Cassette Review // Eloine "Impractical Furniture" (Personal Archives)

https://personalarchives.bandcamp.com/album/impractical-furniture

Items dropping into big ringing and some scraping is how this cassette starts.  A bit of a hollow sound now, kind of like an engine is trying to start, but this also just carries the overall sound of someone struggling to breath underwater.   Tones drop in.    This is an interesting pattern to keep because you could imagine a lot of different scenes in your mind to match the sounds.  Whatever you're imagining though, it feels like a struggle.

Tones come in next that sound like elastics being plucked, there is just that texture to them, to they also bounce around like rubber balls.   This feels like a scramble, in the way that you would be looking for something.   In some ways this can also remind me of the warping of a cassette- or record- in that whirring way where it just feels like it's about to break.  It's tightly wound.   This also reminds me of a dj trying to spin records but instead of a turntable they're manipulating wind.

There comes a point where this definitely feels like it is about to stop, but then those whirrs come right back in.   As these whirrs progress it can almost begin to sound like shivering.   At some point the whirrs can become almost hypnotic, in a way that they take you in so that you can recognize the patterns and begin to almost hear the rhythm as words.   I can hear full on songs, but then as it comes to an end I'm once again left with thoughts of choppy wind.

On the flip side we begin with that percussion which sounds like the banging of pots.  There is some static in here but it is a lot louder and has more parts making up the sound than what was on the first side.   It's a lot of banging.   Some big gongs ring and drop distortion like bombs.   This feels like destruction, like Godzilla walking through a city.   Some scraping now, and it can begin to sound electronic even.  A saw sound comes out like a moan and it's getting sharper.

With screeching, this comes out in a primal way now.  I can feel how it is being made with instruments or some objects, but it just feels like the primitive days of cavemen jumping around and throwing rocks at the walls of their caves.   Through more scraping, it can sound like the breaking of an acoustic guitar.   As everything else quiets now, this can just become a huge distorted explosion.   

Synths come in now and there is a glass scraping.  A lot of that ringing around the glass now, as there is also some stomping behind it.  Though that lightsaber type sound persists and this feels like a culmination of all of the different sounds from this side working together or possibly against each other.   A fluttering now, like insects and then it goes into a dark place.  This feels like we are slowly turning into that plague of locusts sound.   There is a wavy synth now, which feels like a humming that can be used to hypnotize.

This sound can also just hit and then feel like we're dropping off into the abyss.  If the first side was a struggle, this side is fighting back but possibly not winning.   That slight crackle of static now, driving through space and some shots are fired.   The sort of scraping gets sharper now to where it cuts through like knives.  It begins to feel like the soundtrack to a horror film, like Freddy or Jason.   Some rattling now and we're into this feeling of banging once again, like how this side started.  

There is some more scraping now and banging, but it also rings through with these magical type elements.  It feels like some kind of final judgment but at the same time could just be some old metal parts on a building swinging around in the wind.   Horror elements remain in the sound and it can even begin to sound like a storm, a slow burn to get you in the end.   To think of this as a movie is to think of the end of the entire cassette as that final battle scene.