cassette craze chronicles XLV (special nautical edition) feat. CHAINED TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN, NADJA and WHERE MERMAIDS DROWN

Sailor, bring your boombox when you go to sea!

And if you take me with you I'll bring my latest three tapes:

CHAINED TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN - Let Us Not Speak Of Them But Look And Pass On (2026)

CTTBOTO live in Hamburg

This mini album came to me during my last visit aboard the MS Stubnitz, where Chained To The Bottom Of The Ocean where supporting Sumac. Speaking of: Sumac's Aaron Turner also created the cover artwork for "Let Us Not Speak Of Them But And Pass On".a

Between wails of feedback and distortion the release contains four boundlessly angry tracks of buzzing, droning, absolutely crushing Sludge Metal to suck all air and joy out of every room. This is nasty business - and it slays!

NADJA - Seemannsgarn (Church In Session) (2026)

In case you're not speaking German and you wondered about the nautical reference of this tape: "Seemannsgarn" directly translates to "Seaman's Yarn".

The over fourty minutes long single track of this album had been released before and presented on video for Roadburn Redux, the 2021 pandemic online edition of the festival, so I knew without a doubt that this new live performance from January 2025, recorded in the Genezareth Church in Berlin, would at least be worth checking out.

And of course it was! The slowly building piece is dark foreboding Drone Metal in flawless perfection and for sure one of my favorite works in (the beknown to me part of) the huge discography of Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker. Brilliant from start to finish.

The mint green cassette itself is anonymous, but it comes with a nice cover inside a slipcase with a punched out logo. Feels like an item found in an antiquarian treasure chest.

WHERE MERMAIDS DROWN - Embrace The Ineluctable (2026)

The French Post Rockers are back - and not back, because they are still on a planned hiatus - with a new three-sog EP. Eighteen minutes of their epic longing sound packed into a beautiful cassette shell. Everything like you would expect, yet still a bit different.

"Embrace The Ineluctable" was recorded as a trio and the tracks are... not smaller or significantly shorter then all songs from the past, but a little more intimate. The chair circle draws closer together - and it has moved from the bottom of the ocean to sun-filled waters near the shore. Where Mermaids Drown hug you in a meaningful embrace, putting an understanding hand on your shoulder in a world of perpetual melancholy.

cassette craze chronicles XXXIV feat. DARSOMBRA, HAVE BLUE, KARKARA, SUNRISE PATRIOT MOTION and WHERE MERMAIDS DROWN

Tomorrow I'll be on my way to Copenhagen for the next festival, so it's time to review at least a part of the haul from the last two, right? Plus two new other recent releases... Here we go: part thirty-four of my cassette craze chronicles!

DARSOMBRA - Dumesday Book (2023)

Ok, no beating around the bush, that big VHS case is of course the most intriguing object in this picture. So what is it? The duo Darsombra played an absolutely fascinating, very fun and DIY, but also immerse and magical multi-media show at Roadburn - and this two-tape boxset represents the band's balance of home-made charme, humour and actual art / great music perfectly.

The box contains two cassettes in slipcases, a high format booklet, a poster, a sticker, two pins and a miniature "thing", which resembles the one on the album cover. And - which sadly seems to get less popular these days - also a Bandcamp download card. Not knowing what to expect I was very happy when I opened this box. How can you not love independent artists, who put so much love into their releases?

And the music matches the visual side. The seventy-five minutes consist of mostly instrumental tracks based on loops, synth and guitar and very few actual rhythmic instruments. But you actually don't miss those, because everything here sounds exactly like it's supposed to sound. A gorgeous mixture of Space Rock, Ambient soundtrack elements and drone in a somehow very personal, but still wide open and epic format. Yeah, this is weirdo stuff. This is hippie shit. This is White Hills, Earth and Sula Bassana summoning the Kraut spirits of old and binding them into a dreaming Roboter. Call the doctor and sing along!
I am so freaking glad that I took the plunge of buying "Dumesday Book". It's really everything I wanted it to be - and more.

SUNRISE PATRIOT MOTION - Black Fellflower Stream (2022)

No, visually the other tape I bought at Roadburn definitely cannot keep up with Darsombra. The music however is more than fine; a dark and desperate take on Post Punk / Gothic Rock with lots of keyboards, lead guitars and a big industrial building echo, made by dudes coming from a Black Metal background. While mostly staying in the same up-tempo (or the half-time of it) the band comes up with enough variety to make this half hour fel like only twenty minutes.

The memory of the drummer playing with so much feral energy as if he was trying to smash his kit into pieces is for sure helpful to enjoy this mini album. But even without that aid this is damn good stuff from a group positioning itself comfortably in their own sonic niché.

HAVE BLUE - Trübe (2023)

Yet another merch table purchase, but this time from the much smaller Dazed & Spaced Festival in Hamburg. We're starting from a similar musical point somewhere in the early Eighties, but then the mostly German-language "Progressive Punk" of Have Blue from Berlin takes on a completely different life on its own. In spirit and at the base of their sound is indeed raw Punk, but interspersed with Funk and Surf licks, creative bass lines and some surprisingly elaborate rhythmic ideas. Above all however all this makes just one half of Have Blue's sound with the other half being firmly rooted in various flavours of Psychedelic Rock. No, these guys aren't afraid of experimenting and actually playing their instruments, while still keeping a believable Punk attitude.

With over fifty minutes this album offers a lot and not too much, because this is just very cool stuff. And don't bother about the language barrier, if you don't understand German; I'm confident you'll enjoy this anyway!

KARKARA - All Is Dust (2024)

This is probably the "biggest" release here - at least in Kraut afficionado circles. After their evolution from "Crystal Gazer" to "Nowhere Land" I was pretty confident in the French trio Karkara to give us another uptempo banger for fans of (old) Slift, (old) King Gizzard or (recent) Servo, but with many new impulses to keep it fresh and exciting.

The nine minute opener "Monoliths" may not deliver the biggest originality yet, but it already leaves no doubt that these dudes have grown golden hands for this style. It's just so fucking good. I even really like the vocal performance now. And for my taste it gets even better in the more aggressive second track "The Chase" - especially when you think the song has told us everything it has to say, but then breaks down to a slower tempo and lets a sick guest saxophone burst into the space it has just made. Fucking excellent!

I won't go through all six tracks here, but be assured, those are all bangers! Great bass and guitar tones, cool Desert Rock orientalisms blowing through the dust, tasty analogue synth sounds and B-movie spoken word passages...
If you wanted just one song suggestion to check out "All Is Dust" it would probably be "Anthropia" with its killer earworm chorus and guitar licks. Or the title track? So majestic here, wo unhinged there- and it has a Mexian trumpet solo.

Great album and a nice orange tape shell. The coloured vinyl versions are probably more spectacular than this cassette, but this is fine, it was was cheaper - and a more exclusive limited edition, if we're talking in collector's value.

WHERE MERMAIDS DROWN - Stellar Frequencies Session (2024)

And finally... those Post Rockers from France again? Is it something new? No. So just familiar songs played live... again? Yes,, it's a studio session though. And you can also watch it on YouTube. So there's actually no reason to buy this on cassette, is what you're saying? Well, is having it on cassette not reason enough? I guess so.

There you have it: the "Stellar Frequencies Session" is far from a quintessential release, but the Mono style epic instrumental Post Rock of Where Mermeids Drown hasn't stopped being great, the recording sounds flawless, the tape doesn't cost much, has a beautiful shell again... and if you already have three tapes a little bit of collector's greed might play a role, too.

cassette craze chronicles XXIX feat. ANTON RIPATTI & ASTERMIR MARSHENKULOV, EFFLUENCE, NICK HUDSON, REVEREND KRISTIN MICHAEL HAYTER and WHERE MERMAIDS DROWN

Omg, he's playing with that kaleidoscoping lense again! Sorry notsorry, can I have a little fun with my phone, now that my Digital Harinzemi toy camera is gone? And let's also focus on the actually important things = more tapes in my collection! And believe me, this edition of the cassette craze chronicles contains some really big, important (as in album of the year contender) and rare new treasures!

EFFLUENCE - Sarmat (2022/2023)

Déjà vu, Mesdames et Messieurs! I have been writing about this beautifully chaotically apocalyptic Deathjazz atrocity before. So if you're interested in my thoughts about this abhorrently lovely mammoth track, let me kindly reroute you to my digital Bandcamp Friday haul of last April!

The cassette edition, which has been released in the meantime is nothing spectacular, but it's what you'd except. And it's nice to have a real item with the great artwork now. To make purchase, shipping and taxes more worthwhile I bought "Sarmat" together with other stuff including one more tape. So we'll return to this amazing batshit crazy band later in this post!

REVEREND KRISTIN MICHAEL HAYTER - Saved! (2023)

Hallelujah! While the cancellation of her final continental European tour as Lingua Ignota still hurts a little, I'm glad that Kristin Hayter is at least back with a new album, now under her - extended - real name. [Yes, I wrote this paragraph before the surprise release of the final Lingua Ignota live album yesterday.]
And oh boy am I glad that I listened to the album online before I spun the tape, because otherwise I would have been furious about my player devouring it, as tempo and volume of the opening track "I'm Getting Out While I Can" are glitching horribly - and do so on purpose.

"Saved!" is a very minimal and low-fi album, almost exclusively performed with vocals and prepared piano (meaning chains and bells being placed inside) and recorded in high-fidelity actually, but then run through various degrees of copying on tape recorders of uneven functionality and further manipulation to emulate age and decay.

Contentwise the newly anointed Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter presents us with both a continuation of "Sinner Get Ready" and a radical change of perspectice at the same time. Interestingly she still maintains the moving, chilling, shocking effect of her music. It just doesn't come from the weight of her processing deeply traumatic personal experiences anymore, but from a more ambiguous place.
And while the concept is simple - performing traditional and original worship songs in a seemingly historical sonic setting as fervently and intensly as possible to find out if they will eventually work - it isn't that easy to pin down what it actually means. My personal view as an average Northern German atheist is already unable to cope with the creepy intensity of standard American religiousness. Which makes it hard to determine where realistic Appalachian practice ends and artistic exaltation begins - or the other way around.

"Saved!" is a play. If it was a completely earnest display of Kristin actually turning to Jesus, the dissasociation through the low-fi production wouldn't have been necessary. Or is this really her completly serious special way of trying? It is a weird experiment.
In any case the album is no mocking or critique of religion per se. Even though a lot of its content is heavily uncomfortable - especially her speaking in tongues is downright horrifying to behold -, all this still is just a presentation without judgement. There are even some passages which reflect a rather beautiful healing process - at least if you imagine them outside of the eery indoctrinated gospel of the whole and understand the album as an allegoric vehicle, as the translation of an actual experience into the language of hardcore Christianity.

Whatever the whole truth may be, one thing is for sure: This album is utterly intriguing. On paper I shouldn't even have much motivation to even listen to this. But in reality it's of course fueled by the magnetic mind, musicality and presencee of Kristin Hayter, thus transcending my capabilities of written explanation. And just being executed so goddamn good! There's no chance to resist.

You may have guessed from the way "Saved!" was produced that I'm very happy with choosing its tape version instead of vinyl or CD, because I think this is actually the most fitting and authentic media to represent this work of art. And for the Reverend's and the Perpetual Flame Ministries' benefit I want to assume that the writing on the back cover, which is too tiny even for ants, was never actually meant to be readable.

WHERE MERMAIDS DROWN - Live Reminisce Tour 2023 (2023)

This tape surely will be a lot easier to digest for most people - at least if you can live without sung vocals. It's also yet another déjà vu, since I've already seen the Post Rock band twice and reviewed two of their studio releases this year. So concerning this particular genre Where Mermaids Drown have really become the main actors of 2023 for me. And I'm not complaining about that. But of course there's really nothing new for me to add about their majestic instrumental music at this point.

So what about this release? The title of the tape, which is limited to twenty-five handnumbered copies, says it all: These are recordings from the first European tour of the French quartet. The sound quality is flawless and successfully captures the spirit of their live presentation.

One special thing the band did was that they involved the audience by holding short interviews with visitors before the show, which even the band members themselves would hear for the first time during the ambient fade-out of the final track "Statues Learn To Weep".

NICK HUDSON - That Falconetti Stare (2023) /
ANTON RIPATTI & ASTERMIR MARSHENKULOV - Son#11 (2023)

But now let's get to something rarer! Not only do even fewer copies of this cassette exist, but half of its content hasn't been released in any other form at all yet, so other than Nick Hudson himself only one or two handful of people have heard "The Falconetti Stare", a collection of thirteen songs recorded between 2014 and 2021. Piano, acoustic guitar and occasional strings are the favored instruments, the vibe could be called Baroque Poetic Sunglasses in the Night Singer/Songwriter Contemporary Timeless Gothic - unless that's a little bit too long for you. But then you cannot fact-check my review properly for the time being anyway.

This is very beautiful material however, with delicate instrumental performances and smooth vocals, probably my favorite quieter album with male lead vocals of the year. So I'm glad that the multidisciplinary English artist residing in Georgia (the European Georgia that is) now could send me one of those precious tapes - even though getting my personal digital copy means a little bit more work than usually in this case. I'll even have to redo it, because I fucked up the volume on the first try. Now look how I am so privileged and yet such a whining crybaby!

Those forty minutes of unreleased songs are also only the first half of this split tape. The B side contains seven more tracks of the Georgian collaboration of guitarist / singer Anton Ripatti and multi-instrumentalist Astermir Marshenkulov on keys, strings, winds, guitars... well everything except drums I guess. And the couple of instances where we get programmed drums indeed fall a bit flatter than the rest of this album. They are still listenable though.

Not the same, but in undeniable spiritual brotherhood to Nick Hudson, whose art also graces the tape's cover, the duo refuses easy categorization, but moves somewhere between almost-Folk ballads, Eighties Art Rock, Electronic Wave and Neoclassical influences. And in this case you can also check this out - and buy digitally - for yourself on Bandcamp.

Even though I don't fully understand what this album wants (the language barrier might be a part of that), it's a good listen. I especially recommend the last track, which mainly consists of eleven minutes of slowly growing, beautifully sad and hopeful piano and guitar meandering.

EFFLUENCE - Liquefied (2022/2023)

And now we're completing the circle! While being in the hot honeymoon phase with newly discovered music it's an almost impossible task to determine whether the current butterflies will last and if the work will actually proof to a classic on regular rotation. But even with the competition of Reverend Hayter - if there is one album among these cassettes which will undoubtly be as artistically valuable in decades as it is right now, it must be this latest release by Effluence.

"Liquified" is one of the best concept albums of all time. Yes, I said it and I'm not joking!

Of course I didn't say it is an exceptionally deep or complex concept. The cover artwork, song titles like "Mix", "Blend", "Chop", "Dice", "Mince" and pseudonyms like Ice Crush, Nikki Mix or Kitchenaid G are already explaining the whole thing completely: What happens when you put humans into a giant blender and use all programs of the kitchen machine to liquefy them?

That's really all it is. But boy, the execution is so incredible perfect! It's a quick twenty minute inferno of Free Jazz, Grindcore and Death Metal (the Bandcamp tags also read annoying and blendcore), which somehow has all the right bubbling, whisking, chopping, pulverizing sounds to graphically sell each and every step of the process.
"Liquified" may seem like a fun silly hyper-brutal short album. And yes, that's still the most fitting classification for what I would normally call an EP - just given the genre and how overwhelmingly much is happening here in the time. So it will surely be easy to underestimate it for many listeners. But come on, the skill and sonic imagination behind this is just incredible!

This is the kind of mind-bending yet still easily understandable Avant-Garde you can justify putting close to Naked City's "Torture Garden" in your collection. Über-delicious ultra-addictive whatthefuckery. One should film a cooking tutorial with this as the soundtrack.

WOODBUNGE Festival 2023 • Freitag, 21. Juli • mit A PLACE TO FALL, BZAAT, OAKFARM und WHERE MEAIDS DROWN

Neulich posteten die französischen Postrocker Where Mermaids Drown, die mich vor zwei Monaten erst auf dem Colossal Weekend in Kopenhagen überzeugt hatten, dass sie noch ein Anschlusskonzert suchten zwischen zwei Shows in Paris und... Holzbunge? Moment, das ist doch hier oben irgendwo, oder?

Tatsächlich, ein kleines aus einer Gartenparty gewachsenes, zweitägiges Festival nur ein paar hundert Meter vom Wittensee. Und Oakfarm, die neue Band der ehemaligen zwei Drittel Bone Man Arne und Dennis, die ich bisher noch nicht live gesehen hatte, spielten dort auch. Cool, also nichts wie hin! Allerdings nur am Freitag, da mir campen oder zweimal hinfahren dann doch etwas zu viel Aufwand gewesen wären, zumal ich diesen Monat finanziell unvernünftigerweise ja auch noch ein weiteres Open Air mit weiterer Anfahrt auf dem Kalender stehen habe.

Selbst die wesentlich kürzere Strecke zum Woodbunge Festival wurde allerdings lästig und für mich überraschend durch eine Umleitung verlängert. Die Vollsperrung zwischen Brinjahe und Rendsburg hatte ich nicht auf dem Schirm gehabt. Naja, zum Glück hatte ich es nicht besonders eilig. Die erste Band am späten Nachmittag zu sehen, war eh nicht geplant, und die zweite begann bereits mit deutlichem Verzug im Zeitplan.

Das Gelände war kompakt und gemütlich hergerichtet, praktischerweise auch mit vielen Möglichkeiten, ins Trockene zu flüchten. Denn das Wetter präsentierte sich zunächst noch nicht gleichwertig sympathisch, so dass ich einen Großteil der Show von A Place To Fall nicht vor der Bühne, sondern auf einer aus Paletten gezimmerten Bank unter einem Pavillon verbrachte.

A PLACE TO FALL

Ok, es fiel mir auch relativ leicht, mir die Band nicht aus unmittelbarer Nähe anzusehen. Ihre Musik war - für das was sie sein sollte - wohl einigermaßen gut gemacht. Glaube ich? Vielleicht war es auch medioker? Das war für mich genrebedingt nicht einmal relevant.

Es war halt so Deathcore mit Cleangesang zwischendrin. Und das berührt mich abgesehen von der reinen Funktionalität als Rhythmusvorgabe zum Kopfnicken einfach selten bis gar nicht. Ob Dauergegrowle, Riffs oder Breakdowns - das kann man technisch alles so machen, ich persönlich würde dafür allerdings einen stilistischen Rahmen vorziehen, in dem größere Tiefe und einprägsames Songwriting erlaubt sind. Wurde dann doch schnell langweilig

Aber den lokalen Fans gefiel's und der Einsatz von Seifenblasenmaschinen vor der Bühne lief auch ganz fleißig.

BZAAT

Zu sagen, dass der Rest des Abendprogramms für meinen Geschmack interessanter aussah, ist angesichts des Mindfucks, der sich nun auf der Bühne manifestierte, eine derbe Untertreibung. Da befindest Du dich auf einem lokalen Freiluftveranstaltungchen, auf dem Du vom Gefühl her eher Gruppen aus Schleswig-Holstein und angrenzenden Bundesländern erwarten würdest, und dann zieht der Veranstalter das israelische As Bzaat auf seiner ersten Mini-Deutschlandtour (und überhaupt ersten Tour außerhalb Israels) aus dem Ärmel!

Ich weiß, dass ich in Bezug auf Duos mit Superlativen aufpassen muss, da ich in der Beziehung in den letzten Jahren so einiges höchst bemerkenswertes gesehen habe, doch dass Hadar Levi und Aviv Bart zu den großartig beklopptesten Zwei-Mann-Bands gehören, die mir bisher untergekommen sind, steht dennoch außer Frage.

Bzaat - der Name wurde uns oft und deutlich eingebläut - spielten instrumentalen Heavyrock voller mathematisch komplexer Arrangements, überraschender Wendungen, Ausflüge in drölfzig andere Genres von Easy Listening über Funk bis nahöstlich ornamentiertem Gehirnzirkus. Vor allem aber war es dass sowohl von Tom Morello und Ben Weinman als auch von traditiollem Rockstartum inspiriert klingende Gitarrenspiel, welches immer wieder für offene Münder und freudig ungläubiges Kopfschütteln sorgte.
Zwar halfen Wah-Wah und andere analoge wie digitale Effekte bei der Erzeugung vieler ungewöhnlicher Sounds mit, doch es war in erster Linie immer noch das besessene, mit einigen selten gesehenen Stunts gekrönte Spiel des Iroträgers selbst, welches die Riffs und Licks zum Ausnahmeereignis machte.

Unfassbar, was für ein irres Brett zwei Typen erzeugen können! Entdeckung des Tages.

OAKFARM

Zu zwei Dritteln mit ehemaligen Knochenmännern als Rhythmussektion bepflanzt, kommt man natürlich nicht daran vorbei, den Auftritt der Eichenfarm mit der ehemaligen Gruppe der Kieler zu vergleichen. Und klar, man erkennt die individuellen Eigenheiten und das typische, oft einen Ticken ungeduldiger als erwartete Spiel mit dem Tempo wieder. Doch nicht nur der bluesige Ausdruck von Gitarrist und Sänger Tobias Lemberger sorgt hier für eine deutlich anderen Note.

Bewegt man sich von Bone Man in Richtung Fleedwood Mac, dann trifft man Oakfarm vermutlich auf halber Strecke. Also in den frühen Neunzigern. Oder so. Wer's nicht mag, der könnte behaupten, dass diese Töne nun dad-rockiger seien. Aber das ist dünnes Eis, ich weiß. Schließlich habe ich mal einen langjährigen Facebook-Freund verloren, weil ich das D-Wort benutzt habe. Lächerliche Geschichte...

Aber jetzt zurück in den Wald! Sehr vintage und erdig war die Show, stilecht mit instrumentalen Jampassagen, doch auch mit sanfteren eingängigen Gesangsmomenten, die an frühe Motorpsycho erinnerten. Unabhängig vom eingeschlagenen Härtegrad fühlte sich das immer auf eigenständige Weise dreckig, direkt und roh an, aber halt niemals doof, sondern immer mit Seele und Absicht dahinter.

Mir gefiel's jedenfalls sehr gut, und ich war mit der Meinung nicht allein. Schön, die Jungs wieder aktiv zu sehen!

WHERE MERMAIDS DROWN

Es muss schon um Mitternacht herum gewesen sein, als die Bühne in blaulastige Unterwasserstimmung versetzt wurde und wir zu zum Sterben schönen Postrock-Klängen der Meerjungfrau beim schön Sterben zuhören durften.

Freunde von Mono, Bruit ≤ oder generell einfach jeder für große Gefühle in sich langsam aufbauenden Instrumentalstücken empfängliche Besucher wurden von Where Mermaids Drown mit epochalem Wohlklang verwöhnt. Nur wer bereits das erste Ausnüchterungsnickerchen hinter sich hatte, dürfte wohl Probleme mit den vielen vielschichtig umeinander flirrenden hohen Frequenzen gehabt haben. Da kann ich nur nachträglich die Daumen drücken, dass nicht allzu viele Besucher betroffen waren.

Spätestens wenn die Gitarristen Geigenbogen und Schraubendreher (o.ä. Werkzeug) zum Einsatz brachten, lohnte es sich auch jenseits der Lichtstimmung einmal, die entrückt geschlossenen Augen zu öffnen und zu schauen, wie das Quartett diese cineastische Klangwand überhaupt erzeugte. Ja, das war erneut eine sehr schöne Vorstellung!

Leichten Abzug in der B-Note gibt es höchstens dafür, dass als Zugabe ein Song wiederholt werden musste, da die Band abseits des kompletten "Reminisce"-Albums und des längsten Stücks der "And The Raging Winds Do Blow"-EP (Review beider Veröffentlichungen auf Kassette hier!) kein weiteres Repertoire vorbereitet hatte. Der Himmel fand dies auch ein bisschen traurig, so dass es nach mehreren freundlichen Stunden nun doch wieder zu schütten begann.

Aber ernsthaft konnte man sich natürlich nicht beschweren. Für diese Dosis traumhafter Transzendenz nahm ich es dann auch gerne in Kauf, danach im Amphibienmobil nach Hause zu tauchen. Ist ja auch eine wesentlich anspruchslosere Übung, als wie die Band noch einen Haufen Equipment durchs Nass zu schleppen und ganz bis nach Lyon fahren zu müssen. Merci dafür!