TMT Cerberus 03 Slippery When Wet

In this ever-expanding musical world, there's a wealth of 7-inches, cassettes, CD-Rs, and objet d'art being released that, due to their limited quantities and adventurous sonics, go unnoticed by the public at large. TMT Cerberus seeks to document the aesthetic of these home recorders and backyard labels. Access the archive here and email us here.

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Black Eagle Child
Kite Excursions [CD-R]

[Blackest Rainbow; 2009]

http://www.blackest-rainbow.moonfruit.com/#

By Jspicer

Black Eagle Child's one-man suites are put aside on his latest limited release in favor of twisted passages of drone and static. Whereas BEC consumed and spat out ragas like Ben Chasny and Peter Walker with earlier releases, Kite Excursions is dripping with buzzes, clicks, and steel to disturb his once-mellowed din. Much of the CD-R sounds as if it were coming from an out-of-tune HAM radio — the distance dialogue beaming through opener “You and Me and a Dragonfly” just missing a ‘Niner' or '10-4' — creating space between BEC's melodious guitar playing and his descent into frayed electronic madness. Epic finisher “June 3rd” showcases a different side, with gnarled guitar riffs piercing through the calm atmosphere like lightning and thunder, breaking up the pleasant summer's day before the clouds are ran off by the oncoming wind. Kite Excursions is Black Eagle Child's most versatile and stylistic release to date, proving Mike is more than just another picker-in-training.

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Absinthe Minds
The Black Plague in Mono Vol. 1 [CS]

[Jerkwave Tapes; 2008]

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=360476661

By Mangoon

The first in a new tape series by Jerkwave Tapes, this bad boy has synth wiz Dead Luke teaming up with death folkster Max Elliott to produce loner bedroom psych that's awash in a galaxy of synthification. Commencing with Luke's chirping pulse waves and Elliott's sparse guitar figures and Jandek-meets-Dylan vocal catharsis, these two elements come together in a mixture that's as murky as a snifter of aged wormwood. The B-side is an extended live track and sounds more like Southern Cali drone psych, somewhere in between Magic Lantern and Robedoor. The persistent tribal percussiveness complete with maracas and bongos makes me think this is what it sounded like when Matthew McConaughey was arrested, bong in hand. Both Max Elliott and Dead Luke perform in their own solo incarnations as well as comprising Zola Jesus' backing band: productive young lads these two are.

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A.M. Shiner
Good Cop [CD-R]

[Stunned; 2009]

http://stunnedrecords.blogspot.com/

By Jspicer

A.M. Shiner's contribution towards Stunned's First Anniversary celebration is the fly in the ointment. It's crunch of created din is the sort of noise that found sound enthusiasts dream of capturing. It's the sound of a buzzing mosquito that just won't leave you alone; it's the sound of a train speeding head-first into a brutal storm as the wind and rain desperately punch at the steel structure; it's the haunting echo of factory machinery forging car parts and children's toys. Good Cop may be a ‘noise' album by the loosest of definitions, but the thread-ripping sounds created by A.M. Shiner are industrial in nature: the sounds of creation, destruction, and reconstruction. Hidden behind a simple paper sleeve and a decorated lament lays the most unassuming musics of Big Bang.

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Hive Mind
Eidolic and Opaque [CS]

[Tone Filth; 2009]

http://tonefilth.org/

By Gabriel Keehn

Since the early '00s Grey Holger, through a slew of releases (many on his own Chondritic Sound label), has worked his particular brand of synth-drone witchery to a froth. His past work has ranged from much less sonically grating fare to harsher, more traditionally jarring jams. Throughout, everything Hive Mind has done there is a vein of pure, deep oppression -- a profound feeling of being inexorably and perpetually smothered by an unending sea of sonic waste that can never recede properly, but only curl back infinitely into itself. It's a very particular form and feeling, and it's one that Hive Mind has mastered like nobody else in contemporary noise. It's also in full effect on Eidolic and Opaque. This cassette is to be ranked at the farthest, most burdensome, and dismal end of the Hive Mind catalog. Ceaseless analog static vomits itself up again and again over the course of each nine-and-a-half-minute side, attracting new layers of grime and filth at each eruption. It is really enough to induce a fit of claustrophobia, and one can feel the blood vessels in one's eyes getting increasingly congested as the oxygen to the brain is slowly cut off, before the tape mercifully fades, only to be reborn with the exact same plodding fervor on the opposite side. A labyrinth comprised only of one tiny room. The package comes as a professional printed chrome cassette in an awesome screenprinted case with a screenprinted insert on high-quality paper.

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Sick Llama
Life Doesn't Suck, You Suck at Life [CD-R]

[Fag Tapes; 2008]

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=375801430

By Mangoon

From Fag Tapes label-head Heath Moreland, here's some static-thunder noise that's more motivational than any drivel that's oozed forth from the mouth of Tony Robbins. Sick Llama has become renowned for offering up some of the bluntest sounds around, and this release shows no relenting. This is what I imagine Luigi Russolo had in mind when he helped noise music's birth; the sound of burning rubber, melting wax, and dying motors mesh with slow oscillations and radio static in an apparent homage to the Italian futurists -- abstract, minimally repetitive noise at its most pure.

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John Thill
Broken Freeways [CS]

[Unread; 2008]

http://www.geocities.com/unreadrecords/

By Gabriel Keehn

You know those commercials for XBox 360 that start off squarely focused on a blank face, followed by a slow rotation of the camera around to the back of the person's head, where we see that the head has been sliced in half-vertically and there is some type of miniature scene unfolding in the back of this person's empty skull? Listening to this tape by Los Angeles folkster John Thill reminds me of those commercials, except the tape isn't creepy or disturbing -- at least not in the same way as the commercials. Here, Thill opens up his chest cavity to reveal a glitteringly detailed and expansive diorama of life in the LA suburbs, populated with bizzarro characters from childhood-friends-turned-street-gang-kings (“Petty King”) to legendary local debutantes (“The Flower of West Covina”) and all cast in potently affecting tales articulated beautifully in Thill's subtly accented wail. Whether singing about riding his bike on freeways, white supremacist groups, or the apocalypse, Thill brings a truly necessary energy to each and every song, raising the overall wallop-packing power of this cassette.

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Trauma
Calming Effects of the Ocean Vol. 1 [CS]

[American Tapes; 2008]

http://www.geocities.com/americantapes/

By Mangoon

For Years, John Olson's (Wolf Eyes, Spykes, Handicapper Horns) American Tapes imprint has been issuing tapes, CD-Rs and other assorted art damage in such painfully limited runs that it's led to diehard fans coughing up their retirement funds on eBay to procure some limited-edition half 7-inch or a pile of melted solder with a spool of ¼” tape enmeshed inside it. This Trauma cassette comes wrapped in a cheapo cardboard sleeve and features “inzane” spray-painted artwork from Olson himself. Numbered 3/11, it will likely one day be more valuable than my 401k (if it isn't already). Trauma is guitar and drum duo Hell Hall and Chris Riggs, and despite having a guitar, their sound is mostly percussive. The drum improvisations are somewhere in between the works of Andrew Cyrille and Rashied Ali, and along with the Derek Bailey-inspired guitar scrapings and abrasions, these jams wouldn't sound out of place on an old Actuel record. Jazz ethics played with punk intensity.

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Julian Lynch
Garden is Adventure [CD-R]

[Buffalo Songs; 2009]

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=90290098

By Jspicer

Julian Lynch is the bridge between modern pop experimentation and what's left of the Elephant 6 crew. Blending the dirty California vibrations of Ducktails, Wavves, and Sun Araw with the likes of Olivia Tremor Control and Circulatory System, Lynch creates a pop hybrid that brings old and new weird to middle ground. Garden is Adventure, the third release in Lynch's series with earlier offerings Born 2 Run and Birthday, expounds on the first two's more warm offerings, though it leans more toward buddy Matt Mondanile's palm tree serenades. If you haven't heard, the Brian Wilson-stylized beach sound is what's hip. However, Lynch also throws a bit of jazz flavor into his mix, happy to slow jam the neglected format.

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