Cassette Review // Ethan WL "The Pink House" (Drongo Tapes)

https://drongotapes.com/album/the-pink-house

While the music style of Ethan WL is mostly guitar based, this cassette serves as the soundtrack to a film called "Inventor Crazybrains and the Girl Called Bird", which you can certainly find out more about on the Bandcamp page.  There are several parts to this soundtrack which might feel more like a film score but it still works and it's not like I haven't heard that type of audio sampling in guitar-based cassettes before.

One part of this is the guitar.  With chords or notes, this is ramblin' and in layers.  At times it feels like it can be drone and that can also make it feel trippy.  But then it brings out hints of Johnny Cash or that lone gunslinger.  At one point the notes begin to build while also going back and forth and it just feels so magical.

At the same time there can be a break which doesn't really have guitar in it at all.  One such occasion has a sound like we're over a stream and then you can actually begin to hear the water to confirm that.  It feels like ambient splashing.   There also exists a point where it feels like we're just listening to traffic pass us by on the highway, just that open sound of being outside.  

However you want to think about all of this guitar playing, there is a piano sound at one point as well, and it just takes on this whole sound where it can be complex within the notes and layers but also at times just sort of drone out and feel minimal.  Soundtrack or not, this is just really nice to listen to at almost any time of the day.