ALBUM REVIEW: The Delphines - Careless (Single)

With the popularity of the cassette as an affordably trendy way to release their own music, it was only a matter of time before its scrappy little cousin the cassingle made a comeback as well. Now local garage pop favorites the Delphines have embraced the quirky format, making their speedy, characteristically catchy new single, "Careless", available as a limited edition pink tape, out now on Milwaukee's own Organalog Records, in addition to the usual digital download.

The real reason to pick up the release in any form is the music which, as you may expect from the Delphines, goes by in a flash, its two tracks rushing by in less than five minutes altogether, but leaves a big impression in spite of its brevity. "Careless" is a stomping, snotty kiss off with a short but effective psychedelic breakdown, while the lovesick B-Side, "Strut", is a tad more vulnerable, but rocking nonetheless. 

The recordings more than do the material justice, preserving their usual clean, crisp mix while emphasizing the low-end a little more than some of their previous releases. That, naturally, comes through best on analog, which is one reason to shell out a few bucks for the physical copy, another being the slick packaging and cover design, the Delphines having as good an eye as their ear. Cassingle or otherwise though, "Careless" deserves a listen.

AUDIO: Barrie Konicov - Subliminal Astral Projection

When I'm scanning the shelves at my local Goodwill thrift store, as I so often do, I look for two things. The first is stuff which I legitimately want to read, watch or listen to, and the second are items that make me scratch my head and ask, "What the fuck is this?" So over the years I've added many great albums and books to my collection, but I've also accrued quite a few oddities; strange, unloved and forgotten pieces of media which deserve to be heard and shared if for no other reason than how unusual they are.

One such find is Barrie Konicov's Subliminal Astral Projection. For those of you who are unaware, astral projection is the practice separating your consciousness from its physical form so that it can go traipsing across the universe, visiting other dimensions and whatnot. This tape promises to teach you how to achieve this via hypnotic suggestions, which on side one are presented subliminally, woven into the fabric of some new age-y music. Personally, I was unable to accomplish this feat (which is a shame because I was so looking forward to transcending the planes of existence), but to be fair, I did not commit to listening to it every day for two weeks as the case advises.

Creator Barrie Konicov is not only the president and chief hypnotherapist of Potentials Unlimited, who released the tape, he's also listed at number four on The Atlantic magazine's list of the top ten tax scofflaws of the 20th century. The libertarian Konicov, it seems, felt no need to pay his due to the IRS, and what's more, encouraged others to follow suit through a series of seminars. All told, 138 people took his advice, depriving the federal government of $3.3 million in revenue. Konicov was sentenced to 87 months in prison for his trouble.

I can't promise you'll have an out-of-body experience, but this is a pretty fun listen nonetheless, and Konicov's blissed-out ramblings are just begging to be sampled. And who knows, maybe you'll get lucky and attain enlightenment or something. Enjoy!  

Download the full tape here.  

AUDIO: Phonies 1

Though the technology had been around in various forms for decades, it wasn't until the late 1970s that telephone answering machines began to take off as practical, relatively affordable home appliances. Just as the proliferation of cell phones years later would lead to a new market for obnoxious ring tones, the entry of the device into the average American's life also created a new product: the novelty answering machine message.

This example from 1977 includes 12 celebrity impersonations designed to delight (or more likely annoy) anyone who had the misfortune of ringing while you were out. Some of the personalities parodied on the tape are timeless legends of entertainment (Humphrey Bogart, Jack Benny, Peter Lorre, Groucho Marx), but many of the others are hilariously of the moment, reflecting the then-current state of politics and popular culture. Like some kind of goofy, uninformative time capsule, the tape also features send ups of 70s icons like Jimmy Carter, Paul Lynde, Ted Knight of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and, er, Idi Amin. 

So on the off chance you've been looking for a way to have a monstrous dictator or a beloved comedian to answer your phone, you've come to the right place, but these 10-15 second tracks are also pretty entertaining in their own right, especially when they come up on shuffle when you don't expect them.

Download the tape here.

AUDIO: Backmasking: Subliminal Deception

Long thought of by certain fundamentalist Christians as a nefarious plot to brainwash our impressionable youth, backmasking is, quite simply, the process of including backwards elements in a recording. Sometimes the effect is obvious and used as part of the aesthetic of a song, as with the Beatles use of reversed tape loops in "Revolution 9", but just because it's plainly noticeable, that doesn't stop people from attributing some deeper meaning (Paul is dead!) to something that was probably given little thought beyond, "Hey, that sounds pretty trippy". 

Where people really start slipping down the rabbit hole into paranoid conspiracy theories though, is when they claim to have found backwards messages, usually satanic in nature, hidden in normal speech or singing. Though particularly prevalent in the 1980s, due in part to the rise of heavy metal, this belief is still widely expressed today in some of the sadder corners of the Internet. Of course, if you're hunting for that sort of thing, you're bound to find it in the jumbled confusion of a song played in reverse, in the same way you'll probably see faces in clouds or other abstracted imagery, thanks to what psychologists called pareidolia. 

I've always been fascinated by Christian extremists' efforts to demonize popular music, so I was overjoyed when I came across this wonderful little cassette at my local Goodwill thrift store. Distributed by a Green Bay, Wisconsin organization called Media Ministries in 1984, the tape "exposes" the subliminal messages implanted in hit records by a variety of artists, including The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, Cheap Trick, Queen, Pink Floyd and many more. Beyond simply playing examples of backmasking, the tape delves in to the theory behind it in some detail and, of course, engages in some hilarious bible-thumping.

Since this particular "Media Ministries" seems to be long since defunct, at least as far as I can tell from extensive Googling, I thought I'd take it upon myself to digitize this lovable relic for posterity and do my best to spread the good word. Enjoy!

Download the tape here.