Stunned no. 111

Nite Lite / WaterFinder — Marjorie / The Good Heart c57 (Stunned no. 111) —out of stock—

Phil & Myste return as Nite Lite along with backing bros Jeffry and William, and their offering ‘Marjorie’ is a year’s worth of free-jamming and field recording around the mountainside they call home. Migratory birds, frogs, parties in the park, synth & guitar trancin’, and riparian wildlife all coalesce in Nite Lite’s ever-evolving audio mosaic. Nite Lite is proud to partner on this split cassette with long-distance friends & free spirits WaterFinder, who’ve been delighting many recently with awesome releases on Peasant Magik and their own Biological Radio imprint. Members Jackie McDowell (Inez Lightfoot) & Matt McDowell (Sagas, Dire Wolves, etc.) explore a fascinating array of angles to folk, drone, homebuilt instrumentation, and nature-oriented sound in under a half-hour. Light a long stick of incense and likewise let your mind – and good heart – waft upward in a single vapor along with WaterFinder’s ritual songs. Limited edition of 111 pro-dubbed & imprinted c57 tapes w/ double-sided jcard and insert.
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review:

— Tome to the Weather Machine

Stunned no. 110

Black Eagle Child / Eureka — c49 (Stunned no. 110) —out of stock—

Black Eagle Child has brought his signature sound to an exquisite point of refinement over the last year, and his half of this split edition with Eureka is evidence of that fact. Commencing with a triptych of tunes, BEC entwines field recordings with fluid guitar lines that bloom outward in subtle & seductive fashion. It’s in these rare musical moments that the immediate pressures of space and time are relieved, where both musician and listener coast into pleasant memories and unhurried daydreaming. Eureka similarly gains stride on Side B with his first new material since 2009, giving events a slightly more labyrinthine twist than usual. Sustained pyramidal piano precedes deeper passages of intrigue, where hybrids of free-percussion and mellow six-string peak out behind cobwebs & hashish smoke plumes. Sonic frescoes lining the way suggest the strong influence of wise ancestor guides and transcendent astral myth, which Eureka translates to tape one liberated step after another. Limited edition of 111 pro-dubbed & imprinted c49 tapes w/ double-sided jcard and insert.
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review:

— Agitated Atmosphere

Stunned no. 109

Torture Corpse / Architeuthis Rex — c44 (Stunned no. 109) —out of stock—

Back for a third time on Stunned, Torture Corpse delivers a fierce and fire-licked side appropriately titled ‘Ignorance’. Like being herded through a geoengineered tweak of the weather, or standing under a sky checkered with persistent trails of aerosol spray, the consequences of exposure to TC’s guitar-crush has been verified to generate psychic mutation. Our hero from Rotterdam thankfully holds nothing back, and signals with his arsenal of pitch-black electronics the final malfunctioning of all civic and political institutions. Pestilence spills through cracks in the merciless wall of noise erected in Torture Corpse’s anarchic defiance, trickling over to the second side of this split. One can practically hear the vermin scampering underfoot in Architeuthis Rex’s haunted churchyard exploration. What begins as a desolate wind-whipped scene of terrestrial tension ends with something akin to encountering the first of four apocalyptic horsemen, turned loose and swinging low its scythe. Hold on tight. Limited edition of 111 pro-dubbed & imprinted c44 tapes w/ double-sided jcard and insert.
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— Utvær!

Stunned no. 108

Love Cult / Tempera — c46 (Stunned no. 108) —out of stock—

Ivan & Anya of Love Cult have a knack for capturing the sense of tranquility that accompanies moments of deep homeostasis, hovering over the fine line between communal music-making and private meditation. This split finds the Russian duo conducting three-part ceremony, where each passage tumbles naturally – and with an increasingly woozy bliss – into a beautiful stew of storm-tempered organ and female vocals. The accompanying side by Portland Maine’s Tempera absolutely locks in the high vibrations, with the troupe caught up in translucent vocal rhythms and cycles of electronic chimes. It’s one of the more magical moments of documented live performance we’ve heard in quite a while, and its dazzling display provides a listening experience that demands frequent revisiting. Limited edition of 111 pro-dubbed & imprinted c46 tapes w/ double-sided jcard and insert.
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— Pied Paper

Stunned no. 107

summerTales / Knit Prism — c56 (Stunned no. 107) —out of stock—

Last year a rather strange tape by Sicilian group Armali Lari surfaced on Stunned (later re-issued on A Beard of Snails), and the response to it was a bit surprising considering it was a debut release. Simply, many of you wanted to hear even more of this unabashedly fun eye-tied weirdness. summerTales comes very near to fulfilling that wish, as it shares Armali Lari’s primary member Nicola Giunta, whose repertoire of effects will be familiar to fans of ‘Ma tu la pasta la vò?’. Here, Nicola is joined by sound artist Guido Broglio, and the two drive summerTales away from the free-electro-spazz of Armali Lari and closer toward head-nodding island dub loops and fractured melodies drifting in on ocean breeze. Not without its own challenging internal logic, it keeps a distinct levity that we’ve come to appreciate not only from Nicola’s work, but from the contemporary Italian improv underground in general. After this engrossing first side, we are greeted by Knit Prism, who needs little introduction for anyone keeping abreast with current cassette culture. The naturescape/ambient dreamchild of Canada’s Mike Pouw (proprietor of the House of Sun imprint), Knit Prism is a consistently refreshing project — poignant with its calming way of drawing in the carefree listener. It’s the kind of soundtrack we want handy for thawing by a fire after a hard day’s work, or for those lazy weekend sunrises we just don’t want to forget. Limited edition of 111 pro-dubbed & imprinted c56 tapes w/ double-sided jcard and insert.

Stunned no. 106

Charlatan / Spare Death Icon — c42 (Stunned no. 106) —out of stock—

When Brad Rose (The North Sea, Digitalis, etc.) and Jason Anderson (Brother Raven, Gift Tapes, etc.) conceived this split together, they agreed that Relaxation was to be the overarching theme of the tape regardless of their distinct synthesizer arrangements. The result is one of the finest examples of the heights Brad’s synth-driven Charlatan and Jason’s SDI solo vehicle can attain with analog circuitry. Charlatan steps right to the business of chilling out proper with a pair of jams that fuse laser-guided arpeggios with angel chorus and heart-aching string pulls. Spare Death Icon follows up this plunge toward heaven’s gate with a balancing tug toward an environment as isolate as some distant preorganic planet. While maintaining a most relaxed flow, the back side of this cassette is also experienced as its dark side — a mysterious sound evoking the first whispers of cellular lifeforms clinging within glacier crevices and cooling fields of lava. Limited edition of 111 pro-dubbed & imprinted c42 tapes w/ double-sided color jcard.