Expect envy as I relay the conundrum of the music reviewer: A plain package shows up from an unfamiliar address. Thankfully not addressed to Tom DeLay, but to yours truly. I let the cats sniff it, the toddler gently shake it. Sounds like a cassette. It’s not from the label and as far as I can fathom, not from Michael O’Dwyer and Aaron Wallace who fancy calling themselves Boquillas. It sits on top of my stack for a week — perhaps two (it’s a large stack — apologies for the “brag”). It finally meets my tape player. It rings, loudly. It buzzes, furiously. It resonates, triumphantly. Much like the secret world from which this tape came (thank you kind stranger or clever pseudonym), Boquillas was recorded in a tunnel a world away from my humble Usonian knock off, coming from the depths of the unknown to create a feeling well worth discovering. And much like the toddler that inhabits my space, its roars from the tape player through the hallways and angled doorways are signals to the imagined portal through the center of the earth. As if Boquillas and I are tied by a taut string at direct opposites of the Earth. They pull and I fall; I tug and they crash into their gong, only for the din to travel that mythical rope like words spoken in a can between treehouses. No matter how the message came to me, I am hearing it as it was intended for me to hear. I apologize for ignoring it for as long as I did. But Boquillas’ mature rumble finally cut through the childish boom that often inhabits my home. The distance between Melbourne and Indianapolis doesn’t seem so far these days.
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