Concentric Circles

Berceuse Heroique Tape

Genre: INDUSTRIAL / WAVE / ELECTRO

Cassette

Boomkat Product Review:

Jed Bindeman aka Concentric Circles is a force to be reckoned with; one of the brightest minds operating in and around the reissue/archival industrial complex, responsible for some of the wildest music from the margins we’ve come across over the last few (many) years. His credentials are tight as hell - as co-owner of Portland, Oregon's beloved Little Axe Records store, co-runner of Freedom To Spend (alongside Pete Swanson), and Grouper’s bandmate in Helen - the dude knows his shit, and is here at the helm of a fully inspirational 90 minute mixtape of psychedelic and wavey songs you’ll find yourself obsessing over for months and years to come. It’s the latest edition from Berceuse Heroique, following that sick “Yugoslavian Lunatic Love Songs” salvo from Vladimir Ivkovic a few weeks back and, as you’d expect, offers an educational, deeply inspirational session from one of the best in the game.

Bindeman's first Berceuse Heroique mixtape revels in the wild and never ending pool of outsider music, DIY, private pressings and one-off tape editions he seemingly spends his entire life salvaging from waste bins and charity shops across the United States - an endeavour that’s already landed his Concentric Circles label with one of the greatest chance discoveries any reissue label can lay claim to this century (Carola Baer - look it up!). While it would have probably been easy for him to put together a selection of unfathomable noise, drone and found sounds, Bindeman here instead takes the hard/scenic route and provides an hour and a half of music that exists at the periphery of pop - albeit of the deeply freakish variety. Aye, it’s all full-bore weirdo genius, from wildly pastoral folk to linndrum x guitar post industrial, riding all spots in between, full of what-ifs and what could-have-beens, the kinda grail shit you spend you’re life searching for.

For the most part, these ain’t ID-able algorithm bullets either, the trip goes way deeper, all semi-lucid 80’s and 90’s zoners and phantasmagorical vagaries - the kind of unrestrained experiments that revel in the spirit and ephemerality of the amateur creative life. The mix sets out Bindeman’s motivations with unrestrained glee, paying little attention to genre boundaries, finding coherence in the catalysm behind the recordings. Without a defined fanbase and its potentially warping gaze, most of the the artists featured here were able to operate almost in secret, moving through ideas and concepts fluidly, puzzling out material that just plainly wasn’t designed for easy categorisation.

On the opening side, unwieldy drum machines and angular post-punk twangs barrel into toybox synths as candid minimalism melts over early sample experiments. It's impossible to figure out where Bindeman’s headed: when he settles into a mode, it inevitably gets blown off course by something more peculiar or perplexing. Molten, ritual psych for a few minutes, tweaky proto-acid next. On the flip, his daze is flagrant, opening with a blunted synth/foley jam, reaching through left-field exotica, zither-led breakbeat dream-pop, mucky Flying Nun jangle, operatic, Robert Ashley-style spoken word and sensual steamroom electronics.

Bindeman himself describes the set as "accidental abstract psychedelia, designed to amplify a sense of accessible disorientation" - and indeed, it’s a vital reminder of just how gripping a mixtape can be when focused on narrative rather than movement.

What a ride.

Cassette (3)