The New Testaments according to Tiny Telephone's vanguard John Vanderslice

Wonder of the western world — John Vanderslice; press photo courtesy of the artist.

There are incredible forces of inexplicably innovative insights that operate on wildly influential levels out there in the world. These are those presences of knowledge and wisdom have shaped or influenced countless classic forebears as well as hosts of contemporary work from innumerable fellow talents. And just as the discography of their oeuvre reads like Encyclopedia volumes; the most prolific of collaborative caretakers of others crafts almost always proceed with extensive catalogs that lend a light on their own creative and personal progressions along the ever shifting winds encountered along life's flight paths.

Of these modern day marble giants is John Vanderslice, the artist behind all the artists and a star of their own organic design. With the release of the eeeeeeep! EP, we find our San Francisco beacon of bright supportive light making the move to the SoCal lands of industry and diverse supportive communities — Los Angeles. These exoduses from the Bay to LA are common for those searching for new eclectic environments in the faces of monumental culture shifts, as SF traded in its ethics of artistry and progressive activism in the interest of wooing big developers and big tech brands. Abandoning the dog eat dog late-capitalist routines seen in the dubious aftermath of nu-tech boom; Vanderslice adopted the warmth, congeniality and community support found scattered throughout the vast terrain of the Southern California sectors. Having found a home in the Historic Filipinotown neighborhood and establishing the home studio Grandma’s Couch; those of us here still in the home digs of the artist’s former local terrain will miss the casual presence of someone that has immeasurably contributed to the culture. An artist whose All Music credit list only begins to introduce one of the world’s most storied pop masterminds; Vanderslice’s absence in the Bay is a void by which there is no substitution (accept no imitations).

The EP eeeeeeep! enters the arena that displays our state of alarm and emergency with the world distorting electro bombast of "Xxxx". Imagine your Kid A / Amnesiac, Massive Attack and Autechre obsessives and your still ten thousand meters off base. The sardonic sass and snazziness of "Lure Mice Condemn Erase" has our hero settling into a power pop mode of free associated styles that are collected and arranged with pure guided precision. Borrowing liberally from the books of Brel, Walker and Bowie — "Team Stammer Savior Machine" shares in life’s journeys with beatitude levels of epiphanies intertwined in stanzas designated to be broadcast and proclaimed from the tallest peaks of the coastal fog catching California mountains and hilltops.

Vanderslice starts the dance step du jour with the IDM orchestrations of “Song for Leopold” that recalls electronic outcasts making new green worlds of glory untold. The brilliance at work is how functions of musical fashion and anachronisms are all mixed together in an alchemy like the skilled twist of a bartenders wand or the swirling sterling silver spoon from a Merlin-like magician/apothecary character posted up at a Stop and Shop on the side of a desolated highway road. The EP closes with the lamentation of love with accepted realness and blessings in “Song for Jaime Sena”. Nick Bostrom-style trilemmas and simulations are debunked on “Jaime Sena” where alternate entities of doppelgängers, tulpas and their respective timelines collide with today’s confrontations of fire tornadoes, full on states of inferno, ensuing storms, continued social unrest, a global pandemic and perpetual civic ineptitude. Vanderslice’s latest creative document dabbles in palettes of discontent, the strange, the sentimental and the pursuit of enriched living and greater exchanges of meaningful expressions between one another.

In John Vanderslice’s own words:

In 2018, I was living and working in San Francisco and had been for a while. as the owner of a recording studio there, Tiny Telephone. It wasn't even a remote possibility to leave and because I was constantly touring, it didn't really matter to me where I lived. or so I thought. That year I was recording Cherry Glazerr and they gave me a clear and inspired pitch on how much happier I would be in LA

Seeing San Francisco through their eyes was depressing honestly, I could try to ignore the strange glaze-eyed tech invader vibe, the decimated art scene, the complete absence of a middle class, but it was VERY obvious to them.

I started visiting them in LA, going to shows and bars, touring taco tents, swimming at El Matador and running into more people on the streets of Highland Park than I knew in SF. I was sold.

Now I live in Historic Filipinotown and couldn't be happier.

John Vanderslice’s eeeeeeep! EP is available now via Tiny Telephone.

Cover art from John Vanderslice’s eeeeeeep! EP.