Pablo A. Gimenez - The Work In Progress -1988- (Tape, STI: Sindicato de Trabajos Imaginarios), Spain

I'm very happy and enthusiastic that I can announce the first guest contribution to Archaic Inventions by a fellow traveller in music and music selector Juan Vacas, who is also one of the representatives of the Madrid based music collective Real No Real. Some rarities from the Spanish tape culture (and perhaps beyond) will be occasionally presented by him to the blog. Starting with this incredible one! -

Pablo A. Giménez is still one of the great unknown Spanish composers of the 1980’s. He was predominantly based in Zaragoza, with an occasional stay in Paris. During the early 70’s he was involved in a group dedicated to the study of electronic music (Estudio de Música Electrónica) along with Luis Fatás, M. Medalón and Luis Colomer. While in Paris, where he studied philosophy and sociology, he refrained from making music for a few years. Short time after his return, his reconciliation with music began after he was offered to compose for amateur film works. Far from having studied at a conservatory, Pablo A. Giménez belonged to the band Casablanca during the late 70’s. Casablanca was described to be something like the band of a hippie commune that established itself for several years in Logroño. The band was composed by more than seven members and generally leaned closer to progressive rock but with numerous influences which ranged from salsa to jazz, being heavily influenced by bands like Gong, Frank Zappa or Hawkwind. 

Casablanca live in the 70's, Gimenez on sax

Several years after the dissolution of the band, Pablo A. Giménez started working with magnetic tapes, he became interested in the use of computers and eventually worked with simple low budget machines (not that he seeked for this cheapness in any way, but for a lack of better mediums) mixed with professional saxophones. Among his influences, it is easy to highlight great figures of the contemporary music world like Edgar Varèse or musique concrete pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry.

His works have been, for the most part, published by the Zaragoza based label STI (Sindicato de Trabajos Imaginarios, translated: Syndicate of Imaginary Works) that during the 80's mainly focused on avant-garde and homemade music, ranging from noise, to sound poetry or industrial music as well as being involved in mail art projects and run by Javier Cinca. His three first albums vary from more electroacoustic compositions, to more pop and dreamy sounds as well as darker sides mixed with spoken word.

The Work In Progress is his first album published on cassette by STI where he reveals bright saxophone melodies intermingled with subtle drum machines and electronic sequences on the first side, and more abstract compositions during the second half. - Juan Vacas

Pablo A. Gimenez

"Perseguidos por las sombras
caminamos apresuradamente
hacia el olvido..."

Get it HERE

Dust That Collects - Black Water Delirium -1991- (Tape, Self-Released), Canada

Dust That Collects was an explorative electronic sound project by Canadian artist Ron McFarlan. McFarlan had been involved in the home-taping culture of the 80's and started his project Dust That Collects around 1990 when opening for Illusion of Safety at the Music Gallery in Toronto. A brief autobiographical summary of McFarlan's musical history can be found over at Don Campau's Living Archive.

Black Water Delirium is a nice cassette bringing together four pieces of post-industrial soundscapes of noise, mechanical sound manipulation, field recordings and drone. You can hear almost ambient psycho-acoustic atmospheres that are indeed somewhat reminiscent of Illusion of Safety, or maybe even something of the Hafler Trio, Empirical Sleeping Consort or Zoviet France (many examples obviously exist). The last 22-minute track Black Water Delirium is a nice highlight where some sort of tenniscourt sounds are being manipulated into dark aquatic and swirling depths that ultimately culminate into their own sonic deconstruction.

The sound fidelity and certain parts of the tape are still very much rooted in the cassette medium and culture. Later this type of dark ambient soundscape music transitioned almost in its entirety to CD and became very inherently clean in production, even if the music was noise. This was the first self-released cassette by Dust That Collects, maybe some other tapes will surface with the time.

Get it HERE


PS:
We still have major issues with Zippyshare as an external file-hosting server since it is being blocked in many different countries. You can bypass it by using proxy servers though, which is what you should do. But still, where are we migrating to with the files? Any suggestions?

Various Artists - Music From The White House Volume 2: It's A British Treat -1987- (Tape, Exart EA029), UK/Netherlands

Here we have another (and also last) of the Exart compilations that had a country as their theme. Exart was the tape-label by Hessel Veldman aka Y Create. He used to be one of the key figures in the home-taping network of the 80's releasing and collaborating with numerous musicians. Besides the Y Create project he was in the band Gorgonzola Legs and did many collaborations with his wife Nick Nicole, Cora and fluxus artist and Dutch underground cult-figure Willem de Ridder.

De Ridder also had his Radiola Improvisatie Salon radio program which played a hugely important role for the home-taping scene in The Netherlands. The idea was that every tape that was sent to the radio show would be played without being heard in advance. A very unorthodox and adventurous approach that sometimes led to the discovery of jaw-dropping musical pearls of unknown musicians.

Music From The White House Volume 2: It's A British Treat consists of different English artists (as well as an Irish one) who were mainly active in the home-taping circuit. Most of the cassette comprises of projects by Steve Hartwell who played music under many different guises like The Dead Goldfish Ensemble and The High Tech Pagoda's. Then there is Dave Arnold (a multimedia artist from Essex who used to run the Dead Happy Records label during the 80's) under his project The Starkman as well as a track of his post-punk group Turn Blue. Also Rob Baylis is present under his disguise The Detective and many other artists.

Like many of the Exart compilations the A-side shows more poppy home-taping tracks and the B-Side more sonic experiments. Other Music From the White House volumes are here and here.

Kindly donated by the Y Create Archive

Get it HERE