Various Artists - Swamptape Compilation 2 - Swamp-To-Tape -1990- (Cassette, Hahamandad), Netherlands/International

Despite the recent ongoing tragic events that are taking place in an already dystopian world, the difficulty of finding the right answers and figuring out what to do I finally decided to keep posting music here anyway. Whether as a distraction, as medicine, as fuel to power up or to let off steam and anger. Some strange sounds might help to cope with a strange world. In any case, I wish everyone lots of strength and courage out there. -

The Swamptape Compilation 2 (Swamp-To-Tape) was assembled during 1988/89 and released by Hahamandad in 1990 with a magazine called 'Vision'. Hahamandad is a foundation and a label from the Southern Dutch city of Axel (in the province of Zeeland) that was founded by Messy and Amanda Man (Leo van de Velde) in 1984. The Hahamandad foundation also organized numerous festivals around alternative culture, art and played an important role in bringing together different international underground and home-taping musicians. They released dozens of cassettes of both their own music projects and international compilations.

The Swamptape Compilation 2 is a nice and varied release with some known and lesser known artists of the international cassette culture. There are some home-made minimal synth songs by Messy, Kees Beukelaar and Nostalgie Eternelle, some dark industrial pieces by Big City Orchestra, Clemp Yod as well as some dazzling hypnotic tracks by Ambulatorio Segreto, From Nursery To Misery and Mystery Hearsay. Also: much(!) more.

 

Get your tunes from the swamp HERE

Kindly donated by The Y Create Archive

King's House - One -1987- (Cassette, The Subelecktrick Institute), US

 

King's House was a project by members of the home-taping and improvised free-music collective Big City Orchestra from the greater San Francisco bay area. The project consisted of Toby Hardman, Brook Hinton, Arne Ryason, Rob Wortman and Jim Young. The BCO started out already in the late 70's and kept being active throughout all decades to come. The output of their music, first on self-released cassettes, later CD's and vinyl and later MP3 albums on net labels, is so vast (literally hundreds of releases) that it would be hard to make your way though the entire discography. Let alone adding all the members' solo projects and different side projects like King's House. Moreover the music is never the same and morphs into all possible styles and everything in-between.

The cassette we have here is the first King's House release and displays a wonderful collage of absurdist improvisational music. We hear radio cut-ups, tape loops, minimal synth manoeuvres, damaged pop songs, noise, musique concrète madness and interesting inventive soundscapes. It's a carefully composed release with lots of attention for its variety and the succession of the tracks.

A very nice tape that has that distinctly American cassette culture sound. I think even though this is the King's House project, the music might be a great starting point in getting to know more sounds of Big City Orchestra as well. A burst of endless musical creativity.

Kindly donated by The Y Create Archive

Get it HERE

Various Artists - There Is No God And He Is Your Creator -1987- (Cassette, GGE Records), US

Merry Christmas and an Archaic New Year to all Friends and Followers of the blog!

 

To end this year with I reckoned that we needed something with an adagium that covers both these end of the year holidays as well as the situation we have found ourselves in throughout this year. There Is No God And He Is Your Creator (a title as oxymoronic as the title of this blog) was another fine cornerstone compilation of the international home-taping circuit created by GGE Records, a cassette label that was based in Kent, Ohio. The people behind the label also played in the band Ice Cream Blisters. 

 

There Is No God And He Is Your Creator compiles quite some known acts from the era like the Belgian experimental synth groups Bene Gesserit and Human Flesh created by Alain Neffe. It also contains a Merzbow track and a track by A.D. Aker known as a Dutch musician who was one of the founders of experimental music collective De Fabriek. The US tape-music legends Big City Orchestra provide a fine humoristic cover of Throbbing Gristle's Subhuman. Aside from those bands there's a lot of obscure American home-taping stuff on here ranging from lo-fi pop to strange collaged rhythms. Quite a nice bunch of tracks all together.

 

Kindly donated by the Y Create Archive

 

Get it HERE

 

 

Lots of things have happened the past year in terms of the discovery of unknown material and it has been rewarding and beautiful to have been in contact with many musicians and to have even been collaborating with some great labels that provide todays reissue jewels. I'd like to thank you all for the opportunities you gave me and the enthusiasm you share about music.

Archaic Inventions is a blog that still remains part of the underground with a loyalty towards the larger blogosphere in the way I discovered that space more than a decade ago. I'm not sure yet whether this blog will last longer than the next year, but only time, energy and life decisions will tell. Again. Much love to all readers, spreaders of the word or occasional bypassers here. Stay safe in this mad world and keep fighting all the corruptive powers that are surrounding us. Oh and listen to some nice music!

 

See you with some good stuff from the past in 2021!

 

- Bence AI