Cassette Review // Christopher Flores "Scapes and Devotions" (Histamine Tapes)

$7 //

Edition of 30 //

https://histaminetapes.bandcamp.com/album/scapes-and-devotions-ht016 //

This begins with a soft, ambient hue.    Sharpness comes through now like cracks in the glass.   It's a quieter, almost droning dreamscape.   At times, it can even begin to start to feel eerie, like we're going to get sucked into a void.   It maintains this sharpness but not too sharp as it feels a lot like glass but in an electronic way.    That's also that unsettling feeling like something is lurking in the background, like that film "The Thing".  

We shift into a different type of light now in what I can only assume is a new song.     It gets wavy.   It gets sharp around the edges.   Sometimes the speaker can shake when the sound hits it just right.   It feels somber.   Desolate.    There is an air about this, a fog, and it feels like it's on the verge of post rock but just a little too quiet to reach there.    You instead are best to just relax on this celestial plane of ambient drone.   

On the flip side we have similar hollow drones and then these great tones come out, one by one, to give it a certain dreamy feel but also it can remind me of bells ringing, like how churches do it on the hour.   This drops back off into more of the drone fog we heard on Side A and it just makes me feel like we were on a planet where there was once life, but then it was gone and then some returned only to be wiped away again.  Kind of like if Wall-E brought everyone back to Earth only for them to all die, which might seem dark and twisted but so was Walt Disney.

As we're drifting, floating, some keys which feel like magic come in and they feel as if they are droning right along.   I feel as if we're in a spaceship now, leaving behind the planet which destroyed the human race twice.    Has there ever been a story where the entire human race has been wiped out except for a handful of people, then they rebuilt the population only for it to be wiped out again somehow and then it becomes told through the eyes of a second survivor?   This could be the soundtrack to such a film.    Netflix is into post apocalyptic movies now.   Someone from there should contact Christopher Flores and work it out.  

The tones feel rather uplifting now, like church organs, and I feel it growing again, radiating.    As we get into another song it feels a bit deeper, darker now as to where we have gone.   Reverberating tones take us into what I would describe as minimal industrial.   While it can still feel alien there is a certain level of mechanics going on in here that makes me think we are rebuilding a civilization perhaps.    These guitar notes come in before the end and they create a certain feeling of wonder before we reach the end.