Hello! This is the Doomed Show - Strike Commando 2 (1988)

Sleep/Walk Situationer

My new album, Sleep/Walk Situationer, is available right here. I wanted to make something a little different, so instead of recording it digitally, like normal, I recorded the entire thing directly onto some late 80s/early 90s (and very used) Radio Shack Supertape brand cassettes. Then I imported the tapes onto my PC and mixed the sounds I recorded very minimally, spliced them all together, and then recorded them back onto cassette before finally saying, "Okay, that is enough of that!" 

I quite enjoy the results of recording the album this way, though I will probably never do it again! The unpredictability of old cassettes and old analog gear is awesome but the way the album sounded as I was playing it was on a different planet than what I ended up with. The normal bias cassettes and my old tape deck stripped almost all of the low end out and overall, the album is too treble-heavy for me. And full disclosure: when I had the files on my computer, I turned the bass back up only for it to be stripped out again when I put it back on tape. "LOL" as my grandparents used to say.

My co-worker described the album as being like walking by the hidden speakers in Tomorrowland. And I like that very much! I also got a review from a very kind soul on Bandcamp. Warpfan said: "This album is not only the perfect cure for your Night Journal Forgery symptoms (it handily dispatched with mine), but also for overly-commercial, cookie-cutter music. Armed only with a guitar and a few pedals, the slow wizard weaves a warm, curious blanket of sound that at times evokes Autechre, theremin music, Boards of Canada, Japanese koto, and Doctor Who soundtracks. If this sounds good to you, snap up one a hand-drawn cassette today. Less is definitely more on this album. [wizard emoji] Favorite track: Side B."

I gave the album some lore about the titular device and hand drew and hand colored all of the cassette covers. That process, like making the music for the album, was very soothing. It's called "art therapy" and I invented it. Pretty soon, I'll be teaching courses on my revolutionary technique.  

As for the music of Situationer, I limited myself to one guitar and all the guitar pedals at my disposal. There are no drum machines or synthesizers this time around. I wanted to see if I could make something soothing or, at the very least, moody, with a limited amount of tools. And I had a stash of 90-minute tapes that needed to be used. So, I recorded about 2 and a half hours of music and then cut it down to 90 minutes for the tape. 

But what about that lore? Here's the story of Sleep/Walk Situationer from the liner notes: "In May of 1994, Dr. Eva Jelion received word that her estranged daughter Era had been killed in an unlicensed somnambulistic spelunking accident. Dr. Jelion set about inventing the Sleep/Walk Situationer, a preintuitive synapticolater in order to prevent sleepwalkers from ever coming to harm again."

Here's how I decided to promote the album: