Audiopile Review: Another must-grip release from the Sloth Mate imprint! Cuneiform Tabs features the label’s head and Violent Change mainstay Matt Bleyle, alongside Sterling MacKinnon, who also played in VC, though is now located in the UK. Trading recordings back and forth, the duo have painstakingly pieced together a collage of hissy art-rock and warbled lo-fi pop, at times coming close to The Hospitals’ melted-psych monster-work, Hairdryer Peace. No doubt, this one is heavy, it’s pop-y innards liberally doused in blown-out rhythms, tape hiss and fractured vocals—this sonic melee isn’t gonna be for everyone. And really, in a meager edition of 200, it physically can’t.

Cuneiform Tabs is a correspondence recording project between Matt Bleyle (Violent Change / Sopors) and Sterling Mackinnon (False Berries / Violent Change). Compiled from 18 months of recordings traded between their respective homes in the Bay Area and the UK, this eponymous debut was assembled with Tascam portastudios and entry-level home studio software. For anyone familiar with Violent Change and the False Berries, this will sound like a hybrid of both. For the unfamiliar, this recording is recommended if you like R.D. Laing, technology in flames, Sylvia Browne, blue dream, Sid and Marty Kroft, narrow band light therapy, Vera Figner, Kim Philby, Art Bell, and Gunfight At Carnegie Hall. Edition of 200 copies.