Triode – One Way Voice Link (False, 2012)

Triode – Konets 000 (excerpt) (False)

 
Crazy crazy crazy. This is some true awesomeness right here. I have no idea who/what Triode is, except this tape came from, appropriately enough as you’ll soon discover, a live WRIU set in 1998. Freshly dubbed by the caretakers at False, One Way Voice Link is a standalone piece of noisy radio brilliance. Deep rumblings laying waste to the landscape with hideous mechanical crunching, haunted caustic drones, faded ethereal voices, heaving electromagnetic swamp acid, clips of radio transmissions steamrolling through the airwaves. The best part of this hour long mess is the 20 minute mid section of the B side. I couldn’t tell you if this was recorded straight from a numbers station or if Triode coated it in a thick brown fuzz afterwards, but it’s a recording of male & female vocalists singing something beautiful and dramatic but blown into oblivion so the lyrics and language are obscured, and they’ve been chopped up into about 10 second long segments, maybe 4 or 5 different “verses” that cut short and start up again without keeping the tempo they’re singing in, subtly but undeniably jarring, and looped without variation for about 20 minutes, so long that you hyper analyze everything, wondering what’s been altered, what’s intentional, what’s unavoidable, and WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON, but it’s so beautiful and hypnotic, a disintegrated loop halted in its deterioration, locked in lo-fi forever. 100% worth the tape for that part alone, but the rest is amazing and the packaging is downright ridiculous. Each False tape comes in a brown jewelry box with cotton padding, a printed velum insert, and obi strip. Way classy and over the top, just the way I like my tape packaging.