against the sort of NYC hipster punk milieu Slender is comprised of colors my perception a bit (let’s be real though there is no chance any random band that sent a demo sounding like this to LVEUM would get the time of day…); I do not claim objectivity, and while I honestly commend this band for attempting to stretch conventions and make something unique and contemporary (and I do enjoy a few of the songs quite a bit), it comes off a bit forced, as if pandering to some romanticized notion of eclecticism, when taken as a whole.

Staubitz / Waterhouse – “Pickup for Mark” b/w “Exterior Scroll” (Gertrude Tapes, 2020)

Mary Staubitz (Donna Parker) & Russ Waterhouse (formerly 1/2 Blues Control) are a new power couple heating up the NE seaboard, and here is their debut release, a very ltd. lathe 7″ that will probably be long gone by the time you read this. From a recent live performance (remember those?) I thought I had somewhat of a grasp on what this duo would present in recorded context but fuck me I was not expecting whatever the fuck this is. The A-side has some familiar sources (voice, coughing, phone ringing, back masked clipping) but it’s all engulfed by this hallucinatory bubbling wave form, as if you’re having a fever dream while floating on a life raft in the middle of the ocean (on acid, falling down the stairs, bleagagh;g!). The flip is a similarly disassociated radio play for a contact mic’d wheelchair race with color commentary by an asthmatic seagull. It all makes me want to break out my Chocolate Monk CDRs and never see the sun again. Quite a shame that material as good as this would be relegated to such a terrible and unobtainable format, but I have the sense these two are just getting started, so keep your eyes/ears peeled for more if you’ve made it this far.

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Do you record marginal music to keep yourself from going insane? Would you like for it to be reviewed? If so, e-mail crisisoftaste [AT] gmail.com. Only physical releases will be considered, and reviewer reserves the right to discard upon unsatisfactory listening experience, but if what you send is good then that shouldn’t be a problem.

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