[€4 // Edition of 66 // https://babavanga.bandcamp.com/album/tlaotlon-st-ed-sv-ta-split]
While this split cassette has what you could consider differing sounds on each side, it has this overall quality that can connect these two artists, even if unintentionally. One of the first qualities I heard in the Tlaotlon side was that of a pinball machine and as I've listened to the side of Střed Světa and had it really grow on me I can only say that it similarly makes me feel like I am in an arcade.
Tlaotlon begins with some sort of sci-fi pinball whirr which goes into these pounding 8bit loops that sound like when you press the button to make Mario jump, for example, just hitting over and over again at a rapid pace. Laser synth whomps come out and this leads to what I can only describe as skramblez. There is some beeping and I definitely could see this as being the type of electronic music that would have Gir dancing on "Invader Zim". Through mystery whirrs come frantic beats, rattling and shaking and just really fast beats overall. This could be somewhat hip hop even, but at the same time it could be almost glitch as well. Is there a genre of electronics that combines glitch with hip hop? I feel as if I've typed the term "glitch hop" before but I don't want to use it here. This just is so good that it defies categories.
On the flip side we have Střed Světa who begins with a sound that reminds me of the Atari game "Frogger" (Though thanks to "Seinfeld" I will forever think of "Frogger" as an arcade game) and there is this sort of slurping or crawling noise of some kind going with it. This carries into short tones that sound like a manipulated dial tone. Water crumbles (Don't ask me how, it's just how it sounds) and then R2D2 begins to glitch. There are bubbles somehow and then this whole experiment just begins to turn into something out of an arcade soundtrack. I'm hesitant to call it 8bit but it is something along those lines with beats (Most likely made by drum machine patterns and rhythms) but it is still rather good and in the same way as the side before it really doesn't have a genre in which it can rest comfortably.
Really when I listen to this cassette all I can think from one side to the other is how much there should be subgenre labels for both of these artists to fit so nice and neatly into, yet there just is not. When I listen to A I can only think that because it works so well in comparison with B, but outside of this split there isn't really a whole lot else that sounds like this but I am digging on those crazy beats.
No comments:
Post a Comment