Cassette Review: Hot Date "Hot Date" (talking skull)

[$5 CAD // Edition of 100 // https://talkingskullmtl.bandcamp.com/album/ts007-hot-date-hot-date-2]

I've always been a fan of labels who refused to stick to one genre.   I remember growing up, in my late teens, VIctory Records was always considered to be a hardcore label but then when they started branching out and signing other types of bands people were mad and all like, "That's not hardcore!"     This all goes back somehow to my belief that as a true fan of music you will like at least one artist from every genre out there, so no matter how much you may not like country for example you'll like George Jones.

So if you like something from every genre then you definitely like multiple genres of music and if you're going to start a music based label then why not release artists that you like and want to get behind, regardless of what little box they may or may not fit in?  

That being said, the cassettes I've heard from Talking Skull thus far have all been different in their own ways yet they can still be tied together in other ways (The power of rock?) except for maybe Will Austin who stands out a bit.    But now when I listen to Hot Date it's unlike anything else on Talking Skull that I've heard and that i even a bit of a distance from Will Austin who was kind of the outsider already.

Hot Date's cassette begins with mechanical distortion and journies through wikki-wikki scratches, quieter waves of something I can't quite place but might be cars starting and eventually sharp feedback.    It lands at sounding somewhere between being lost at sea or simply in space but not lost in space.

Sonar, beeping tones, church bells (or something similar sounding), Wall-E noises, bass notes, secadas and lasers firing through space just overall create a sound that I can only really compare to Underwater Escape from the Blackhole and being that is one of my favorites and there just aren't enough others to sound as close this is definitely something that not only needed to exist but is doing justice by sounding this good.

While it could be argued that other artists are out there creating similar sounds, drawing images of similar environments I can tell you that they are not doing it as well as this and if UEFTBH ever did put together some kind of tour and had Hot Date on it (or if they did a split or collaboration) I could only see it as being completely fitting.