Monte Burrows - Fantasy Living

Haunting and truly uncomfortable tape collage from Monte Burrows with Fantasy Living on Spring Break Tapes. So let me clarify uncomfortable. This is thoroughly enjoyable listen, that provides the listener no comfort, no safe haven within which to focus attention. Whirling, clattering machinery, sombre melody that loops in a slightly less than rhythmic cadence. Spoken word samples, instrumentation that sounds clipped directly from a 1940's cinema house. An ancient fragile soundscape rendered and interpreted mechanically. The square peg of old movie film feed into the round hole of digital 1's and 0's. The whole thing warbles and garbles with magnificent low fidelity. Strange and mysterious, odd and beautiful.

Edition of 100 copies on clear shells with mesmerizing tape squiggle. Grab direct from Spring Break Tapes.

Bus Gas - Snake Hymns

Piercing melodic ambience from Bus Gas, with Snake Hymns on Spring Break Tapes. Big, shadowy melodic washes, rumbles, fuzzy circular drones. Like a continuation of the last two Bus Gas tapes I've heard, but completely unique. Man, this stuff feels absolutely alive. The timbres, and the combination of textures is just off the charts. Snatches of desert rock, glitched electronics, who knows? It's a hypnotic wall of smoke a mile wide. It's a rainstorm rolling across the horizon. Devastatingly beautiful stuff. Dig.

Hand numbered edition of 100, double sided full color inserts, pro dubbed and imprinted with download code included. Grab direct from Spring Break Tapes.

Bugseed - Some Foods

Mega chill ocean side vibes from Bugseed with Some Foods on Spring Break Tapes. I often lament my credibility in reviewing things with a "beat", and so as a remedy I rely on Joe from SBT to curate incredible stuff like this for me. Picture perfect retro modern beats. A 70's Newport cigarettes ad tapping a Ninja Tune compilation CD with it's bumper going 1mph. Twelve tracks that glow with this warm perfectly compressed thump, overlaid with soupy swirling keys. If the ladies ever get here (they won't), I'm throwing this one on.

Edition of 100 pro dubbed and duplicated. Yellow shells, double sided inserts, digital copy included. Grab direct from Spring Break Tapes.

Junior Pande - The Red Tape

Through the course of posting about the first three numbered Junior Pande tapes, I've had the chance to describe the work of Justin Peroff quite a bit. His latest, and the first outside of a numbered sequence on Spring Break Tapes, is The Red Tape, and it continues much in the same evolutionary vein as those first three. A genre less boundary crashing mix up of beat styles. Perhaps this time things feel a bit more controlled and less chopped. Track remain plentiful, and lengths short and rapid fire. But, with that familiar mechanic, I'm finding tracks that veer a little more towards dance influence and bit less hip hop banger. It's a more controlled blend, but no less effective and still full of such surprising twists and turns that a smile crept across my face more than once. The mix still breaths with heavy compression as bass hits suck all the air out of your lungs and then push it back in with a tide of synth, but now structured and integrated with increased focus. Raw, controlled, just a hell of a lot of fun.

Packaging on this is so sick and so detailed. Edition of 50 unlabeled red shells housed in an individually numbered hand stamped ocard with section of photographs and a bit of paint. From what I can tell, each tape in the edition has unique photos. Along with the tape, a zine full of photos from the artist, a pin and a sticker are all included. This was no doubt a monster undertaking and it presents wonderfully. Grab direct from Spring Break Tapes!

Junior Pande — Liberty After by springbreaktapes

Sima Kim - Intertwined

Soft, gently glitched tectonic ambient movements from Sima Kim, with Intertwined on Spring Break Tapes. Delicate moments that loop, establish themselves, and slowly spiral outwards until they join with a host of melodic elements (I think guitar), as a developed whole. It's a free flowing and organic process that often occurs within the span of just a few minutes. I can imagine that for most members of our hectic and immediate society, these may seem to start and end without occurrence, but for the astute listener, there can be depth immeasurable. I'm uncertain if the intent of these ambient pieces is to impart a feeling of nature and the natural, but I can't help picturing expansive plains, sunrises, all that type of stuff. A release that truly exhibits command, both from the artist to command his own process, and the listener to command their attention to each element to enjoy the whole. A set of original tracks on the front, remixes on the flip.

As always Spring Break Tapes brings a completely professional physical edition of 100. Fold out double sided insert, download included. Grab direct from the label.

Auxiliary Priest - S/T

Ominous astral delirium from Auxiliary Priest, with a self titled chiller on Spring Break Tapes. No track titles listed, no breaks except for the flip. Just etherial blown out space wreckage spooling outward into the cosmos. This one is much more on the noise side of ambience, but what really appeals to me is the restraint to maintain balance between the absolute perfect hints of static and fuzz, and the smooth massive sweeps of melody. Echoing, mechanical grinding way out front in the mix, juxtaposed against caverns of backing melody. Sad and sinister. Striking a delicate balance here between something, and the absence of something. Negative space, but not. Guess that's what I take the Sagan quote in the liner to mean. Sounds like the lone survivor on a doomed space station meeting his own demonic reflection.

Edition of 100, pro imprinted and dubbed. Fold out double sided jcards. Lucky you, this one is on sale as I type this over at Spring Break Tapes.

Junior Pande - Tape Three

Head rattling off kilter beats. Big crusty curtains of noise that huff and puff, breathing in syncopated rhythm with the beat. Sly little homages to 70's California cool. The Junior Pande moniker of Justin Peroff keeps on blasting through traditional beat scene genre boundaries with Tape Three on Spring Break Tapes. What I've found so enjoyable about what, at this point, stands as a trilogy of editions, is the lack of concern of (or carefully considered disregard for) staying cannon to singular tropes associated with beat making. Everything feels exactly on, and also quite "off". It all sounds spontaneous, organic, as if created on a whim, and not living inside a midi time signature slave to a Propellerhead Ignition Key. Spacey, crunchy, throwback, 8bit, whatever else. How much is there to say about something like this, just play it.

SBT is about as selective (and diverse) curatorially as it gets in tape land, with just eight releases total. That three of them represent the Junior Pande trilogy should tell you how essential these are. Stop depriving yourself the chance to have a little fun, grab this one direct from Spring Break Tapes.

And the trilogy...

Ali Helnwein - Strange Creations

Intriguing, unclassifiable, psychedelic sadness from Ali Helnwein, with Strange Creations on Spring Break Tapes. Psychedelic in the sense that it feels like the soundtrack to a twisted bedtime story. Intriguing in the sense that it's just so darn interesting to listen to. Sounds like a music box come to life, backed by an orchestra while morning the loss of a dear friend. Tracks wander a blurred line between whimsical and touching. The standout second side concludes with the heartrending piece Gluttony which showcases delicate fingerpicked strings over a bombastic rhythm section and mournful melody. This one will test your genre preconceptions, and is exactly the type of heady experimentation I love to find.

Limited edition of 100 on black shells tapes, download included. Grab directly from Spring Break Tapes.

V/A - Greetings From Spring Break Tapes! Vol. 1

Sun drenched beats and lazy acid jazz vibes on the new comp from Spring Break Tapes, Greetings From… Vol. 1. An absolutely killer stable of producers, tour de forcing their way through ten tracks of mid tempo beat scene sickness and 70’s soundtrack chic. Favorites of mine, including Junior Pande and Jah Connery make appearances, along with Lazloh, Dr. Quandary, Elaquent, Lushlife, West Widows, Don Cash, Amable, and Sunclef. Thick, beefy production, high quality sound, and a flat out fun to play feeling that begs you to borrow an old car with a tape deck and head to the beach. All ten tracks repeat on both sides to double your chill out capacity.

I hadn't grasped what a massive undertaking this comp must have been until the package arrived. Each copy packaged in a separate, custom stamped inner envelope, bursting with extra goodies. Button, die cut sticker, ten miniature postcards, one for each artist, and a download code. Grab directly from Spring Break Tapes.

Junior Pande - Tape One

Killer mash up of genres and scenes from Junior Pande, with Tape One, on Spring Break Tapes. There's about 20 tapes worth of loops, fuzz, and experimentation here, all smashed into a single crazy headspin that sounds like an improv performance recorded live to mic in your living room. Enough melodic ambience to keep you hypnotized, and enough variety to keep you awake. Some tracks have clear boundaries, other seem to overlap and intersect with reckless abandon. It's that unpredictable spontaneous element that makes Tape One such fun. It keeps you sharp, not sure if the next track will be straight up sequencer loops, or a drone / desert rock mash up that sounds like Earth gone tape crazy.

Junior Pande is the first release from Spring Break Tapes, with a second now available from Don Cash. It's time your cassette deck had a little fun.