Clean Heads: A Look At Some New Labels Of 2014
9.12.14 by Mike Haley

It’s common place to see cassette labels with catalog numbers up in the triple digits. Even for relatively fresh operations, those monthly batches start adding up like mice offspring. In that deluge of tape madness are crews taking their baby steps with only a handful of releases under their belt, sometimes just a couple of tapes. Here are six scrappy upstarts from this year that I’ve been crushing on.

Phinery
There’s been some highly sleek activity from this Denmark imprint with their six cassette releases to date. Included in that half dozen is some gorgeously murky, textured sound sculptures by Hollowfonts, the 7th appearance of Daniel Leznoff’s meticulous synth work as Demonstration Synthesis, and some game changing nuggets of designer sound by Karl Fousek on his imaginative “Relative Position of Figures”. Phinery’s editions range from 50 – 75 copies and look stunning.

Castle Bravo
A C30/VHS by Czern and C30 Doberman (dubbed on Maxell brand blanks) is all this label from Indiana has to offer so far, but quality outweighs quantity in a serious way. both projects grapple with cold and shadowy synthesizer conditioning with art and sounds that are both minimal. You’re probably thinking that planet Earth is flooded with this sort of stuff, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But trust me, Castle Bravo is bringing compelling vibes to an overcrowded scene.

Oxtail
Full disclosure: The guy who runs this label is a former Delawarean with relatively close ties to the Tabs Out enterprise, but he has since moved to the big city and has probably forgotten all about us. Oxtail dropped their first two releases over the summer, A C20 from label head Nigro and a collab he did with Ian Franklin (note: also a TabsOuter / aka Shredderghost) under the moniker Primitive Fiction. Both are dense and impressive bombings of noise with snake oil salesman smoothness. The artwork for these are mega-striking, something you have to hold in your hands to fully appreciate. And in their editions of 25, ya should probably act on that.

Aught
I wrote a bit about this mysterious label a couple of months back and their crystal like presentation of clear tapes in poly bags. While we don’t much about who’s behind the wheel, we do know they are doing a fine job at releasing sobering, post-life dance music by Elizabethan Collar, Topdown Dialectic, and De Leon.

Adhesive Sounds
The most active of the bunch with 10 release thus far, this Canadian operation kicked things off with a left field organ grinder by Japanese Treats and hasn’t missed the target since. Peppered through the catalog are offerings by Hobo Cubes, Wasted Cathedral, and Will Kaufhold aka Form, who’s glossy monument “Trips” will skip gems across your mind. Find what you can from this label and gobble it all up.

Aubjects
This is another new guy with only two cassettes available, but they’re super sized and super tight. Both are 4-way, 2xC60 packaged in those double-thick Norelco cases. Titled “Noosphertilizer I” and “Noosphertilizer II”, they feature a yummy buffet of tunes by Dmitri Zherbin, Tired Light, Gods of the Dead (Geoffrey Sexton & Frank Baugh), The Big Drum In The Sky Religion, Gushing Cloud, Arma & Refusenik, Nigel Samways, and Homogenized Terrestrials and artwork good enough to eat. I’m hungry. Buy these tapes.