Some musicians these days produce so much music that it can be hard to keep up. It’s probably always been this way, but the internet ease-of-access often serves as more of a reminder of how much you’re missing rather than as a way to tune you into everything that’s going on in the depths of underground music. Adam Harper just wrote an essay about this for his continuing column for Electronic Beats. In it, he outlines ways to try and keep up with so much going on, but the very existence of that essay is an admittance of how hard it is to actually do that. He mentions the usefulness of websites like SoundCloud and Bandcamp, as well as the benefit of links, but these alone couldn’t possibly uncover even a fraction of what’s out there. Luckily, you are not alone. The line between music listener and music journalist has blurred to such a degree that everyone has become an archivist, collecting names, labels, and releases, reconfiguring the context of everything in order to fill in the gaps of the music web with more and more lines.
This mix of early Carlos Gonzalez songs from his long-running Russian Tsarlag project is a great example. With less than a week to go before the release of Russian Tsarlag’s new album, Gagged In Boonesville, Noah Anthony of Not Not Fun’s Profligate thought it’d be a good idea to compile a what-you-probably-missed greatest hits of Gonzalez’s massive output. Collecting songs from years of limited and tour-only releases, each of the 10 tracks here fit together like timeless references to Russian Tsarlag’s evolving “swamp-surf” sound.
Stream the mix below and then feel free to dig deeper into the Russian Tsarlag discography. However, you may want to leave bread crumbs so you can find your way back. After all, every look in one direction is its own turning-a-blind-eye to every other direction, and we don’t want you getting too stuck in the web.
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01. “Last Release”
02. “Teenager In A Mansion”
03. “Lived Too Long”
04. “50 Years”
05. “Death Night”
06. “Let’s Drive”
07. “Take U Home”
08. “Bertha’s Back On Tape”
09. “Again”
10. “Desire’s Trace”
Russian Tsarlag’s Gagged In Boonesville is out next Tuesday, July 2, on Not Not Fun.
• Russian Tsarlag: https://www.facebook.com/RussianTsarlag
• Profligate: http://profligate.bandcamp.com
• Not Not Fun: http://www.notnotfun.com