by Lars Gotrich

How many insanely limited edition cassettes come out in a year? It hurts my head thinking about it. Hell, I can’t keep up with (nor desire to keep up with) the edition-of-12 c40s clamming up the Troniks board. No, sir, these are just the cassettes I heard and thought were pretty awesome in 2009.

Now what I really wanted to do was produce a digital mixtape for y’all, layering earthy drones and cosmic freedom in beautiful sequence. But things change, so you’ll have to make do with half-baked descriptions, a few known download links and the hope that maybe one of these limited cassettes is floating around some distro or scamming up mega bucks on eBay.

(Also, it goes without saying that the Beru and Robe. cassettes would definitely be on here, but, you know, conflict of interest.)

1. Silver Bullets- Free Radical [Stunned]
It’s hard to believe that Stunned Records has put out 65 (!) releases in just two years. Phil French & co. do well to document west coast psychedelia and other such sky burners, but the biggest winners tend to be international in origin. That said, William Giacchi (Magic Lantern, Super Minerals, Eureka) scored major with Silver Bullets, a group of deep psych conjurers from Italy. Free Radical touches on the meditative spirit of Don Cherry and keeps a healthy kraut-boogie throughout. Download it.

2. Dreamcolour- Spiritual Celebration [Not Not Fun]
Dreamcolour- Inner Worship [Stunned]
Might as well call Dreamcolour my new favorite cosmic jazz crew of 2009. Of the many robed jams that came out this year, these two joints were tops and couldn’t be any more different. Spiritual Celebration is the funkier of the two, especially on Side A, streaking sunshine with a thick bass line and a joyful horn section out of Sun Ra’s Arkestra. I like to think of Inner Worship as the Remain in Light of Dreamcolour’s short career, with drone wizard Sean McCann as the band’s secret weapon behind the boards… kind of like Brian Eno stretching the band’s honking wails out of proportion. (Thor’s Rubber Hammer hopes to release something by Dreamcolour in 2010.)

3. Keith Fullerton Whitman- Dream House Variations 4xCS [Arbor Infinity]
Admittedly, I’m drawn to Keith Fullerton Whitman’s pretty drone music. Lisbon? One of the best live drone-improv records ever made. Playthroughs? Its quiet, tonal subtlety makes me weep. So when K-Whit releases a four-cassette box set meant for simultaneous play, I definitely sign up without owning four cassette players. With only two tape decks, one c44 (or c40 or c36 or c32) is almost enough. It’s K-Whit at his most clangy, probably emulating the early gurus of electronic music he likes so much. Noisy as it is, the textures move like a clock, which I imagine at four dimensions is like a Dali painting come to life. K-Whit briefly uploaded a six-hour (!) mixdown of Dream House to Soundcloud, but it’s been taken down. I snagged the MP3 and it’s fun to hear his version of it, but I’m looking forward to my own quadraphonic experiment.

4. Super Minerals- Clusters [Stunned]
William Giacchi and Phil French generally use Super Minerals as a grimy noise-drone outfit, but Clusters is like the no-fi Well-Tuned Piano. It’s an uninhibited piece of minimalism that makes no apologies for the duo’s untrained abilities as pianists, for which the cassette medium is perfectly suited. The warbly grit of the tape gives us pieces of clairvoyance as one of the Super Minerals manipulates cassettes of bells around it. I’d really love to hear more material in this vein. Download it.

5. Pete Fosco- Autumn Fire Blues [Digitalis Limited]
Somewhere between the loner avant-blues of Loren Connors and the ambient crawl of Alan Sparhawk (Low) lies guitarist Pete Fosco. He doesn’t quite abstract with saturated sound nor does he lend himself to a song. Autumn Fire Blues‘ title makes it too easy: this is the sound of embers dying on a lonesome, chilled night, barely able to hold a guitar to its weary body. (Thor’s Rubber Hammer will release Night Spirit Gestures by Pete Fosco in 2010.)

6. Vibes- You God It [Not Not Fun]
Drone kids like to party, too. It’s not all moanin’ and sythesizerin’ all the time, you know? Well, Vibes still does that, but puts a caveman funk bass way out front. It’s essentially the NNF hamjammer house band, including members of Pocahaunted, Robedoor, Sun Araw and Magic Lantern, not at all really “rocking” or stirring up soul. Well, they are stirring up some kind of anarcho-good-times soul, but kind of disaffected and pumped at the same time, right?

7. Wasteland Jazz Unit- Complete Spring Tour 2009 6xCS [DroneDisco]
Dammit, is there anyone near as painfully earstabbing as Wasteland Jazz Unit right now? I just want to run a tube through my sound-canal and let WJU’s mangled reeds of distortion leak charred spit valve noise. I swear the cover of Complete Spring Tour 2009 needs to be mounted on the Wall of Noise Defamed: three amp stacks, a sax and a Bud Light beacon perfectly frame the six cassettes of free-skree contained within. What’s it like to imbibe 12 shows worth of shitty Bud Light and two dudes tearing a sax and a clarinet asunder? I wanted to know and now I’m dumb. Download it. (Thor’s Rubber Hammer released a Wasteland Jazz Unit split LP with Talibam! last fall.)

8. Indignant Senility- Plays Wagner [Portland Bad Date Line]
When the Buddha boxes weren’t cutting it zone-out-wise (be it the FM3, FSS or the Gristle Box), I played this one a ton. Indignant Senility is Pat Maherr (Sisprum Vish), who uses a similar set-up to his warped-crunk outfit DJ Yo-Yo Dieting to bring classical records to a deathly crawl. It’s haunting material, especially considering the source. Maherr reduced the orchestral machismo of Wagner to heavy grief and desolation, clawing at the sides of stone tombs. (Apparently, Type Records will reissue Plays Wagner as a 2xLP+CD in 2010!)

9. Field of Hats- Myriad Features [Trilogy Tapes]
Super Cluster-y synth meditations maybe inspired by gothic cathedrals and all the chanting that goes on therein. Emeralds fans will like it, for sure, but I was drawn to the overwhelming bummer of it all. Like, this guy needs some happy in his life, but not really if he’s gonna make tapes like this.

10. Jah Lion- Dub Bible [Roll Over Rover]
Oh, sure, Roll Over Rover’s got some great drone jams from the likes of Sean McCann and Kellen Shipley, but Jah Lion’s artwork was too funny and the idea was too silly not to scour the distros for a copy of Dub Bible (Dub Bible!). And you know what? It’s a great cassette, too, which was the unexpected surprise. Bunch of a white dudes making minimal dub with maybe a little of their pasty drone thrown in for good measure. Hell, they even cover Culture’s “Two Sevens Clash” with some authority. Download it.

Others, In No Particular Order:
Forbes Graham- Brave Game #1: Trumpet [905]
Rambutan- I Saw You Running Out [905]
Earn- Person [Young]
Raglani- Classically Sprained [Arbor Infinity]
Jefre Sei Getsu Ledesma- Namu Kie Butsu [NNA]
Grasshopper- Kindertotenlieder [Baked]
v/a- Deaf in the Valley [905]
Burial Hex- Four Tone Poems of Orlog [Cathartic Process]
Greg Davis- Full Spectrum [Digitalis Limited]
Helm- Direct Landscapes / Monuments [Tone Filth]