First???

My tape arrived much later than Herr Lepper had planned, months and months after I sent my tape out. My first problem was finding something to play it on. My old tape deck had died for the second time. I dug around in my attic and found an old Walkman.

I knew quite a few of the artists on the tape: Jap Noise exponents Ghost, blind beatnik jazzbo Moondog, Norwegian Art-Metal band Noxagt, UK Folk super-group Pentangle, obscure bruised American Folkster Jack Rose, US Indie Rock Comets on Fire (is that right?) and apocalyptic gimp Charles Manson. I think that gives quite a good idea of the flavour of the tape itself. It was quite a gnarly, depressing compilation of burnt-out sonics. There was however a very distinct palette that was being used and it was refreshing to not have to listen to any modern electronic beats, even if one track a kind of Avant-Undie thingummy with that Will Oldham’s cousin doing nasal rapping over occluded beats did make a showing.

Given the provided artwork and the Northern England postcode I guessed, or rather imagined, that the compiler was once at something like Liverpool Art School. For my own part, and perhaps in direct contradiction to my last comments, I wondered how it was possible to make such a tape without a greater allusion to the dominant drive of 1990s music, dance. It was like that decade had never happened, though I’m sure many people are glad it has been brushed under the carpet. There was something markedly un-deconstructed about all the tracks, and that's always a quality I enjoy.

What struck me most however was the wonderful rich treacly sonics of my old Walkman. I subsequently made the pledge to move back to cassettes on a grander scale. If I had a tape-deck in my hatchback it wouldn’t keep getting broken into! There are some marvellous old tape decks, Nakamichis and Tandbergs, and using one would mean I’d keep a pure analogue pipeline from my old records. The mix-tape as a vehicle
can’t be beat can it?