Cassette Review // Johnny Deep "SLOBS & HEART THROBS" (Mass Soul)

$5 //
Edition of 10 //
https://massxsoul.bandcamp.com/album/slobs-heart-throbs //

Trippy whirrs bring about a lot of banging percussion and this starts off somewhere between electronica and something out of the 1980's, like if Oingo Boingo was fused with Underworld.   The whirrs move now, the synth shapes itself like a wild rollercoaster ride.   It feels like we're floating around in space, bouncing off of clouds, and then laser blasts come through like a video game and shoot us on down back to Earth.

At one point it feels like it's just going to drop off, like the record skips, but then it comes back and eventually Side A comes to a close with this huge distorted bomb dropped on it.   It just feels like everything was blown to bits and that is why there can be no more music.

On the flip side we open up with the third song on the Bandcamp page and has these almost howling whirrs coming through with beats.   It can feel quite haunted, with the beats stirking down hard like the Tell-Tale Heart.   This then picks up a nice rhythm, a melody, and it feels like we're moving underwater in a cartoon.   This could be an audio clip or vocals but it sounds like a preacher trying to sell us something on an infomercial.

Big synths open up now like some forgotten movies from the 1980's.  "Flight of the Navigator" comes to mind right away for some reason.   The beats enter and it has that throwback feel to it, close to what the kids call vaporwave.    I feel like vaporwave is the new shoegaze in the sense that it used to be a good tag at one point but now people overuse and abuse it.

The synth notes seem to be telling a story in their own way.    For a cassette which is instrumental, it certainly says a lot.   From something you can really get up and move around while listening to something which could be the soundtrack from a movie released on laserdisc, Johnny Deep creates the perfect sound for people stuck between things and want to find something stuck in there with them.