Cassette Review: Invertabit / August Traeger "Cacophonies" (Bicephalic Records)

[$7 // http://bicephalicrecords.bandcamp.com/album/cacophonies]

When I looked up the link for this cassette on Bandcamp I noticed the somewhat spoiler at the bottom of the page which told me that Invertabit recorded his side in a field with insects while August Traeger recorded his side with birds.    Not that, you know, it wouldn't become obvious or anything once you hit play on both sides.

Invertabit begins with the sounds of crickets and then bees.    The crickets never go away except at the end.   There is this CD player glitch sound that comes on and I can only really relate it to when I used to have these huge, bulky stereos and they'd kind of eat CDs so it would start skipping but not make any music-like noises.   It's hard to explain unless you've had it happen to you.

A high pitched noise comes in and it is angry.   Then we have what sounds like a coffee grinding press take us into the static doom.  What I find funny- since I knew that this was a split- was that it got so quiet I thought it had ended, like maybe this piece was just shorter than the other so there'd be some definitive dead air.   Boy did a loud burst of something right before the cassette stopped change my mind on that.

On the flip side we have August Traeger who has birds chirping with sort of lasers and scribbling electronics.   Have you ever been to the zoo?  If you have, you've probably been aside the room which holds birds and other small animals.   These rooms are usually fairly dark and wet.   Words like damp and dank best describe them.    And they always seem to have these funny looking little orange monkeys in them.

Anyway, this portion of this cassette reminds me of that specific room at the zoo.   I don't know why exactly, but I could somehow sense the puddles on the ground.   I could feel the chill on the back of my neck.   I could smell the smell that you can only fully experience in that one specific zoo room.

From insects to birds, both of which have families that can fly, this is quite possibly the first ever scratch and sniff cassette I've heard so you need to check this one out to see if it can do the same for you.