Out of the Dungeon IV

Welcome to Out of the Dungeon, a many part series detailing a decade of NSFTM noise, hip hop, 'n' adventures from top No Sunlite for the Media scholars, historians, fans, 'n' collaborators. Medians share their thoughts on the absolute values of various NSFTM rekkerds, while we provide free audio streaming 'n' hi-quality file purchase of all the albums at our bandcamp page.

Out of the Dungeon IV: Exploring Better Than Kollege
Brickly Bodies Reading New York Times
by Trouble-T Trip

Outside you can’t escape sounds of moving metal,
Vehicles with horns, human chitter-chatter, and bird twitter-twatter;
Your earholes are flooded with both Media and Sunlite.
The only safe way to hear that is with headphones on.

In the Spring of ’05 NSFTM came into ownership of a 7-Track Cassette Recorder (extremely rare, since most will have 4 or 8), allowing their earlier freeform noise experimentation to ‘mature’. The result is Better Than Kollege Vol 1: 7-Track Kollages [download in its entirety here].

The "Bikini Frog" art for all of these cassettes was Math/Martha-drawn with
Rose Art colored pencils with variants on every copy, though colors were preserved.

To move from freeform experimentation to pre-written recordings of hip-hop/folk songs (see later NSFTM material) is not ‘evolution’ or ‘maturation’. Attempting to use Australopithecus afarensis or puberty as metaphors in this scenario would be lame and unclever, because what is being discussed is no more than a different approach to making sounds. Within headphones a musician can create whatever place they want. Here, No Sunlite have created a closet full of humans and machines which can open up without warning, expanding into a misty valley and a voice on the far ridge is crying “…yer a visionary man.”

As much as recording can be considered a creation of imaginative space through sound, No Sunlite was getting more and more into the delightfully strange art of sculpting the air. In short, the Medians learned multi-track recording techniques and fancy stereo panning and this EP came into being- ho hum.

…But these hos certainly can hum.

The inner-liners, also hand-drawn 'n' crammed.

ALL sounds were produced by microphones and tape decks (only). Technically, that’s all there is to say about this recording. Microphones were crowded around and spittled on by energetic youngsters, beaten on and beat-boxed on, and the resulting phrases and rhythms are manually looped live (note the extensive use of the rewind button). What a sight, Math with the biggest smile he will ever smile in his life, gingerly cradling a handheld tape recorder within a throng of official Medians, each one excited by their chance to spill words from their mouth overflowing with characters and stories.

How can you witness this and not play a rousing game of Xtreme Schoolwide Hot Potato, careening through the halls – we who are about to die salute you - and swarming like killer bees? The editing was surely as open-minded, but more inwardly focused. Though I did not participate in any mixing of which I can recall, I was for sure in on the mixing of the fi-lo hop-hip tapes to be recorded in the following days. Master in one deck, fresh one in another, hit play and then each person better grab a volume or panning knob and start sculpting.

The treasured "Rich Beats" CD-R from which NSFTM dubbed many
quality beats to give names to cassette compositions of the era.

After each collage would come the B-Side Wins Again, true to the Public Enemy song. You get a slice of life and then you get it backwards, just to make sure you heard it right. This technique in shifting perspectives was lifted from Japanese culinary texts, which instruct for following a dish with a colder, smaller, upside-down portion of the same dish.

Whether it Wins Again or not, the actual B-Side does keep it fresh. It comprises not a mash-up of the reversed tracks from Side A, but a whole other piece based on homemade experiments in the extirpation of Brian Eno and Aphex Twin recordings- N.O.B.E.A.T. In its vastness it contains the pressure shift before an electrical storm, as well as the pressure of 7 fingers on 7 buttons juxtaposed with the patience of a young man listening to Selected Ambient Works Vol. II.

The reissued artwork, keeping the color scheme and Bikini Frog,
but this time designed with sharpies 'n' cardboard.

As for insight into how we were living during this period, simply listen to the tape. Yes, these are the topics we were discussing (‘what makes girls hot is the size of their earlobes’). Yes, these are the tunes we were listening to (ODB, Notorious B.I.G.), This is what we were eating (peanut butter, macaroni). These are the jokes we were making (‘I’m Ronald Reagan’). Yes, we did understand the complexities of the human mind. It’s all true. That’s what happens when you’re playing wallball with Ev every day at O’faye Stadium. You know the youth are out there reading the New York Times, seeing brickles instead of nipples, and completely ignoring the crystals, the moments everyday that float around our thick bodies, waiting to be appreciated as distorted blasts of echoes that fall around us as we confidently, wistfully, say with a swagger-

“I once met an Apache warlord… he gave me do-si-dos…”

-Trip Tim
Harrisonburg, VA
Oct. 2k9
Trippy: