Robert Inhuman’s
reviews & articles for Cassette Gods www.cassettegods.com
NURTURE ABUSE "Carcass Parade" (Truculent
I got this tape from
Chris in Providence
during a tour in 2007. It is a harsh noise tape, but coming at it from the
approach of somebody who is way down with noisecore.
Chris is one of the guys from Suffering Bastard btw,
check them out for sure... Anyway, Nurture Abuse is bleak and wrenching, a string
of many short feedback / distortion / vocal pieces on a nicely presented (this
is from Truculent after all) c10 tape. Imagery and titling is very consistant and what you would expect from the project's
name. It's not a common situation these days to hear a harsh noise tape that
screams that its roots are in punk and grindcore,
versus roots in just dicking around with random gear
for no reason besides being stoned, so I was happy to listen to this one a
number of times. I stop listening to it once I start to feel too much like the
guy who is about to have his head chopped off on the
photo inside the sleeve. I feel like when the time comes for my head to get cut
off I would like to be out doing something besides typing with one finger about
a tape for a webzine. Otherwise it's like the guy in Jurassic Park
who got eaten by the dinosaur when he was on the toilet, you know? Anyway, look
up Nurture Abuse, this tape if it is still available, and related bands such as
Suffering Bastard! www.truculentrecordings.net ~ Robert Inhuman 11/27/08
ABRADE / BAKA YARO / NUCLEAR DAWN / SMG 4-way
split (Noise Infection Music #2)
"A
FUCKING DESTRUCTION OF MELODIC WIMPS!!!"
(insert xerox photo of the
Pope) "THIS TAPE WILL SMASH YOUR WEAK EARS!!!" ...hell yeah, it might
not be as "noise" as it claims, like any grindcore
and punk slogans as usual, but that's part of the fun and tradition I guess, to
seem wild and totally out of control! This tape is really fun and a firm
disciple of DIY's unconditional friend.
"ABSOLUTELY NO COPYRIGHTS: COPY THIS TAPE NOW!!" ...tape trading in
the midst of 21st century mp3 oceans, such a strange
and confusing sentiment, but somehow it maintains a soft spot in my heart, even
though tapes = more garbage made/on Earth, and mp3's
= not physical clutter... ANYWAY... ABRADE = intense
high-energy grindcore from Chicago. They're comparable to bands like Magrudergrind and I'd recommend grabbing anything by Abrade
you can find if you really love current grindcore
that is not screamo in disguise. Hentai
Lacerator played with them in Chi on Saint Patrick's day 2007 in a basement and it was an awesome time, very
youthful and for-the-moment, the spirit of true hxc. BAKA YARO = fast intense crusty
hardcore from Slovenia!!!
Fucking hell, Dylan who does these tapes gets people from all over. He traded
me this other noisecore tape of a band from Romania! Can't
recall the name at the moment... Baka Yaro is high energy music with statements like "NO
BLOOD FOR OIL" audible in between. Call me PC, but that seems like a
fucking good thing to say through music or anything else!!! NUCLEAR DAWN = I
love Nuclear Dawn. Brutally awesome animal rights themed noisy grindcore duo from Columbus Ohio, this time with songs like
"Incarcerated By Employment", "Fuck Celebrities", and
"AS IF COMPASSION WERE A LAUGHABLE QUALITY TO HAVE" - if you love fun
and awesome grindcore, seriously look these guys up.
If you are into music that's about radical ideas, especially anything similar
to those of the A.L.F. - this is a band to get down
with. SMG = The band is from
Malaysia!
They play super fast and muddy hxc/grind, totally
desperate and wrenching, but with periodic breakdowns to string everything
together. I'd like to find more from SMG sometime. I
got this tape in 2007 from Dylan, but I think his contact has changed since
then. I guess he is living in Spain
right now! Try him at [email protected]
and definitely look up these bands!!! ~ Robert Inhuman 11/27/08
NUCLEAR DAWN / WARHEL / VOMITROCITY / DISMAL "SUBURBICIDE"
(Punched In The Throat Records #9)
FUCK YEAH! I think I got
this 4-way split tape back in 2006 at some point? In Columbus Ohio,
where I was living at the time... Nuclear Dawn = awesome (seriously
awesome!) animals rights themed brutally noisy grindcore duo from Columbus, guitar / drums / both
screaming and grunting... I adore the style they play and even how it is
recorded, totally lo-fi but you can hear everything
really well. I love Nuclear Dawn. Look them up!!! Warhel
= totally brutal crusty metal, whom I think live in a remote farm area of West Virginia(??) Songs themed around the atrocity of war, the
atrocity of mainstream political systems, and a healthy level of misanthropy,
maybe tied to Green Anarchism, I'm not totally sure and would wanna look them up further to avoid speculation... Dismal =
rugged crusty hardcore from Columbus,
more apocalyptic shit it seems. I think this band has/had(??)
people from stuff like Killed in Action in it... Dismal is way D-beat if you
are into that sorta thing. I get frustrated when
bands choose that specific style and never stray from it though, it seems
insecure / stale, but the stuff on this tape is still strong and exciting. Vomitrocity = gross and ridiculous goregrind
from Columbus, with songs that are more about jokes and fun stuff I associate
with the Cbus hardcore scene I saw earlier this
decade when I lived over there. Vomitrocity was/is(??) people from bands like Killed In Action and Dylan who
went on to Nuclear Dawn. Dylan did this tape, and I think his contact has
changed since it was released. Try him at [email protected] and search
for these bands on MY space (so sad) or elsewhere. "IMMUNE TO MELODY"~"GRIND FOR LIFE!!!" ~ Robert Inhuman
11/27/08
THE BREAKS (2004 demo)
Fuck yeah, talking about
tapes that have cool memories attached... I got this from The Breaks at the
beginning of my first Realicide tour, solo, the Summer of 2004 - at Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center in Saint Louis (fuck yeah
this is from a while back, before Joe and those dudes stopped coming to Lemp...) show with Voetsek and
some others... They were a really fun and exciting oldschool
hardcore band: fast, catchy, youth angst, and a little blood-letting... The
demo is 4 songs and a crudely drawn cover of a kid
whose brainseems to be exploding outta
his ears. This band hasn't existed in a long time, I think some of those guys
ended up in Chicago, but if you ever see something by 'em
and enjoy traditional hxc, check it out. Joe Sulier, the singer of Breaks, later went on to form the Get
Born! beat-inspired punk poetry series in STL and on
tours, involving Jim Swill from Realicide. ~ Robert Inhuman 11/27/08
PENIS GEYSER (3rd tape, 2007)
Fucking hell, back again
- CColumbus Ohio true noisecore
filth with a 3rd demo tape, from later 2007? or is
this into '08?! Either way you'll be pissed if you hear it. This 3rd Penis
Geyser tape offers TWICE as much as the previous one, 6 MINUTES! And it is
actually a bit more to work with, sounding like it could be edited together
from various recordings over a period of time, though each still only a couple
seconds long of course. For fans of Gerogerigegege,
Seven Minutes of Nausea, Gore Beyond Necropsy, Fear of God on a really
off-day... Penis Geyser is still that ritual shame of rock music, corroding
away the dignity of anyone it encounters! Tape comes in a "cassingle" style paper wrap-around adorned with a
drawing of Charlie Manson with a giant cock surging out of his mouth like some kinda play on the alien from that movie, Alien. ~ Robert
Inhuman 11/27/08
PENIS GEYSER (2nd tape, 2007)
"TOTAL DESTRUCTION
IS THE ONLY SOLUTION" - "MUSIC IS FOR NO ONE" --- This is the
2nd tape release of Columbus
Ohio's completely unreasonable noisecore band, Penis Geyser, recorded in 2007. It's a
little more to work with that the one the year before, this time filling a
whole 3 minutes on one side of a c6! Yeah, what an epic, huh? The recording is
basically indecipherable harsh noise, straying from the completely ADD
start/stop/repeat format of the earlier tape. There are three members credited
(including Mikeal of the Smash Music noisecore zine!!!) for various
percussion and vocal work, but it is seemingly inaudible... My favorite thing
about this tape is its look - all black xerox
with sparse white lettering inside a black envelope, tape's label is black
print on a black label... Reminds me of the Fields Of
Blood CD done on the Outfall Channel label in Dayton: ALL BLACK. There is a cool xerox booklet with a series of images of a woman altered in
different ways via photocopy machine work, which I'm still/forever a sucker
for. The look is totally "harsh noise", straight-faced and morbid,
despite the name of the band I mean. ~ Robert Inhuman 11/27/08
PENIS GEYSER "a tribute to the smiths"
The first demo from
Columbus Ohio TRUE noisecore creeps, Penis Geyser. If
you enjoy music you will most likely hate that this tape even exists!!! It is
actually a longer cassette but there is only 1 minute of audio on it. To make
things more excruciating and confusing, the recording makes most other NOISECORE sound hi-fi and complex! It makes Seven Minutes
of Nausea sound like Dream Theatre! The tracklist
consists of an "intro." followed by "songs 1-26", each
"song" determined by a nanosecond passing thought among the band
during the course of the 1 minute recording that is more count-offs than
anything else! I fucking love the classic prank with count-offs, a ritual of
many noisecore bands such as Ptao
and my ultimately beloved Final Exit! This tape will really piss you off,
unless you love noisecore, in which case it will
briefly remind you of that and then be over. It's from 2006 and I think the
contact address on the sleeve is out-dated. ~ Robert Inhuman 11/27/08
TAPERECORDING SHOWS AFTER MY
COMPUTER BROKE
The past few years of
this shit I hear is the "21st century" I haven't really used tapes
for almost anything except in my car, cos that's all
it can play, and to play looped samples at shows cos
I don't have a sampler. But I started recording shows on tape again after my
computer died. This is kind of a set back that far outweighs the fading
sentiment or stupid nostalgia for something that is just a product and often
just waste (like most of the non-digital music industry at this point, I hate
to admit...) If the tape runs out at the end the show doesn't get captured. If
it doesn't run out that time, it probably will the next time, unless I leave
the rest blank which always seems wasteful. I deal with a lot of bands that
play 20-30 minutes, so it can be hard to time things right with 60 and 90
minute cassettes: not have the last songs cut off + not waste the stupid
tape.
Then there is the issue of getting around to transferring this to
digital later on. I feel like I used to be more prompt about it, but when you
do 30 shows in a row you come "home" with a box full of tapes, hoping
you didn't lose any or tape over the wrong sides of some, then they sit there
for a couple years cos I don't have the time to
re-listen to hours and hours of shows that I might already have mixed feelings
about, just to have em suck away all the space on my
30 gig hard drive...
There is this completely ridiculous Toecutter
recording from Rotterdam
I have been meaning to find in a box of mostly unlabeled tapes from this year,
and I know it would be really cool to track it down for him, myself, friends...
but man just looking at the box of ??? tapes, then at my list of more pressing obligations... next
thing I know the tape is in Cincinnati
and I wound up back in LA. There are too many recordings that have fallen into
similar scenarios over the years. I have bad thoughts of the flimsy tape
crumbling and all the little magnetic shit turning to dust cos
I couldn't deal with it sooner. Any sentiment is totally outweighed by burden.
One thing I have appreciated about the taperecorder
is that it's battery-powered, and I have been rocking some re-chargables for a few years now. My old computer's battery
could not hold a charge so if it was unplugged during some audience's bodily
surge in a basement, the recording was just gone, no way around it. There were
a couple instances in which the guy running sound (I swear I will murder him
yet! Who's with me?) was for one reason or another
determined to cut the band off. First they cut the power to the house's system,
but we are usually also playing out of our own system. There was one time in
particular the sound guy just came over and started randomly pulling out plugs,
frantically trying to stop anything even remotely similar to gabber from
happening. Another time I remember a guy, frustrated that we had our own PA
after he'd turned the house's off, cut the power to
the whole room, even the lights... So the recordings were lost cos of the computer's need to "save" the wav
data. That doesn't happen with the physicality of a tape; what you've got is
what you've got. The only thing that can take it away is taping over it when
you forgot which side is blank.
Someday, like other grueling and questionably worthwhile projects,
I will sift through all those tapes and probably find a few really cool things
that I had completely forgotten about. Kind of like a time capsule or some
shit. Hopefully it won't suck quite as much as most time capsules I've heard
about, but I won't get my hopes up. Half the time I probably put the recorder
too close to the PA = it will be utterly unlistenable
and undecipherable.
So, in conclusion, to anybody reading Cassette Gods who ironically
hates tapes and recording shows with them, please feel encouraged to donate to
me some kind of mini-disc recorder or whatever is more current and reliable
technology for field recordings. My taperecorder is
from Target and can suck it once I find something better to rely on.
~ Robert Inhuman 11/24/08 [email protected]
PS. I am involved with CG to review HARDCORE tapes and related styles
such as grind, gabber, noisecore, powerviolence,
speedcore... If you send me something asking for a
review that is not within this "ballpark" you will be fucking sorry.
There are other writers in CG who do a great job with tapes as far as noise and
the less-aggro avant-garde, so keep them in mind for
that instead of me. If I ever write about something completely unrelated to HxC on CG it should be seen as a special case and not
something sent to me with a request attached. But if you have HxC or anything remotely related, hit me up and it's on.
KATCHMARE + ANTLER PISS
"AUTOMATIC WEDDING" (Scissor Death)
This tape was mailed to Cassette Gods with my name on it. I was
recruited into CG for the purpose of reviewing tapes dealing in all variations
of hardcore punk and electronic, not noise. This tape is very much a noise
tape, in just about every way, in every vague and irrelevant way. I don't
really listen to a lot of noise recordings, especially on cassettes, unless
they are specifically driven by some form of radical or sociopolitical ideas or
motivations. This element needs to be readily evident, cos
I can't fucking read minds. With no notes or explanation
or absolutely anything to convince me this is not just more SOUND FOR SOUND'S
SAKE or worse yet the complete tsunami of ACCIDENTAL NIHILISM that carries the
noise scene in the US and elsewhere, combined with any knowledge whatsoever of
my personal politics regarding the functions of music and bands which are
readily noticeable in most of what I involve myself with, why would I be
somebody who'd want to review this particular tape? There are other writers for
CG that surely feel much less critical and downright combative as me about the
popular noise scene, I just don't understand why I was
chosen as the target reviewer. Maybe it was just another case of somebody
seeing my name and making assumptions, I have no clue, but I do not usually
write reviews of ANYTHING, let alone tapes, nor do I seek or read read reviews at least 360 days a year I'd say, and I am on
here to review variations of hardcore music. The term "hardcore" is sooo fucking loose too, I mean it can mean hundreds of
things, but this tape not connected to hardcore by anything I've been brought
aware of. I am not gonna get into my opinion of it as
a noise tape on here, it's not why I'm writing and trust me you wouldn't wanna hear my thoughts on it anyhow. Please please please though feel free to
send your hardcore, grindcore, noisecore,
speedcore, etc.
not-just-made-up-genre-names-as-a-joke tapes to CG with my name on it and I
will talk about your tape! And this is not a rant saying you should not send
noise to CG, cos I'm pretty sure you're supposed to,
just please don't put my name on it cos it's not why
I'm writing for CG (I said it yet again, sorry) - You don't wanna
hear my opinion of the average noise tape cos I will
not talk about if it sounded good, I will talk about if it taught me jackshit or not about anything. Oh yeah, for this tape,
though I kinda didn't review it, www.scissordeath.com ~ Robert Inhuman, October 2008
DJ THUMPER! /
VANKMEN (Hate State)
So these are two people I've played and toured with a lot in
Realicide, but you know there aren't that many tapes I like listening to so I'm
gonna write about this one. It's a split c39 tape
recorded live from Ravesploitation Fest, November
2007 at The Smell in LA, by Jonathan Snipes (so you
know it's alright). It was Thumper's first actual live show, and still the best
to date (he doesn't play live very often), featuring gabber and breakcore mixes of the Mortal Kombat
theme, Andrew WK, Bush (the band actually) pitted against dialogue from the
infamous Virginia Tech shooter of 2006, Slipknot and a bunch of other nu metal bands I'm not going to bother trying to name.
Basically DJ THUMPER! (aka
Mavis Concave, btw) is really fun and well-produced gabber and breakcore fueled by pop culture samples, adding the
somewhat subtle mechanics of a rather dark commentary on the entertainment
world and how we relate to it as a society. VANKMEN, of Oakland,
upholds the title of "best speedcore gabber in North America"... yeah I stand by that statement,
and haven't run into much to challenge it so far. Vankmen
is fucking brutally hardcore and equally fun, satirizing spaced out kandy
ravers to a backdrop of ectoplasm-spattered
ghost-busting, in his live set combining hardware drum machines and bent noise
gear with segments of Ableton software tracks! This
was an incredible festival and this tape documents quite
accurately two of the acts that contributed, representing US gabber when so few ever do! Man,
breakcore is alright, aside from the gimmicky
fart-joke trends, but man, GABBER is what will always keep me going when the
going gets rough, and you know it frequently does! Lastly, as this is a Hate State
release, it's packaging is hand-knitted, plus the
sleeve with Thumper's "lyrics" and Vankmen's
shout-outs. When was the last time you came across hardcore techno and
hand-knitted tape cases in the same object?! Fucking hell, what a weird thing
to exist... DJ THUMPER! www.myspace.com/thumpallnight VANKMEN www.vankmen.com
HATE STATE (check out other releases too!) www.hatestate.info
~ Robert Inhuman 09/23/08
RIVAL FACTIONS
"Our Voice" (Flish Records)
Leo gave me this when we were in Richmond last month. Among all the comedic
burn-out psycho-dayglo paper-rad-clad
noise of their Church Of Crystal Light scene, I never expected to get a really
solid HARDCORE tape, among a serious bounty of work Flish
has released the past year (most is much more alligned
with noise / experimental / just plain WEIRD). Rival Factions' tape is on one hand
painfully stereotypical: images of bullet belts, riot gear cops, ugg.... gasmasks, AK rifles, and old english fonts combined with stenciled fonts. The
music is just as predictable as the imagery, and the lyrics are the expected
vague pseudo-revolutionary teen angst grab bag. But fuck it man, I really like
this music! I prefer to listen to bands like Drop Dead or fucking Crass (duh),
as more popular examples that is, for an affirmation of the attitude I
want to live with and stand behind, because they are slightly more articulate
and focused in their purpose, but AT LEAST bands like Rival Factions carry the
same youthful spirit and fun aggression without malice (I'd hope in many cases
at least) that brought me to punk and hardcore initially in my teens... They
might not be challenging me as an artist or as a radical, but maybe they are at
least challenging me to not forget the naive yet seed-planting attitude that
set my life on the course its on. I am not in a band that sounds, or is, much
like Rival Factions, but that kind of band was the starting point for me as a
person who'd want to be in bands at all. In there defense, at the risk of being
blatantly combative, AT LEAST a hxc band like this
attempts to speak out against violence and injustice, in their own way with
their own simple perspective on these subjects. I prefer it greatly over the
growing popularity of bands that base their material on flirting with sexism, homopobia, fascism, etc. You can call me a "PC
faggot" all you want, but I know the truth of these joking campaigns:
Historically they weaken our immunity to ideas of hatred and fascism, before
you know it the ideas have gone from JOKE to REALITY. So be fucking careful
with your satire; make sure it reads accurately AS satire; or there's a price
we all pay. And lastly, again in defense of more generic hxc
bands like Rival Factions, AT LEAST it does not bore me to tears. People cling
to the notion that noise music is inherently challenging and
"experimental", when in fucking reality it has become just as
pigeon-holed and predictable as classic hxc punk and
other cookie-cutter sorts of music. And comparing a generic hxc
band next to an equally generic noise band, at least hardcore still gets my
blood pumping, so on a primal level it has that in its favor and that's kinda why I'm writing this. I'm not gonna
live or think exactly how this tape implies I ought to, but I am gonna feel a little uplifted when I hear it. So thanks,
Leo!!! And of course in the true sense of anarchy and alternative choices,
their myspace link, www.myspace.com/rivalfactions
~ Robert Inhuman 09/20/08
DIANOGA
"Uprising" (Phonophobia)
This is a pretty sick grindcore tape I
got up in Minneapolis.
There seem to be some really awesome bands like this up there right now; we
played with another called Sloven that ruled too.
This stuff isn't exactly progressive in any particular way, but at least it's
keeping grindcore and thrash
really fun, high energy, nothing too technical or self-righteous. Our Minneapolis show was in a
filthy basement called the Cockpit, and this tape is a great souvenir of that
experience. Dirty water dripping outta the ceiling;
low ceiling and big support beams in the way so you can't even see who's singing
or drumming half the time; lights out and horribly overblown yet coherent
ENOUGH. The lyrics are... brief. If you like grindcore
like that this is a tape / band to check out. Oh yeah, the sleeve is a xerox of some sick deep-sea-monster artwork, which actually
reminded me of another band up in MPLS, the late Ganglion who seemed to have a
theme of dark sea horror or something... Anyway, www.myspace.com/dianoga420
~ Robert Inhuman 09/20/08
HEGEMONICIDE /
VICTORY! "Home Is Raped"
This tape is utterly unlistenable. But
in the spirit of noisecore, in its eternal mission to
smash all music into oblivion, I guess this makes sense. We played with
Victory! at 2 of our Michigan
shows this past summer, in Lansing and in their
home Grand Rapids
at a great non-profit venue called the DAAC (look it up!). Victory! is a really promising duo of Sam Snedeker
and Brandon Hill, who've formerly worked together in various incarnations of
noise and free-jazz-inspired improv. But yeah mane
now they play completely off the hook noisecore, in
all its classic confusion and obscurity. This tape is terribly unlistenable, but I really enjoyed their shows and would
definitely listen to something recorded in a slightly different way; any way
that allows me to hear what is going on musically even in the absence of
"music", haha... Hegemonicide
is Brandon solo
playing great hardcore with his guitar and a drum machine. I couldn't hear this
on the tape either, but you know maybe my tape is just fucked up cos Sam dubbed it for me late the night of the DAAC show
and maybe something happened...?! Anyway, we saw Hegemonicide
that night as well and it was really great. I'd definitely want to hear some
decent recordings of those songs. There were samples playing between songs too;
really great stuff that goes beyond the stereotype of "animal rights"
into a more mature attitude that it is LIFE overall we need to keep sacred and
in respect with all our thoughts and actions... very challenging ideas being
offered by a couple of guys just outta high school.
Leading me to the ZINE that comes with their tape! I know I've said that the
tape is really rugged in sound quality, but this book of images and LYRICS
quickly sparks an interest to learn, moreso than what
the fuck is up with these bands, who are these people, I'd like to talk to them
about these subjects and hear an elaboration on their perspective. I was blown
away to see a range of topics such as dietary disciplines, things that seem to
reference green anarchism, feminism, spirituality, speciesism,
"...Then fuck punk and fuck you. You are no different than the things you
claim to hate." I dunno, it was an array of
topics and ideas that really made me want to get to know these guys better...
and a little wanting to hear a better recording or at least find out if my copy
of the tape was messed up! The end of one side is filled with something like
reference materials(?!) - found
/ used (on the tape, however you wanna say it)
interviews with Utah Phillips, Cornel West, and Mumia
Abu-Jamal. Go to Grand Rapids
and meet these kids, or here's their contact... Sam, [email protected]
and Brandon, [email protected]
~ Robert Inhuman 09/20/08
XTRA VOMIT
"Inebriation" (Otherwise Dead Records)
Awesome hardcore punk in just about every way. The riffs are catchy but not poppy. The vocal
is strenuous and very human; totally youthful. I listen to this a lot in my car
(but if you're on a bike you could use yr walkman, which is
seeming like a MUCH more appealing situation these days). The production
rules so fucking hard cos it's way raw and warm but
not lo-fi, not losing any clarity and you can hear
what's going on to the right degree I think; even the way the tracks are linked
together is perfect; classic sample clips between tracks edited well and not
awkward or detracting from the music... I got this tape from the Loaded For Bear / Abrade tour in January 2007. I guess this guy Xtra Vomit, or Sock from Grand Rapids MI,
was supposed to be with em or something and he
couldn't make it, so they were getting his tapes out to people along the way. I
didn't initially know what it was (just that it was probably punk or grind and
not a noise tape); didn't know it was a solo act or that it was drum machine cos it's kind of like Mavis Concave's
SX where the machine is pretty similar to a standard hxc punk drum style. There's a cover of the band Cress (in
some ways similar, but not same, as Crass) which I didn't know before Cress
actually used drum machines too. This tape definitely got me listening to a lot
of Cress afterwards, which I'd really only heard briefly until then, and I can
see a good amount of influence they might've had on the Xtra
Vomit material in content and approach. There's a xerox
zine/book that comes with the tape and it's got the
words and collages and notes, totally fun but not at all just some childish
bullshit trying to adhere to some stereotyped aesthetic. Xtra
Vomit rules cos it's one dude in the midwest doing what he wants to do
in the vein of classic hxc punk even in the 21st
century. I think we're playing with him in Grand Rapids next month, so I'm pretty
stoked. I hear there are other releases besides this "Inebriation"
tape too... Contact Sock (that’s who made this tape) [email protected]
~ Robert Inhuman, June 2008
STUCK IN THE CAR
WITH CHEAP 120 MINUTE TAPES
Tape releases and the format
in general is becoming more and more confusing to me as their practicality is
severely lost to faster and more affordable digital formats, and as tape
becomes more and more a symbol of sentimentality rather than something
culturally relevant in the 21st century. I’m on tour right now and it’s been
difficult to find the time to collect nice words to say about tapes and their
few non-bullshit roles in current society, but I actually find myself using
them quite a bit during this tour, so instead of taking the easy way and
explaining several avenues of why the format is anti-progressive, I think I’ll
just talk about what I’m using tapes for right now and maybe a shaky attempt at
“why” too…
I’m driving an old car I bought cheap off this old dude in Cincinnati a couple years
ago when my last old dude car died. It’s just got a tape deck, and although I
have one of those adaptor things I don’t like fucking with a CD player so much
while I’m driving, and I don’t have an Ipod. One time
somebody bought me an Ipod and I returned it and
bought $330 of blank CDR’s; it ruled. But anyway, in
the box between the seats I’ve got a pile of way cheap 2 hour tapes of all
kinds of stuff; made them for when I drove from Cincinnati to LA in January. They are really
crappy tapes since they are more than 90 minutes. There’s no fucking way I was gonna put noise or any music that is heavily reliant on the
sound’s fidelity on those tapes.
Why do noise artists toil over their recordings and production,
only to cram it onto a format that ultimately compromises / does not preserve
the quality of the sound and wears down kinda quickly
compared to other formats? The fidelity is all there is. There’s no beat or
riff or hook element to distinguish tracks or artists apart. If I put on a tape
and it is immediately lost in the vast sea of noise tapes I’ve hear throughout
this decade; if it’s indistinguishable I know I’ve kinda
done something fucking stupid putting the tape on. If it is distinguishable
even in a decrepit state then it’s probably some of the much better noise out
there though, huh? Fuck it man, but maybe I can explain a little more…
For tapes I really prefer music that can decay endearingly when
the EQ starts wearing down, or when (in the case of my low quality 2 hour car
tapes) they’ll start getting wobbly or watery sounding. Music with beat and
riff and recognizable voice is still somewhat distinguishable in these
circumstances. The care in production of punk or breakcore
or gabber is more of a luxury and subordinate characteristic, where as with
noise or any much reliant on texture and very specific frequencies you really
can’t subtract from the fidelity without subtracting crucial aspects of the
material. Does this sound dick? That I won’t listen to harsh
noise or ambient or whatever cassettes, especially in my car with its crappy
speakers? I’ll listen to stuff that comes close, like noisecore or speedcore, but these
are still using something resembling beat and riff, though barely… and don’t
get me wrong, if the music means enough to me I will still listen to it on
tape; it’s not a big enough deal that’s I’d shut out something likely to be
valuable.
For those 2 hour tapes I’ve mainly been fucking with Christian
Death “Catastrophe Ballet” but the beginning of the tape always gets fucked up
and I have to fast forward it through my favorite songs so that the pitch isn’t
distorted and wavy. It sucks. Also been sticking with Cress; kind of like
Crass; and that tape usually plays ok which is a rare treat. These are those
shitty white tapes btw. Yeah they were cheap… DJ Sharpnel
mixes such as “Mad Breaks” and “Anime Gabba It”. It
seems like all my deathrock tapes are fucked cos I have Voodoo
Church and Kommunity Fk but both are way
mangled and will flip sided spontaneously or just speed up and shred up the
tape when I pull them out of the deck. These tapes are really low quality. I
was thinking “120 minutes, that’s more and I am gonna
be driving a lot so that’d be cool”… yeah, dead wrong, these suck. My Rob
Zombie / White Zombie mix is still going strong though, for some reason of
questionable merit. Alec Empire “Intelligence and Sacrifice” and DJ Promo “My
Claim To Fame” among other stuff. When I’m tired of
these tapes I know I can’t tape over them, they’re just junk.
So, sorry if these thoughts are kinda
scattered. I don’t know why I’m touring this much this summer, especially with
a car full of white 120 minute tapes. If you want me to review your releases, I
guess just keep the above in mind, aside from the fact that you probably aren’t
using white 120 minute tapes for your music. I’m planning to focus on all
variations and descendants of hardcore punk and techno, the more mutant the
better, for Cassette Gods, the zine that deals with
an inherently warm and tangible format, served to you via the tingling
frigidity of cyberspace, where warmth is only an illusion with your bullshit
personal interests wrapped in a thick glob of HTML clip art from some google-search mouse-clicking shit. You can see pictures of
tapes on here. This shit is so fucking weird…
~ Robert Inhuman 06/??/08
(CIDE index)