Terlu - Big Bingo (2018)

Unreleased archival collection of minimalist keyboard reveries by one of the Western States’ unsung tape hiss savants, Orvang aka Terlu. The bulk of Big Bingo was recorded late at night in the spring and summer of 2011 in a garage in Grass Valley, California using a medley of thrift shop Casios, Yamahas, and scavenged cassette recorders. Heavily inspired by Raymond Scott’s proto-ambient Soothing Sounds For Baby volumes and Mark Mothersbaugh’s playful mid-80’s synth sketches, Musik For Insomniaks, the songs share a similarly naïve, delirious spirit, woozy and wistful, cloudland loony tunes traced in joyous haze. He describes his original intention as evoking an imaginary kids show soundtrack, “but twisted.” The transistor fidelity and sun-warped melodies echo fellow fringe psychedelic innocents like Tracey Trance and Orphan Fairytale but Terlu also ventures more abstract, textural terrain. Closing cut “Corafax (Psyche Toner)” – a reference to a recurrent dream in an astral office space wherein he begins receiving a series of faxes from his future self – unfurls seven mesmerizing minutes of grainy, iridescent murk, a persuasive paean to the ageless pleasures of inner space.