Cassette Review: Cartoon Forest "Cartoon Forest" (White Reeves Productions)

$5 //

https://whitereevesproductions.bandcamp.com/album/cartoon-forest-wrp016 //

If you were to ask me what the first thing I thought of was when I heard the name Cartoon Forest, I would undoubtedly tell you "Over The Garden Wall".    Have theThis re been a lot of cartoons to feature forests throughout time?  Yes, yes there have.   It seems at some point or another most animated shows go into the woods, hell, "The Simpsons" did it in one of their earliest episodes.   But the fact that this name makes me immediately think of "Over The Garden Wall" is special because that was such a great series and it really does stand out from other animation.

This cassette begins with quiet electronic whooshes.   There is quite a bit going on during these songs and yet it still feels minimal somehow.   It is almost drone, but then there are waves crashing as well.   A sound that is some kind of wolf beast comes through and then there are lo-fi tones in the distance.   Yes, the sound is of a wolf beast because I'm thinking of this one as being set in the woods, of course, and that wolf would not be the one you would think of in "Little Red Riding Hood" though.

We shift into the dark, hollow static void before the end and this one is just full of quiet and minimal electronics.   It can resemble the woods in that way: calm, eerie, sometimes one thing happens and it seems louder than it is because of everything around it being so quiet in contrast and at other times there is a lot of sound but this cassette never really gets into that everything all at once sound which is ok because it might feel like too much.

On the flip side there are louder scrapes.   A voice is stuck in the machine and I'm thinking of some horror movie where kids are stuck in a cabin in the woods but yet animated (which is a movie I'd watch the hell out of).   A beeping sounds as if a phone is off the hook, which adds to the element of horror.   Heavier darkness comes out next and it sounds industrial.   This brings on a sort of glitch but in a static way.   The static begins shaking.   Radio frequency changes bring out a song so it does really sound as if someone is actually flipping through the radio.

This strange sound is as if someone is squeezing out something but I can't put my finger on what.   Electronic scrapes lead to a chanting of some kind which feels like a commercial being sampled.   Though this name is "Cartoon Forest" is still feels like quite a decent horror movie I would watch.    Briefly, the sound of big hair metal comes out and then there are static squashes.   This all ends with those crushing static bursts and if I had to guess I'd think this movie would end with no survivors and a monster like that of "The Thing".