Tuesday, May 28, 2013

A Vacant Lot To Be In Reviewed in The Wire

Jason Zeh
A Vacant Lot To Be In
Crippled Intellect Productions LP


Those who grew up with the cassette as the principle means for portable listening and file exchange find its resurgence a bit puzzling. How many beloved tapes died from the tape snapping or getting melting in the sun from leaving it on the car dashboard or the physical mechanism itself jamming? For Jason Zeh, those failings are exactly what he seeks to extract through his visceral collages from discarded tape machines and malfunctioning cassettes. While many of his previous recordings have employed the mangled sounds of crumpled and even burnt tape, A Vacant Lot To Be In focuses on the electro-magnetic properties of the tape machine, as Zeh shoves magnetic pieces of metal into the mechanism to interfere with the signal flow. The result is ominously insectoid humming and scabrous noises that increase in density and velocity over both pieces of this vinyl, collapsing into a exhausted smolder of corroded drone and hiss.

No comments:

Post a Comment