–

Label: Auris Apothecary

Produced by: Lather (?)

Another impossible-to-rate anti-cassette from Auris Apothecary, “rated” to, like, prove its existence for anyone idly looking up this stuff online.

Lather’s bandcamp has some pretty interesting sound experiments on it, so I would’ve like to have heard these two three minute tracks of cello bow, oscillator and more, creating “amplified oscillations running into vibrating transducers” and “applied to aluminum foil” and “manifested entirely without the use of instruments” – and no, I have no idea what any of this means, or how it all fits together, but I’m intrigued.

Regardless, the cassette is wrapped in 50 ft of aluminum foil, purposefully meant to be annoying to unravel but not impossible, and I went through the process out of curiosity, only to find the “spray-adhesive bondage” which was applied to make this even more laborious was perhaps done to the cassette itself, so the final few layers of foil seem a few steps beyond the effort I was already putting in. Like, I’d have to scrape that stuff off, flake by flake, or probably there’s some internet method of soaking in some ingredients that would work, but I have other anti-cassettes to puzzle over.

So go flip through Lather’s other offerings for some out there sound manipulations – Aesthetic Conditioning is pitched as being minimalist but a-musical, but I found some of the bandcamp stuff more pleasing / direct than that – and kudos to AA for another puzzling and creative bit of packaging.