2024 Repress on W.25th - transluscent yellow vinyl
With the original pressing disappearing as quick as we could drop the needle on it, W.25th (home to Nivhek and Cindy Lee) have picked up and re-pressed the absolutely knockout transatlantic collaboration between Sloth Mate head honcho Matt Bleyle and (possibly?) former Violent Change bandmate, the now UK-located Sterling Mackinnon. Their opposing locales provide an instructive map for where they're at with Cuneiform Tabs, channeling both the outeredge psych meanderings of Bay Area indiepop and the very British bedroom-dwelling post-punk experimentalism of Jane From Occupied Europe-era Swell Maps. It's a thrilling union, wrapped up in tape-hiss fog and white noise static, songs emerging in-and-out of the ether, like a sliding radio dial occasionally hitting a golden oldie frequency. The aesthetic is a little different, but it does bear some resemblance to Cindy Lee's Olde Worlde romanticism (maybe this is why W.25th tuned in?), the sense of another world sitting somewhere out there in the subspace. That it's a world they've imagined remotely is probably telling - it doesn't really exist, a shared dream without accepted terra firma. It makes for a spun-out listen, adrift and hard to pin down, a memory you're not sure is yours but you return to anyway.
