Cassette Review // Chris LiButti "Symbolic Victories" (Personal Archives)

https://personalarchives.bandcamp.com/album/symbolic-victories

The sound of static swirling around, as if in an engine, is how this cassette begins.   It's a very droning type of Pole Position almost.   It begins to feel as if things are being dragged as well, but much like in an electrical way which can also sound like scraping.   Electricity comes through now, as it just feels like we're being struck by thunder only in that lightning type of way.  

As the static comes through harsher somehow, it also becomes more screeching and there is this hollowing whirr behind it all which makes it feel haunted like a ghost.  I'm not sure why, but I imagine a train being conducted by a ghost as it is speeding off its tracks.   A grinding, perhaps the turning of a crank, is in here now as well as it sounds like record scratches as well.   This all culminates into the sound of a siren.  

On the flip side we open with these minimal sounds of things sort of being shuffled around, while at the same time this organ tone is droning behind it all.  Sometimes it feels like a zipper is being pulled up and down and at other times it just feels like the sound a person would make when attaching a mic to their body and running.   The electronics really begin coming through now, to where you can hear them like frequencies.

Beeps like robots are in here now as well.   It really starts to fly, like we're just flipping through different channels here and then there is some sonar as if we took off.   Everything comes to a head with this ringing drone and then the little patches of static return with that squealing.   A little bit of that pots and shuffling and then this side reaches its end as well.