Falling Back In Fields of Tape
 Britt Brown

Top 10 Fuck It Tapes

It’s no secret that Jeremy Earl’s FIT label releases some of the greatest cassettes of the modern age. We have our Fuck It stash arranged in its own column in our home. You should too. Sadly, I don’t own every title. But here’s a top 10 of the ones I do. (Disclaimer: Knit Witch “Witchycraft,” Robedoor “Stoner Reaper,” Shepherds/Quintana Roo, and Pocahaunted “A Tear for Every Grain of Sand” are disqualified due to “conflict of interest”…i.e., I played on those tapes).

10) Hair Police – “Beyond Leech Pit”
First FIT CS I ever got. Lazy sunday muffled noise-clatter meanderings, “non-music” style. Way less aggro/hostile than their live vibe and “Constantly Terrified,” which I appreciate. Love how out-of-character the artwork is too...a drawing of lambs nibbling on diamonds falling from the sky. No leeches anywhere! Oh that’s right, this is BEYOND the Leech Pit. Whew. Feels good.

9) The Skaters - “Talking Head”
Basically zero Skaters albums are “bad,” but this one has an even more interesting arc than most, cause it goes from bored murky feedback babble into slightly more arranged tonal wobble into weirdly focused strumming patterns into literally “This Must Be The Place” by Talking Heads!!! So the progression is one of formless amp haze to, ultimately, meticulously composed art-pop song-smithery? What a journey, man. Probably Skaters’ most “conceptual” release.

8) The Brain Band
Elisa from Magik Markers, Karl/Axolotl, and Donovan & Glenn from Skygreen Leopards hang out and play musical Cranium. Lots of open mouth sky-breathing and aimless tambourine-shaking. Best thing about this tape is how song-y the 2 sides are…the voice/percussion synergy bond is sharp, totally builds to noise choruses, with psych breakdown parts and tight vibe-riffing. Like a BAND, not a collab. This band could be your brain. This band could be your brain on drugs.

7) Damned Yellow Swans
Classic stasis-crush action from these consistent geniuses. Sounds like two galactic laser cannons firing steady streams of white-hot light at one another, and the beams hitting head on, the atoms fusing together and then poetically disintegrating in the black compression of endless space. So, yeah, it rules. Cover is inexplicable, a weird grotesque freak figure in front of a mountain range.

6) Magik Markers
Hilariously sloppy/sick 1-sided C60 from these polarizing post-hippies. LOW-fidelity live set recorded who knows where, features some extreme wah-wah guitar wankery, Elisa busting slam poetry through heavy echo FX, slow-motion sub-sonar noise ooze, etc. Eventually Pete closes his eyes and plays drums to a dream-song in his head. The most overtly drugged-sounding Markers recording I’ve personally ever heard. I dig the hand-crayoned writing on the CS spine.

5) Family Underground - “Future Bread”
A crucial piece of the FU lexicon. “Future Bread” is up there with “Familiar Places” and “Axial” in terms of total dronal overload, a psychic wind tunnel of dense, churning, metallic morphine. Five hundred roiling loops and spikes and feedback ghosts summoned out to feed your dying mouth. Spectral, substantial. Great J. Earl cover art of lurking red-eyed wraith apparitions.

4) Shepherds
Kinda like the FIT house band, Shepherds is label chieftain Jeremy Earl, Christian of Woods/Meneguar, and GL Crane aka Non-Horse. A finer trio of Brooklyn psych-seers you’re not likely to find. This CS was their first (I’m pretty sure), and it captures everything they do best: rural ritual guitar séance, fucked machine/clatter atmospheres, death trip chants, beautiful doom dreaming. The cover photo shows a robed skeleton proffering alchemical oils. A life-size statue of Jesus stands slightly behind, eyes downcast. It’s worth 1,000 words.

3) Sword Heaven - “Fan Death”
Fucking A, what a band. This cassette retrospective by Ohio’s ugliest piss-pounders delivers a full hour of grossly engrossing audio misery. Spanning from SH’s earliest (2003) adventures in harsh bile and torture-drumming all the way to late 2005 masterpieces like “Dust Pneumonia Blues,” “Fan Death” is as fucked, vile, and deafening of a document as the band’s ever released. Sick, severed hands artwork by Shawn Reed on sparkly silver cardstock seals the deal: this is an FIT pinnacle.

2) Blues Control - “Riverboat Styx”
In retrospect, this seems like such a landmark tape. Russ & Lea’s Watersports offshoot had already dropped a couple releases, but it wasn’t until “Riverboat Styx” that the world/internet at large woke up and truly got on board. And it was high time. Their groovy stew of mellow drum machines, stoned guitar squall, and space-jazz keyboard riffs is in fine fucking form here, sprawling into the horizon in a haze, only pausing to bust out a harmonica solo (?!!?) here and there. Still a riddle how this duo weaves such weird elements into a harmonic whole, but wondering is part of their wonder. Bonus: graced by my single favorite Jeremy Earl J-card art of all time.

1) Raccoo-oo-oon
I first encountered this Iowa City psych crew here, on this CS, with the neon orange paper covered in a thousand floating eyes and classic Shawn Reed curlicue band-name script on the spine, plus the random photo insert of a stoned-looking dude holding a gigantic fork over his head. The perfect exterior for the perfect interior. Haunted forest voices howling over tribal-jazz drumming and basement junk noise and warped sax skronk and collective wilderness regression. Raccoo-oo-oon have rarely again ever sounded this “out”…of their heads, skin, souls. Was a beautiful beginning to a (hopefully) never-ending story.


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