Cassette
Deeply ashamed of myself for having missed this wonderful off-the-cuff oddity by lowkey Bay Area trio Hospital, originally issued by Paisley Shirt midway through last year. Surprised, too, since we're all well aware of the people involved, namely Sad Eyed Beatnik and PS head honcho, Kevin Linn, and Mike and Karina from Flowertown/Cindy. It's as overtly experimental as I've heard any of them be, threading together 16 patchwork tracks of varying degrees of free-form krauty noise, lilting psych song, lo-fi ambience and lullaby drone. The sound, ostensibly, of three friends in a room reaching around their shared inspirations and allowing themselves to be led wherever those roads might bend. Think Robespierre's Velvet Basement by way of Stoned Rehearsal with a little Finklestein to rough up the edges (yknow, all the best stuff). Though their sound may be far less spiky, they seem to share a similar scattershot spirit to fellow San Fran-ers Famous Mammals and Cuneiform Tabs, charged as they seem to be by an equally non-professional zeal, in service only to the idea and the feeling. The only things worth being in service to.
