Cassauna Days Re Revisited
2.6.14 by Mike Haley

Since sorta falling asleep in 2011 after a year of heavy production, Important Records is waking up their cassette imprint Cassauna. Cassauna issued fourteen tapes from the likes of Conrad Schnitzler, Greg Davis, Maurizio Bianchi, and Richard Lainhart’s Buchla 200e System recordings “Lux” (pictured below), to name a few, packaged in letterpressed and silk screened packaging. The relaunch brings two new release, two releases on deck, a Cassauna-centic episode of Imporant’s podcast, plus a Cassauna Bandcamp for the digital natives.

The new releases are by Randy Gibson & Zachary James Watkins with future cassettes coming from Claudio Rochetti + Pietro Riparbelli and Sarah Davachi. Here’s some info about the two new dudes direct from the Important horses mouth:

sauna15: RANDY GIBSON – THE FIRST PILLAR APPEARING IN SUPERNOVA
“The two sides of The First Pillar Appearing in Supernova could be considered as opposing explorations of the simplest section of my ongoing work, Apparitions Of The Four Pillars. When approached by Cassauna to make this cassette, I knew I wanted to use the mechanism of the cassette to create the work. As with my previous work for cassette, Analog Apparitions on The Tapeworm, the sound of the cassette is integral. Cassettes of individual vocal drones were recorded onto a Marantz PMD222. Using the volume and speed capabilities of the Marantz, I worked with a single line at a time to create a dense harmonic world from a simple intervallic source.”

sauna16: ZACHARY JAMES WATKINS – MOVEABLE
“Movable is scored for pianoforte in a unique just intonation/equal temperament hybrid tuning and employs a new mechanical extension we like to call the Piano Monster built by NYC artist Ranjit Bhatnagar that uses 16 voltage controlled motors with attached objects that resonate piano strings.”

The cassettes will set ya back ten bucks a pop and can be ordered by clicking the artist names above. I’m not seeing them on Bandcamp just yet, but most of the back catalog is up now. You can listen to episode six, an hour-long show focusing on Cassauna’s past, present, and future, on Soundcloud or below.