Cassette Review // Wilted Woman/ Nick Klein "Café Kotti" (Alien Jams)

£6 //
Edition of 100 //
https://alienjams.bandcamp.com/album/caf-kotti //

This one starts with this sharp back and forth sound, like red and yellow, and then the beat drops in huge: supersonic.   It feels like a sawblade, almost like "Psycho", and the bass just expands.   This continues on this loop where it feels kind of eerie because of the sharpness and then the spatial expansion just makes it feel like we're being kicked out of the open door of a spacecraft without proper headgear.    A sound almost like a whale moaning enters the background now.

A loud, horn type sound is flowing in the background now as water can be heard, more like a waterfall than rain but it just has a steady stream to it.   This all feels rather primal now, like we're out deep in nature and might not make our way back.   Frequency whirrs begin to twist and turn and then the old school Pong ball goes dancing around.   That howl though... that howl returns.    Somehow this trickles until a few tones and then this somewhat haunted, somewhat blissful piano line.

The whirrs can feel like an alarm now as the tones seem to be waking me up or like a ringtone, but they also have this magical fluttering feeling to them where it feels like we're in the future.    A slight sharpness makes me think of the rain again and it feels like we've almost come back to where we started, as the distortion begins to make the speakers shake.   If you've ever had one of those sticks you tilt up and down and that piece moves inside it creating a sound, it has that sort of thing going on now.

Then it all drops down, and it begins making these "JAWS" type of waves.   It keeps making beeps and boops but also has these firework-like sirens coming through which make me feel like we are certainly in an emergency state.   There is some drone and reverb now.   A sort of spooky organ vibe.   Birds are chirping now.   Synth whirrs like R2D2 or Wall-E.    And then it just feels like it logs off.

On the flip side we open up with this ringing drone and then those droids beeps make a pattern before it gets all flustered.   There is a piano pattern here now as well, a loop, which can somewhat remind me of a broken piano before it turns into a sound like Knight Rider and then the distorted bass of destruction.    It shuffles and builds.   Grows and bounces.   It feels like a crazy, psych game of pinball or ping pong.   There is this one twang that almost sounds like a duck.

A steady beat comes through now with minimal sharpness and it just feels like a locomotive.   Squeaks and beeps as the drums kick and everything sounds like it's burning out all at once.   Through stellar beeps come beats which just sound like knocking on some level.   It feels so minimal, like banging on a block of wood, yet so intergalactic at the same time.   It feels almost like a xylophone now, but somehow this loops morphs into what I can only describe as something out of Double Dragon.

A deeper synth tone goes through the waves now and this really begins to feel like a video game.    It feels so trippy and isolated as the whistle blows.  Hollow and darker now, you can feel that last breath, that last hint of fire slowly diminishing itself down to nothing.   The electronic beeping loops return, as if they are trying to tell us something.   They expand.   Drift.   Fade.   1, 2.  1, 2.   The cycle repeats.   Then through this slight dying of an engine, the sound fades to a soft whistle, which you might just mistake for the ringing in your ears, and then it all comes to a nice, neat close.