Handmade Birds followed up the amazing Critical Fabric - Yellow cassette series with a smaller series simply called Blue: these tapes draw from the most bizarre edges of the underground noise/grind/black metal / necro-synth pit, all of it presenting a curious and compelling counterpoint to the mostly-harsh noise and power electronics skuzz of the first series. I'm listening to all of these Blue tapes out of order, but if you set all four tapes side by side, their slipcases spell out the word "BLUE". Any continuity between these infernal machines stops there though, as each one offers an entirely unique experience in extreme, left-field "metal". Really laying on the scare quotes on that "metal" label, though...all of this stuff comes from much weirder realms than anything most people would refer to as metal of any kind.

One of the best examples of the bunch is the Warlock Corpse tape. Man, I fucking LOVE this tape. I had actually just stumbled across this (apparently?) Kazakhstan-based one-man band via Bandcamp, and his bizarro blend of broken no-fi vampire synth music and utterly cracked outsider black metal buried its fangs in me instantly. Gotta be upfront, I'm really not into the whole "tanzelcore" and "keller synth" label, neither of which seem to represent anything in particular to me as far as aesthetics go. Not that Warlock Corpse gets plastered with that label in any kind of official way, but it's definitely been thrown in the direction of this project. The thing is, this kind of bonkers blend of low-fi sinister synth, casio beats, weird song structures, and a bizarre basement ambience has been around for a long, long time, in different forms. And, when I listen to Warlock Corpse, which I do with an almost obsessive and evangelical persistence, I hear something that's pretty different from anything else coming out of the weirder fringes of the "dungeon synth"-adjacent underground. This guy really does not sound (or look, for that matter) quite like anyone else. Which is naturally a big part of the appeal to me. But my obsession with Warlock Corpse's catalog of Casio-damaged weirdness is really about the sheer catchiness and demented vibe of the music, which in my opinion reaches new heights of infectious oddness with this Curse of Endless Sleep cassette. It's totally different from anything else in Rich / Handmade Birds "Blue Series", and it's a blessing. So what the fuck am I trying to describe here?

A gorgeous and muck-splattered din of vampire-castle ambience and gonzo soundscapery, at least at first. "Bloody Sunset" opens this with a clamor of cathedral bells and strange growling, before settling into the beautiful, moody dark synth instrumental of "Forsaken Citadel". It's all ancient analog fantasy ambience, but then burbling beats, squirming synths and a ultra-primitive goth rock backbeat kicks in, and we're suddenly transported to some ghastly dance floor on "Descent Into Eternal Night" that sounds to me like a weirdly witchy take on early (and I mean early) Depeche Mode; like all of Warlock's tunes, it's over way too quick, with the hooks burrowing into your brain beforeyoueven realize it. And each song steps deeper into the album's odd, uncanny musical catacomb. Ghoulish choral textures unfurl over slow, funerary percussion and languid melodies on songs like "Cryptic Serenade of the Damned", "Forgotten Secrets of Dungeons", "Forest of Haunted Dreams" and the morose closer "Symphony of Desolation", which all do a fantastic job of evoking the best qualities of "Era 1" Mortiis, but with trace elements of a no-fi New Wave quality. The thirty-second "Warlock Advice" murmurs over grainy electronic skuzz, but it's back to the dance floor with "Curse of Endless Sleep"; that's the first song with full-on vocals, and they're a snarling black metal style shriek over rolling toms and a sort of mutated EBM feel. Freakin' awesome. Warlock Corpse's songs on this tape continue that sketchy, malformed structure that seems to be his calling card, leaving you wanting to immediately hit rewind (or replay, or whatever) as each song tumbles through the cob-webbed recesses of this uniquely warped world.

As with the other "Blue Series" tapes, this cassette (marked only with an iridescent sticker) comes in a lovely reverse j-card housed in a jet-black tape case, which fits into a professionally-printed O-card slipcase with the artist's name on the spine and the letter "B" on the front. Held inside a re-sealable plastic bag with blue fabric, a sticker, and other ephemera. Collect 'em all!