I call myself an audio Gumshoe but I’m more of a seeker than an investigator these days. My mission? To find the perfect cassette tape. Yes, a lot of CS productions have come close, I admit that, yet I feel the surface has barely been scratched. To paraphrase Dirk Diggler super-loosely, We Can Make a Difference With This Music; This Music Can Be Important. But where does it start? Hell, why not with Augenmusik’s self-titled effort on Eidertown? Augenmusik is tight and absolutely surging with activity despite the fact that not a single sound will be identifiable to your ears (unless you’re a serious audio detective, in which case I’d be glad to bequeath you the Gumshoe handle if you can prove your mettle). It’s like a long, swaying ride on a boat in choppy water, the radio going in and out and sea creatures all around, waiting for your watery demise like vultures in the sky. When a cassette like Augenmusik comes across my desk my first instinct is to listen to a few minutes, just to get a feel as to where I should place said tape, and when. With Aug-Mu, however, I found it impossible to take a break. Once I was sucked into its vacuum-sealed maw I could’t think about anything except finishing the side so I could flip it over and experience Side B. That’s how it SHOULD be, folks. I know drone is ubiquitous but there’s shouldn’t be so much time to twiddle thumbs when a tape is playing. I want action, heat, resonance, friction, an escape from the drudgery of daily 9-5 living, and I don’t want to sit through 60 minutes of exposition to get there. Hey that’s me. I like butter in my ass and listening to people jam on tape; is that so wrong? Think Caboladies, the experimental spaces in between songs on that first Racebannon record, and, most of all, think about how much work it must have taken to render these sounds so unrecognizable. No fake mustaches and/or fedoras here; if you want a thinly veiled MicroKorg composition drop in on a Soft Metals show. Another lovely product from Eidertown, limited in scope, yet ready to take the world by storm if people would just plug in and LISten. Will you take the ride with Augenmusik? I hope so, dawg.
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