Magnetic Domains

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Chris Spheeris/Paul Voudouris

Primal-Tech Music

For several years now I've enjoyed the drifting ambience of Spheeris and Voudouris's 1982 album Passage, and their 1991 contemporary instrumental new age album Enchantment has its moments as well. Primal-Tech Music, however, pre-dates both those albums, and could have been made by an entirely different band. Here the duo produce a kind of mechanical new wave. The first side kicks off with a string of fairly accessible synthpop tunes, but by the time "Look Again" comes around, Spheeris and Voudouris grow more and more experimental. The atonal synth riff of "Simple Life" recalls The Normal's "Warm Leatherette", and "White Black" may have been the spark that ignited the artists' later interest in ambient music.

There are a couple things about this cassette that confuse me. First, the copy I found in Goodwill was recorded onto a Maxell-branded C46, but appears to still have an original printed J-card. The Maxell tape dates from around the same period the album was released, so it's possible this is how it was issued, if it was a small enough run, but it could be a home copy. Also, Voudouris's site cites a Milwaukee Journal review from 1981, but according to the J-card this live album wasn't recorded until 1982. Was the newspaper reviewing an earlier live performance, or maybe a previous studio version of the same album exists?

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Leona Rivet

Under the Sword

Under the Sword is the second of the two Leona Rivet cassingles I recently discovered. It was released in 1994, two years after Phorrest's Theme, and in that time Leona built upon her previous style by introducing a few new elements; the two pieces here are longer than we've heard before, and the title track features an extended blues-rock guitar solo courtesy of Al Mevissen. "Endgame" is based around a steady drum machine beat and an almost overpowering bass guitar part.

The colorful, handmade artwork is even more elaborate than before, and this time it includes a few quotations that give us some insight into Leona's fictional world of Phorrest Cashay and Damien Scoville. I also find the handwritten "No. 7" in the corner of the J-card interesting — was this tape released in a numbered edition, or might this be the 7th in a series?

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Leona Rivet

Phorrest's Theme: "The Knight of Blood"

This is the first of two cassettes by the enigmatic Leona Rivet that I recently discovered. Each is only single-length, with two tracks repeated on both sides of the tape. The music seems to serve as a soundtrack for a fantasy world developed by Rivet, and, as such, her keyboard compositions here play off familiar medieval fantasy music tropes, with more contemporary drum machine programming.

Whether the world of Phorrest relates to any other sort media, like a novel or even a D&D campaign that Rivet might have planned, remains a mystery, but just based on the artwork it's clearly something she was very passionate about. The artwork is hand-colored and glitter has been applied liberally — sadly it doesn't show up very nicely in my scans! I love finding cassettes like this.

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Touché

Follow Your Dreams

Touché is a duo comprised of Ross Woods on keyboards and drum programming and Yil Ozpay on saxophones and electric wind instruments. I haven't been able to find any info on Woods, but I do know that the Googlably-named Ozpay is (or at least was at some point) a San Francisco-based street performer specializing in the kind of upbeat smooth jazz heard on this album. He has worked on a number of different musical projects, including at least two albums with Touché: this one and another called Horizon, both from 1990.

Personally I'm not a big smooth jazz fan, but the genre occasionally has its moments, and Follow Your Dreams is such a strange album I just had to post it. Touché's style is so unorthodox I'm almost tempted to call this "outside music". Basically, each song is based on what sounds like a repetitive Casio keyboard Auto Accompaniment part from Ross, on top of which Yil delivers his improvised sax or wind synthesizer lines. On occasion we might get a keyboard solo, too. None of the pieces have very well-defined beginnings or endings, which makes it sound like Yil could just keep on jamming into eternity. The album's highlight for me is "Hiway Cruise". It's funky fresh!

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Bruce Lehrer

Seraphim

Here's yet another unknown new age obscurity. Bruce Lehrer released Seraphim in 1991 on Ashlay Music (probably his own record label), and if I had to guess, I'd venture that the music was produced almost exclusively with Ensoniq sampling keyboards and synthesizers, since the only reference to this album I have been able to find is in a 1992 issue of the Ensoniq enthusiast magazine Transoniq Hacker. Apparently he submitted the album for review to their "Hacker Basement Tapes" section, but since not every issue has been digitized yet, I don't know if the album was ever actually covered.

The music of Seraphim fits squarely into the ambient-leaning new age camp, never using drum machines but still providing a sense of rhythm through slow arpeggiated lines. Lehrer doesn't do anything truly impressive here, never straying far from a pretty stereotypical set of new age patches, but he has enough melodic sense to keep the album from becoming overly stale. For me the highlight is the first track, "Pyramid", which has some cool pitch-shifting stuff going on. The final three tracks on the B-side are mixed together into a longer suite.

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Juvie Fantasma

Sketches of Juvie Fantasma

I discovered this behemoth of an album in a Goodwill store earlier this year. Hand-numbered and limited to 100 copies, recorded onto a TDK branded C90 (actual running time is about 93 minutes), and apparently completely unknown to everyone on the Internet except one other person who seems just as baffled by it as I am. The dates on the artwork indicate the 65+ "sketches" here were recorded between 1994 and 2003, and they range from lo-fi folk dirges to lo-fi synth jams to lo-fi answering machine messages. Check this out if you're into any of the following: James Ferraro, Ariel Pink, Jandek, Kemialliset Ystävät, Rangers.

If anyone out there knows more about this artist, please get in contact with me!

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Thomas Miller

Ancient Worlds

Based on what I've been able to dig up, Tom Miller seems like real jack-of-all-trades in the media world, working in illustration, video and, of course, music, all under the banner of his company Adventure Unlimited Media. His connections to the film world are evident on this 1996 album, as it's filled with the grandiose, cinematic sounds we've come to associate with soundtrack music. The instruments here are either sampled or synthesized, but I get the impression that Tom is one of those artists who would love to record with a full orchestra if he had the resources available.

On Ancient Worlds, Mr. Miller functions mainly as the composer, assigning arrangement and performance duties to two other individuals — Robert J. Resetar handles the majority of the pieces, and Dean Anderson is behind tracks 2 and 4. Personally I prefer the Anderson tracks, since he uses more electronic sounds and traditional synth patches, while Resetar prefers to emulate the sounds of real instruments.

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Edward L. Tuton

Vibrations

Tapes like this are the reason Magnetic Domains exists. Edward L. Tuton is an artist so obscure that not a single soul on the Internet, barring one copyright registry website, has even mentioned him, yet at one point in 1989 he decided to release his music to the world, and in 2014 I found it for a dollar in a thrift shop. And the best part: the music is actually really awesome!

At first glance I thought this was going to be a fairly typical new age album, and it does have its share of atmospheric, ambient synth pieces, especially on the first side. But when the Dam-Funk-esque bassline of "Moon Mirage" came in I knew Mr. Tuton was a different kind of artist. Tracks like "Amazon Dawn" and "Phase" even anticipate the armchair techno that would come about a few years later in the early '90s with projects like B12 and The Future Sound of London. My absolute favorite is "Mogando Lake", featuring a wistful synth melody over a funky, head-nodding beat. This is an unknown classic! Just download it!

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Dark Facade

Pas de deux

Dark Facade was a minimal wave/post-punk band from Milwaukee, formed in 1981 and probably disbanded in 1986 after the death of synth player and founding member David Wolf. They began as the duo heard on this particular release, their music centered around drum machines, synthesizers, and the vocals of Steven Nodine. Only later did they expand to include guitar, bass and live drums. According to their Facebook page, the surviving members got back together for a reunion show in 2012.

The band has a few well-documented vinyl releases from 1985 (Losing Faith and Kunst), but I haven't been able to dig up any info on this 1983 cassette. The sound is much, much more raw here, and the way the tape is formatted almost makes me think it's a demo — it's recorded to a C90, and there's 20 minutes of silence after the music on the A side, and the B side is completely blank. Nevertheless this is an interesting obscurity for fans of minimal synth music.

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Zonergyx

Larv Trancet

Just in time for Halloween, here's a creepy little thrift store find... Two 30-minute sides of deep, dark drones and unsettling noises from a mysterious project known only as Zonergyx. Since there are no "A" or "B" side markings on this cassette, the order in which I've presented the two tracks is arbitrary.

Much to my surprise I was able to find a website for Audio Muzixa Qet, the label on which this tape was released, although it looks like a site that was created in the early days of the Internet and has been unmaintained since then. I discovered Larv Trancet was released in 1989, and even found that the list price was $3. (Is it still available? I doubt it, but if you can find a contact email I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask.) The label is/was connected to Xexoxial Editions, a publisher for underground visual and written art that is still active today.

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Steve Kuether

Folk Dreams of the Spirit Dancing

Here's another mysterious self-released new age cassette. The artist Steve Kuether has more recently worked with the Soulfood label, but this 1985 tape seems to have been erased from history until now. Sadly the cassette sounds like it has been played a lot and has significant distortion in the louder sections, but I think you'll still be able to enjoy it. The highlight for me is the second track "Lite the Candle", with its Tangerine Dream-inspired sequencer parts.

I've noticed that the track times listed on J-cards sometimes don't match the actual running times, but with this release they're completely out of whack. I thought maybe the two sides of the cassette were mislabelled, but they don't match that way either. So I've just tagged the files as they are listed.

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Edwina Lee Tyler

Drum Drama!

Edwina Lee Tyler is known as The Drum Grandmother, and she was one of the first women to perform on African percussion instruments that were traditionally reserved for men. This is her debut album, a live recording from 1987, released in 1988.

I was really surprised by how diverse the sounds on this album are. The "cool" side starts off with a melodic composition for marimba that leads into a piece centered around extended piano techniques, sounding like something that could have been written by an avant-garde classical composer. The first side closes with an interpretation of the spiritual "Wade in the Water", featuring the deep, haunting voice of Edwina herself. The "hot" side is dedicated to Edwina's exuberant djembe drumming, culminating in an intense 15 minute version of a traditional West African song.

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Kenneth Weir

The Fairy Dance

I discovered this self-released cassette in pretty beat-up shape (just check the images), but luckily it plays and sounds decent enough. Musically this is your standard melodic '80s new age fare, produced with synthesizer and a few guitar parts. Existing fans of the genre such as myself will find material here to enjoy, but I doubt it's going to be winning over many converts. One notable aspect of the tape is the track of electronic twinkles and "happy laugher of the fairies" (pitched up a la The Chipmunks) that runs through its entire duration.

Sadly I can't tell you whether or not Kenneth Weir produced any other material, but the catalog number "KW100" suggests this was his first release. If any other albums do exist, they're probably just as obscure as this one.

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Bryan Rombalski

Nozomi

Nozomi is a fascinating and extremely forward-looking album of instrumental music centered around the guitarist Bryan Rombalski. At times it reminds me of the jazzy post-rock bands like Tortoise and Do Make Say Think, and it also has similarities to the desolate stoner rock of Yawning Man. But really it's an album unlike any other I've heard before, and the fact it came out in 1987 makes it even more amazing.

Rombalski is still an active musician today, frequently performing around Midland, Michigan, with his band Three Worlds, although musically he seems to have moved into more traditional jazz fusion territory. According to a 2007 post on the band's messageboard, Nozomi was at one point slated to receive a CD reissue, but I can't find any evidence that the plan ever came to fruition. So in lieu of that, here's the tape rip for everyone to enjoy.

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Franklin M Gauer III

Ascent to Conscience

Melodic keyboard music from 1991, released on Ascending Octave Productions (probably the artist's own label). In 2014 Mr. Gauer has a strong web presence with pages on various social networking sites, and he's still producing music today, but only as a hobby, it appears — apparently he works as a programmer for Disney as his day job!

I found this cassette on the shelves at Savers, and there is literally zero mention of it anywhere on the Internet (a common theme on this blog). I enjoyed it a lot though, and I hope you do too.

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