Poland’s outlines is, in their own words, “a searching label.” With footwork as their launch point, their “Groove” cassette tape series aims to seek out divergent iterations of the Chicago sound, highlight newly intuitive, often minimal, forms, and keep nudging boundaries ever out and around.
The first three tapes in the series come from some of Japan’s juke finest, D.J. Fulltono, CRZKNY, and Skip Club Orchestra, and the recently released fourth trips forth from Argentinian producer, and ABYSS head, Aylu.
Aylu’s tape hyper-excites with innumerable little bits that are assembled in a type of strewn-and-sewn 食品まつりa.k.a foodman way. Brief rhythms emerge and fade, fidgety, until some other compulsive clip or warble or toy box tone elbows its way into place. Each moment feels held in tensioned balance by all the others, while the whole swath continuously erases and reassembles like a Jenga set, an Etch A Sketch, those blocks of nails stabilized against a piece of plastic that you press into to leave an indent.*
Stream both sides below, and take a listen to the first three tapes this way.
* I just spent way too much time looking up what that thing is called. It’s called a Pin Point Impression toy.