Fifteen Cassette Commercials
9.24.13 by Mike Haley

You’re probably not gonna scope any blank cassette commercials on TV this week, but when they were going they were going strong. Here are fifteen examples of how great/absurd they were.

 

1. The Usual, Sir
Alright, let’s start this off with a classic, shall we? This is probably the most iconic cassette commercial of all time. And don’t give me that “I didn’t have a TV growing up” bullshit. You saw this.

 

2. The Odd Couple
This is a good one because even though Professor Sweater despises his neighbor, he still knows the specifics of what blank tapes he uses. That is what makes a community. I’m afraid we’ve lost that.

 

3. Domino Rally
The domino run is nice. The little figure taking a piss at 0:22 is nicer. The final tape in the line is amazing. I don’t care if it’s fake or not. I want to believe.

 

4. The Sound I Hear Back
Other than the bass voice, fancy sports car, and lavish playboy look, I consider myself to be a modern day John Laws. Also, who the fuck is John Laws?? Besides my new hero.

 

5. The Most Sophisticated Of Systems
Man, the 80’s…. Am I right?

 

6. Dear John
You gotta feel bad for Gallagher. I mean, sure. He’s a straight up dweeb. But he seems like a nice guy, and he’s fighting for his country. Even if it’s one of the bobo countries that nobody cares about.

 

7. Hot Teens
Dude, take a look at these young people! Their hip, they have nice cars (uh, with FLAMES!), and is that a leather jacket with no shirt?! Sign me the hell up!

 

8. Is It Chuck Mangione Or Is It Memorex?
Ella Fitzgerald was known as the Queen of Jazz. She won (among many other awards) thirteen Grammys (including a Lifetime Achievement), a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the very first Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award which was named “Ella” in her honor. Sometime in the 80’s she was asked to indicate whether she could tell Chuck Mangione from a recording. Take a moment to appreciate life.

 

9. I Get It
I do. I get it. If you don’t get it, then you just don’t get art. You see, what Andy is doing here is… He’s holding a mirror up to… He’s twisting the very idea of fame so… I don’t get it.

 

10. Double Dose Of Bee Gees
I don’t know who the current equivalent of the Bee Gees are, or if there even can be one, but this makes me wonder if a popular band is doing CDr commercials in Japan right now.

 

11. In Another World
Holy shit. Sheree Da Costa was FEELING TDK tapes! Through her system at that. When was the last time you felt like this about anything? Now I just need to find out where to get those intense headphones.

 

12. She’s Got A Flamethrower
Okay, so the friend from Boy Meets World has a motorcycle in his bedroom and his mom has regular access to a flame thrower. And this situation, where she barges in and sets his boombox on fire, happens so often he has stocked up on them. That’s pretty tight.

 

13. Must Buy Tapes. Must Buy Tapes.
This must contain some sort of subliminal message. Either that or it’s a beta version of the flying toasters screensaver. I’m hungry. Who want’s tapes?

 

14. Deck Hates Punk
Geez, this tape deck didn’t know how good it had it. If it thought those Germs demos and live Circle Jerk cassettes were offensive to it’s system, it’s gotta be straight H-A-T-I-N-G some spray painted HNW.

 

15. Epic Drive
Let’s close with a reminder of how baller the Maxell dude is: When he isn’t at home, getting cassettes served up by his butler, he’s driving a car through space. That’s the life he lives. I think the Marlboro Man just rode a horse and died of cancer.

9.21.13: Tape Of The Month – September 2013
ARTIST: Unguent

TITLE: Scanning

LABEL: Refulgent Sepulchre

LENGTH: C36

DUBBED: Home

EDITION: 100

 

 

 

Oprah and Tabs Out are pretty similar when you think about it. Now, we’re not giving away new cars or sending anyone off on a jet to the Bermuda Triangle piloted by John Travolta or whatever. But, like O, we have favorite things. One of those favorite things right now is a somewhat new Philadelphia cassette label called Refulgent Sepulchre. They only have four releases out at the moment, specifically from Some Pepper (002), Tinnitus Timulus (003), and Unguent (001 & 004). That second Unguent jam, “Scanning”,  is most definitely the tightest tape I have heard all month.

Your mind grapes can juice up assumed info about what a band sounds like based on their name. Sometimes it’s totally null and void, like when you first hear Death Vessel and it sounds like a throw away track from A Mighty Wind. With Unguent it’s so fucking perfect. It only takes about 2 minutes of the squishy, balmy garbles on “Scanning” to be sucked into a soft, greasy, or viscous zone. Like fly traps that somehow got candy stuck all the way down their strips, Unguent builds sticky layers of gummy sweeps and swooshes with a panic of florescent rhythmic zaps. The opening jam, “Hypnagogic Stair”, lays out a loop of measured tones. Imagine a Xmas tree with LED’s emitting tiny pokes of sound instead of light during their repetition (so I guess SED’s). While that’s going down, fake snow is being huffed by the chimney with care. It’s weird. It’s wet.  “Party Parsec” totally disregards whatever semblance of order was going on, with a full on invasion of cosmic goop. It drips from all angles, with a barrage of filter sweeping, dank beeping, and oily creeping blanketing the airwaves. The couple on side B, “Fungal Tarantula” and “Gorgon’s Horn” focus heavily on patterns of sound. The former using looping chirps and rings along with what could be vocals? The latter plays like an overly intense video game soundtrack, with some straight up Nine Inch Nails percussion getting in on the action. No joke. This joint turns into a birthday party where the kids can’t decide between watching the “Head Like A Hole” video or the clown make obscene balloon animals. Everything slows down, DJ Screw style, and mom says that the party is over. Everyone leaves. The clown, the pony, and the weird ginger kids you didn’t want to come but they got invited because your parents are friends. And you go to sleep on a bed of wrapping paper with cake on your face.

Unguent, who lives in Philadelphia and runs Refulgent Sepulchre, used a Sidrassi Organ to forge these wonderful paths. An analog instrument with pressure sensitive bars with designated tones, tuning buttons, and pitch/chaos knobs. It was “designed to reflect the glory of god with pure triangular voices. But it also allows exploration of the Devils’ Tone”. After hearing it’s beauty blasted on “Scanning”, I may have to rethink atheism.

The cover for this, and the other R.S. tapes thus far, are dazzling. The artwork on the two panels here is silk screened in three colors. Wavy, lime green concentric lines form a hypnotic swirl on the cover and back flap They’re absent on the spine. A small detail, but it looks so sick. Crude line drawings of alien clip art in baby blue with purple outline, and scratchy text fill in the gaps. I can’t stress enough how dope this looks. The cassette itself is an opaque green tape with “ung” and “s” written in silver ink. Writing abbreviations and initials for the artist/album title like these appears to be a running theme so far. And you know how I feel about consistent aesthetics. I’m for them.

Other than the first Unguent release all Refulgent titles are available to grip. At least they are at the moment I am typing this. Things change though, man. That’s the way the world works. So click here, figure out what’s what, and “gift” paypal $7.00 per tape to refulgentsepulchre@gmail.com. Or send cash in the mail, like its 1998 or something, to his Philadelphia abode.

 

 

 

 

9.18.13: Lee Noble & Derek Rogers Team Up For Collab Cassette

Salt & Peppa. Ben & Jerry. Bill & Ted. Now you can go ahead and add Lee & Derek to the list of ultra-tight duos throughout history, because the two prolific jammers have teamed up for a collaboration cassette to be released later this month on Jehu And Chinaman. Their project, dubbed Circuit Rider, is calling the 6-track tape “Unit Holds” and you can preorder it now, which is highly advised considering the teeny-tiny 50 copy pressing JaC is doing up. All tapes ship September 23rd from the UK.

Lee & Derek are no strangers around these parts. We gushed about Noble’s amazing No Kings imprint back in January, and recently talked with Rogers about this and that over the summer. He was even rad enough to offer up an unreleased track. Some of the material from “Unit Holds” is available to jam now, and is absurdly crucial. But please do not bother taking our word for it! Check out a few cuts from the tape below.
 

 

9.16.13: M.Sage “A Bad Case Of The Corners” Video

Echo slinger and Colorado resident M.Sage’s latest cassette, a C31 limited to 50 copies called “Scatter The Cabal”, will be out this Friday on Mirror Universe Tapes. Sage, who also runs the label Patient Sounds, made a video for the side A track “A Bad Case Of The Corners” using footage of the recent flood in his home state taken by his father Mick. You can check out the video below. Everyone in the Sage fam is safe and sound.

9.13.13: Goldrush Fest Companion Compilation

The Goldrush Music Festival will take place later this month, on the 27th & 28th to be exact, in Denver Colorado and will feature performances from Giant Claw, Noveller, MV & EE, Lee Noble, Derek Rogers, and Rene Hell just to name a few. To commemorate the event Planted Tapes is issuing a companion cassette with tracks from just about every artists involved and artwork by M. Sage. Eighteen in all, 16 of those being exclusive to this cassette.

It will be made in an edition of 300 pro-dubbed C84’s and cost ya $7 a pop. Though you also have the option to grip up in a few bundles deals that include tickets to the fest and 40-page zine.

Scope the track listing and a full stream of Side A:

Side A:
1. Noveller, “Completing the Cube Ambient”
2. Scammers, “Planet Earth”
3. mole people, “Bloodletting”
4. Hideous Men, “Gray Eyes”
5. Lee Noble, “Woman in the Dunes”
6. Comfort Link, “Threading the Brown Snake”
7. Thollem Electric’s Keyngdrum Overdrive feat. Heather Treadway, “eight”
8. M. Sage, “Expedition Blues Ascender”
9. Derek Rogers, “Live at Los Globos, 8/6/2013 (excerpt)”
10. Paw Paw, “Lost Dream”

Side B:
1. Cop Circles, “Sound Delivery”
2. Accordion Crimes, “Ivey”
3. Lee Dockery, “Drop”
4. Saguache, “Discovery Bell”
5. Giant Claw, “Jersey Christ”
6. Pythian Whispers, “Seance Frequency”
7. The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact, “Vibe Drone 2” feat. Crawford Philleo
8. MV & EE, “Green is the Colour”

Click here to purchase from Planted Tapes.

9.9.13: So Bad It’s Good – The Art Of Doing It Poorly

Some cassette packaging is bad. Just god fucking awful. But a select few, an elite squadron of zoinkers, make that shit so so sooooooo bad that it’s actually good. Somehow these turkeys manage to cross the border into dreggs-ville, floor the escalator, and make their way into a zone built just for them. A land where pixelated stickers are applied askew on twice-recycled Norelco cases just so. Where spray paint and Mod Podge are spat on discarded cassettes from the local library. Not because they are in a rush to get their release out into the world. No, no. It’s something else all together. It’s as if the part of the brain that tells a typical person “Yo, don’t use that poorly Photoshopped picture of Anthony Kiedis windsurfing, you can totally tell it’s not him” has been replaced with spray paint fumes and empty cases of Pepsi Jazz. These Sharpie and duct tape champions just must see the world differently. Shit like having uniform cassettes for a release is meaningless to them. Like a real estate agent trying to unload a crumbling shack as a “rustic fixer-upper with a cozy attitude” these noisers see cracked cases as “gently used cassette sweaters”, and I think they believe it in their core. It must be truly freeing, this nihilistic acceptance. It’s not bad, it’s brilliant. Here are three labels that do it so wrong it’s right.

American Tapes is a primo example. Started in the early-90’s by John Olson, AT’s discography is now hovering around the 1,000 release mark. It should be noted that some of the “releases” aren’t your standard “release” (ie: AM-900, a party that was held on April 23, 2011) but the lion’s share are cassettes. The early stuff was more mixed media projects than tapes, with materials like lacquer, plumbing tubes, dowels, caulk, toy train tracks, wood, and staples congealed together in a syrupy assemblage. Olson has evolved or devolved (depending on your mood) his style into what can only be described as truly American Tapeian. Shit is thrown together. Usually in heavily spray painted and flimsy boxes, polycases sealed with a random fragment of tape, an 11″x17″ poster with hyper-hued face collages folded into 4″x4″ squares, and re-purposed books-on-tape with a stray marker scrawl. Where the fuck is this dude gripping all of these books-on-tape from by the way?!? Thousands. He’s dubbed THOUSANDS of them. Where are they coming from?!? Anyway, even though all of the above sounds sorta negative, somehow it isn’t. I never get the feeling that Olson doesn’t give a fuck when he’s assembling a batch. I actually think he’s giving several fucks. Probably more fucks than the sleek as a mink coat pro-dubbed/pro-printed/shrink wrapped tape slingers give. That’s somewhat proven by the dumpster load of American Tape worship labels out there (you know who you are), but they never hit the nail square on the head. A random norm may see a stack of cassettes from American (FWI: despite the plethora of artist names, it’s probably Olson in some form) and declare that anyone could do that. If that’s the case, I haven’t seen it proven. And mugs have attempted for sure.

One of my favorite examples of Olson’s so bad/so good sensibilities is AM666: Sixes “666” 3xC26. Three tapes float around in a full size box like beer tabs inside a spent Coors can. The box is a knock off Raisin Bran, dusted with red, white, and blue spray paint. Enough to obscure the box, but light enough that you can still scope some of the nutritional facts. There is a postage stamp sized American Tapes logo pasted on the corner with another black & white photocopy that takes up about 70% of the box front. My favorite part; there was still fucking cereal in the box. Not two scoops, but like I said, it was a bo-bo brand. Not the real deal. Sometimes I just hold this thing in silence and laugh, knowing the results are totally what Olson envisioned in his dome. ‘Tis a thing that brings me much joy.

Out in Ohio is another straight up whacky crew that can’t be left out of this; Fairchild Tapes run by the Moth Cock brethren Doug Gent and Pat Modugno. There is some serious space casery going down with these dudes, and their output, in the most perfect ways. When chaps like this attempt to live the lavish cassette-life, they fail. They fail hard. Let’s face it, you can’t wake up at 3PM, eat some Skittles you found inside your NES, and then problem solve with NAC over the telephone about ink coverage and bleeds. But when they just ease back in a stained up La-Z-Boy and do what the little green dude that lives in their shirt pocket tells them to do, it’s gold. The majority of Fairchild tapes I own are either dubbed on prison cassettes with a dot of black ink on one side (I have no clue what that indicates??) or on some Recoton Ultra Flow cassettes from god knows when/where. A featured goof for me is a copy of the F.T.17: Godfrey “Scratched Oakley’s” tape where the label is sorta half torn off. As if Doug or Pat pursued a peel off that didn’t quite work out, followed by a “fuck it” declaration in unison. Then wrote F, a GIANT period, T, NO period, the number one, and I guess the number seven? Yeah, I suppose that could be a seven. Slap a sticker with a collage made on Paintbrush via Windows 3.1 on the cover, another sticker haphazardly inside for good measure, and top it off with a third hand-cut circle sticker on the case. NOT the part where it opens to persuade it to stay close. No, sir. It’s gonna go on the side opposite of that. Just because. Top it all off with oddly cut Jcards, spines that juuuuust don’t go far enough or juuuuust go a bit to far, rando price tags on cases and you got something that mom is most definitely going to hang up on the fridge. She don’t care if the sky is green and the dog has three legs. She loves you. She’ll always love you.

Last, but for the love of all you hold dear in this world, not least. MT5 Tapes. Stationed in Baltimore, MD as a kid brother to MT6 Records, MT5 does something that is very special. Some people try to make “bad” looking art in hopes of replicating an Angelfire webpage they did 15 years ago. Chasing that metaphorical dragon, ready to crop and invert an image on the fly. But to spawn images and cases this atrocious, to do this poor of a job, you gotta be born with it, baby. We all want to dunk from the foul line, but if you’re not Michael Jordan, it probably ain’t gonna happen. Same goes for New Age Hillbilly, the moniker of MT5’s CEO. His line is decently foul as well, so leave the dunking from it to him. Sure, you may hobble together a black and white picture of Elmo and some monkeys, cut it blindfolded, use packing tape to affix it to a CD slip case. But you had to think about it. You had to WANT it. MT5 just did it. It was like breathing or huffing glue to him. Natural as a rainbow.

Some people will never forget the moment they saw their newborn baby’s face for the first time, or where they were on 9/11. I’ll never forget first seeing the Palm Trees Cassette Duo / Legless split (MT5 0002-2008). Dave brought it over to play on Episode #6, giving a warning before letting it loose. The cover, another sticker (zoinkers love stickers), was too much to handle. The simple labels on the Jcard had Sharpie covering whatever word was before “Tapes 2008”. The insert bared the handwriting of several different humans, each using a different writing utensil. It become clearer with each passing second that this shit was high art. Or at least art that you made because you’re constantly… Whats the word? On the drugs.

I think the one unifying aspect of American, Fairchild, and MT5 Tapes, and why I accept their “bad” as “good”, is consistency. Like a hamster gripping a food pellet, every time they push the button the same thing comes out. They are fully aware of what’s going on here and are comfortable in their own skin, even if it’s coated with poorly placed stickers and paint splatter. I don’t want tapes that are garbage because the people making them are assholes that think it doesn’t matter. I want tapes that are garbage because the people making them are incredible and know it shouldn’t.

Cassette Store Day Reissue Tutorial
9.7.13 by Mike Haley

It’s here! Today is Cassette Store Day (known familiarly as #CassetteStoreDay to aficionados). While most are overcome with joy, the less hip amongst us do not live in neighborhoods with Cassette Stores. So what do you do if you find yourself amongst that sad class and unable to purchase the totally gnarly and necessary CSD exclusives like reissues from all of our favorite bands?!? Cue MP Lockwood, ready to drop some straight up cassette SCIENCE on your ass!

This three minute YouTube video will explain how you can conjure up your very own cassette reissue from almost nothing! I know what you’re thinking; “This CAN NOT be reel” (get it?). It may seem like alchemy, or at least internet trickery, but we checked Snopes and it all checks out. Watch here as he pulls an At The Drive In rabbit out of an analog top hat.

Follow him on Twitter: @radioshock

9.4.13: Who Has Tapes Anymore? #1

The fine people over at Ad Hoc have invited us to do a monthly feature where we can talk about some of our favorite recently released tapes. Sort of a PSA for the cassette world. It’s called Who Has Tapes Anymore? and the first one is up now. It highlights 11 of our summer loves from Prism Corp Virtual Enterprises, Shingles/Josh Millrod, C. Reider, Bitchin Bajas, Fairhorns, Tiger Village, Foodman, Ala Vjiior, Andrew Kirschner, Mundo Animal/Dark Spring/Black Thread, and a compilation on DZ Tapes.

Click here to check it out!

9.3.13: The Isolatarium – A Novel By Brad Rose
Experimental mogul Brad Rose apparently found time between making music, making cassettes and records, making podcasts, making tape recommendations, and making humans, to write a book. His 125-page sci-fi novel, The Isolatarium, is available through Amazon and Digitalis as an eBook now.

Rose came up with the concept for the book about an isolated space prisoner in the 24th century (you had me at “isolated space prisoner”) when he was finishing up a Charlatan album of the same name. The book comes with a digital companion soundtrack featuring sounds by Charlatan, Keith Rankin’s project Giant Claw (Keith also did the artwork), Paco Sala, Basic House, Rose Kallal and James Ginzburg, Prostitutes, Best Available Technology, Josh Mason, SEEKERSINTERNATIONAL, and Peder Mannerfelt.

This is part one of The Isolatrium. Expect part two by the end of 2013 or so, with a possible physical edition merging both chapters to follow.

Go ahead and start streaming the soundtrack now. I’m willing to wager that by the time it’s finished Mr. Rose will have already started a Foxy Digitalis Boxing League, North Sea Cruise Line, and a tasty BBQ Sauce.