V/A – Now That’s What Your Parents Call Drone 2.3.16 by Mike Haley
Parents are lame. Right, fellow youths? They call remotes “clickers”. They call texts “phone emails”. I don’t even want to mention what they call people of color. And apparently this is what they call drone. Bringing a digital release from 2014 to the physical realm, Big Sleep Records presents the 102 minute compilation “Now That’s What Your Parents Call Drone”. Like any genre, it’s debatable exactly what “drone” is. Some curmudgeons will undoubtedly waste time, energy, and WiFi grumbling over the lack of “drone” on this compilation. But if you ease up for a moment (you gosh darn drone gendarmerie) you will see that this comp handles the noble job of traversing spongy, gratifying dimensions keenly. Plus it’s a funny title. Good enough for me. So ease up.
16 artists take a swing at revamping “parent music” into lush vocal forays, drenched guitar spells, glistening electronics, and/or modified originals. Far from a collection of vaporwave or hardvapour or whatever the kids… er… I mean my peers from Spencer’s Gifts (hey guys!) call it. There is no pace car on NTWYPCD. It trots from a loitering version of the 1984 George Michael single “Careless Whisper”, to an Amy Grant slash-n-dash, to a squirmy rewiring of not just Alan Parsons, but his Project as well. When boiled down to it’s core, it’s a good time comp for good time folk.
Tracklist:
1- C. Vadi – Careless Whisper (Wham! feat. George Michael)
2- Jackknife Barlow – Songbird Origin (Kenny G)
3- Via Vegrandis – Baby Baby (Amy Grant)
4- Cinchel – How Did I Exist (Air Supply)
5- Neil Jendon – I’m Not In Love (10cc)
6- Anaphylaxis – Stay Awhile (The Bells)
7- Bishonen Knife – Sail On (Commodores)
8- Otologist – Hello It’s Me (Todd Rundgren)
9- Bílý Dehaen – If You Leave Me Now (Chicago)
10- The Kendal Mintcake – Can We Still Be Friends (Todd Rundgren)
11- Teutholimax – Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel)
12- Vapor Lanes – Save the Best For Last (Vanessa Williams)
13- Mute Neighbor – Hello Master (Lionel Richie)
14- Patrick Cosmos – The Osiris of This Shit (Alan Parsons Project)
15- CPI – You Don’t Own Me (Lesley Gore)
16- XYZR_KX – Suddenly (Billy Ocean)
In the shadow of last night’s shit show of GOP debates and miscellaneous conservative nonsense, Sacred Phrases is kind enough to bestow on the world some much needed positive energy. That should not be interpreted as an announcement of uplifting, jubilant musical formulas. The two new cassette tapes from the prolific pairing of German Army and Andreas Brandal deal deeply with ominous and sour blueprints. The tone is obviously doom and gloom, but far from pithy platitudes and desolate outrage. GeAr and AB’s anesthetic bleakness is vivid and alive. They are downers that bring hope.
German Army is a marathon machine with a wildly copious discography. Yet somehow the quality control is an impeccable beast. And “Yanomami” may be one of their best. Each track trenches into your skin, hunting and gathering goosebumps. T(he)y furl a collection of beats around skeptic vocals and illusory rhythms to soundtrack vacant gas stations and sketchy European post cards. “Yanomami” is full of smoke and has no time for filler. Each of it’s ten tracks are present and sticky with purpose.
Norway’s Andreas Brandal is no stranger to the world of blank stare sounds. For about 20 years Brandal has been leaving a trail of stale bread crumbs on imprints like Stunned Records, Sweat Lodge Guru, DumpsterScore, Lighten Up Sounds, Tranquility, his own Twilight Luggage, and many others. “The Thursday Curses” is a selection of austere mood music. Lurching through a premium of plaster-like drones, Andreas Brandal dredges up paralyzing vibes. Another beautiful cassette added to his long list.
Cintas Chromo’s Audio Encyclopedia Of Weird Spain 1.19.16 by Scott Scholz
Your average modern American might come up with Pablo Picasso or trendy tapas restaurants if pressed for examples of cool stuff from Spain, but the underground music scene going down from Valencia to Barcelona right now is among the most vibrant in the world. Wild synth zoners, updates to early industrial soundscapes, and impactful harsh noise are all well represented in the catalogs of killer labels like Cønjuntø Vacíø, Verlag System, and Atrocious Symphonies.
But if you’re just getting into this scene, there is no better introduction than the “Enciclopedia Chromo” series from new cassette label Cintas Chromo. Like succinct audio-encyclopedia entries, this series of mostly C20 tapes gives international listeners a taste of the range of deep jams coming from contemporary Spain, the perfect starting point for figuring out which artists you want to dig into some more. Already up to five “entries” in just a few months, this series is off to a fine start, with more excellent releases in the works. Featuring black & white cover designs with matching spines, these will eventually make for an attractive-looking travelogue series that’ll be easy to locate for quick reference on your shelves, too.
Volume 1 in the series features solo work from Julio Tornero, a member of the vibrant Polígono Hindú Astral. These brief jams are a great start to the series, uniting a diverse palette of cosmic synths, slightly abrasive industrial overtones, and percussion sequences somewhere between Cabaret Voltaire and EDM.
Noisegg, a solo project of Huevo, the bassist for Cementerio and Derrota, is featured on volume 2. This music veers between industrial and harsh noise textures, bookended by opening/closing tunes that have persistent modular melodies that feel like a doom/sludge variation on Perturbator.
The lone C40 in the series so far, Volume 3 is from Sentionaut, an imaginative synth-slinger who also plays in Dekatron III. These are killer krautrock-infused jams, featuring thoughtfully layered synths, uptempo percussion, and a great melodic sensibility. If you’re into latter-day Tangerine Dream or great synth albums from labels like Field Hymns, you’ll find a lot to love with Sentionaut.
On Volume 4, you’ll find solo music from the head of the Atrocious Symphonies label performing as Malacoda. These short pieces capture pensive, dark atmospheres, veering from cinematic vistas to more intimate, minimalist industrial vibes. Processed vocal work plays a major role in many of these pieces as well.
The latest in the series, Volume 5 features Noir Noir, whose black metal and psychedelic overtones make this tape the most punishing 20 minutes of the series so far. While these pieces still fall generally in the “synth zoner” spectrum, they’re more like journeys into a blackened underworld than the open skies.
All of these tapes are still available, making this the perfect time to get into the Enciclopedia Chromo series. Plus Ultra!
With the exception of a two year hiatus, Daniel Castrejon’s label Umor Rex has been a clearing house for ambitious and outsider music for a decade, more recently making a dazzling dive into the cassette world. I caught up with Daniel, hot on the heels of three new tapes from Umor Rex, to chat about the label’s past, future, and aesthetics.
You started Umor Rex ten years ago, mostly with digital releases. When and why did you decide to start issuing physical formats?
Releasing in physical formats was not something that I decided as a matter of wanting to do it. There was always the idea and the desire to do so. It was always the purpose of this, but it just was impossible at that time. I was younger. It’s still difficult, but it was even more so before. It isn’t much easier now, but the label is a little bit more established that allows me to move on with vinyl and cassette releases. Umor Rex has 87 cataloged releases as of January 2016 (plus a dozen other prints that don’t have catalog number). The first era was only digital + CDr stuff, the first 40 releases. Music and design are the most important things for me and are linked. There is undoubtedly tangible object fetishism.
Tell me about your first couple of cassette releases. They were compilations, right?
Yes. “Dezember” and “Sagittarius” both were published in December (in different years). It was a kind of a year celebration, because the winter solstice.
The artwork you design for your releases is stunning and very recognizable. What is appealing to you about that style? Do you have a background in graphic design?
Yes, I work in design, I’m full time in a publishing house in Mexico City. Designing books and publications in general. I also work on external things like design for other labels, museums, festivals etc. I’m always designing something; 95% of my time, whether at work, in Umor Rex or in some other project. I want the visual aesthetics of Umor Rex consistent as a whole, respecting the sound characteristics of each artist and trying to make a visual connection to the sound of them, but always harbored within the aesthetic parameters that have developed in Umor Rex.
Tell me a little bit about your printing process and packaging choices.
I am in Mexico City, but the records are pressed in Europe, the cassettes are pro-dubbed in the USA. So usually I’m away from production processes, although I am always overseeing them. In the case of the vinyl, certain common features are present in my catalog; working mostly with spot inks, not with 4-colour process. For the cassettes, I buy the boxes in the US, then I print here. A part of the process that I enjoy doing in México is serigraphic print. Then I ship the boxes and inserts to Chicago where the final assembly is done.
Lately I’m working closely with a Japanese book that is a collection of color combinations made by Sanzo Wada in 1933. Some releases of this year will have a color treatment inspired by the work of Wada and Haishoku. The new LP by Good Willsmith is based on a typology of oriental color, also it has spectacular photographs of Sam Prekop who kindly shared with us.
I really like cardboard packages in general, especially the brad-pack because of its size. It allows the object to be a little more tangible from my point of view, as part of the publication; as a book and its covers, as a vinyl and the jackets. Last year, one of the cassettes we published, “Interpretations of superstition” by James Place, was a box I designed. The die cutting is different from the brad-pack, I’m trying to explore other materials and colors, I think the next batch will have a different technique regarding the printed process.
Does Thrill Jockey handle all of your mailorder/distribution? How did that come about?
Thrill Jockey handles distribution to stores in North America, as well the pre-sales and mailorder. And I work with Morr Music for our distribution in Europe and UK, and direct mailorder in Europe through their site Anost.
I’ve been working with Morr Music for 6 years and about 4 years with Thrill Jockey. As a matter of logistics, distribution is the starting point, and thanks to them our publications can be found in record shops and online stores around the globe. But mailorder is also very important. The bulk of our sales are in the US and Europe, making our mailorder and distribution from Chicago and Berlin the most sensible way to streamline processes and to maintain fair prices. The relationship with Thrill Jockey and Morr Music goes beyond a working relationship. I admire the work of both, and all the people who work there; they are good friends and are a fundamental part in Umor Rex.
One of my favorite releases on Umor Rex is the Maar “Ceto” tape from 2014. How did you first hear of Maar and solidify that releases?
My first contact with Maar was through Cleared, the band formed by Steven Hess and Michael Vallera, and their albums released by Immune Recordings are fantastic works. Then I met Michael, and he showed me the first drafts of his project Maar with Joseph Clayton Mills, I was delighted, we decided to publish it in Umor Rex. Michael and I have met a few times in Chicago and shortly after “Ceto,” I published in Umor Rex a small book with his photographic work called “Perfect Fatigue.” All these guys are very talented. Michael has published under the pseudonym of Coin, and more recently “Distance,” with his own name, both on Opal Tapes. Joseph has solo works, and is member of Haptic (with Steven Hess and others) plus other projects. And Steven Hess, Michael’s partner in Cleared is also member of Locrian, Haptic, Pan · American etc. And Steven Hess has a new cassette release on Umor Rex with Ruy Zuldervelt (Machinefabriek), called “re-collecting”, I think all of them are an awesome gang. I can say that there will be a new work by Maar soon.
What would you say is the breakdown of releases that were spawned from demo submissions compared to artist you sought out?
I think it was half and half in recent years, but now things are changing. I’m no longer “officially” open to new demos. I love hearing new things. No doubt, I will publish some things that come to me by as demo. But Umor Rex is a small label, the number of publications that I can make in a year or in a specific time is small. I have a short list of upcoming releases, but enough for my abilities. I have also committed to following up artists who are already Umor Rex family, I’m interested in continuity. Although I am open to new artists. I don’t care about the number of releases or artists, I care about the strength of them.
The first 100 copies of the Charlatan “Local Agent” LP you released came with a bonus cassette called “Dead Drop”. This may be a question for Brad Rose, but is there any musical connection between the two? Any reason the tape was not offered on it’s own?
Yes. The album “Local Agent” emerges from a science fiction novel that Brad wrote before making the album, and is completely influenced by it, one might even consider some kind of soundtrack. It is a fascinating album. For me it’s like a tribute to J. G. Ballard literary works. Local Agent’s music is telling a narrative. There are climax and knots, in an twisted-intense tone reminiscent spy stories of the 60’s. You can see lines on the cover, back cover and inserts, these lines represent an encrypted code. The lines are opened, and in the cassette “Dead Drop” the lines are present on the cover, with different color and the lines are closing, and have the appearance of being an interpretation of the primary code of “Local Agent”. The songs of “Local Agent”and “Dead Drop” were composed in the same period by Brad Rose, they are part of the same session. We thought the whole job could be divided in two different albums, “Local Agent” as formal narrative, and “Dead Drop” as the decoding of the first.
What tape labels, if any, do you keep an eye on?
Regarding just tape labels I enjoy a lot VCO Recordings, Constellation Tatsu, and Sic Sic Tapes among others. My recent favorite cassettes releases are Helena Hauff and German Army, both on Handmade Birds, “RIP Chrysalis” by Eartheater on Hausu Mountain, and “Sketch for Winter II” by Pan·American on Geographic North, although these labels have releases in many formats.
What is the experimental music scene like in Mexico City?
In Mexico almost any artistic endeavor is necessarily independent. And the experimentation is not an exception of course. It is very large, there are artists doing pretty interesting programs of improvisation, many happenings or other artistic performances combined with different disciplines. There’s a lot about electronic music, collectives oriented to minimalism and field recordings and a strong experimental dance floor scene. The most interesting is the way musical life in Mexico is conducted, unlike the plastic and literary arts – in which we have an immense and well-documented tradition, and whose main objective is publication. In music the characters are more ambiguous, and don’t follow a line of work within a label. The experimental and independent life today in Mexico exists generally in live acts, and is spread primarily in digital ways.
What should we expect from Umor Rex in 2016?
The newest batch of tapes includes M. Geddes Gengras, a collaboration between Steven Hess and Ruy Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek), and a split by Shapes (which is half of Phantom Horse) and Melfi. In February we will publish the second LP by Good Willsmith on vinyl and digital (their second from Umor Rex, the first being “The Honeymoon Workbook”), titled “Things Our Bodies Used to Have.” It is ready for pre-order. In April we will have the second LP by Driftmachine (their third publication on Umor Rex after his debut LP “Nocturnes” and the EP “Eis Heauton“). And for the next batch of cassettes, without a release date so far, I can anticipate the line up too. We will publish an album by Alexandre Bazin, a French composer and member of Groupe de Recherches Musicales, the second work by Maar, and the Mexican producer Nicolas Guerrero. It will be his debut under his own name, he is also known as White Visitation.
Bastian Void / Kyle Landstra – split 1.15.16 by Scott Scholz
Two of the best synth zoners to ring out a stellar 2015, Kyle Landstra and Joe Bastardo’s Bastian Void take complementary yet opposite approaches to modular mayhem. Both artists bring recent recordings of pieces workshopped over summer gigs to this split C45 on Chicago’s Lillerne Tapes, gifting us with a rare tape that explores both inner and outer space.
On the A-side, Bastian Void’s “Acorn Construction” is a perpetual motion machine, blasting off with a persistent arpeggiator section into a field of cosmic dust. Several other arpreggiator-dominated passages morph into one another, nicely balancing timbres from the three major food groups of kosmische: square, saw, and sine waves. Even when the piece eventually settles into swelling pads and fading drones toward its end, a sense of motion and vertigo remains. This side is a great companion for interstate (or interstellar) travel.
When you arrive at your destination, though, it might be time to turn within, and Kyle Landstra is ready to light up your limbic system with his “Seeking Refuge in Emptiness” on the B-side. Like Bastian Void, Landstra is no stranger to the joys of the arpeggiator, but here he focuses instead on slowly shifting pads and drones. A fine coda to his excellent “Unshared Properties” quadruple tape on Sacred Phrases just a few months earlier, this feels like a reverent embrace of stillness, made of compressed time and gentle atmospheres. From its midpoint onward, “Seeking Refuge” starts to incorporate rhythmic, arpeggiated figures, but somehow they feel more circular than linear, embracing the listener from a central position instead of defining a path of movement.
Bastardo laid down some killer infinite-regression artwork that’s just perfect for this split, and he printed up these j-cards all classy and gorgeous, too, with fine line work and vintage, muted colors. There’s a rad little card inside, too, where you can familiarize yourself with these fine fellows’ feline companions. These babies are almost gone, but you can still snag one of the last copies over at the Lillerne Bandcamp. Happy travels!
Bicephalic continues their split tape series of gonzo squeal with another double dose of noisenik unions. This match up marks numbers three and four in the run, which will max out at eight cassettes. The artwork for these puppies, hand painted by August Traeger, is god damn dazzling. Not just for these new ones, but all of em. Go ahead and check. I’ll wait….. Ya see? That’s reason enough to collect all eight, and thankfully the jams are hella dope as well.
Promute tackle their side like hyper-focused bed bugs navigating through the coils of an overused mattress (you know those things don’t last forever, right?). Fifteen minutes of itchy, speckled sounds corkscrew at random, vibrating from junkstriments and metallic massages. Their partner for this adventure is Homogenized Terrestrials, who opt for an oily infestation. You know those times when you accidentally spill a mason jar of slugs and jellyfish parts into an oscillating fan on low? You don’t? That’s NEVER happened to you? Then you’ll just have to trust me that this is what that sounds like. Seriously, you’ve never done that???
Carl Kruger (possibly related to Freddy? Though I think they spell it differently. Still too scary!) riffles through the junk drawer, sips on empty Big Gulps, and searches for a pen that still has ink remaining for a gnarly span of gummy noise. The viscid experience is almost sad. “For the love of god, someone give Carl a drink! Please give him a pen!” I literally shouted that while listening to this track. And by literally, I mean figuratively. NJ9824 goes for it on the flip side. I used to love that show as a kid. Confession time: I am a GIANT Luke Perry nut, but man has shit changed. Gone is the day-to-day drama of privileged California youths, instead replaced with cleaved and minced audio fragments, Vibrant and void of attention. The occasional six second piano rasp brewed into sensory bombardment doesn’t slow things down. I guess kids today just don’t get Luke Perry?
Both of these cassettes are C30’s, limited to 50 copies. Grab them while they last from Bicephalic.
Used Condo – American Birthstone 1.13.16 by Mike Haley
“I wanna snip! I wanna snip!” That’s my two year old daughter whenever she see’s a pair of scissors. That little dummy loves those god damned things. And of course I never properly supervise while the “I wanna snip” sessions are going on. It’s cool, she is using round tipped, extra safe, Obama scissors. Because apparently our kids aren’t allowed to learn life lessons anymore. Remember when Reagan was king shit and kids played with glass and lighter fluid and whatever goodies trickled down? Anyway, she’ll post up on the floor, snipping away at junk mail, magazines, and download codes, spilling that “leak-proof” cup of milk all over an infinite field of debris. Maybe some apple sauce will make it’s way into the mix as well. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a grape or two compressed in there. It’s both a lesson I’ll apparently never learn and a gnarly spat, nearly impossible to clean up.
By this point you’re probably wondering where this, if anywhere, is going… I popped “American Birthstone” by Used Condo, a Larry Wish joint, into the trusty deck knowing nothing about it. Not knowing whether Used Condo was short for used condominium or slang for used condom, I wasn’t even totally sure on the name. Still not I suppose. It was, however, clear by three or four minutes in that this was going to be a frustrating listen. Viscous fragments of Stone Temple Pilots and Collective Soul flipped the switch on my PTSD from Operation Snip. Listening to Used Condo probe into 90’s alt rock, testing it’s elasticity and temperament, shredding it like old electric bills, is a digital reflection of unintentional Papier-mâché. Musical pulp, puree, and pale liquids borg with shag carpet, clumping at 69% vacuum resistant rates. Moments dipped into zombie-zones that vaporwave originalist will nuzzle, but the majority went complete opposite routes. Pure fuckery and sloshy gloom ruled the day. Used Condo essentially empties Mrs. Butterworth’s original recipe into an external hard drive, drowning files with names like buzzclip_archive.zip and playfulsynth_ver48.wav. Those files get converted to bitmaps, 3D printed into cubes, then rolled like dice.
Consult the bones for yourself. Then head over to Suite 309 to pick up “American Birthstone”, a C44 made in an edition of 50 copies on pink tapes with matching Norelco cases.
I can’t go to sleep in silence. If there is any hope of getting even a moderate amount of shut-eye, a TV show or movie I’ve seen 25 – 50 times needs to be streaming on Netflix. Then I’m out like a drugged duck before the credits of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (specifically the Kitten Mittens episode). But sometimes the WiFi goes out, or remote controls are MIA. When that happens I’m left with thoughts. My dismal, depressing thoughts. Because, for some reason, all I can think about while lying in bed is car accidents. Diseases. A stupid thing I said in high school nearly 20 years ago to people who may have died by now in car accidents or from diseases. Every sound is the roof caving in. Every smell is a gas leak. I hate it.
With a comparative load of depressive influence is “Rebecca’s Spit”, a self-released, self-hating C40 by the simply named Mot. This tape has the personality of a clogged sink, but isn’t exactly trying to be the most popular kid at the party anyways. It’s not even sure why it’s at the party. With the agenda to drink cough syrup, explore the basement, and burn family photos, it should have just stayed home. Mot’s opaque malaise is freaking everyone out. The blend of lo-fi, hiss-concealed wind chimes and creaky floors on some of the tracks here make for a laborious listen, especially when coupled with a clobbering amount of distortion and oscillations. It’s thick walls of sound are totally singed, paint pealing. Metallic, hollow blast ring out behind them, devoid of hope and conscious rhythm. There is no joy to be had, unless you get down with back-alley joy. In which case, open up wide.
DNT Celebrates 10 Years With A Dozen Tapes 12.27.15 by Mike Haley
Doris Nordic Tribute Records, or DNT to friends and loved ones, have been kicking about and dubbin’ away for ten years now. In the cassette world I believe that is the chrome anniversary. Their celebrating the happy occasion with a dozen tapes and a few hour-long samplers. All cassettes were duplicated in real time and feature unique. hand painted covers by Tynan Krakoff and Pearl Morgan, and are only $2.50 each. What?! Here are the goods:
Tad “Sweet Potato” cassingle demo (DNT057) Tad “Yucatan Sunshine” (frozen) demo cassingle (DNT072) Tad “Yucatan Sunshine” b/w “Have You Ever Had A Witch Bloom Like A Highway” (fast) demo cassingle (DNT073) Meadow Argus cassette (DNT075) Meet the Octopus 1-sided cassette (DNT076) Affectionate Light Bulb 1-sided cassette (DNT077) ADVANCE SPECTACLE 1-sided cassette (DNT082) latticework shuttle cassette (DNT083) Novaya cassette (DNT084) Tad “Great Generic Park” b/w “Have You Ever Had A Witch Bloom Like A Highway” demo cassingle (DNT085) Maskalyn “Suicidal Plastic Man: Maskalyn’s Greatest Hits” cassette (DNT086) TK “2005” demo cassette (DNT088)
The genre specific C60 samplers (compiled as Drone, Americana, Pop, Weirdo, Skronk, and Sir Tad’s Picks) span DNT’s decade long catalog, and can be gripped for free (one per every three tapes ordered) or in an insane bundle deal along with all the new releases. For just $25, which is pretty fucking great, right?
Surf the hell on over to DNT’s web dwelling and go to town!
Let’s All Chill The Fuck Out (And Stop Bashing Cassettes) 12.25.15 by Ross Devlin
Writers all have axes to grind. We are fickle, neurotic creatures full of pent-up rage we exorcise through our fingertips. We control every quark of our cultivated universes – the beautiful byproducts of poorly-cased brains with terrible replay quality, prone to scrambling information, skipping, and rendered useless underwater for too long – and that should be enough. Occasionally, though, when lacking creative juice, or attention, some writerly folk succumb to the temptation to lash out at –stuff-. Yes, there is nothing quite so satisfying as hurling insults at that which cannot insult you back. Rants about stuff can be aimed at anything gaining in popularity with any group of (young) people. Especially fair game are things that don’t immediately make our lives more convenient, because anyone who isn’t maximizing their biological efficiency by chugging soylent and churning out #ideations is missing the point of life, right?
Specimen A: this recently published op-ed, snuck up the ass of the New York Times, is not happy with recent resurgence in cassettes. Why? Who knows. Maybe their verisimilitude article published in 2010 didn’t land messily enough. This time around, it’s a vitriolic knee-jerk of a column that reads like a fistful of Ritalin, and it serves no other purpose than to showcase said writer’s skill at mashing together similes with childlike glee, scattering the pieces across the floor and cackling as the rest of us lacerate our feet on the pieces. Many more articles have come before this, written by opinionators who come off as hopelessly out of touch in their efforts to stifle trends. Other publications take a more sympathetic approach. All miss the mark completely. I’ll sum up every single one: cassettes are obsolete; cassettes are pretentious; you are a hipster.
The offending NYT author substitutes knowledge about music for dad jokes and cliché selective memory bias. He opens with a comment about Nelly Furtado using the format (for a special, limited edition), which seems consistent, until it is followed by a remark on how cassettes have seemingly “swapped fates” with Seal, not realizing the same Seal has sold over 10 million more albums than Furtado, and is very much still around and producing albums, if only in Chechnya. This same author also takes stabs at a tape’s perceived audio impurities, ignorant of the importance fractured tape loops played in shaping minimalist classical music and, ultimately, sampling as a reappropriation of audio. Not to mention one of the most influential and historically important compositions of all time erupted organically from tape decay – It was worthy of a performance remembering the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and could very well be played at the 20th, and 50th anniversaries as well.
Regardless, it’s time to set the record straight: tapes aren’t back because of “sentiment.” They are back (if they went anywhere at all) because, like all things, they fill a niche. Nelly Furtado’s 20 million records doesn’t automatically flick the tape game into the “on” position. That’s called a marketing gimmick. If one wants to understand why tapes are appearing in the public consciousness, it will help to look at where they are useful. But first, let’s drop the hypocritical rhetoric of cassette sounding “bad”. You can’t tell the difference, son. MP3’s bought on iTunes or converted from CD (or put through a Youtube Converter sound composting unit) are compressed at substantially lower audio quality to cassettes. Streaming with Pandora or Spotify is even worse. And cassettes are by no means a “terrible technology” – they withstand heat, cold, shock, time, and greasy fingers much better than CDs, vinyl records, or binary file formats. They are the most high-density storage devices on Earth, so far, which is why they are still widely employed for archiving purposes. Floppy disks became obsolete because they held 1.2 megabytes. That’s about a single PDF. Sony recently developed a cassette that holds 185 terabytes, which is equivalent to the entire Library of Congress 18 times over.
So why are cassettes around to stay? And why should Gen-X’ers and trendphobes quit whining? Well, for starters, music has been dealt quite a few blows below the belt in the 21st Century. No longer are “compositions” made by “artists,” for “listeners,” subsequently discussed, analyzed, emulated, and improved upon. Now we have “hooks” engineered by “producers” (Somebody, please, I’m begging you, give me one good reason why a song needs to have upwards of ten writers in its credits.) for “users” in an oversaturated market. Genres emerge and re-emerge in a permanent echo chamber of maximalist cacophony, all geared towards squeezing profit for a malnourished, dinosaur industry. Maximum dopamine, maximum complacency. Artists – as in the people who create thoughts using imagination, and translate those thoughts into communicable media – have combatted the deterioration of the music industry themselves, by using that icky quality known as independent thought.
Both vinyl and tapes are successful attempts to create a more meaningful connection between the listener and the artist. Limited runs of vinyl records have become collectors items, and are a hit with techno, punk, indie, and classic horror movie soundtrack fans. Tapes have experienced similar success with experimental labels and noise houses. Just look at the beautiful pieces curated by Auris Apothecary, No Kings, A Giant Fern, Phinery, 905 Tapes, Geographic North, Patient Sounds… the list is very near endless. The barriers to entry for the industry are near zero, and with a keen eye for detail and design, the chances of breaking even on a releases and ensuring future endeavors with new artists is palpable. A hand-numbered edition of 30, 45, 100 cassettes is a significant product in a consumerist world that values a user’s response to a product more than the product itself. A physical releases gives artists a sense of legitimacy. In every case, it is a collaborative effort – a DIY, family affair, born not from industry competition, but from a desire to physically record every creative impulse every musician/producer/composer has ever had. Cassettes are being duplicated by some of the most acclaimed avant artists of the year, sometimes in between LPs, sometimes in addition to them. In many cases, gripping a tape is like finding the notebook of a mad genius on the subway and marveling at its contents.
Bottom line, cassette culture is not about your dopey baby fingers unspooling tape in a rear-facing carseat. Above all, it is not about the fucking mixtape you gave your girlfriend once. It isn’t even a “resurgence” – this is about music, not extreme religious fundamentalists. Hating on the recycling of technology is a surefire way to get labeled as a curmudgeon pining for clicks. Casual commentators on the relevancy in “obsolete” musical formats never used these formats because they cared about what was contained inside – they passively consumed along with the rest of society, and passively adopted the next technological change to come along based on some arbitrary, externally assessed improvement. With vinyl to cassettes, it was called “portability.” Cassettes to discs, it was audio quality. CDs to MP3’s, it was called “convenience,” and “sharing.” Mp3’s to cloud-based streaming, you were finally convinced you didn’t even need your own personal archive anymore, as long as you have a wifi connection. When pressed, no one would admit they prefer any format to the sound of a real, live instrument. It all comes down to economic conditions and accessibility. How can you hate on something that costs less than $10? That’s cheaper than chocolate. Maybe one day in the future, when physical music is still taking flack from dudes with solid state drives hardwired into their brains, we can finally say the conflict of formats is all in your head.
