{"id":12862,"date":"2025-02-13T17:55:24","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T23:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/?p=12862"},"modified":"2026-05-07T19:25:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T00:25:47","slug":"album-review-jason-tait-patrick-michalishyn-g-384","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2025\/02\/13\/album-review-jason-tait-patrick-michalishyn-g-384\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review :: Jason Tait & Patrick Michalishyn :: G-384"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by Maggie A. Clark<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some readers may well be scratching their heads right about now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJason Tait, huh? Yeah, I recognize him. The drummer from Red Fisher and that other band \u2014 you know, the one with that song about Gump Worsley! Patrick Michalishyn, though: now where have I seen that name before?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try \u201cone page ago,\u201d on account of the above “CKUWho?” profile. In the interest of full transparency, I should mention that he did ask me to review his split tape, and I obliged. So let it be known \u2014 if you ask nicely enough and I have a spare evening, I\u2019ll just do whatever you say. I\u2019m easygoing and I crave the approval of others! (And on that note: if you<\/em> have an album you\u2019d like me to review, shoot me an email at assistanteditor@stylusmagazine.ca.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I know I called G-384<\/em> a \u201csplit tape\u201d a second ago \u2014 and, to be fair, Michalishyn told me the release would be accompanied by a limited cassette printing \u2014 but that\u2019s really more of a naming convention. It\u2019s certainly catchier than \u201csplit series-of-five-MP3s-in-a-zip-file.\u201d It goes to show that the terminology we use to describe music hasn\u2019t quite caught up to the digital means through which it is now often mediated. Description, almost by definition, lags the reality it is meant to capture. Must communication remain forever imprecise?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know! I don\u2019t have time to think about that right now. I have a split tape to review! \u201cNYE2024,\u201d the first of Tait\u2019s two contributions succeeded by Michalishyn\u2019s three, kicks things off with a low hum punctuated by synthetic vocal notes that soon form an ostinato. A minute later, an electronic drum pattern enters the fray and is further supplemented with an icy arpeggio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s all very Oneohtrix Point Never, sure, but I\u2019d like to highlight a different point of reference. I was pleasantly reminded of the soaring, royalty-free synth tracks that Jon Bois deploys to great effect in his YouTube documentaries about real-life deaths caused by slipping on a banana peel or the history of the Seattle Mariners. (Some may say these topics are one in the same.) I feel like I\u2019m about to watch Edgar Mart\u00ednez rip a walk-off line drive into deep left field \u2014 or, to put it in terms to which the non-sportsheads can relate, it prompts a palpable sense of anticipation and forward momentum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could get into the skittering, staticky groove of \u201cCool Phosphene Trick,\u201d but I want to skip right to the finale, \u201cWe\u2019ll Get \u2019Em Next Time.\u201d Dovetailing nicely with the opener, it too fades in with an ominous drone and approaches a nine-minute runtime. But here, the sluggish, woozy instrumentation is intercut with slowed-down audio of Aldous Huxley warning a BBC interviewer about the dangers of technological growth: one gets the sense that, as he put it, \u201cman is being subjected to his own inventions, that he is now the victim of his own technology [\u2026] instead of being in control of it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this, I hear echoes of Marx\u2019s famous observation that people \u201cdo not make [history] under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past,\u201d applied in this instance to the realm of gizmos and gadgets. It also evokes, to my analogy-addled mind, Louis Althusser\u2019s claim that \u201cthe reproduction of the material conditions of production cannot be thought at the level of the firm, because it does not exist at the level of its real conditions<\/em>. What happens at the level of the firm is an effect<\/em>\u2026\u201d (my emphasis). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So too with individuals. What happens in our own lives is likewise an effect \u2014 not merely of technology, but of capital, infectious disease, acts of God, dumb luck. Our lives are governed by these powerful, mysterious, sinister forces, their reach extending far beyond any individual\u2019s capacity for comprehension. How much control over our surroundings have we ever truly possessed? Michalishyn, via Huxley, is hitting at a question I ask myself nightly: were we put on this earth to suffer, to be swept beneath the tide of endless cataclysm? Are we born to die?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an admittedly self-defeating thought pattern \u2014 one that can provoke an abject, demobilizing terror if left unchecked. Or rather, it would<\/em> produce such dread, were it not for the goofiness of the wonky, manipulated delay attached to the messenger\u2019s Oxbridge affect. Nonetheless, I must applaud Michalishyn for teeing me up perfectly to launch into my usual schtick of quoting some long-dead commie philosopher in the music zine I help edit. Thanks, bud! I owe you one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Maggie A. Clark Some readers may well be scratching their heads right about now.  \u201cJason Tait, huh? Yeah, I recognize him. The drummer from Red Fisher and that other band \u2014 you know, the one with that song about Gump Worsley! Patrick Michalishyn, though: now where have I seen that name before?\u201d Try \u201cone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1420,1719,1665,1718,1682],"class_list":["post-12862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-album-review","tag-g-384","tag-jason-tait","tag-patrick-michalishyn","tag-winnipeg-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12862"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12866,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12862\/revisions\/12866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}