Cassette Review // Peter Kris "Afternoons In The Valley" (Histamine Tapes)

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https://histaminetapes.bandcamp.com/album/afternoons-in-the-valley-ht020 //

We start with these drones which have notes trying to come through like Nirvana as it makes me think of "Pennyroyal Tea".    There is a calming trance about this though and then it just fades out.   Distorted notes come through next with a haunted air.    Through this winding whirr the notes ring through with echoes.    Those hollow drones return with some notes in front of them now to create a sense of FNL.

Back and forth notes now find a series of sharper notes behind them and this is creating the song, it's using the music instead of lyrics but you can really hear it singing.   The speakers shake on this as well, but it's this series of notes as the song and nothing else so it is rather peaceful as well, tranquil.

As the distortion comes through like waves or perhaps a storm during the next track it can also take on the form of a march.    Notes cut through now in that blistering guitar way.    We're taking into darkness now which makes me feel like a song by Stabbing Westward is about to begin.   It rambles like an old engine- chugga chugga- and the notes come through like post rock.

On the flip side we open up with these notes which feel like they're going in a circle, like a carousel, but they also remind me of Nirvana somehow (the ones in the way back)   As the notes toll back and forth there is a decent amount of distorted static droning behind it as well.   This all makes me feel like we are about to take off into space.    A rambling type of guitar now, but it still makes me think we might go into some Nirvana.   Though it can also take this darker turn to where it feels like a western.

As the next series of notes come in they remind me a little of bubbles forming and bursting, and I'm singing along with them like a pop song.  Bom.  Bom. Ba-ba-ba-bom.    The guitar notes just really cut through these tracks and maybe they are the only sounds, sometimes maybe they are not, but this is just guitar heavy and it's something where when you listen to it you can just feel like you're leaving your body and entering a different level of conscieness.

This particular song can become hypnotic though, a line between that snakecharmer I like to think of and something metal in the Black Sabbath way.   It kind of just fades out at the end, to complete the first cassette, where it feels like it could have been a march that just made it so far out into the sunset we can no longer see the footprints.

The second cassette begins with this upbeat country song- perhaps Dolly Parton- and the words are about where you go when you die, what happens to you, and how no one really knows.   It's a bit spiritual.    After the first song comes to an end, I keep going and it sounds like more of the same.  At this point, I realize this was a cassette meant to be dubbed over and it wasn't, so what I'm hearing is not what I'm supposed to be hearing (oops) but you still can get a general idea from the first cassette of what this will be like.