The West Virginian cassette tape gurus over at Crash Symbols
continue their unrelenting cadence of adventurous releases, showing no signs of
slowing down. The label’s been offering
up about a tape every month since around April of this year, and each one is a
pleasure to behold in both the visual and the aural realms. Even cooler, some of their tapes are
accompanied by an artwork-matching button that you can proudly wear on your
favourite jacket now that Autumn is here and the icy weather is brewing.
The latest spool of goodness to hail from the Crash Symbols
camp is a delicious slice of harmonious improvisation from Isness, the duo
project of Montreal’s Catherine Debard (YlangYlang) and Oakland-based composer Matt Robidoux (Curse Purse with Ted Lee of Feeding Tube Records, ex-Speedy Ortiz). Robidoux is actually a west coast transplant,
originally hailing from Massachusetts, inhabiting the zany orbit that folks
like Sunburned Hand of the Man also abide.
He and Debard crossed paths via a web of touring and other opportune
moments of translocation, synergistically creating the isness of… …well,
Isness.
A third member graces the A side of this delicious tape, violinist
Jenifer Gelineau of Sunburned Hand of the Man.
This material was recorded in summer 2017 when the three musicians
convened in Ontario, Canada, and is very much dream-like in execution. A soft drone permeates the proceedings over which
violin, percussion, flute, what sounds like banjo, and the ocean’s roar are all
interwoven across the first three tracks.
The side closes with “Beach Pizza”, its clangorous strings and feedback
serving as the jarring wake up call that abruptly terminates the mesmerizing hallucination
it succeeds.
On the flip, we have the pair of Debard and Robidoux on
their own, sprouting a growing delusion of amorphous room tones, string
scrapes, samples, percussion, and other less discernable sounds. Their poetry grows ever musical as the side
unfolds, abstract aural phenomena coalescing into crystalline patterns which
then splinter apart such that the resulting sonics are at times mellifluous and
at others certifiably strange.
You can peer into the spellbinding mindshare that is Isness by pointing your browser to the
Crash Symbols Bandcamp; there are still physical copies available.