Many thanks to the SciFi-Blog & Podcast “Fantastische Wissenschaftlichkeit” for playing “What Penumbras” from Strategic Tape Reserve’s brilliant ShopLand World cassette! Catch the tracklist and archived audio on their website.
Tag: shopland world
Strategic Tape Reserve Label Mix on I Heart Noise
If you’re not yet familiar with the weird and wonderful world of Strategic Tape Reserve, I Heart Noise has a label mix up to introduce you to your new favorite ferric cassette architect. Features some of my favorites like moduS ponY & VLK, qualchan, HAWN, and Whettman Chelmets, plus my contribution to the 2019 compilation Shopland World: Music for a Discovery Park of Miniature Supermarkets. Check out the article on I Heart Noise and the mix on Mixcloud or below:
Best ofs: Counterzine, An Earful, Houdini Mansions
First of all, big props to blogs who wait til the actual end of the year to make their year-end lists! I really appreciate being recognized on the following:
anearful Best Of 2019: Electronic: Farewell, Doomed Planet! “I can imagine watching the big blue marble disappear in the porthole while listening to her loopy melodicism and watery textures, which brought both Eno’s Apollo and David Torn’s guitar to mind.”
Houdini Mansions Favorite 100 Albums of 2019: Strategic Tape Reserve’s ShopLand World: Music for a Discovery Park of Miniature Supermarkets (including my track, “What Penumbras“) at no. 30
And “What Penumbras” also made it to no. 175 on Counterzine’s Top 200 Tracks of 2019, as listed on Twitter
Tabs Out Top 200 Tapes
Tabs Out named the Strategic Tape Reserve Shopland World tape (which I have a track on) their #2 tape of the year and my Departure 2019 tape their #70! Check out the full list (which also includes music friends Whettman Chelmets, Budokan Boys, Nicholas Langley, moduS ponY, Jordan Reyes, and more) here.
Shopland World on ACL Happiest Music
A Closer Listen included Shopland World, which has my song “What Penumbras” on it, on their 2019 Happiest Music of the Year list. “A trip to the local (miniature) supermarket has never been so much fun!” Read the full list here and listen to the album below.
ShopLand World Reviewed on Yeah I Know It Sucks
Strategic Tape Reserve’s ShopLand World: Music For A Discovery Park Of Miniature Supermarkets is happily still making the rounds, most recently being reviewed by my faves Yeah I Know It Sucks. They had this to say about my contribution, “What Penumbras:”
“First shopping mall I entered was one curated and owned by Elizabeth Joan Kelly. Once in I got the surprising surprise of being tossed into what could only be described as a surreal slide into something named ‘What Penumbras’. A heaven for consumers that likes to buy psychedelic experiences from a jar by mumbling gurus that got themselves deliciously surrounded by smoke and special sound effects. It made me not only feel very enthusiastic, it also gave me a very weird feeling in my stomach; a shopping sensation like this, you simply wouldn’t even expect to happen at a well thought out shop in a chewed up Disneyland theme park… This was the impressive place that once you had found the exit again would have made such a impression that it would simply stay with you for days on end.”
Full review on their blog!
More What Penumbras/ShopLand World reviews
Our supermarkets may be small, but our musical ambition knows no bounds! The Strategic Tape Reserve compilation ShopLand World: Music for a Discovery Park of Miniature Supermarkets has continued receiving favorable press, including some alarmingly non-sarcastic banter on the Tabs Out Cassette Podcast. “What Penumbras,” my contribution, also received some praise in Pat Padua’s Spectrum Culture 3.2 star review of the album:
“This isn’t a trip to the dazzling cornucopia of the modern grocery store, but a descent into a commercial hellscape, with a quick succession of shimmering blips suggesting a nightmarish aural vision of the checkout aisle.”
Padua also calls the album a “a dense and frequently unsettling anthology.” Read the full review on the site!
Want more? Here are a couple more reviews of the compilation:
Lost In A Sea of Sound
Cassette Gods
M4DMV on Bandcloud, What Penumbras on Dublin Digital
Bandcloud, aka Aidan Hanratty, had some kind words to say about Music for the DMV and my one year recap. Here’s an excerpt:
“It’s a concept album about visiting the Department of Motor Vehicles, and it mirrors the agitation and unease many feel there. It’s clubby, ambient, expansive and weird. I like it.”
Read the full review here along with words on John Beltran, Cloak, Pamcy, Forest Management, Litt, Oracula, Juarta Putra, D. Strange and Golden Chorale.
Bandcloud also played my song “What Penumbras” off Strategic Tape Reserve’s ShopLand World: Music for a Discovery Park of Miniature Supermarkets on his Dublin Digital Radio show last week; you can hear the full show, including tracks by Kings of Tomorrow, Diplo, Low Normal, Mischa Lively, Ten Years Lost, and more, over on Mixcloud:
What Penumbras on A Closer Listen
Another review of Strategic Tape Reserve’s ShopLand World: Music for a Discovery Park of Miniature Supermarkets, with these thoughts on my track:
“If I heard a plastic rock spewing “What Penumbras” by Elizabeth Joan Kelly, I’d be intrigued; it’s like space age music performed by drunken shopping carts.”
Thanks Richard! Read the full review over at A Closer Listen.
ShopLand World out TODAY!
ShopLand World: Music for a Discovery Park of Miniature Supermarkets is out today on the wonderful Strategic Tape Reserve label. Help support Eamon’s dreams of building a miniature supermarket theme park, and listen t 25 solid bangers along the way, all for the low low price of $3.36 USD for digital download or $5.60 USD for a BEYOOTIFUL cassette. Make sure to check out my contribution, “What Penumbras,” at track 2!
Elizabeth Joan Kelly 