The debut tape from Monte Burrows (nom de plume of our dear Spring Break Tapes!-maker, Joe “Tuesday” McKay) comes with an interesting passage of complete and utter nonsense written by someone named Uel Aramchek printed inside the fold-out J-card. I caught the word “necropolis” in a quick skim (that word just sticks out, doesn’t it?) and so I wanted to start there. Because that is indeed where this music starts, on the galley of a submerged ship at the bottom of a lagoon, barnacled and gnarly, and your vision of this aquatic graveyard smeared in the wafting lukewarm currents. He takes you right there, fixing your listening scope with a scratched-lens filter, blurring the old tape loops and grinding organs into a haunted dystopian drone from another time. Monte Burrows hits some Basinski vibes as the whole of the composition seems to point itself down into that crumbling descent we call de-composition, but with the horns and woodwinds on side B, I’m also really taken back to my first encounters with Philip Jeck, and the composer’s ability to pull a sensory-stuffed drone out of romanticism and let it ride in a sad, sallow mess of sound, all without sacrificing the most important thing: the melody (of course!). Totally haunting and all-engrossing stuff, an impressive first outing and another slam dunk for Spring Break Tapes!
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