So I never thought another cassette by Error would surface after stumbling upon their earlier Show Off Your Mutants tape, but I was wrong. Here it is! Error was an electronic music group from the small sea town of Corpus Christi in Texas. On this release it says that the music was made by Geronimo (voice/instruments) and Big Chief (instruments), however it might as well be a solo project, who knows.
Just like Error's previous cassette Strange Universe is an interesting collage of samples, electronics, drum machine patterns and EBM basslines. This album reflects a much more colorful 90's sound than the previous one that leans more towards darker EBM sounds. However Error definitely has a more humorous approach to their music in general which keeps reminding me of Severed Heads. The sound and attitude illustrate that the new dawn of musical styles of the 90's had risen. Unpolished, creative and fun cassette-making in hidden corners of the world during the global rave-olution. The Strange Universe of Error.
Message: Next month this blog will be 10 years old and there might be some sort of project celebrating that. I will give an update on that once I know more in February. Simultaneously this might be the last year of doing this or maybe I can't let go and will keep going. I don't know. Maybe it's time for other priorities. Probably what is still to come combined with the pace of this blog will be already more than a year of material. Some stuff I kept in the vaults for years. So let's keep it organic and see!
Viktimized Karcass was an experimental underground band from Memphis, Tennessee that was strongly embedded in the cassette culture of the 80's. The band consisted of Chris Phinney (founder of the Harsh Reality cassette label),
Michael Thomas Jackson,
Richard Martin,
Robert Henson and
Roger Moneymaker. The music consists of psychedelic jams, electronic experimentation, tape-loops and other improvised sounds. Most of the members were also involved in solo projects and contributed immensely to the shaping of the cassette culture of home-tapers. Viktimized Karcass released many cassettes on a variety of international cassette labels.
Skinned Alive was released through Sound Of Pig, a pivotal cassette culture label from New York that was created by Al Margolis (aka If, Bwana). There are some far out space rock jams on here. It reminds me a bit of Smersh or Sponge. Wonderful stuff.
The Katharos Foundation was a collective of audio-visual artists and musicians from Tilburg, The Netherlands, established in February 1986. They used performative, conceptual and multi-media aspects in their work which incorporated transgressive elements. There were different musical guises of which a notable one was the industrial Sluagh Ghairm. That band would later turn into the tribal techno act Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia which would gain both domestic and international fame. Some band members were apparently part of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.
During the phase of the Katharos Foundation exhibitions and concerts took place a.o. alongside bands like Étant Donnés, Coup de Grace and Zombies Under Stress. The Katharos Foundation also functioned as an imprint releasing a number of cassette compilations during their short existence. All in all they can be viewed as another group of industrial culture representatives in The Netherlands.
Καθαρος - Emanation: Treasure The Fertile Soil In This Barren Land, And Receive is a compilation that brings together the different acts under the Katharos umbrella. It displays industrial electronics, home recordings, live recordings and performance sounds. It came with a large booklet with artwork which unfortunately is not included here.
Regicide Bureau was a home-taping project and label from Overland, Saint Louis, Missouri created by Thomas Sutter.
By himself and together with other befriended musicians Sutter released numerous cassettes throughout the 80's and 90's. The majority of those cassettes were never for sale and could only be obtained by exchanging cassettes. The Regicide Bureau was an important force and institution within the global home-taping cassette culture which created an autonomous music infrastructure far away from the commercial music industry. Associated acts that included Tom Sutter were a.o. Next Radio, Drive!Hesaid, Regimental Anguish and Berlin Diary (with the Berlin based musician M. Finnkrieg during Sutter's time residing in Berlin).
A Rose Of Beds, In The Cross Of The Sign (nice word scramble) is a bit different than most Regicide Bureau tapes I've heard because it doesn't display the characteristic alchemical sound of electronics, synthesizers, vocals and tape collage. Instead the recording consists of four improvised pieces of electric guitar loops played by Tom Sutter technically assisted by Dave Schuey. The sound is rather minimalistic, lo-fi and hypnotic.
I just found out you can listen and download the latest 2022 release by Regicide Bureau over here on the Nostalgie De La Boue label. Tom Sutter honestly did some remarkable music over the past decades and still goes strong.
Lastly, I think some more uneasy listening and darker stuff is coming to the blog towards the end of the year because that happens to be in the pipeline at the moment. Perhaps it suits the times we are facing.
Originally from Austin, Texas, Seemen is the collaborative effort of Kal Spelletich and some forty odd art
drop outs and extreme technology inventors who enjoy building extreme
machines and robots that they allow their audience to operate.
Since the late 80's and 90's Spelletich has been doing performances with Seemen and the notorious Survival Research Laboratories. Through the extremes of technology, the building of giant metal robots, pyrotechnics and other inventive dangerous constructions many incredible installations have graced both festivals and urban wastelands. Simultaneously the musical output connected to that has been an important element. Inevitably the clinging of metal, fire and flames and other robotic mechanisms create sounds, Seemen also made some really special cassettes that were circulating in the home-taping culture.
Within that late 80's and early 90's realm quite some urban area's were not as gentrified as they are today thus able to provide some space for these greater machine endeavours. The art and its surroundings played an important role on each other. Not only because of the artistic nature, but also because the artists would sometimes work on these giant living sculptures and robots for months. Therefore many of the artists started to become part of the surrounding communities and meet people who, in their turn, would help on some of the projects and vice versa. For example during their time in Amsterdam a collective like Survival Research Laboratories helped barricading some squats showing support during their eviction. A performance art group like the Mutoid Waste Company in England started to engage with the free party rave scene. Eventually they even established their own village called Mutonia in Italy. These are just some examples, but there are many more stories. In the new millenium this type of art has moved to festivals because the neo-liberal globalized urban environment leaves less and less space to be engaged with.
Woozy! was a self-released cassette by Seemen from 1991. From the cover:
The Seemen don't want to be your traditional Rock-n-Roll band which follows traditional formats. The idea being to produce something creative and innovative. Traditions are made to be broken and broken they are. There is no reason to repeat history! To repeat yourself when you have mastered something means it's time to move on to something more challenging. The future of music isn't guitar solos and drum machines but the sound of a vacuum cleaner or a child laughing. If music is to progress it needs to go beyond The Format (percussion/rhythm/solo/vocal). The forbearers of THE NEW WILL not be the Euro-X-Dance Beat Generation but the intelligensia who are willing and ABLE to grow beyond what Chuck Berry accomplished 30 years ago.
Here's an odd but great one. It took me some time to decipher this cassette since the cover kind of confused me at first. In any case it seems to be a split tape between Scottish home-taper Dion Trevarthen (also known as Square Sun) and Royal Flush, a home-taping act that was released by the Black Death tape label from the small town of Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. Black Death was created by Marcel Tuijenburg. A label which a.o. published compilations of the international home-taping community. The music on this cassette by Royal Flush seems to have been a solo effort by B. du Perron who creates a long dark ambient soundscape.
The other side of the tape consists of some dazzling hypnotic acid drenched electronic music by Dion Trevarthen. Hailing from the village of Aberlady, East Lothian, Trevarthen was part of a psychedelic space-rock group called Sponge along with his two brothers. He also released his own electronic music under the name Square Sun on various international tape labels. One of the most notable releases was the Tierversuche, Das Perfekte Konzept Der Selbstvernichtung tape on the German cassette label IRRE.
Fluorescent Tube Shadows is a mind-bending psychedelic piece of electronic home-taping music. There are many electronic textures, radio waves, rhythms and strange transitions going on. I recommend hearing this loud on some serious speakers and not just some screenspeakers. It has a very immersive deep sound that almost absorbs you. Within home-recordings it illustrates the transition of the 80's minimal synth sound into some of the new electronic music of the 90's, but somehow remains ungraspable. Some other acts that might be alike are Ras.Al.Ghul from Portugal or Delta-Sleep-Inducing Peptide from Germany. Or or or.
It would be great if some label would reissue some Square Sun music, but I guess it's wishful thinking.
Here we have yet another compilation on Epitapes that was established by Mike Tetrault from Belchertown, Massachusetts.
Throughout the 80's dozens of these compilations were created. Each
compilation was based around a certain theme and assembled accordingly by Mike Tetrault. Some of the tracks were taken from existing releases while
others were sent specially for these tapes. You can read an interesting
interview about these cassette series with Mike Tetrault over here.
The title of this cassette "Warmth And Silence" already reveals the type of music that was selected for this compilation: subtle ambient experimental sounds for more than one hour and a half created by a large range of home-taping projects from around the globe. Present on here are quite a few more known cassette culture protagonists like Illusion Of Safety (Dan Burke, US), Hessel Veldman (Holland), DZ Lectric (France), Hands To (Jeph Jarman, US) and Los Paranos (Christophe Petchanatz, France).
A curiosity on this compilation is that Mike Tetrault also features a piece by himself in which delicate rhythms create a base for a whispered reading of André Breton's surrealist poem "Freedom Of Love".
So I've posted something before that was on the mysterious Slang Tapes label, a US cassette label that was dedicated to strange humorous free-jazz and improvisation. That live improvisation cassette fell a little flat amidst all the home-taping music on this blog, but it was strange enough to share. I actually try to redefine that eternal crescendo of music posts of which one thing should be constantly better than the previous. In all actuality all of this musical output knows its own historical context, in its own place and time. There are different musical styles or approaches but a lot of it shares an underground ontology or a deviancy to whatever the dominant culture has been pushing. That's why it remains important that different types of music are represented on the blog.
In any case, the previously shared Slang Tape release is very different from this one. That cassette came from Allentown, Pennsylvania, so I assumed that the label was based around that area as well. However there is no real confirmation. Also I don't know which musicians were actually part of the Songs From Ward 6 project.
Songs From Ward 6 is a stunning piece of American avant-garde music. It sort of balances on the minimal music tradition within modern composed music, jazz or other more trained musicianship traditions, but at the same time it's far out in its experimentation while displaying absurdistic lyrics and vocals. It also presents amazing crystal-like cosmic ambient synthesizer manoeuvres with a deep sound, creating different hypnotizing grooves. It eventually even ventures into some self-explored ethnic sounds. Not too far fetched from some of the more unclassifiable acts that were included on the NWW list.
I'm pretty sure that this was made in the early years of the 80's, but it clearly has some ground in the weird 60's or 70's music traditions too. From Silver Apples to Cromagnon and from Care of The Cow to the Los Angeles Free Music Society, the music by Songs From Ward 6 once again emphasizes the endless eclectic creativity and inventiveness of musical output that existed within the fringes of American underground music culture during the second half of the 20th century.
A great piece of lost music! Also any additional information on this would be highly appreciated!
Since this is the third time that I write about Liza N. Eliaz on this blog I will re-use some of the older texts:
Liza Néliaz (1958 - 2001) was an electronic dance music producer and hardcore techno (terror) DJ originally from Oostende, Belgium. During the late 70's Néliaz started out as musician part of different Belgian avant-garde and new-wave bands. Inthe
80's Neliaz become more involved with the international home-taping
network and contributed her tracks to cornerstone compilations on
pivotal cassette labels like Insane Music (Belgium) and Exart (Netherlands).
By the late 80's, Neliaz started to play a self-invented style of proto-dance music
that somehow connected the DIY spirit of 80's home-taping with new beat
and the upcoming rave culture that would later evolve into established
genres like techno, hardcore and acid house. She was a pioneer (one out
of many ofcourse) in exploring these new musical styles in which perhaps
the most important element was musical continuity. From the 90's onward Liza 'N' Eliaz established herself as an
important hardcore techno DJ in the free party spheres which granted her the underground title of Queen of Terror. The name Liza
was adopted because in those days it used to be a nickname given to
Trans people in Flanders. She used her abilities as a musician for her DJ-sets that were uncompromising, lethal and full of energy. Neliaz lived a nomadic lifestyle dedicated to music until the end of her life. She sadly passed away in 2001.
The cassette that has surfaced here is an odd one. It was dubbed on a blank tape and specially given to Hessel Veldman and his family by Liza during the late 80's when she resided in Holland. First of all it contains the instrumental versions of the first Sensecruise release (not sure if there are any non-instrumental versions since I don't own the "official" Sensecruise part 1 cassette, so can't verify - let me know!). The interesting part is that the cassette continues with some loose tracks that I can partially recognize by checking out other releases, but there are also some tracks that are unknown to me.
Still the fact remains that this is a remarkable set of songs from that late 80's Neliaz sound palette. Quite a treasure, because we repeatedly have no idea whether more music by Liza might be out there. You never know what survived on cassettes of her friends or whether some music was given to befriended DJ's from the time. Her later DJ mixes are still alive on many platforms on the web and seem to inspire many people today and beyond.
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.
Error was an electronic music group from the small sea town (for American standards) of Corpus Christi in Texas. The group consisted of Geronimo (voice, keyboards, effects and programming), P. Poly (drums, percussion, programming) and Mr. Q-Pons (guitar). I suppose they were a home-taping group, but I don't think they were heavily involved in the more established cassette culture. Also since this cassette was released in 1990 the international cassette culture was ofcourse already different than it had been during the previous decade.
The music by Error is a nice cocktail of rhythmic electronic minimalism and EBM type tracks with lots of cut-ups and samples. Some fragments have religious Christian aspects, some are taken from unknown broadcasts and we even hear William S. Burroughs on one of the tracks. It's quite an interesting mix of tracks with a strange collage-like nature recorded in a peculiar but interesting manner. The production seems to be a bit weird at times, maybe somewhat dated, maybe recorded through some computer (Amiga?) from that time, but it does give a strange depth to the sound.
All in all some nice electronic music that reminds me of bands like The Genetic Terrorists (T.G.T.) or Severed Heads. I have no idea whether Error released more music or whether they were known for any live appearance.
The Swingin' Love Corpses were a spontaneous jam outfit from Lakewood, St. Louis, Missouri connected to the Church of the SubGenius. The band consisted of Dr. Philo Drummond (saxophone and vocals), Col. Sphinx Drummond (trumpet and vocals), Baba Ray Hay (guitars and vocals), Elvis Hemingway (keyboards), Mojo "Skippy" Butcher (drums), Lafe Kowabunga (bass and guitar), Pope Cecil X. Nixon (trombone and vocals) and Dr. Winston Torquemada (synthesizers, percussion, trombone).
Philo Drummond, one of the key figures of the band, was founder of the Church of the SubGenius together with Reverend Ivan Stang. The church represents a parody religion that mocks popular as well as lesser known belief systems. It also has an own mythology created around the ficticious 1950's salesman J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, who saw God on a televison set he created. He is used as the symbol and epitome of the recurring American capitalist dream and is also depicted here on this cassette cover as some sort of sci-fi warrior.
In 1988 Ivan Stang and others published the book High Weirdness By Mail that was a compendium of all kinds of strange fringe-organisations, visonaries, UFO worshippers, political extremists, Jesus-freaks, weirdo's, conspirators and other pseudo-religious groups. Included were their mail-adresses or other contact information and descriptions. People were thus able to communicate with these groups and started to correspond.
Through the mythology and tactics as well as the complex systems which imitated their subjects, the Church of the SubGenius functioned as an organized form of Culture Jamming. Media culture and cultural institutions were ultimately being disrupted through a clever Church scheme of playful anti-consumerist protest. It's as if they were giving media, the mainstream culture and consumerism a bit of its own medicine and used their own mechanisms against them, whether in the form of mockery or as direct disruption.
In any case a lot of the activities of people involved with the Church of the SubGenius were also related to music. A radio show called Hour of Slack, hosted by Ivan Stang, has been going on for decades and can still be heard to this day. The Church had interest for music that was manifested through home-taping culture and mail-art. Those were often people either using media in an autonomous way or people who were actually manifesting recordings from their self-created fringe-world away from the mainstream.
The Swinging Love Corpses were one of the bands of the Church of the SubGenius that played over thousands of hours of jam-sessions. They also played many live gigs and released cassettes that were distributed thoughout the global home-taping circuit. In a way they come from a similar realm of American mockery and/or weird groups using absurdism or culture jamming like The Residents, Negativland, Frank Zappa, Butthole Surfers, Blacklight Braille and many others. Ofcourse Pop-Art seems to have been one of the first manifestations of this kind of post-war capitalist mockery and reversal of media powers in general.
I guess there's a lot to check out more elaborately for yourself within all of this, specially regarding today's perpetual digital media simulacrum trip and the post-reality virus age...But for now here are The Swingin' Love Corpses providing their great mutoid funk, zappa-esque manoeuvres, space jazz and trippy jam explorations for the end of the world détournement party which was already recorded some 30 years ago.
Living It Out In The Dead Air-Space was the magnum opus cassette album release by the Ontario based composer, sound-artist and electronic music producer Darren Copeland. The music was realized over the course of half a year during 1987 and 1988 together with a larger group of Canadian experimental musicians: Ron McFarlan (also to be found on the blog under his project Dust That Collects), David Edwards, John Marriott, Michel Flock and Lhuke Shier.
The pieces create a conceptually hollistic space that consists of dark ambient electronic soundscapes, spoken word, field-recordings and ethno-tribal influences. It carries different properties that on the one hand seem to carefully invoke the void of space (a dead end space) with its dark and silent chaos of endless probabilities and on the other hand it displays human consciousness and rational forms of understanding that are defying the dead end space from an existential point of view. The sounds of the dark untamable and alienating universe have an eternal presence in the natural and urban environment on earth. Alienation and the presence of the unknown are of great influence on life existence.
Living It Out In The Dead Air-Space is another beautiful work of Canadian experimental music that is perfect for a deeper listening experience. Simultaneously it works well as an invocation for different existentialist questions on a scientific, natural or spiritual level.
Through the further development of technology in later decades sound explorations from scientific standpoints have obviously become endless and have elaborated into many realms. Yet on this recording we can experience the scientific exploration as a subject of the music rather than that scientific approaches are being used to create the music.
Considering the year of the release, ofcourse Mr. 'Star Wars-program' and buffoon-president Ronnie Raygun is depicted on the cassette cover, but I suppose we could all think of other people suitable for the cover in today's world.
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.
The Epitapes were a series of international home-taping compilations created by Mike Tetrault from Belchertown, Massachusetts. Each compilation was given a poetic title, sometimes even in the form of an entire sentence. Some tracks were taken from existing releases while others were sent specially for these tapes.
A Clicking Sound begins with a track by the Dutch improvisation band Gorgonzola Legs which is introduced by Dutch Home-Taper and sound composer Hessel Veldman (aka Y Create). Gorgonzola Legs was a group that consisted of Hessel Veldman, Gert-Jan Prins, Herman te Loo and Jos van Duijne with occassional other musicians like Masaki Oishi. The band played hours and hours of material that was mainly recorded (or not recorded) at an industrial fish warehouse in the Dutch seatown of IJmuiden. Aside from that a lot of concerts took place at various locations throughout the 80's. From appearances at street festivals to concerts at contemporary art museums. By the start of the 90's the project was laid to rest and the members went on in their individual music directions.
Gorgonzola Legs
The compilation continues with the noise-rock band Blowhole that was founded in 1987 in Colorado Springs by percussionist Jeph
Jerman and the Barber brothers, with Scott Hiller, Fil Rodriguez and Dr.
Soule. Then a couple of anti-musical funny-not-so-funny tracks follow by Norwegian home-tapers Åreknuteknyterne. Later on there are some live registrations in America and Italy by free-impro saxophonist Jack Wright from Pittsburgh. The tape finishes with some great electronic pieces by Regicide Bureau, a home-taping project by Thomas Sutter from Overland, Saint Louis, Missouri.
Ofcourse there are some other improvised and noisy pieces by other bands and people in-between, but I know nothing about them. All in all a nice selection of totally different tracks. More Epitapes compilations will slowly come to the blog but I have to figure out what is already available and what isn't and see which tapes I should prioritize. Or maybe you people out there have some requests?
