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.
Music From The White House was a series of compilations on the cult home-taping label Exart from The Netherlands that was created by Hessel Veldman aka Y Create (also in Gorgonzola Legs) and his wife Nick Nicole. The compilations were made around different countries: Holland, England, France and the United States.
On Music From The White House Vol. 4: France only home-taping acts are compiled from the French 80's underground. Amongst others present is the experimental noise of Brume, the Artaud and De Sade inspired sounds of vulgarity by Suckdog affiliate Costes and the improvisation of Klimperei and La Sonorité Jaune. Furthermore there are some French lo-fi synth-punk tracks by the Dirty Husbands, Cripure S.A. and Hermaphrodisiak which all remind me of Kas Product. Lastly there is a minimal synth track by DZ Lectric and Anton Shield and some miscellaneous home-taping tracks throughout the whole compilation.
Another nice compilation from the 80's containing some better and some worse tracks that display the uncompromising home-taping spirit of the time in the context of transnational music exchange. The Exart label on which this was published functioned as one of the key cassette labels of The Netherlands in terms of home-taping distribution. Soon I will upload the Music From The White House: USA cassette as well.
This cassette was kindly donated to the blog by Hessel Veldman/Y Create.
Message:
Crazy enough, I've got Archaic Inventions mapped out for at least a whole year: if not longer. The amount of never heard material and new content is vast, mind-blowing and extends into many different musical genres. Also I am working hard on establishing the upcoming record label simultaneously with various sound-art and podcast projects. Furthermore I'm developing a live-set of my own music that will see the light this summer.
The digitization process demands time and I have to balance all these different projects. I'll try to do the best I can to keep up the consistency of the blog, but there will be moments which will demand prioritizing my attention to one of these directions. Thanks to all supporting the blog (some of you since many years)! Lots of stuff still to come! - Bence AI
