Witches Of Malibu are one of my biggest blind spots with this Handmade Birds "Yellow Series" of cassettes. They've been around forever, and are aligned with the constellation of Man Is The Bastard-related projects, but for one reason or another I just haven't come across much of their music in the past. This tape is very cool, though, and does a pretty good job of spurring my interest in crawling into their back catalog. The intimate, personal, essentially hand-made aspect of their experimental electronics definitely meshes with the rest of the artists that make up this series. It follows a string of splits with Amps For Christ, Bastard Noise, Tube Tentacles, and KPG, with whom it shares some common sonic DNA via fractured electronics and dark shading. Featuring Richard Skott of the pioneering early-80s American industrial group Hunting Lodge (as well as a member of the acclaimed Los Angeles space-rock group Farflung at one point), Witches Of Malibu present a different but similarly distinct voice in underground post-industrial ritualism.

Side A drops you into a cavern of malignant industrial-scale activity with "A Stabbing Rejection" and "Degrees Of Sacrifice". The first is a thoroughly psychedelic soundscape of chirping electronics, pulsating distorted rhythm, eerie choral-like swirls of background sound, and what feels like a stomping drum beat slowed down to a monstrous slow-motion trudge. It's unsettling for sure, ghostly and vaporous as these various sounds melt together along with spectral singing voices, tumbling metallic clatter, and scraping junk-scrap percussion. There's a ritualistic feel to this mass of noises, the distant voices taking on an almost liturgical bent while everything else churns and collapses around you, the result being a dreamlike wash of scrape and rumble cloaked in immense cavernous reverb. That first track recalls various early 80s industrial abstractions (including the likes of Hunting Lodge, naturally), but with a smoldering undercurrent of earth-rattling thrum, free-form scrap-heap pummel, streams of odd cinematic drone, and massive tectonic rumble that keeps everything on edge through the entire piece. That amorphous creepiness continues through the second song, where the drum-like sounds and clatter are even more prominent; that percussive metallic crash and clang persists through the surreal smear of sounds, sometimes bringing an unexpected heaviness to the propulsive rhythmic elements even as electric noise and pedal-sorcery sweeps overhead. For the entire twenty-minute set, it's almost krautrocky in a way, or reminiscent of the primitive improv clang of CroMagnon, joined by jets of ominous granular electronics and deep, bass-like throb (the latter elements definitely evoking the over-modulated spaced-out insect noise of Bastard Noise). "Witchy", indeed.

The second part of the tape , "Marching Into 1982 (Bel-Air To Cologne Mix)", is even heavier on the demonic drum-circle / oil-drum trance, opening with a mesmeric, motorik pulse that pushes forward into a expanding cloud of locust-like chatter, gnarled drones, and menacing squeals. "Marching" starts to exude this weird, almost "exotica"-like vibe as it carries on, layering the alien-sounding electronics and synth squiggles over this deepening percussive groove, making for a very strange and very hypnotic effect. It's actually rather unique, maintaining that creepiness even as the drumming and percussive elements lock into a looping, entrancing throb that feels as if it's stretching out into the infinite. There are these bizarre moments on "Marching" where I almost feel as if I'm listening to a sound-collage formed by stray fragments of Cave Rock, drum tracks from Riz Ortolani's Cannibal Holocaust score, and the occult ceremonies of Sleep Chamber circa Dream Distillate. An odd and intoxicating experience, for sure. And one of the biggest surprises of the whole "Yellow Series", for me.

As with the other entries in the "Yellow Series" of cassettes, Marching houses the cassette in a printed O-card slip-sleeve also containing a pro-physical media sticker, a fragment of yellow fabric, a roll of yellow craft paper, a clothing-style tag, and another circular tag attached to string.