Pitchfork
February 22, 2010
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Last December, Brooklyn's Oneida issued a limited-run cassette, Fine European Food and Wine, on Scotch Tapes. Sure, the tape contained years-old live improvisations the band deemed unfit for "mainstream" treatment. But Oneida aren't unheralded kids laboring in their bedrooms. Over the past decade, they've put out 10 albums on Jagjaguwar, including 2009 triple LP Rated O. "Why release a cassette?" their singing drummer, Kid Millions, muses. "Man, who knows, right?"
Oneida are only one of the most recent indie-inclined outfits embracing the tape format. London label the Tapeworm opened its virtual doors last summer, selling out a limited run of cassettes by enigmatic multimedia artist Philip Jeck. Upstart bands Jail and Harlem each put out tapes on Fullerton, Calif.-based Burger Records; Sub Pop went on to sign Jail, now Jaill, while Matador inked a multi-album deal with Harlem. Hometapes, the Portland-based label behind art-rockers like Bear in Heaven and Pattern Is Movement, capped the year by mailing out a label sampler to journalists-- on cassette.
Perhaps more surprisingly, a few of underground music's heavier hitters are also championing the medium. "I only listen to cassettes," Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore told CBC radio last summer. Dirty Projectors released last year's highly anticipated Bitte Orca on CD, vinyl, mp3-- and cassette. Deerhunter have made two EPs available on tape: 2008's super-limited On Platts Eyott and 2009's aptly titled Rainwater Cassette Exchange. Beck told Pitchfork last summer he was recording a cassette-only cover of Moore & co.'s classic EVOL album for an upcoming Sonic Youth box set (a spokesperson contacted for confirmation did not immediately respond to e-mail).
Tapes never fell completely out of favor among experimental and noise musicians, but their broader underground resurgence appears to reflect a confluence of cultural trends. Instant access to almost any recording has left some of us over-stimulated, endlessly consuming without really digesting what we hear. Many children of the 1980s first owned their music on cassette, so for them the format represents a nostalgia for simpler times; younger kids probably never owned cassettes in the first place, so for them tapes don't have any negative associations. The spread of Internet-enabled smart phones and 24/7 social networking has made work and pleasure increasingly intertwined in our digital existences. Like records, cassettes offer listeners a tangible experience at a time when our jobs, our social lives, and our popular culture are becoming more and more ephemeral.
In a January blog post for London's Guardian, music critic Simon Reynolds rightly linked cassettes' netroots resurgence to the 2000s' decade-long 80s obsession. Not only were tapes the way many young people first owned music in the Reagan era; from post-punk to C86 to riot grrrl to industrial and noise, cassettes also embodied the 80s underground's do-it-yourself ethic. So much so, in fact, that many indie labels never stopped creating them. Lowell, Mass.-based noise label RRRecords has kept cassette culture alive into the new millennium, joined by Wolf Eyes' likeminded American Tapes and Heavy Tapes labels. In the early to mid-00s, lo-fi garage/psych duo Sic Alps' Folding Cassettes, Woodsist parent Fuck It Tapes, and L.A.-based Not Not Fun-- along with lo-fi maestro Ariel Pink-- helped chart cassettes' course back from pure outsider art to a skewed kind of pop. Last August, Rhizome writer Ceci Moss identified 101 cassette labels.
Cassettes outsold vinyl and compact disc, respectively, from the early 80s until the early 90s. And yet despite their recent resurgence in certain indie circles, 2009 was the worst year for cassette sales since Nielsen SoundScan started keeping numbers, in 1991, according to the record-industry sales data provider. There were a staggering 8.6 million cassettes sold in 2004, and cassettes were still selling 1 million-plus copies as recently as 2006. But by last year-- vinyl's best year in the SoundScan era-- cassette sales had plunged to a pathetic 34,000. Of the 2,000 tapes sold year-to-date, most have been albums at least 36 months old, bought at indie retailers in the south Atlantic region, in the suburbs, according to SoundScan. Last year's best-selling cassette: Jagged Era, the 1997 debut album by Atlanta R&B group Jagged Edge. Now you know.
Paradoxically, it may have taken the technology of the 00s for the technology of the 80s to really make a comeback. Today's cassette culture is both a reaction to and a product of digital media, the Internet, and downloading, says Shawn Reed, who runs Iowa City-based cassette label Night People. On one hand, tapes are "the embrace of something old and outdated, intentionally obscure and marginal, almost pointless in some way," he acknowledges. On the other hand, the Internet is a place where cassettes are "allowed to flourish," Reed says-- the web helps niche products reach a wider audience. Matthew Sage of Patient Sounds says the Fort Collins, Colo.-based cassette label's tapes would be "collecting dust in our living room" without the work of blogs, crediting Jheri Evans' Get Off the Coast in particular. "Blogs cater to audiences with really specific tastes, and with their help, they can make an item that seems benign or totally outdated a 'must-have,' which is kind of a double-edged sword," Sage observes.
One sound that helped was chillwave aka glo-fi aka hypnagogic pop. Washed Out and Toro Y Moi each released cassettes on Charleston, S.C.-based Mirror Universe, Neon Indian played warped tape like an instrument on debut full-length Psychic Chasms, and Memory Tapes-- well, just look at the name. Artists on New Jersey indie Underwater Peoples, such as Julian Lynch or Real Estate-related project Ducktails, were putting out cassettes for tiny labels like Arbor. Built on the haze of nostalgia, boosted by the feeling that the whole thing is an organic underground movement, and trading in lo-fi production, chillwave is perfect for the boombox or old auto cassette deck.
Artists choose to put out their music on tapes for reasons both aesthetic and practical. From a practical standpoint, cassettes are arguably the least expensive physical recording format available. Burning CD-Rs one-by-one might be cheaper, but once you get into buying large-scale duplicators, there's not much comparison. All told, a cassette costs $0.20 apiece to manufacture, says Sic Alps singer/guitarist Mike Donovan, whose Folding Cassettes is set to release a Greatest Hits double album this year on Yik Yak. "$1,500 to release a CD or LP of music that was bound to sell 50 or 100 copies of the minimum 500 run caused me to release a bunch of limited lathe cuts, but then ultimately I switched over to cassettes exclusively," he explains. It doesn't hurt, either, that tapes can be made quickly, with no minimum order. Sean Bohrman, who runs Burger Records with Lee Rickard, points out one other important practical consideration. "We put out CDs on our label, too," he says. "Nobody buys them."
Cassette label operators definitely aren't oblivious to the collectability of limited edition tapes, but these are people with day jobs and/or classes. When it comes to manufacturing and distribution, they have to get creative, and they have to do most of the work themselves or with friends. "It's basically a lemonade stand," Ben Ellenburg says of Mirror Universe, the label he runs with Ryan Moran, where cassettes are dubbed straight from his laptop.
Pretty much all these labels stuff their tapes by hand. Some, like Scotch Tapes, occasionally recycle old cassettes. Many order their tapes from Brooklyn-based National Recording Supplies, which will cut tapes to any length-- perfect for shorter releases. "We source our tapes from a very small company located in the north of England," says John Arthur Webb of UK indie Paradise Vendors. "I think they used to make most of their money from making Biblical tapes. All their stock is very old now. It's so cheap to buy, but all the colors are faded. If you order a bunch of 'red' colored tapes, you won't get red tapes-- they'll be a sun-faded orangey pink color. They have a disclaimer on their website about it. It's great."
In an exhaustive 2007 essay, "The Hallucinatory Life of Tape", music critic Paul Hegarty presents a compelling aesthetic case for cassettes. "Within the dying of media comes the passing or slow dying of individual units-- tapes, records, cylinders, cartridges-- all of which decay, and in so doing, seem to take on characteristics of having lived," Hegarty contends. "Once digital media arrive as 'other', as cyborg sound, the analogue seems to breathe, however rasping the sound." Hegarty exalts the unique properties tape takes on when transferred to another medium-- specifically, the reel-to-reel tape-to-digital decay of avant-garde composer William Basinski's 2002 album The Disintegration Loops. But many people who release music on cassette itself are also drawn to the format's almost-human imperfections.
Take Super Furry Animals and Neon Neon frontman Gruff Rhys, who issued Welsh singer-songwriter Cate LeBon's Me Oh My on cassette last year as the first release for his own Irony Bored imprint. "Listening to a cassette tape is not an exact science," says Rhys. "Some cassette players play them a little faster. Others distort and phrase the music, changing the sound on the cassette forever. My first introduction to U2 was listening to a cassette that had at some point been chewed up by a dog. It sounded like a recording of a My Bloody Valentine rehearsal or something, full of incredible whooshing noises and vibrato. Imagine my disappointment on hearing the correct version a few years later."
Ultimately, the worst thing about mp3s isn't their quality, but that they lend themselves to "knee-jerk reactions," says Mike Sniper, who runs Brooklyn-based Captured Tracks and records as Blank Dogs. "You don't have to buy something and give it a shot-- you can just flip through and think it's boring or not your thing," Sniper says. "Which is really sad, because when I got into music as a kid, I had to at least try everything out for a while and I never liked most of it at first."
Unlike vinyl purists, cassette listeners can't jump to a particular track, only rewind or fast-forward. "A strong personal connection can be formed because it's not an easy format to dump onto an mp3 player," says Kevin Greenspon, who runs Southern California-based Bridgetown Records. "You can't skip around through the tracklisting, so the actual tape and the album become one and the same." A few years ago, during the most recent outpourings of nostalgia for cassettes, writers focused on the mixtape: Moore's Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture, Nick Hornby's Songbook, Rob Sheffield's heartbreaking Love Is a Mix Tape. In an age of total customizability, the new cassette culture looks to tapes for their lack of it.
Perhaps because cassette culture makes it so easy for fans to participate, tapes' appeal for listeners is similar what attracts creators. "I think there's a group of people-- fans and artists alike-- out there to whom music is more than just a file on your computer, more than just a folder of mp3s," says Brad Rose of Tulsa, Okla., label Digitalis. "It's something more tangible."
Hearing music on cassette for the first time is a different experience, too. For one thing, limited-edition tapes aren't likely to leak months in advance. Oneida's Kid Millions draws a loose connection to the handmade or craft movement going on outside the music world. He also recalls the sense of intimacy he got from a Daniel Higgs tape called Devotional Songs, which is basically just the former Lungfish frontman singing into a 90-minute cassette. "Though it's clearly an illusion, the gap between the creator and listener felt smaller," Millions notes.
Critics of today's cassette revival accuse tape fetishists of backwardness and nostalgia. They're right. "My attraction to tapes probably stems from my age," says Alex Davis, whose Leftist Nautical Antiques has just sold out an extended cassette version of Austin lo-fi group Pure Ecstasy's excellent Future Nostalgia 7". "Being 20 years old, I'm among the youngest people who remember a time before the iPod, where it was a really big deal to get a new CD/tape and rush home and put it in that little boombox everybody had. You told your friends, you played it for your friends, and you fell in love and cherished that small collection of records. It doesn't matter that it was Will Smith's Big Willie Style or your parents' Fleetwood Mac Greatest Hits. When mp3s hit I was like, 'Who needs CDs or tapes?', but the further and further I got away from the experience of listening to full albums, going to the record store, and sharing what you found with friends, the more I realized I was just becoming a pretentious fuck with a full iPod, not somebody cherishing a collection of albums I was in love with. When I started listening to albums just to find out my favorite three tracks so I could make raging mixes or blog about them, I realized my complete lack of soul."
"I remember a cassette cathedral," Deerhunter's Bradford Cox murmured two years ago, on his band's Weird Era Cont. bonus album. Memory believes before knowing remembers. For younger cassette adherents, "nostalgia" is barely the right word. In many ways, the next generation's discovery of tape parallels a slightly older demographic's discovery of vinyl. "Most actual baby boomers still think that vinyl is obsolete and don't listen to records," Mirror Universe's Ellenburg says. "And I guess the way they think about records is the way a lot of people my age and maybe a little younger would think about cassette tapes. My girlfriend just turned 21, and I don't think she ever owned a tape deck."
According to Captured Tracks' Sniper, kids about 16 to 23 didn't buy cassettes when they were a popular format, so they "don't have an inherit hatred" of tapes that people in their late 20s or older might. "That's who I notice buys cassettes most at merch tables," Sniper says. "Whenever Blank Dogs goes on tour, we run out of tapes first."
Come the apocalypse, it may be tapes that outlast their digital brethren. Old CDs wind up skipping, anyway-- "perfect sound forever" was a lie. Cassettes have their own problems, from unruly tape that you may need to tape together to inevitable disintegration, but there are certainly worse offenders. "Cassettes and vinyl are the analogue cockroaches to the nuclear Armageddon that is digital formats," Super Furry Animals' Rhys proclaims. "Back in the 90s when Super Furry Animals were starting out, we used to master tunes to digital DAT tapes if we didn't have the budget for reel to reel tapes. Most of these are unplayable today. The sound from them has seemingly vanished to thin air. I have had to remaster some back catalogue stuff from cassette copies-- which sounds great. It's unclear how long information will actually last in hard drives. In that sense it's always worth keeping a vinyl or cassette copy of a piece of music you truly cherish."
Nobody is calling for us to give up online music entirely. The cassette revival is neither all analogue nor all digital-- it's both. "It has been a slow progression that began with noise music and people who specifically chose the format for its lack of modernity and as an attempt to be willfully obscure," says Steve Rosborough of Minneapolis label Moon Glyph. "But now I don't see the format as an act of alienating subversion, but rather as a means of coming to terms with mass digitization and the loss of the physical format." Nor is music the only aspect of life becoming increasingly digitized. Does anybody really need a Foursquare notification that I'm having dinner at a Thai restaurant? Or am I simply reducing my existence to fit the presumed desires of some yet-to-materialize advertisers? Cassettes give us a cheap, romantic, pre-digital means of engaging with music, but they don't require us to give up our Internet addictions-- in fact, the two work hand in hand.
As trends change and a new technological status quo emerges, the success or failure of the cassette format will ultimately depend on the music. If artists with exciting ideas continue to put out their recordings on tapes, an audience will follow; if and when cassettes are again seen as yesterday's news, music fans will move on to other mediums-- old or new. In the meantime, Hometapes founder Sara Padgett Heathcott shares a story that could soon become all too familiar. "Our intern Lyndsey works at Music Millennium here in Portland," she says. "A teenage boy came in a couple weeks ago, looking for tapes for his new girlfriend who said she liked them. The store's tape stock has dwindled over the years, so Lyndsey suggested he make a mixtape. He then said, 'But I don't have a tape burner.'"
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"There's already a cassette industry, but it's pretty subterranean," Thurston Moore told CBC radio last summer. That means if you haven't busted out your cassette deck in a while, or if you never had a cassette deck to begin with, there's a whole wide underground world of tapes and tape labels for you to explore. The following list isn't intended to be definitive, any more than cassettes are supposed to sound like CDs. Still, here's a modest sampling of noteworthy tapes, labels that release tapes, and places you can find tapes, just to get you started.
Ten Recent Tapes Worth Seeking Out
Washed Out: High Times [Mirror Universe; 2009]
This cassette from Georgia's Ernest Greene has more of the syrupy synths, mush-mouthed harmonies, and fractured grooves of the bedroom producer's breakthrough Life of Leisure EP.
Cloud Nothings: Turning On [Bridgetown; 2009]
The cover shows a cloud, but underneath all that sloppy homemade production, this project from Cleveland's Dylan Baldi beams with punk-pop hooks and bratty charm.
Ducktails: Acres of Shade [Arbor; 2008]
You can get a better feel for the full breadth of this side project of Real Estate's Matt Mondanile on last year's self-titled and Landscapes LPs, but Acres of Shade is perfect for tape: two sides, two languid ambient tracks. They sound like the instrumental interludes on Deerhunter's Cryptograms, except you can take summer-afternoon naps to them.
Pill Wonder: Jungle/Surf [Wild Animal Kingdom Records; 2009]
These playpen-safari lo-fi pop ditties from Seattle's Will Murder-- first issued on a Olympia, Wash., label run by Dana Jewell-- are making the transition from cassette to vinyl thanks to Underwater Peoples.
Spectrals: Spectrals [Suplex Cassettes; 2009]
This Leeds one-man band revisits 1960s teen angels with Real Estate's beach-wobble and So Cow's gentle wink.
King Tuff: Was Dead [Colonel; 2008; cassette reissue Burger Records; 2009]
Kyle Thomas, aka King Tuff, has since signed to Sub Pop with his other band, Happy Birthday, but don't miss the shambolic garage-pop of Was Dead, reissued last year on Burger after its initial 2008 release on Colonel.
M. Pyres & the Skygaze Family Band: Apart the Echo [Patient Sounds; 2009]
Colorado is the home of Candy Claws, Weed Diamond, and this ambitious project led by Patient Sounds' Matthew Sage. Alternating between mists of feedback and folk-flecked post-punk clambering, Apart the Echo is best suited for cassette, where you can't conveniently skip tracks. "Eat the orange, just like the apple."
Julian Lynch: Born2Run [Wild Animal Kingdom; 2009]
Speaking of oranges: Julian Lynch turned hammock-bound heads with his "Banana Jam Pt. 1" alongside fellow New Jerseyans such as Real Estate on last summer's Underwater Peoples compilation. That homespun electro-psych track, along with seven others not on Lynch's Orange You Glad LP, appears on this casually immersive cassette.
Terror Bird: Sociopaths Are Glam [Night People; 2009]
This Bowie-eyed art-pop project led by Vancouver's Nikki Never first caught my ear with their overlooked "Shame Is on Your Side" 7" for Summer Lovers Unlimited. Whether upbeat and catchy ("Beat Off Queen") or percussion-less and funereal ("Nine Million Rainy Days"), Sociopaths Are Glam focuses on Never's raw, reverbed vocals, with haunted keyboard arrangements steeped in minimalistic 80s new wave.
Hal McGee: The Man With the Tape Recorder [self-released; 2007]
Recent interest in vinyl and cassettes naturally begets jokes about what's next-- eight-tracks, laser discs?-- but Hal McGee, a pioneer in the cassette medium during the 1980s, has already moved to a format that he says actually predates portable cassette players: microcassettes. Recorded and edited solely in that medium, The Man With the Tape Recorder is a musique concrete art piece, documenting the wide-ranging observations and scattered lo-fi sonic experiences of a man with, yeah, a microcassette recorder.
More tapes to check out:
Oneida: Fine European Food and Wine [Scotch Tapes]; Sic Alps: Fool's Mag [Folding]; Cate LeBon: Me Oh My [Irony Bored]; The Fresh & Onlys: Bomb Wombs [Fuck It Tapes]; Pure Ecstasy: Future Nostalgia [Leftist Nautical Antiques]; Toro Y Moi: Body Angles [Mirror Universe]; The Twerps: The Twerps [Night People]; First Base: Cassette Single [Pizza Party]; Legionnaires: Super Soft EP [Leftist Nautical Antiques]; Nerve City: Hell Tape [Amateur Depression]; Dirty Beaches: Dirty Beaches [Night People]; Nobunny: Love Visions [Burger]; Altar Eagle: Judo Songs [Digitalis]; Weed Diamond: Sweater Kids [Mirror Universe]; Active Child: Sun Rooms [Mirror Universe]; Martial Canterel: Cruelty Reigns Through Ages [Chondritic Sound]
Cassette Labels
Bridgetown Records
Hailing from east of Los Angeles, Kevin Greenspon's label is probably best known for the Cloud Nothings tape, but it has also released raw, witty naive pop by him and Daniel Johnston-ish wunderkind Nicole Kidman (no, not that Nicole Kidman), among others.
Burger Records
Not only have this two-man Fullerton, Calif., label put out noteworthy cassettes by a handful of bands that went on to bigger labels (King Tuff, Jaill, Harlem), they also recently did the unthinkable in this day and age: They opened a record and cassette store.
Captured Tracks
Better known for CDs and vinyl by the likes of Dum Dum Girls, Woods, and Ganglians, Brooklyn-based Blank Dogs' label has also put out cassettes by founder Mike Sniper's band and former Ariel Pink bandmate Gary War.
Folding Cassettes
The San Francisco label run by Sic Alps' Mike Donovan has released noise, punk, and experimental sounds by Yellow Swans, Telepathe, and Ben Chasny aka Six Organs of Admittance. Donovan says Sic Alps' Fool Mags cassette is still in print and a double-LP Greatest Hits of Folding Cassettes is due this year on Yik Yak.
Fuck It Tapes
With Fuck It Tapes and its Woodsist sublabel, Jeremy Earl-- frontman for Brooklyn-based Woods-- has played a key role in cassettes' transition from primarily a noise/avant-garde medium to a format used for lo-fi rock, noise-pop, and shitgaze. Fuck It Tapes releases include Vivian Girls, Wavves, Excepter, Meneguar, Magik Markers, Jana Hunter, Yellow Swans, Blank Dogs, the Fresh & Onlys, Pocahaunted, and of course, Earl's own band.
Mirror Universe
The Charleston, S.C., operation of Ben Ellenburg and Ryan Moran started out with the idea of being a drone label. But after a single drone release, Mirror Universe has become one of the preeminent purveyors of that psychedelic synth-pop known variously as chillwave, glo-fi, or hypnagogic pop. Last year came releases from Washed Out, Toro Y Moi, Weed Diamond, and Active Child, with tapes by the likes of Dead Gaze and Darby Crash expected this year.
Night People
Other tape label chiefs sing the praises of Shawn Reed's Iowa City-based Night People for its artful, handmade packaging, but tapes from Terror Bird, the Pheromoans, the Twerps, Shearing Pinx, Dirty Beaches, Savage Young Taterbug, and Reed's own Wet Hair (with Ryan Garbes) offer plenty to admire sonically, too.
Not Not Fun
Coming out of the noise/psychedelic scene in tandem with Night People, Fuck It, and Arbor, Los Angeles-based Not Not Fun has moved a bit toward sunny tunefulness with the rest of the cassette format, releasing music by not only Pocahaunted, Cloudland Canyon, Foot Village, Wet Hair, Charalambides, Shearing Pinx, and Christina Carter, but also Abe Vigoda and Ducktails.
Paradise Vendors / Italian Beach Babes
London's Paradise Vendors and Italian Beach Babes are two separate labels, but on March 1 they're releasing a joint 12", so it makes sense to mention them together. Both have released music by label bosses' Male Bonding (who last year signed to Sub Pop) and Graffiti Island bands, including a GG Allin tribute split with Pens. The upcoming compilation also showcases such scruffy noise-pop outfits as Spectrals and Teen Sheikhs.
RRRecords
Although they might raise an eyebrow at the comparison, in many ways this label run by Ron Lessard out of Lowell, Mass., is the grandaddy of the recent uptick in cassette releases. Concentrating on noise and experimental music, the label's discography includes Merzbow, Prurient, and Wolf Eyes, among many others.
Scotch Tapes
Al Bjornaa runs his one-man label out of Batchawana Bay, Ontario-- when he's not working as a fisherman. In addition to Oneida, Scotch Tapes' roster has included Karl Blau and even Mike Watt.
More labels to check out:
Amateur Depression; American Tapes; Arbor; Bart Records; Breakfast of Champs; Cult Maternal; Digitalis; Exbx Tapes; Gift Tapes; Goaty Tapes; Heavy Tapes; Housecraft; Irony Bored; Leftist Nautical Antiques; Moondial; Moon Glyph; Near Tapes; Obeast Tapes; Patient Sounds; Skrot Up; Stunned Records; Tapeworm; Tired Trails Collective; Wild Animal Kingdom
People sell tapes the way they manufacture them-- that is, it's pretty do-it-yourself. Besides label websites, which often use PayPal or Big Cartel, and tour merch booths, you can find tapes via small or single-person mail orders like Eclipse, Tormentosa, and Boa Melody Bar, as well as record stores like Boomkat, Carrot Top, Reckless, and Aquarius.
Ten Recent Tapes Worth Seeking Out
Washed Out: High Times [Mirror Universe; 2009]
This cassette from Georgia's Ernest Greene has more of the syrupy synths, mush-mouthed harmonies, and fractured grooves of the bedroom producer's breakthrough Life of Leisure EP.
Cloud Nothings: Turning On [Bridgetown; 2009]
The cover shows a cloud, but underneath all that sloppy homemade production, this project from Cleveland's Dylan Baldi beams with punk-pop hooks and bratty charm.
Ducktails: Acres of Shade [Arbor; 2008]
You can get a better feel for the full breadth of this side project of Real Estate's Matt Mondanile on last year's self-titled and Landscapes LPs, but Acres of Shade is perfect for tape: two sides, two languid ambient tracks. They sound like the instrumental interludes on Deerhunter's Cryptograms, except you can take summer-afternoon naps to them.
Pill Wonder: Jungle/Surf [Wild Animal Kingdom Records; 2009]
These playpen-safari lo-fi pop ditties from Seattle's Will Murder-- first issued on a Olympia, Wash., label run by Dana Jewell-- are making the transition from cassette to vinyl thanks to Underwater Peoples.
Spectrals: Spectrals [Suplex Cassettes; 2009]
This Leeds one-man band revisits 1960s teen angels with Real Estate's beach-wobble and So Cow's gentle wink.
King Tuff: Was Dead [Colonel; 2008; cassette reissue Burger Records; 2009]
Kyle Thomas, aka King Tuff, has since signed to Sub Pop with his other band, Happy Birthday, but don't miss the shambolic garage-pop of Was Dead, reissued last year on Burger after its initial 2008 release on Colonel.
M. Pyres & the Skygaze Family Band: Apart the Echo [Patient Sounds; 2009]
Colorado is the home of Candy Claws, Weed Diamond, and this ambitious project led by Patient Sounds' Matthew Sage. Alternating between mists of feedback and folk-flecked post-punk clambering, Apart the Echo is best suited for cassette, where you can't conveniently skip tracks. "Eat the orange, just like the apple."
Julian Lynch: Born2Run [Wild Animal Kingdom; 2009]
Speaking of oranges: Julian Lynch turned hammock-bound heads with his "Banana Jam Pt. 1" alongside fellow New Jerseyans such as Real Estate on last summer's Underwater Peoples compilation. That homespun electro-psych track, along with seven others not on Lynch's Orange You Glad LP, appears on this casually immersive cassette.
Terror Bird: Sociopaths Are Glam [Night People; 2009]
This Bowie-eyed art-pop project led by Vancouver's Nikki Never first caught my ear with their overlooked "Shame Is on Your Side" 7" for Summer Lovers Unlimited. Whether upbeat and catchy ("Beat Off Queen") or percussion-less and funereal ("Nine Million Rainy Days"), Sociopaths Are Glam focuses on Never's raw, reverbed vocals, with haunted keyboard arrangements steeped in minimalistic 80s new wave.
Hal McGee: The Man With the Tape Recorder [self-released; 2007]
Recent interest in vinyl and cassettes naturally begets jokes about what's next-- eight-tracks, laser discs?-- but Hal McGee, a pioneer in the cassette medium during the 1980s, has already moved to a format that he says actually predates portable cassette players: microcassettes. Recorded and edited solely in that medium, The Man With the Tape Recorder is a musique concrete art piece, documenting the wide-ranging observations and scattered lo-fi sonic experiences of a man with, yeah, a microcassette recorder.
More tapes to check out:
Oneida: Fine European Food and Wine [Scotch Tapes]; Sic Alps: Fool's Mag [Folding]; Cate LeBon: Me Oh My [Irony Bored]; The Fresh & Onlys: Bomb Wombs [Fuck It Tapes]; Pure Ecstasy: Future Nostalgia [Leftist Nautical Antiques]; Toro Y Moi: Body Angles [Mirror Universe]; The Twerps: The Twerps [Night People]; First Base: Cassette Single [Pizza Party]; Legionnaires: Super Soft EP [Leftist Nautical Antiques]; Nerve City: Hell Tape [Amateur Depression]; Dirty Beaches: Dirty Beaches [Night People]; Nobunny: Love Visions [Burger]; Altar Eagle: Judo Songs [Digitalis]; Weed Diamond: Sweater Kids [Mirror Universe]; Active Child: Sun Rooms [Mirror Universe]; Martial Canterel: Cruelty Reigns Through Ages [Chondritic Sound]
Cassette Labels
Bridgetown Records
Hailing from east of Los Angeles, Kevin Greenspon's label is probably best known for the Cloud Nothings tape, but it has also released raw, witty naive pop by him and Daniel Johnston-ish wunderkind Nicole Kidman (no, not that Nicole Kidman), among others.
Burger Records
Not only have this two-man Fullerton, Calif., label put out noteworthy cassettes by a handful of bands that went on to bigger labels (King Tuff, Jaill, Harlem), they also recently did the unthinkable in this day and age: They opened a record and cassette store.
Captured Tracks
Better known for CDs and vinyl by the likes of Dum Dum Girls, Woods, and Ganglians, Brooklyn-based Blank Dogs' label has also put out cassettes by founder Mike Sniper's band and former Ariel Pink bandmate Gary War.
Folding Cassettes
The San Francisco label run by Sic Alps' Mike Donovan has released noise, punk, and experimental sounds by Yellow Swans, Telepathe, and Ben Chasny aka Six Organs of Admittance. Donovan says Sic Alps' Fool Mags cassette is still in print and a double-LP Greatest Hits of Folding Cassettes is due this year on Yik Yak.
Fuck It Tapes
With Fuck It Tapes and its Woodsist sublabel, Jeremy Earl-- frontman for Brooklyn-based Woods-- has played a key role in cassettes' transition from primarily a noise/avant-garde medium to a format used for lo-fi rock, noise-pop, and shitgaze. Fuck It Tapes releases include Vivian Girls, Wavves, Excepter, Meneguar, Magik Markers, Jana Hunter, Yellow Swans, Blank Dogs, the Fresh & Onlys, Pocahaunted, and of course, Earl's own band.
Mirror Universe
The Charleston, S.C., operation of Ben Ellenburg and Ryan Moran started out with the idea of being a drone label. But after a single drone release, Mirror Universe has become one of the preeminent purveyors of that psychedelic synth-pop known variously as chillwave, glo-fi, or hypnagogic pop. Last year came releases from Washed Out, Toro Y Moi, Weed Diamond, and Active Child, with tapes by the likes of Dead Gaze and Darby Crash expected this year.
Night People
Other tape label chiefs sing the praises of Shawn Reed's Iowa City-based Night People for its artful, handmade packaging, but tapes from Terror Bird, the Pheromoans, the Twerps, Shearing Pinx, Dirty Beaches, Savage Young Taterbug, and Reed's own Wet Hair (with Ryan Garbes) offer plenty to admire sonically, too.
Not Not Fun
Coming out of the noise/psychedelic scene in tandem with Night People, Fuck It, and Arbor, Los Angeles-based Not Not Fun has moved a bit toward sunny tunefulness with the rest of the cassette format, releasing music by not only Pocahaunted, Cloudland Canyon, Foot Village, Wet Hair, Charalambides, Shearing Pinx, and Christina Carter, but also Abe Vigoda and Ducktails.
Paradise Vendors / Italian Beach Babes
London's Paradise Vendors and Italian Beach Babes are two separate labels, but on March 1 they're releasing a joint 12", so it makes sense to mention them together. Both have released music by label bosses' Male Bonding (who last year signed to Sub Pop) and Graffiti Island bands, including a GG Allin tribute split with Pens. The upcoming compilation also showcases such scruffy noise-pop outfits as Spectrals and Teen Sheikhs.
RRRecords
Although they might raise an eyebrow at the comparison, in many ways this label run by Ron Lessard out of Lowell, Mass., is the grandaddy of the recent uptick in cassette releases. Concentrating on noise and experimental music, the label's discography includes Merzbow, Prurient, and Wolf Eyes, among many others.
Scotch Tapes
Al Bjornaa runs his one-man label out of Batchawana Bay, Ontario-- when he's not working as a fisherman. In addition to Oneida, Scotch Tapes' roster has included Karl Blau and even Mike Watt.
More labels to check out:
Amateur Depression; American Tapes; Arbor; Bart Records; Breakfast of Champs; Cult Maternal; Digitalis; Exbx Tapes; Gift Tapes; Goaty Tapes; Heavy Tapes; Housecraft; Irony Bored; Leftist Nautical Antiques; Moondial; Moon Glyph; Near Tapes; Obeast Tapes; Patient Sounds; Skrot Up; Stunned Records; Tapeworm; Tired Trails Collective; Wild Animal Kingdom
People sell tapes the way they manufacture them-- that is, it's pretty do-it-yourself. Besides label websites, which often use PayPal or Big Cartel, and tour merch booths, you can find tapes via small or single-person mail orders like Eclipse, Tormentosa, and Boa Melody Bar, as well as record stores like Boomkat, Carrot Top, Reckless, and Aquarius.
