Falling Back In Fields of Tape
 Robert Inhuman
 

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