Tallesen inca

[Bootleg Tapes; 2015]

Rating: 4/5

Styles: observational collage, milieu club, timbre movement
Others: Huerco S, UltraaBriight, A. G. Cook

timbre \ˈtam-bər, ˈtim-; ˈtam(brə)\ n : the quality given to a sound by its overtones: as
a : the resonance by which the ear recognizes and identifies a voiced speech sound
b : the quality of tone distinctive of a particular singing voice or musical instrument

Application of the intangible is one of the most limber of all realms to sculpt. Not only is sound more pliable than most objects, but the signifying visuals embedded in sound also fester within the listener. How music shapes and heals, stretches and encapsulates, dignifies and signifies one’s life is unfathomably relied upon by the viewer of this nonexistent world, if we’re considering music (here) as completely intangible. Tallesen’s newest release, inca, delves into this terrain with both mounting expectation and reckless abandon; or put another way: “How The Internet Maintains Culture.”

Consider the opposite, but within a similar territory. If I were to think like how Tallesen makes music, I’d try to understand the dynamic of inca’s observational timbre (the album’s focal point) by extending the atmosphere surrounding the listener and antiquating reality with meta-acoustics. In fact, I’d think about the expectation of abandonment in terms of gardening. And, turns out, Tallesen works full-time as a roof-top gardener in NYC. Since his day job consists of planting vegetation that he’ll (potentially) never see fully grown, gardening provides a good entry point into why inca sounds the way it does: as if it were a tree planted on a 20th-floor balcony whose growth can only be measured from a specific point in Central Park.

The circumstance for anyone working in a larger city like NYC is enormously rewarding itself, and Tallesen accentuates this through sound. From the swelling echo of the city to the roaring of dinosaurs in the subways below it, those who discover the most maintain grandest mind-trophy. Like a camera’s ability to immediately capture the essence of a moment a thousand times a second, one could also measure and play out similar thoughts if a sound were recorded. Imagine flipping through a photobook/-album from your past while thinking beyond the immediate visual of times you spent during this period; you’ll find inca within the cracks of your nods, flickering noises across the cranium that still resonates with these memories.

Everything that comes flowing out from inca’s cracks include: water from a faucet, PC crash melt, a metal pellet being dropped on an unbreakable glass table, a knife to cut vegetables, chopped call-holding beeps, the faltering cityscape, shut and opened doors, the television blaring action movies downstairs, the squeak of a clothes line, feign motor revs, etc. Always, and mostly, etc. Yet this variety of noise encapsulates the mindset of freedom to grow through whatever. Acute and oblong. Truncate and elongate. Handle and ramble.

Importantly, though, Tallesen wants to make his audience move. Especially with inca. Because a lot of his music is audibly contorted and melted, stretched and stifled, etc. and etc., bodies tap or move (uncontrollably, even) to a potentially non-existent, perhaps constantly decaying rhythm. Yet, as Tallesen tries to shift both with and without this confinement of beat, there’s an insatiable twitch inside us that wants to move with one or all melodies, a fleshy desire for audible nihilism. inca is progressive club, dabbed and tabbed into a lush neon light, flickering to a broken metronome in a trash-bagged window, emitting dense smoke from every seam: it steams for your arrival, and it’s looking to create some dance-floor transcendence.

Links: Tallesen - Bootleg Tapes

Eureka!

Some releases are so incredible we just can’t help but exclaim EUREKA! While many of our picks here defy categorization and explore the constructed boundaries between ‘music’ and ‘noise,’ others complement, continue, or rupture traditions that provide new forms and ways of listening. Not all of our favorites will be listed here, but we think each EUREKA! album is worthy of careful consideration. This section is a work-in-progress, so expect its definition to be in perpetual flux.

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