Review: Radis Benu – les prsctvs

Radis Benu
les prsctvs

Self-Released
Street: 10.05
Radis Benu = William Basinski + The Caretaker + Philip Jeck

Radis Benu comes to us from Russia dripping with radioactive isotopes warping and disfiguring the magnetic tape stretched across your cassette deck as it plays. “Tape manipulation” is thrown around a lot in experimental music as a means to an end, but for Radis Benu, tape manipulation is an end unto itself. Minimal inputs (some warbled guitar, scratched vinyl waltzes, field recordings, sustained tones) are put through a medieval torturer’s rack of physical tape mutilation, and the result is a brazenly beautiful cassette full of mutant melodies and hereto-unfound textures and tones that coat the album with a sprinkling of soil and sulfur-colored water from Stalker’s forbidden zone. It is a gorgeous, befuddling listen for fans of The Caretaker’s sample-based albums and Basinski tape decompositions. –Ryan Hall