Metatag

Transmission

Hel-Audio

Street: 01.22

Metatag = Tangerine Dream + Oneohtrix Point Never + OuOu

Metatag’s tape cover bears a strong resemblance to Joy Division’s classic, Unknown Pleasures, if it were isolated and magnified a couple hundred times. Much like that image of a pulsar CP 1919 radio wave, Metatag plays under a microscope. Often restricted to a handful of repeating melodies undulating and ringing out and full of the warmest, most shimmering digital sounds created sans computer, Transmission also breaks wide open at times with a free-exchange between typical folk instrumentation (guitar, harpsichord) and the siren call of a deep, soulful drone. The who of this 60-plus minute tape is the mysterious Norwegian who goes by the symbol Ɵ, who put out an equally unpronounceable album last year full of dark-ambient soundscapes. This ever-ascending marble staircase of crystalline synths scratches all the itches that tape couldn’t. An album full of John Carpenter melody and repetition without any of the creeping darkness—this is beautiful stuff. –Ryan Hall