Cassette Review // H-M O "Bark up the Spirit Tree" (Ingrown Records)

https://ingrown.bandcamp.com/album/bark-up-the-spirit-tree

We begin slowly, with quiet electronics such as crickets or perhaps a transmission from space.  The longer this first track goes on, the more it can begin to feel like it's out of "The X-Files".  As we get into the next song, it's the sound of footsteps approaching and the higher pitched tones of insects.  An ambient wave is riding behind this, so it does also feel quite peaceful.   Beats come in with the audio of people talking and it feels like we're at a party.  That quickly fades out though and the whoosh of an airplane can be heard now, though it can also remind me of the ocean waves crashing onto shore.

Quieter ambient tones now in the background of footsteps.  I feel like a lot of this cassette so far has just been someone walking through a house, reliving various rooms as stages of their life.  A bit of a thunderstorm is coming out behind this one now.  Is this how your life flashes before your eyes when you die?   We get into the ambient FNL sound now as it's just moving.  These electronics now take me back to the beginning when I was thinking about "The X-Files".  

It can sound as if we're digging at an acoustic guitar, voices off in the distance and these magical tones fluttering through as well.  This whole thing feels like a dream sequence and it begins to grow more intense, more over-powering.   It's the blowing of wind chimes, the turning of the music box.  And then it feels like a box of tools falls over as someone says something quickly and that part comes to an end.   A bird softly singing its song now.  This takes us into a more musical box type of feel, but definitely blissed out as well.  This is almost like the music you'd hear going around on a carousel, but much more pleasant.  Piano keys come out one at a time and you can hear the rooster behind them.  

On the flip side we open with some slight static, like a metal detector reading, and then there are some ambient tones building up behind it.  This whole things come up feeling kind of eerie now, like a transmission sent from space that no one has ever heard before.   This all feels very much like some straight forward mellow electronics, but it's those crackles behind it all which just makes it feel so much like it was a transmission that didn't make it.   As this all fades we go into the next song which begins with birds chirping and tones which build up and then fall back down.  Those tones disappear but the birds can still be heard singing their songs.  

As we go into the next song people can be heard talking again and I believe they are speaking in French.  Tones drop in along with whirrs.  This takes on a pattern including piano keys which can feel like it's taking all of the elements from previous songs and joining them together in one song.   Through all of this back and forth whirring, as if changing the frequency on the dial, the sounds of the birds once again return as well.  This all becomes so tranquil and then notes more spaced out come through.  This begins to feel like it's cutting through, but then it ultimately takes us to the end of this space-bird-trip.