Shaun Robert is the driving force behind the Institute For Alien Research label and Paul Harrison is better known as Expose Your Eyes and part of Smell and Quim. I was less familiar with Robert’s work (although I have a track on one of the IFAR compilations), but I enjoyed Harrison’s collaboration with Howard Stelzer on Oxidation, so I was interested to see what these two would come up with. The label describes this tape as “an album that will truly expand your mind.” Sounds like a good time, so let’s dive in.

We kick it all off with “The Ground,” which is a short piece with female spoken work with heavy reverb, a beat, and clattering metal with sparse instrumentation. It reminded me of older Hafler Trio, which is always a good thing. “Blocks Et Elements” features a man singing about sunflowers, and people talking with a sweeping sound that becomes increasingly more complex over time. “Gigeria” is a woman reciting poetry with weird instrumentation. “Kykeon ” and “Ress play like one song with repetitive arpeggiated synth with a plodding bassline and field recordings of what sounds like construction with analog noises. “Volinmk” has some repetitive guitar that gives way to what sounds like someone scanning through the radio dial.

Flipping the tape over, we have “Partitr,” which opens with percussion, then guitar which moves to analog drone with static. “Nebulous” is some heavy, intense synth drone with some static sweeps throughout. “Thunderhead” is the longest track on the album and brings in snippets of cut up sound, repetitive drum and guitar, and squiggly analog noises. “Our Fate” closes it out with accordion and poetry that calls back to side 1 and gives the whole thing a nice sense of continuity.

In short, this was a good listen and at times reminded me of “Occidental Martyr” from Death in June (especially “Our Fate”) and “I Have a Special Plan For This World” by Current 93 (“Gigeria”) with the spoken word and broken, cut up sounds. Some of this would be right at home on a Public Eyesore release. If you like it cut up but not terribly harsh, this will be right up your alley. This tape weighs in at around 65 minutes.