The physical bodies of Jerry Paper and Andy Boay might roam the mean streets of Brooklyn, NY – land of prestige, sidewalk garbage, and Sugarman – but their eternal spirits occupy other realms. Pop their split cassette into your tape deck, press [PLAY], and explore their interior landscapes for thirty or so minutes. If your deck features the “Auto-Flip” function, feel free to extend your journey indefinitely.
Jerry Paper (Lucas Nathan, to his dentist) sketched out his singular persona on previous releases with Orange Milk, Digitalis, and Patient Sounds, uniting elements of exotica and post-YMO electro-pop into extra-terrestrial torch songs animated by his squelching synths and idiosyncratic croonery. If debut LP Jerry Paper Feels Emotions found our protagonist wallowing in self-deprecation and romantic turmoil, his side of this split evinces a more rose-tinted mindset: perhaps, I daresay, nestled in the arms of someone new? The Now Sound For Today’s Lovers showcases some of the lushest JP material to date, stretching his ornate arrangements into multi-segmented tracks that span emotional atmospheres closer to the “NICE” side of the spectrum. He “feels romantic” as the bleeps of “Funny Girl” escalate into a jittering climax of clipped attacks and solo leads. “Come Over” blossoms into mutant funk handclaps as JP beckons a paramour into his zone. The MIDI flutes and robo-Motown vibes of “Romeo (My MO)” slide into the woozy bliss of “Melt,” in which the maestro leads us into a whistle-gilded denouement.
Andy Boay has conquered stages and hearts across the US (and Slavic Asia) as one half of psych-rock brotherhood Tonstartssbandht, cutting loose enough 6- and 12-string guitar licks in the process to constitute an entire Encyclopedia of Shred, dogeared at the entries of Jerry Garcia and Sandy Bull. Turn of the Century, his side of this split tape, transcends touchstones of “rock” or “folk” in favor of a mammoth loop session of self-harmonizing vocals and omni-Americana improv. Boay invokes the “waters wide and knee-deep” over shaker rhythms and twanging leads, his voice swelling into confident falsetto melodies, before washing the mix clean with delay abstraction and tempo manipulation. His dense collage of multi-instrumental loops tears off in a peyote trip across the barren plains, cresting to a peak of bludgeoning beats and time-stretched snippets of earlier input. As the chaos crumbles into the sustain and pulse of the finale, Boay’s effected vocal work improbably channels The Proclaimers for one last mission into the wild.
