CASSETTE REVIEW: Ross Baker "Terra Incognita" (Arachnidiscs Recordings) [Part 1 of 2]

[Editor's Note: This is Side A of a split with TRANZMIT, who has a side titled "Deep Video" and will appear as a second part as its own review]

http://arachnidiscs.bandcamp.com/album/ross-baker-tranzmit

                As each side of this cassette is by a different artist, I will portray this as almost two different reviews.

                First up is Ross Baker with “Terra Incognita”.   It begins in ambient noise, somewhat like the experimental side of The Illegal Wiretaps, and has this one audio clip repeating that’s either saying “Heaven 35”, “Camera 35” or something else I just cannot make out.

                After some church bell sounding keys, we get into this spoken word bit about how “There is nothing inside” and there are the sounds of birds chirping, as my cats perked up ears can confess.   

                Synth comes on next as if “Tom Sawyer” is to start, and then we’re flipping through radio stations before we end up finding what may or may not be Ross Baker himself singing and playing in a synth pop style.

                After the musical portion, we find ourselves back with the man talking who was speaking over the birds earlier.  I’m not quite sure what this is all about, but it does sound as if I’m watching The Discovery Channel or NatGeo. 

                The documentary style, non-fiction type of words seemingly take us to a conclusion, as the waves fade out, but then we are brought back into the ambience that we sort of started off with.  To say that this piece is coming full circle, not too much unlike going up and then back down a hill, would be somewhat accurate. 

                As we get closer to the end of this side, we begin to hear a man wax poetic about how things were destroyed and it sounds like a monologue straight out of a black and white sci-fi movie.