Reviews for [RL64]
Tereshkova "Romance Space"

• Depression Chamber
  Wrote a little bit about this wonderful tape a few weeks ago here. Tereshkova is a one man bedroom project that features a ton of cascading sounds, a ton of blissed out waves, and is just as good as any shoegaze project recorded “properly.” I think the big thing about this whole Tereshova thing is that it does not compromise beauty and frailty for sounding too clean, or too commercialized. This is an era where bands like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine are very appealing to the average music listener (as opposed to the 90’s right? no… pretty sure the bands were popular even then). Jeff Lane could have made this louder than life, a little more fuzzed out or chaotic and still somehow it would have sounded just as lightweight and pretty. I feel like each track segues quite nicely, and helps the one before it (and the one after it) exist fully on the tape. Don’t get me wrong, tracks like the killer “Tentacles” could exist all on their own, but the way the synth noises play in and out of the tape (quite recklessly I might add, but this is probably what makes it appealing to me) as though everything we are accustomed to hearing is actually just a front for what could be a really beautiful ambient album. But it’s not an ambient album, it just has a lot of those warm synthy/guitar elements throughout it. Every time I listen to the tape, I end up listening to two different songs at once (probably because my brain is broken), the songs with drums and basslines and then the songs without those. I don’t know why this happens, but I’m really stuck on how this would sound like without that other stuff (very minimal and silent for a good while, I think). It’s really good with them in there as well so I’m totally into it as is. I’m going to leave it at that (or try). I think the tape speaks for itself. The music is very mature for being homemade, and is really elated as much as it is timid sounding… although I suppose it’s not really as timid as I have interpreted it to be. I think it’s the melodies that are just so damn cute that make me feel as though the music is timid. An edition of 50 with full color j-cards that has information printed on the inner sleeve (which is kind of hard to read, but I’m into that difficulty). I think these are home dubbed, but they sound really good. The copy I ended up with sounds perfect from beginning to end, no pops or wobblyness. I’ve got to hand it to Tereshkova and Rok Lok Records. This is a superb release.
  
  
  
  
• Suave Citation
  It took me a few listens to get what Romance Space by Tereshkova was about and appreciate it as such. Like watching a movie a bunch of times, more and more gets revealed. I think the B side is better anyway, but both sides have their moments. At first I had a hard time justifying the prominent use of synth since the songs that use it and the songs that don’t are really polar in instrumentation. And with the guitar stuff, it seemed like pretty elementary chord progressions that I wasn’t too thrilled by. The vocals have this cleaned up but more stoned Karen O thing going for them which caused me some surprise in finding out the whole tape is one Jeff Lane. What became interesting about the tape was it’s sheer diversity, and while I don’t like the more heavy synth/pad areas like “Blush”, I really enjoyed the slowed down surf rock numbers on the B-side and the slower, more ambient mixed output shoegaze numbers that surrounded it all. It can get pretty zonked and dreamy, but there are some really fresh sounding leads hidden in here. One or two songs start pretty basic, only to melt away with increased echo, reverb, and eventual abstracted variations on the initial theme with floaty vocal chants that hit some weird harmonies and unexpected leads, which can be fun to sit with. A good example would be “Lemon Cake”. It all comes to a healthy collision and fruition for me in the final minutes of the B-side bedroom surf riff meltdown “Misunderstandings (We Were Close To The Mountain), which I certainly plan on playing for some friends who might be wary of shoegaze but would be sold on the Growlers-like appeal. The J-card collage is really captivating to me for some reason, and fits the music pretty nicely I think.
  
  
  
  
• Guide Me Little Tape
  Dream soaked shimmer from Tereshkova, with Romance Space, on Rok Lok Records. You won't find me promoting much stuff with vocals. And when I do, it tends to be a tape that uses the vocal more like an additional instrument. Not so much to guide the themes of the piece, but to develop the tone of the recording. My personal bias, but I like a little, maybe a lot, of mystery and sometimes a clearly delivered vocal destroys that mystery and removes my imagination from the listening process. Tereshkova finds that beautiful middle ground. A catchy pop recording bursting with simple honest emotion that doesn't overwhelm the experience with narrative. Ringing guitar, an astrally inspired selection of synth tones, hazy vocals. How can something as lyrically indiscernible and reverb drenched as the opening moments of Heart Song be so monumentally affecting? Like a shoe gaze fraternal twin of Kim Larsen, I can almost pick out moments verging on Neo Folk inspiration. Simultaneously fun and furiously sad.