Instead of a standard j-card, the first release from Virginia’s Found Tapes label is a black cassette that comes with a Norelco shell outfitted with these creepy veins just underneath some kind of painted coating that’s adhered to the plastic. Getting the obvious out of the way first: This thing just looks completely bad ass. But the unique vein-look does more than just make Inside Aquila stand out in your wall tape rack — that splintery 3D artwork also just so happens to give a nice little visual queue as to the work I.G.M (Ian G. McColm) put into the music for Inside Aquila. Like the sharp contours, twisting lines and tight angles created by those veins on the cover, McColm’s compositions often start with prickly staccato textures, tiny dots connecting a jagged maze through which meandering drones and reverberant harmonics of the guitar can freely flow, a nice backdrop for the spaghetti western melodies that sit on top, spread across the tape like the boney fingers of a skeleton. The album moves through some frigid fright-fests, humbling, beyond beautiful balladry, but it’s the substance beneath all that that keeps this guy on repeat: those undertones are so deep and rich, rolling tides of seismic bass, all full of satisfying and gratifying nutrients fed straight into your mind with the efficiency of… well, of a human body’s circulatory system, God’s second greatest creation (next to the auto-reverse function on a Walkman).
More about: I.G.M
