CASSETTE REVIEW: MARAMe / A C C O U split tape (Indian Redhead / Alligator Baby Records)

http://abrecords.bandcamp.com/album/split-k7

                One of my favorite things about cassette tapes has been their being host to splits.  Sure, records work just as well because you flip them over too, but can a CD do a split justice?  Can your precious computer files do it??

                So, you get one band per side and it’s quite wonderful.   This split not only has two different bands, it’s being released by two different labels together, so that’s something to think about as well.  If you’re not sure whether you want to put out a cassette or not because you think maybe they’re not cool, and you have a friend with a label who thinks the same…  SPLIT TAPE!!

                Okay, so this cassette begins with MARAMe, who have three different tracks.    MARAMe is an instrumental project that has a lot of beats and in terms of my movie comparisons is somewhere between Beverly Hills Cop and Miami Vice.  It’s upbeat synth for sure, and it borders on seapunk without actually being seapunk, if that makes sense.   There is some genre that is just outside seapunk and that’s what this is.   I’d like to say that it exists and it’s called chillwave or something else (glo-fi?) but I’m not even 100% certain that this does exist in this way yet so to try and pin in to a genre in that sense would be criminal.

                There is what I can only describe as trill, then a lot of electronic looping to end out the side and MARAMe’s part on this split tape.

                A C C O U also has three songs and they are somewhat similar to MARAMe, only different.   There is an immediate knocking of a drumbeat, which is paired with a wild carnival ride otherwise.  An audio transmission clip comes out in what I described as a less angry version of Prodigy and mean in only the best possible way.

                The third song, which ends the tape, makes me think of either Christmas or royalty for some reason.  It has that royal feeling in the sense that you’d play it when the Queen of England was entering the room, but it also brings out enough of the Good King Wenceslas because I just keep on humming “On the feast of Steven”. 

                Overall, these are two excellent sources of music that are different enough to stand apart on their own (You definitely will be able to tell which side is which without paying much attention to the tape stickers) yet they are bonded together somehow that they seem like they should be somehow related or at the very least friends.