-otron sent us his cassette tape Prism Exhilarated (NO LABEL), which is an OK set of electronica, ambient-ness, beats, and samples from the NASA archive. If you buy the cassette he guarantees that it’ll be a unique copy – no two copies in the print run of 49 have exactly the same contents, and you’ll get a track not available on the Bandcamp page. This isn’t much of a big deal to anyone who ever purchased a bedroom cassette with a xeroxed cover in the 1980s, but evidently -otron thinks it is – he’s even invented a bogus “company”, Soundary, who own the Prysm system behind this “unique duplication” method. Bluff duly called; anyone can fling together a web page these days. The music here is mostly solo, though a saxophone player Pee Wee Ellis guests on one track with “eight renditions of layered horns”. Rather ordinary overall; the beats, sounds, and samples (especially the American voices of NASA technicians talking about space) all sound over-familiar already, and -otron’s attempts at distortion, mutation, and tricky rhythms are not especially bold or inventive. (11/01/2018)
