This is a short and curious, little tape; with spartan but elegant packaging.  It has seven tracks on just twenty minutes worth of cobalt, so a quick burst of mathematics will show you that none of them loiter too long. Except that they do loiter, really; the tracks, as a rule, sprawl through the speakers. They circle around an idea; there’s not a lot of progression, as such. Guitar instrumentals are the order of the day, and cryptic ones at that.

The first piece is a short stream of looping noise, so short that it becomes an oddity - it just about announces its presence, and then its gone. It has an antiquated feel - not out of date, but the actual sound feels old. If it was presented to you as an early Futurist noise recording, you probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid. The remaining six tracks are all based around recognisable guitar sounds and playing; and its here that it gets cryptic. The deliberate choice of guitar tones associated with goth, or music from the 1980’s, could either be an indication of an unusual personal preference on the part of Mr Matt Franco, or it might suggest the tape is an exploration of a recollected youth or era. Its unclear. I’m inclined to go with the latter, purely because of my personal opinion on those guitar sounds…

The guitar itself is nothing spectacular or unusual: short improvisations (i assume) in the rock idiom using rock scales - nothing that particularly grabs the ears. Though “Vocation” does a lot with just two notes; played, if not glacially then respectfully, over a loop of muffled wind. “Here I Stay” could be unfairly summarised as “sped-up post-rock recorded to a dictaphone”; which is indeed unfair, but hopefully gives a sense of what territory the guitar resides in, whilst also introducing the more prominent element of the sound: the recording process.

The tracks are recorded at a constant point of overload - it reminds me of the first Cul de Sac album I heard (“I Don’t Want To Go To Bed”). This area, where performance and recording technology collide and interact, is the point of interest for my ears. Though this is something that can be as joyful, as it can be a barrier. Thus each track is encrusted with muck and murk, and for the better, in my opinion. But this smothering of detail means that the tape has less effect through individual tracks, then it does as a whole. A short and curious, little tape.