ghosting and rob walmart reviews

Rob Walmart Contains The Hit Waterskiing In Canada (Yarnlazer)

Anonymous, crazy and drunk, this Portland enigma releases the modern beats.

[SPOKEN-WORD CRUNK] A waiter's voice opens one of the 12 tracks on Rob Walmart's latest, Contains the Hit Waterskiing in Canada, saying simply, "Mr. Walmart, your beer has arrived." A bass riff follows, and then the presumed Mr. Walmart opens his beer into the microphone. And the song called "Mr. Walmart Your Beer" ends. The song prior, "How Much the Wires," features a synth organ line, coughing, static and this series of slurred questions: "How much of that do you think is the speakers/ and how much the natural sound of my voice?/ How much the wires?/ How much the music?" Static swells. End song.

Contains the Hit Waterskiing in Canada is littered with these moments, and the fabulous title track, which is a ridiculous yet infectious five minutes of spoken-word poetry about robbing an unidentified "supercenter" while on waterskis, is backed by echoey beats and electronic fades, a mix of the extremely abstract and the extremely concrete that's common on the record. Imagine if Kerouac, Ginsberg and the rest of the Beats had access to an effects rack, and Rob Walmart is what you get.

An album as un-self-consciously experimental as this is what happens when you own a four-track, record at home and release on a DIY CD-R label, I suppose: Every late-night drunk has the potential to develop into a late-night drunk recording session. For most, that sounds nearly as regretful as a one-night stand, but for a figure as talented as the enigmatic Rob Walmart, the result—while occasionally drifting into somewhat pointless electronic jams—is absorbing, and a somewhat odd introduction to crunk beats, which underscore nearly every one of these 12 tracks. In fact, about the only introduction Yarnlazer gave me for this album was this: "A mountain of crunk." Rob Walmart steadfastly refuses to be identified, even by association (except for an affiliation with Marriage Records, which released some of their music near the label's genesis). The only clue we have that this is indeed a crew rather than a Mr. Rob Walmart is a brief introduction given on the Yarnlazer website: "It may take two to tango, but it takes eight to rob a _______." Or, eight to trip us the fuck out for 44 minutes.

—MICHAEL BYRNE

Ghosting 'Catch Waves' from Untitled Split with Bonecloud (Yarnlazer)

Zach Reno and J.P. Jenkins manage to turn the soundtrack into a storyline.

[ATMOSPHERIC STORYTELLING] To musically create atmosphere is one thing. Whatever you call it—ambient, background, mood music—this type of song is meant to be ignored at a certain level, its purpose to accompany a narrative, to be breathed in and out, perhaps drifted with, but rarely charted. To create an atmosphere that tells its own story, that survives without earth and gravity, is something else entirely. The 22 minutes of chiming bells, ghostly electronic drones and haunted guitar delays that is Ghosting's 'Catch Waves' is precisely this. The dry word for it is 'cinematic.' Within its too-short (these 22 minutes elapse in dream time) span is a narration of sense and feeling, traveling from a bewitching solace of barely formed melodics to an anxiety-laden hum, embedded with frail whispers and glances of feedback and squeal. The ending's an abstract horror show that I'm loath to give away, save for the fact that its only resolution is a turn of the volume and effects knobs to '0.'

This track, one half of a split album with Ireland's Bonecloud, is one in a sea of releases for the Ghosting duo of Zach Reno and J.P. Jenkins, many of them on Reno's Onomato CD-R label. This album finds itself on yet another CD-R label, Yarnlazer, in (relatively) limited release. Though I suspect the band isn't terribly concerned, the situation is unfortunate, as 'Catch Waves' is an achievement comparable to the (again, relatively) underground Sonic Youth score for the French film Demonlover, a cold, cynical montage of corporate nightmares. The score has the effect of stilling and clarifying—in the same way a bare, cold day does—the images on the screen, in addition to matching the motions and rhythms of the narrative. The funny thing is when the images and dialogue are removed; the music retains the imprint. The story remains. With 'Catch Waves' we have only the music, which is a good thing. It means we can ascribe whatever concrete world we want to it, within its abstract bounds. Or, we can ascribe nothing to it at all, and simply have a story of moods and feelings.

—MICHAEL BYRNE