Cassette Review // opt out "Three Glimpses into an Opal" (Moonside Tapes)

£5 //
Edition of 30 //
https://moonsidetapes.bandcamp.com/album/three-glimpses-into-an-opal //

Keys and whirrs start this one off, like an organ in slow motion.    As it feels like the gears are winding there is some screeching as well.     As this brings everything to a halt, we grow into the next song with these somber waves.    An organ tone slowly comes into the background and there is just an overall feeling of relaxation here.   It's a little bit wavy and can even feel like a transmission, a voice trying to break through it all.   It can also take on this slight feeling like being underwater.

A hollow glass sound now rounds the bowl.   It's a ringing.    Then we go into the next track which has this slow ringing sound like sonar.   It feels like such a minimal chamber piece with the tones coming through in the distance, almost as if you are lost at sea and this could be your field recording (though how we would ever get to hear it is another story)  As it begins to grow, I begin to think it could also be post rock.

The ringing grows desolate, hopeless and it really does start to feel like the end.   It then switches into this nice melody, sort of like a carousel, which makes me think that there is some hope left, that this might not be the end and we might be saved after all.    We're back into that glass bowl ringing which brings in these space whooshes and whirrs as well.    Guitar strums sound dreamy and mostly just take me to another place.

On the flip side we open up with laughter and then the question of "Whatever made you do that?"   A supersonic drone comes in now, the keys slightly changing.   The tones really begin to change now and it almost sounds like singing is trying to come through the background.   There is a slight bedroom feel to this.   A sort of banging leads to some stars being shot through the background and then like much of space it just... fades...

Notes- perhaps a guitar now- come through and this has that post rock feeling to it again, like something on Deep Elm.   It calms into this sound of waves, like we are near the ocean, but then the guitar notes return quieter and it feels like an indie film.    There is a scene in this film where something traumatic happens at the water and this is the soundtrack to it.

In the next song the water isn't there but it still feels sad like an indie film.   Though I suppose we could just be aimlessly floating around space, unsure if we will ever find home.   A mechanical sound comes on next and then those beeps and bloops like R2D2.    Tones eventually come through and sound somewhat uplifting, so I like to think we end on a positive note- that either we were found in space or befriended by the robot overlords.