Cassette Review: Ossa "Your Math, My Magic" (Medium Sound)

$5 //
Edition of 50 //
https://mediumsound.bandcamp.com/album/your-math-my-magic //

There is this certain magic to be found in music.   I don't mean all music of course.  I've heard songs and thought "There is no magic here", which is sometimes okay and other times makes me never want to listen to an artist again.   When I was younger- and not to date myself, but when Napster was a free thing that scared the drummer from Metallica, I had this old Mac PC and I listened to this band through its speakers a lot.   Years and years later, I'd listen to that same band, those same songs, on the laptop I had before this one and think "What are these songs?"  They were somewhat unrecognizable as they had bass.

Now that is an example of advances in technology.   That old Mac PC I had didn't come with the best quality speakers and made this band I was listening to seem all tinny, full of treble.   When technology updated (or at least when *mine* did) I came to the shocking conclusion the band had a bassist and it put a whole new spin on their songs.   Imagine if someone could have a similar effect on music but not using the means of outdated technology as being the game changer.

On "Your Math, My Magic" Ossa takes us on an adventure of electronic looping, beeping and an overall chillwave sound of video games.   Even though I feel it to be mostly computer generated, it seems to keep an upbeat tone to it as well.   There are sounds like computers and for some reason it reminds me of screensavers.   Drum machines offer up video game fun mixes and this can have that Pong or pinball machine type of feel to it, but also NES or an arcade game with alien tones and sonic distortion blasts just the same.

I heard all of these ideas the first time I listened to this cassette all the way through, which so happened to be out of the speakers of my stereo.    Organ tone drone and deep bass tones bring about these sharp tones which seemingly cut off and throughout the entire time it does remain chill.   Though it has that distinct video game feel to it (choose your own game to match it up with) I am also picturing this as the soundtrack to an otherwise silent episode of "Adventure Time".

On subsequent listens to this cassette I used earbuds.    This brought out a different sound about it somehow.   It kept that overall video game vibe, but it just grew more bass in it and also the idea of it sounding like Pong felt more like it would glitch somehow.   Perhaps the ball (which was actually a square) was hit and then couldn't be defended because it just exploded.   It's not a 100% completely different cassette with earbuds in but there are enough of these little subtleties that this is not worth listening to over and over again on various occasions but also you need to contain this one to your ears and also let the sound fill an entire room (or larger) to fully appreciate its magic.