Reviews:

(Disaster Amnesiac) To paraphrase good old Michael Corleone, just when Disaster Amnesiac thought I was out, I get pulled back in! Recently I'd been suffering through feeling at a loss for music to listen to and review, but thankfully along came yet another surprise package from Public Eyesore headquarters in Richmond. This was entirely good and welcome news, and I began to listen to Crooked Doppler, the new cassette collaboration from Bryan Day and Seymour Glass as soon as I was able to free it from its packaging. What one will find on Doppler is the sounds of two very established artists/writers (me reviewing the guy behind Bananafish? gtfo!) delving deeply into their respective methods and fusing them into pieces that integrate them seamlessly. As Disaster Amnesiac has listened to this cassette, these pieces have always felt cogent and coherent. The attention to detail and pure awareness that Day and Glass clearly brought to the production of this release is evident throughout. They leave tons of spaces and gaps in-between the noisier parts, spaces and gaps which allow the perceptions to process and prepare, and even dare I say relax as the sound worlds reveal themselves. Even a waterfall of literal glass breaking sounds at one point does not collapse into incoherence (not that that ever should!) but instead becomes a musical timbre within the gestalt of the piece in which it is contained. Speaking of timbres, Disaster Amnesiac has certainly felt pleasure in seeming to be able to identify some of Day's invented instruments from theirs. Having seen him play live more than a few times, it's been really satisfying to recall them as I've listened to what I believe to be their distinctive sounds. In addition to such aspects, the listener of Crooked Doppler will be treated to odd moans, crinkling clicks, mysterious synthesized buzzes, radio broadcast voices, found sounds of the urban variety, even what seemed to be Glass quoting a Gospel hymn. All of this and more within a matrix of deftly organized Music Concrete that would surely appeal to a wide swath of musical adventurers from the scruffy post-Industrial dudes to the serious intellectuals of academia; there's sonic goodies for them all within this release. Be sure and take a bite, but remember to take your time chewing, as you'll not want to miss any of the richly complex flavors of Crooked Doppler. - Mark Pino

(Wire) Bryan Day & Seymour Glass Crooked Doppler tanzprocessz MC Bryan Day is involved in lots of musical projects and also runs the Public Eyesore label. Seymour Glass (former editor of Bananafish) is a founding member of both Glands Of External Secretion and Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble. Based in the Bay Area, each of these fellows is well-versed in other sounds. This is their first recorded meeting and it’s a great collision of musique concrète, field recordings and curious live event generation, with virtually no mouth-based orienteering. The effect is akin to hearing the soundtrack for some horrible and mysterious gastrointestinal disease – one that causes fevers and visions of historic proportions. 2021 is looking like a great year for this kind of thing, so don’t not notice. - Byron Coley

(Raised by Cassettes) This cassette opens with the sounds of percussion but it feels almost like a bird is laughing at us. Big church sounding bells come into the background and is this is a neat collection of sounds. When I hear the bells, I hear them singing "I love you". There's some shuffling, as it skips around a bit, the sounds of water and then something making tiny groans like an alien or Gremlin. A sound of scraping and then automated vocals that seem to say "Yeah" only all twisted up. It sounds like little quacks and then it drops off. We move into this race into outerspace. There's some beeping and what just feels like the turning of the nobs before those big Undertaker-like gongs come in. Heavy breathing now, like someone is out of breath from running, and then a deep tone like a moo. It sounds like muted talking and then just drops off into a whole bunch of crashing noises, things falling and being thrown around in a kitchen perhaps. We're slipping through space now and it just feels so desolate. There is also a feeling now as if we're dropping off into a video game, with synth tones that make me think about the Atari. It feels like a crowd before these tones go into an up and down loop. Dings come in now and it sounds like a pinball machine for sure. Then it just feels like a horn, a trumpet perhaps, is just blaring through drone. This takes us into some whirrs and clanking of glass. It feels like balloons stretching now and it makes a noise as such, as the air comes out. Voices come through in static and trade off before we reach the end of the first side. This takes us into the flip side which has some vocals that are stretched out and deep but then there are words spoken behind them. Lasers cut through like swords and someone can be heard shouting from it. Sounds like bugs lead to long croaking like a frog but also a monster. It feels like we're going through the pots and pans again, but not as loudly as before. A blender now sets the stage for chaos. What sounds like a baby crying but isn't human. Beeps and blips for sure. Notes come through like Q-Bert and then there are these little blasts of distorted air behind them. And everything just begins breaking now. A series of beeps, a pass code perhaps. Then it just kind of drops off into darkness, with Darth Vader breathing sounds. Tones slowly make their way in as this almost becomes ambient. Scraping and the sound of glass come through before some more percussion in the background. The beeping has returned and it's all sort of merged together. It feels like a printer is at work or a copy machine. And we get to a long and animated scream now. Humming now as well and then the whole thing just sort of drops off. It felt somewhat like we were inside of a video game the entire time but then also it just seemed in a real world way like we were inside of a factory or something similar. - Joshua Macala

(Vital Weekly) From Seymour Glass, I heard an excellent cassette as Glands Of External Secretion, his duo with Barbara Manning (Vital Weekly 1075). I know he has a long career in weird music, but I am not all too aware of the ins and outs here. Bryan Day 8is someone who builds his instruments from old electronics, wood, metal and other stuff people would put in the trash. What Glass does, come to think of it, I have not an image off, but I would think it involves all sorts of magnetic tape (reel-to-reel, cassettes and Dictaphones). In the autumn of last year, they spend time together to record the six pieces on this release, and maybe for some reason or another, all of these pieces are around eight minutes. The music in which this results can be classified as something that holds the middle ground between improvised music and electro-acoustic music. It is a lot of both really, with Glass picking up sounds from Day, feeding them back and Day being in a constant struggle to keep up with the sparks of tapes flying about, hitting, scratching, touching, rambling, shaking his amplified objects. I almost added, 'beyond control', but that it is not. If proof is needed at all, then it is that these gentlemen exercise great control over their instruments. As gifted improvisers, they also know how to do a great job, which is all (so I believe with my limited knowledge of improvised music) action and reaction, a call and response play of sounds. The conversation might be chaotic here, but that is something that I find the great thing about it. The quick shift between sound constellations, chaotic and organized at the same time, all adds to the enjoyment for me - Frans de Waard

(Tone Glow) This is music that I could believe was either fortuitously improvised, or labored over second by second, but nothing in between. I must admit that this is my first exposure to both of these figures, who have been performing and releasing music for twenty and thirty years respectively. The decades of experience are on show here—these pieces glide from chirping synths and whirring motors, to homemade instruments which sputter and stretch and scream, to field recordings which are often chopped-up and looped like pop hooks. Everything feels well-balanced, even as separate elements cut in and out abruptly, often at both extremes of the stereo range, at the same time. There are moments of comedy, here, as when the very impressive-sounding and very sound-arty rumblings of some giant, possibly homemade machine are suddenly drowned out by the deafening whirr of a lawnmower. However, the primary commitment remains the assembly of strange and interesting sounds, which either slip interestingly over one another, or clash at unexpected angles. It’s some of the best sound collage I’ve heard this year. - Mark Cutler

(Lost In A Sea of Sound) Clarity in an environment of aural explosiveness. This is a place of found sounds and made sounds. A place where rhythms and beats ignite like old matches and extinguish with no smoke or smell. Listeners are dazed as minds numb in the volume of sonic passing. Are the vignettes within Crooked Doppler assembled as bits and pieces in randomness, or is the construct of a higher order? A question answered by the two artists themselves or pined upon in time by music scholars and noise specialist. Bryan Day is an artist who forges the physical world to make both sound and music. His skills pull from late nights in workshops and push towards stylish art galleries. A consciousness in tune with intriguing details, few people notice the sonic world the way Bryan Day does. Seymour Glass is a magus in a world of sound. Years of turning pages, reading about music, editing others thoughts about sound, and creating aural escapes that push the threshold of what is understood. Both Bryan Day and Seymour Glass match well on paper, but the true measure is how Crooked Doppler sounds. And this is stunningly clear and magical. Imagine turning the pages of a colossal photo album depicting a long lived point in history. Each image reaching above the page to gain depth and vivid clarity. Crooked Doppler is like this. Each track a page in the album, each series of sounds brought past the speakers being replicated on. All leading into thoughts to resonate with a deeper consciousness within all of us. Released on the Tanzprocesz label out of France. Cassette copies are no longer available from the label, but have found them for sale at Soundohm, a distribution store out of Milano, Italy. There are some well written reviews collected on Bryan Day's site to read as well. - Robot Rattle

(Noise Not Music) Two well-established virtuosos of collage, cobblecore, and clutter-clobber come together for this delightful tape full of tactile toybox sound-worlds, warbling electronic transmissions, and surreal environmental invasions. The combination of Day’s audio-mechanical sensibilities and invented instrument arsenal with Glass’s idiosyncratic ear and insatiable bent for the bizarre is one for the ages.- Jack Davidson