Cassette Review // LYNXX "The Home of the Headhunter"

$18 //
Edition of 50 //
https://lynxx.bandcamp.com/album/the-home-of-the-headhunter-deluxe-edition //

Dark, zoning drone starts this and it just makes the speakers shake like the distortion of a guitar.   Notes come in higher, then drop down deeper.   There is a certain level of feeling like you are isolated in space and as such are going mad.   It just builds and builds.    It's not quite synthwave or synthpop but it's synth-something.  Can we call it synthdark?  Then these guitar notes just come echoing through and it feels like it could turn into a metal opera.   It bubbles and grows through the darkness, the magic, like something on the radio but without words.

There is a ticking and video game drop downs which remind me a bit of Magic Meru and not just because I listened to them both for the first time on the same day.   Distorted guitar notes cut through now and you can hear vocals in the distance.    This takes on a real serious tone where you know something is going to go down, like in a Tarantino film.   Drums come in and this is from some soundtrack I can't quite place ("The Crow"?)

Magic tones start things off on the flip side and behind them you can hear the birds.   This has a deliberate feel to each note but also can seem like a church song as well.   The birds fade and this begins to bring up this electronic organ vibe with synth crashing behind it, like some sort of symphony or soundtrack out of a movie from the 1980's/1990's like "Flash Gordon" but I think closer to the lesser know Buckaroo Banzai.

Chanting comes in now and it feels a bit... haunted.     Big strings come through now, like huge plucks somehow.   It feels like a banjo or giant elastic band, but in that way that Tom Hanks danced on the piano in "Big" on with guitar strings being plucked.  There is this sharp, almost glass-like sound, coming through at the end here and it seems to really make the point this cassette is trying to demonstrate.

While I would say I receive download codes with maybe 83% of the cassettes I review, I very rarely actually go through and download them because I always feel like, hey, I have the cassette to listen to so why do I need to download.   There is a 30 page artbook though which comes with this download and I definitely recommend that when you get this cassette you also pay attention to that aspect of this overall art.