The Walkman Journal by Netta Szabo

Autumn/Winter 15-16

The Walkman Journal CONVERSATIONS ON MODERN CASSETTE CULTURE

GRIMES

N1 o

IN THE BODY OF THIS CREATURE

read the interview on p 6

Heart-to-heart

Discoveries

Habitat

Think pieces

Bright Light

14 30 GB archive

22 Cassette Store Day

28 Secret Music

Grimes

15 Modern Tapes

24 Infographics

29 Chrome BrulĂŠe

10 Sporting Life

15 Nelly Furtado

30 LP vs Cassette

18 New Releases

supported by SONY

Heart-to-heart

IIM MPRI PRINNTT Editor-In-Chief FIEN ROBBE & NETTA SZABO Art Direction and Graphic Design FIEN ROBBE & NETTA SZABO Editors RACHEL AROESTI, KEITH CAULFIELD, QUINN MORELAND, BRAD ROSE, KEN LONG, ROBIN MURRAY Photography MARIE WYNANTS, BEN GRIME, RILO KILEY, ANDREW KASS Printing and Special Thanks To PATJE © No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission from the publisher

H E A RT-TO - H E A RT / 5

BRIG HT LIG HT BRIG HT LIG HT

Cassette tapes aren’t completely on the comeback trail, but the semi-forgotten format has recently been making inroads. This year alone, artists like She & Him, MGMT and Rilo Kiley have issued cassette releases, albeit in very limited quantities.

hose cassettes represent a tiny fraction of the overall album sales market in the United States. So far in 2013, cassette sales amount to just 0.02% of overall album sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Comparably, the resurgent vinyl LP has a 2% share of the album market. Still, there is enough support of the niche format from indie-minded acts that a new holiday celebrating the 3”/4” piece of plastic has been launched: Cassette Store Day.

Why are you releasing "Make Me Believe In Hope" (Blueprints Version) on cassette? I'm a huge fan of cassettes; they're how I first started buying music. My friend Jen Long is one of the people who started Cassette Store Day, and when I heard about it I really wanted to do something for it. My album came out on cassette when it was initially released and the cassette run sold out on pre-order, so it was nice to do a special cassette reissue.

Like its unrelated big brother, Record Store Day, the cassette-focused festivities on Sept. 7 will take place around the world at many independent music retailers. Most of the retailers are located in the United Kingdom and United States, but there are are couple participating stores in such countries as Sweden, Finland, France and even Argentina.

What's the appeal of cassette tapes? Do you own a cassette deck? For me, as you can't really skip through a cassette with any ease, I love how the format encourages listening to an album right through. It's nice to draw attention to continuity of a record and the order of tracks. And yes, I own four cassette players.

More than 50 cassettes are being released for Cassette Store Day, from acts including Haim, Animal Collective, Deerhunter, At the Drive-In, Volcano Choir and Bright Light Bright Light.

Do you have any fond memories of cassettes from back in the day? Any favorite cassingles? I have very fond memories of buying "All That She Wants," by Ace Of Base, with my pocket money. And very happy memories of taping songs off the radio making compilation albums of my favorite songs, and making mixtapes for friends. What I love now is that Goodwill and thrift stores are usually well stocked with really cheap cassettes, so you can get some amazing bargains.

The Walkman Journal spoke to Bright Light Bright Light (aka pop singer/songwriter/DJ Rod Thomas) for his views on Cassette Store Day, the format in general and why he's releasing a special gold cassette edition of his album "Make Me Believe In Hope.”

Have you talked to other artists about cassettes? Have any of them weighed in with thoughts on the format? I know a lot of people who love cassettes, but it's mainly indie artists I know who still use the format. A U.K. journalist said it was interesting I make pop and still use cassette, which I hadn't really thought about. I like the warmth a cassette tape adds to otherwise clean production. What's your preferred format for consuming music? Streaming? Digital files? 8-tracks? Cassette for playing something right through, and vinyl for sound and the actual process of starting-and-stopping play. I find that digital files leave me cold. They're so useful for immediate needs, but I forget I have songs or albums if I have to buy them digitally. You're playing Festival No. 6 on Sept. 14 in the U.K. What can we expect of the show, and do you plan on tracking down Nile Rodgers, who plays the next day? Sadly, I have to leave the same night, so I'll miss Nile, which is almost unforgivable, isn't it? The shame when you're a touring band is you rarely get to see anything beyond your own set, especially at festivals, where you don't often get to stay for other days.

“I find that digital files leave me cold. They’re so useful for immediate needs, but I forget I have songs or albums if I have to buy them digitally.”

photography by RILO KILEY

written by KEITH CAULFIELD

Indie Artist Shares Passion For The Forgotten Format

photography by BEN GRIEME

written by RACHEL AROESTI

6 / The Walkman Journal No 1

G RI M ES

“In my life, I’m a lot more weird than this” After three years of intense highs and lows, the quixotic auteur explains why she’s coming back down to earth with her most personal album.

8 / The Walkman Journal No 1

he last time Grimes saw me, I was dressed as a chicken gimp. I’d responded to her Twitter call-out for fans to dance at her upcoming shows, and at London’s 2012 Field Day festival I downed a vodka, shoved on a fluffy white dress and PVC mask and bounded on stage as the space-gun synths of Claire Boucher’s bedroom pop project blasted out to 7,000 Londoners and hit them in the heart. To witness her metamorphosis was incredible: she’d arrived a couple of hours before, bundled up in her parka with sunglasses on, having had no sleep and in desperate need of coffee, and now she was like a pop idol from another dimension with the magnetism of Morgan le Fay. Flinging off her cap, Boucher seemed to have gained a new life-force from the screams, lights and smoke as she drenched her burnt-orange hair with water, offering another bottle to me. She smacked her hand down on the sampler to drop the beat, and grinned like an eccentric engineer having a eureka moment.

Most artists on the verge of global success see dollar signs. Boucher saw the devil. “Just before the Visions cycle started, I had my tarot done three times in a week,” she says. Every time, the cards showed the devil – a powerful arcane symbol of excess, overindulgence and bondage of any kind. As the release of her career-defining album propelled her to worldwide prominence as Grimes, the prophecy was realised before her eyes. In a sense, she’d always thrived on being too pop for indie and too indie for pop; now, the world was catching up. In a series of short, sharp shocks to the system, she played sold-out shows around the world, partied with politically dubious princes and, with her eclectic pool-slides style feted by the fashion community, DJed for Donatella. As Boucher’s visibility increased, suggestions that she relinquish creative control of her music came pouring in from, say, dance producers who wanted “an indie chick on their beat”. She always declined.

Three years later, I’ve ditched the clucky costume and am reunited with Boucher in New York. Walking down Fifth Avenue towards the Guggenheim Museum, she wears a once-bright, now-faded loose vest depicting the comic book superhero Ms Marvel, and a plaid shirt that she’ll later pull off to use as a makeshift blanket.

Boucher has collaborated with artists in the past, such as Mike Tucker (AKA Blood Diamonds) on EDM summer jam “Go”, Jack Antonoff, and ex-boyfriend Devon Welsh of Majical Cloudz, but a track falls short of being “Grimes canon” if it’s not written and produced by her alone. Sitting in the mottled shade by Central Park’s Belvedere Castle, the sunlight catches Boucher’s face as she sips her citrus cooler. “If I was just doing vocals it would be, like, bang-bang-bang,” she says. “The production is what takes a long time. I’m a weird artist, because I’m held up to the standard of a bunch of pop singers by my fanbase. A lot of people who love Grimes love Lana (Del Rey), or Charli (XCX). I don’t want Grimes to be some kind of pristine pop star when I’m not. I don’t think the music was ever that pop.”

To glance at her, perhaps the only clue that the 27-year-old isn’t still a punk playing basement shows in Montreal is an Alexander Wang sneaker bag slung over her shoulder, an item created from classics reworked for a new purpose. In hindsight, it may not have been the best idea to visit one of New York’s top tourist destinations on a Sunday in summer, but it’s easy to forget that the low-key Boucher is kind-of famous. The queue snakes out the door at the museum, and she starts getting asked for selfies before we can even get inside. “I can’t believe you’re here!” gasps a blonde teenager from Europe, pulling out her iPhone as the DIY pop powerhouse pulls a nervy ‘Where do you want me?’ grin. Does this happen often? “If you go to certain parts of Brooklyn it can be weird,” says Boucher. “You get recognised but you’re not in danger. There’s not going to be a swarming. I’ve only had swarmings a few times.” She’s looking forward to playing a Dior-sponsored gala at the Guggenheim in November, and quickly darts past a bottleneck of tourists to peer up into the spiralling chasm of the atrium. It is epic in scale, but imperfectly suited to live acoustics. “I see what they were saying about the sound,” she frowns.

“I think my music used to be more escapist. Visions didn’t really acknowledge reality, but this record is more about looking reality in the face.”

Boucher has always had a perfectionist bent, and is in the habit of pushing herself to extremes to realise her musical multiverse, whether sneaking into the motocross to mosh with jocks for her breakout video, “Oblivion”, or cloistering herself within blackedout windows to record her last album, Visions. With a wildly creative and often subversive aesthetic, she’s created some of the most unique records and videos of the decade, drawing from easily recognisable and esoteric styles to create an ultra-modern audio-visual amalgam. As a result, she’s become an icon for those that like to blur boundaries, binaries or both, speaking to an audience unusual in scope for an artist on an indie label. In pop’s hallowed hall, Boucher may be the one with the home-dyed fringe and odd socks, but it’s hard to deny that she electrifies the room.

Yet judging by her new song, “Flesh Without Blood”, Boucher may have a problem on her hands. Following this year’s hookdriven demo “REALiTi”, it’s a soaring, instantly replayable powerpop kiss-off (actually directed at a female) that could well have been written by a crack team of Swedish pop masterminds. “I don’t think it sounds like the current Top 40,” she says, sceptically. “You’re the first person who’s said that.” Whether she likes it or not, it seems primed to be her “Umbrella” moment, cementing her trajectory from cult phenomenon into a pop superstar. The question is: does she want it to be? “OK, so this is how I feel.” She takes a deep breath. “I hate that all music right now has to exist in the context of the Top 40. I just want to make music that’s good. Some good music is pop, some good music is not pop. Everyone is so driven by career stuff now – ‘Can you reach the most people? Can you get on the radio?’ It’s just like, maybe I don’t give a fuck?” A self-ruling spirit runs in the Boucher family’s blood. The second-oldest of five siblings, Grimes Jr spent much of her childhood in the mountainous wilds of British Columbia. “My grandparents live out there,” she says. “They are survivalists. They have their garden where all their shit comes from in case there’s a war from America.” Describing herself as a “weird kid who drew a lot”, Boucher attended a strict Catholic school with a blanket ban on the teaching of science – let alone evolution. Always inquisitive, she remembers “getting in trouble very early on because I questioned God and shit like that”.

As we cross Central Park, Boucher happily chats away, words spilling from her mouth like a cranked-open jelly bean machine. She always seems to be testing out new connections and configurations of ideas, prefacing grand political statements with “I don’t know if this is an argument I believe in, but…”, or describing a new song as “if No Doubt did Studio Ghibli”. Talking to her isn’t stressful, but her pace can feel intense. Apparently the human brain has 100 trillion synaptic connections; with Boucher you can believe it.

Moving to Montreal at 18 to study psychology (with a minor in electroacoustics) at McGill University, Boucher was not particularly dedicated to academia, but found an education in the city’s burgeoning indie community, particularly the scene around local loft venue Lab Synthèse. “She was fun to be around,” recalls Emily Kai Bock, who started a zine with Boucher called Beaubien and went on to co-direct her phenomenal “Oblivion” video. “She was shy and creative, smart and interested in weird things like deep space and learning Russian. I lived at Lab Synthèse at the time, where I made performance-art pieces using our friends as actors, and Claire played violin behind the stage.”

If you look through her millefeuille of vocals, you’ll find a highly attuned ecoconsciousness on Grimes’ new album, which has been through working titles of Fairy, Avalon, and Queen of the Night (after Mozart’s supernatural anti-heroine from The Magic Flute, not the Whitney Houston classic). Boucher can’t reveal the final name of the album, planning to make this announcement the day before it hits iTunes in October. “Lyrically, it’s more political and less abstract than before,” she explains. “Like, really trippy free association about nature and shit. There’s a song that’s from the perspective of a butterfly in the Amazon as people are cutting down trees; there’s a song that’s from the perspective of angels who are polluted, so they’re crying polluted tears. I feel like it’s more about the Earth. I think I was more in society when I was making it, so it feels more grounded.” There is no runaway from the industry so you just have to take your change to become real.

In addition to singing backing vocals for lo-fi pop prince Sean Nicholas Savage, Boucher began to create music of her own around this time, lifting the name ‘Grimes’ from a Myspace genre she’d never heard of and putting out the Dune-inspired Geidi Primes in 2010 on Arbutus Records. But in a city where everyone mildly left-of-centre seemed to be in a band, Grimes was in danger of getting lost amid the noise. Still developing her sound, Boucher took speed while making music with a friend one day. When he came down, she was still up, so she pulled an all-nighter on GarageBand, crafting the shuffling, spectral “Weregild”, which opens with her enticing her cat to mew (“Say something for me, Voignamir!”) and would later appear on her next album Halfaxa. Finding a sweet spot between her lo-fi aesthetic and pop structure, all of Grimes’ sonic signatures were in place. “I was like, ‘Wow, this song’s so much better than anything I’ve ever made!’” she told Dummy at the time.

H E A RT-TO - H E A RT / 9

“Feminism is not what motivated me to become a musician. The reason I have fucking armpit hair is, I don’t actually like it, aesthetically! I’m just too busy to deal with it. I am a working woman.”

10 / The Walkman Journal No 1

Sporting Life About His Mind-Bending Solo Sounds onsidering his chosen alias, it makes sense that Eric “Sporting Life” Adiele would bring up athletics when you ask him about. When we meet in the East Village at a small Tibetan restaurant that he chose, the 32-year-old points out that the two things are not that different. Both involve dedication to practice and performance, as well as agility, ambition, and stamina. Chatting with the Virginiaborn, Harlem-based producer—who’s wearing his usual monochromatic uniform, complete with the mandatory sportswear-themed hat—it’s obvious that he has the skills required for both. He tells me he’s just come from messing around with a new music software program, and he’s visibly giddy to return to it. Sport’s always looking for new ways to incorporate sounds into a composition; at one point, he asks for the noise he makes while slurping a banana smoothie to be mentioned in this article, in brackets, as an aside. It’s almost like he’s sampling our meal.

written by BY QUINN MORELAND

Last year, Sporting Life was featured on the cover of The FADER with the rest of Ratking, the New York trio breathing new life into the city’s hip-hop scene with a sound as expansive as their stomping grounds. The oldest of the group, Sport helms the ship, constructing

a broad range of beats over which Wiki and Hak— and now occasionally Sport himself—spit bars. In September, after three Ratking full-lengths—the most recent being March’s surprise BitTorrent bundle, 700 Fill, Sporting Life released a solo tape titled 55 5’s on R&S Records, a Belgian label that has put out music by Aphex Twin, Derrick May, and James Blake. Named after his beloved sampler, the 10-track instrumental cassette is an amalgamation of two year’s worth of stockpiled beats. They’re woven together seamlessly, and with integrity. The flashy lead single, “Badd,” is a carefully curated percussive craze in the vein of late, great DJ Rashad. The cavernous “Triple-Double No Assists” moves at the rapid, scuffled pace of basketball footwork drills, if practice was being held at the Metropolitan Opera. What might not be obvious while listening to 55 5’s, or when watching Sporting Life attack his SPD-SX sampling pad onstage, is the producer’s compassion. He is razorsharp and focused when talking about his plans for the future, but extremely humble when discussing what he’s already accomplished. A wide, genuine-seeming grin often lights up his face during our conversation. Perhaps one of his lines on Ratking’s “Steep Tech” best summarizes Sporting Life’s easygoing determination: My tracks ill and that’s no sweat.

photography by ANDREW KASS

Ratking’s feverish beat-maker talks shooting hoops, mangling samples, and his recent cassette, 55 5’s.

H E A RT-TO - H E A RT / 11

“If I don’t feel sweaty at the end of the show, it’s like—what did you actually do?”

“I think walking through the streets at night—2 am, 3 am—is really inspiring.”

How did you become interested in making music? SPORTING LIFE: Listening to it. Growing up with a father who collected a lot African music on cassette tapes. Being around hip-hop, or whatever else was on the car radio. Have you always been interested in producing, or was there a time where you were trying to be in a band or play an instrument? Most of my life was focused on basketball. Producing came to mean as much to me in a certain way, because you can apply the same practice habits. I played varsity basketball, and it instilled in me the work ethic that I now apply to making tracks. Do you practice music every day? I try to make it a daily routine. I try to find new things about music everyday. Sometimes, I’ll just go outside and listen to the street. You recently moved to Chinatown. Has living there been influential to your music? I think walking through the streets at night—2 am, 3 am— is really inspiring. It’s a cool hour; not that many people are on the streets, and it can really inspire ambient soundscapes. How did you meet the other Ratking boys? Patrick [aka Wiki] started off making beats, but not that many people had heard them because they knew him from rapping around the neighborhood. He gave me a couple of beats that I rapped on, and that was kind of how we first met. When he decided to become an MC, I started making beats for him. His rhymes were so strong, we would have ended up meeting anyway. What was your approach to making 55 5’s? Were there already-made songs that you wanted to put into a collection, or did you compose all new tracks? A little bit of both. I had a bunch of tracks that were like notes on the particular music I was studying at the time. Some of them were coming out better than others. Most of them are one-take recordings. I came up with a track listing over the span of a few months. Since I was listening to other new shit, I was making new stuff too.

I spiced it up with some new stuff I was making, so there’s a good variety. In an interview with FACT you mentioned that you’re working on a full-length. Can you elaborate on that project? I’m working on a half-length, a quarter-length. I’m working on a bunch of tracks. I recorded some rap tracks that are gonna be the illest. Now I’m just trying to produce them so they can be some street level Yeezustype shit. I’m like maybe two power levels down from full Yeezus. What led you to start incorporating your own vocals into the songs? If you get an inspiration, then you don’t feel stupid when you rap. Plus I feel like some space had been created after gaining certain power levels in production. I’ve learned some things, so maybe I do have time to write more. It’s like ‘Oh, I can breathe now—I don’t have to go so intensely.’ I have a bunch of stuff recorded with Dev Hynes, Wiki, and Novelist. Why did you decide to release 55 5’s as a cassette? Just so I could write raps about it afterwards [laughs]. I wrote a rap about it afterwards. It’s on a song called “Safe.” I’m like I just hopped out of the airport I made it here safe / I just made 55 5’s and I put it on tape. Tapes are cool because it’s a whole adventure opening them, wondering if the sounds are going to be warped. The whole production game, and music in general in a certain sense, is about coming out with sounds that nobody has heard. To pull something like that off a tape, that you know nobody is ever going to find out where it’s from, is cool. Could you reveal any of your favorite samples from the tape? The thing is, there aren’t really any samples on the tape. You gotta understand the processes that are happening to these samples. Gone are the days of MPC chopping where you could just hack chunks out of a sample. Today’s samplers you can actually send MIDI information into a sample and put it at different pitches and create.

Discoveries

14 / The Walkman Journal No 1 N EWS

30GB

underground cassette archive

As a programmer for CKLN in the ’80s, Myke Dyer built a giant collection of rare recordings. Now you can hear them all.

ollege radio stations tend to be magnets for strange and exceedingly rare music. That was especially true back in those wild days when ambitious weirdoes could pop a fresh cassette out of their tape deck, into an envelope, and off along a network of mailboxes belonging to like-minded noise freaks.

Myke Dyer was one such freak. From 1984 to 1990, he was a volunteer programmer at Ryersonaffiliated Toronto radio station CKLN (the frequency that now belongs to Indie88), where he hosted a show dedicated to underground, DIY noise, punk, industrial and avant-garde recordings as well as other audio oddities — many of them made in tiny batches if not single editions. During that time, he also operated a cassette label, john doe recordings, and found that his catalogue of unique offerings garnered him some leverage in the global tape trading community. As a result, his collection ballooned, encompassing local experimenters, which he collected on the Toronto noise compilation A View From Somewhere, to sound artists exploring the vanguard elsewhere in Canada and internationally. In 2009, after languishing in packing boxes for nearly two decades, Mark Lougheed and Graham Stewart helped digitize and archive Dyer’s holdings — roughly 800 tapes with original artwork — at noise-arch. net, which became something of an archeological dig site for noise fans

worldwide. Then, when the domain lapsed, the site’s contents — 30 GB of otherwise lost material — were uploaded as a single mysterious .tar to Archive.org. Now, the tracks have been indexed, made streamable, and outfitted with original artwork (this Rate Your Music list is also a helpful supplement). This is the motherlode. You could spend a lifetime following this gold vein. Dyer was initiated into cassette culture, he says, by the works of local plunderphonics artist John Oswald, who would produce “Mystery Tapes,” a series of “unmarked, unlabeled cassettes of found sounds and audio snippets.” “Getting a tape in the mail was like receiving a piece of artwork,” Dyer tells Chart Attack. “Most cassettes were one-offs, duplicated as needed.”

“Myke Dyer was one such freak. From 1984 to 1990, he was a volunteer programmer at Ryersonaffiliated Toronto radio station CKLN, where he hosted a show dedicated to underground, DIY noise, punk, industrial and avantgarde recordings.”

D I SCOVER I ES / 15

Cassette tapes are having an unlikely moment

he cheap plastic. The unruly ribbon. Leave them on a car dashboard on a July afternoon and be prepared to come back to a warped, melted mess. To those who can remember loading a Walkman or boom box and taking in the warbled results, the recent reemergence of cassette tapes is a peculiar development. But it is a trend that some saw coming, even before the latest resurrection of vinyl, record players, and all things pre-iPhone.

Though quantifiable figures can be hard to come by — unlike vinyl, which reportedly took in $226 million in the first half of this year, tapes are still a relatively underground endeavor — there’s no denying the format’s increased visibility. In the past few years alone, it has garnered its own holiday (Cassette Store Day, founded in 2013 by a group of labels hoping to draw attention to the virtues of the format), served as the subject

of a feature-length documentary (“Cassette,” which is currently being submitted to various film festivals), and become the musical trend du jour for a slew of indie bands and enthusiasts. Even major bands have gotten in on the action, with groups like Metallica, the Flaming Lips, and Dinosaur Jr. offering limited-release cassette formats in recent years.

“It’s fun to put on a cassette and listen to it. I guess it’s just the (physical) nature of it.” “The interesting thing is they’re being put out by labels and being consumed by people who are not old enough to have had cassettes,” says Jem Aswad, senior editor at Billboard, which tracks the music industry. “So it’s a very confusing phenomenon to me.” Confusing is a good enough descriptor. Beyond portability (and the ability to make mix tapes), cassettes weren’t much of an advance beyond vinyl. Yet, at a time in which anyone with a computer or smartphone can instantly access millions of songs, oftentimes at little or no cost, something about these small plastic relics seems to have taken hold. Reed Lappin had a feeling about this back in 2006, when he and a business partner found themselves at a Lowell storage barn, responding to a classified ad hawking old records. As owner of In Your Ear, a Boston record shop dealing mostly in secondhand merchandise, Lappin makes such trips periodically. “We figured if there’s [ever] any kind of market for cassettes, they’ll come to us.”

Dev Hynes Made A Cassette with Nelly Furtado Only available at tonight’s charity shows at The Apollo.

ev Hynes is known for his work with pop stars both ascendent and dominant: Solange, Sky Ferreira, Carly Rae Jepsin and Britney Spears have all enlisted the artist known as Blood Orange for his idiosyncratic production and style. Now, you can add Nelly Furtado to that roster, with the announcement of a collaborative Blood Orange/Furtado cassette tape called Hadron Collider, via Hynes’s Instagram. Not much is known about the project, except it will only be available at tonight’s soldout Blood Orange charity shows at The Apollo, benefitting the Opus 118 Harlem School of Music. Read our cover story on Blood Orange here.

Listen the way you feel

#discovertheinside

18 / The Walkman Journal No 1 RELE AS ES O F T H E S E ASO N

Fraternal Twin, Skin Gets Hot (Appolonian Sound)

written by BRAD ROSE

Singer/songwriter Tom Christie is best known as the bassist for scrappy twee act Quarterbacks, and the solo material he

makes as Fraternal Twin trades in a similarly fragile anxiety. Skin Gets Hot’s acoustic numbers, like the opener “Hourglass,” edge toward Mount Eerie’s grandiose, existential folk songs, but Christie more often makes meek music for those times you feel small.

New 1 Releases Various Artists, Godmode presents American Music (Godmode) Last year, Nick Sylvester’s Godmode Records got a substantial profile boost on the back of Shamir’s debut EP of slicked-back disco tracks, but don’t mistake them for just another dance label. Godmode Presents American Music, their latest stable-spanning compilation, is compelling for its sheer breadth. There’s more DFA worship (Montreal Sex Machine’s “Loose in the Zone”), neon-goth Chromaticisms (Courtship Ritual’s “Ancient Drip”), and even a couple of spaced-out noise tracks for good measure — a compelling cross section of the scene that launched a star.

Levitation Room, Minds of Our Own (Burger) Carrboro, North Carolina producer Ryan Martin’s fractured music forages

the oft-unexplored borderlands between downer drones, neurotic noise, and more traditional (but still austere) singersongwriter fare. This year’s two-cassette release, They’re Playing Themselves, contains some of Martin’s most crucial and jarring experiments yet — or at least the first tape of the set does. As these releases sometimes go, the 70-tape pressing is already sold out.

D I SCOVER I ES / 19

Secret Boyfriend, They’re Playing Themselves (GROVL) Carrboro, North Carolina producer Ryan Martin’s fractured music forages the oft-unexplored borderlands

between downer drones, neurotic noise, and more traditional (but still austere) singer-songwriter fare. This year’s two-cassette release, They’re Playing Themselves, contains some of Martin’s most crucial and jarring experiments yet — or at least the first tape of the set does.

As these releases sometimes go, the 70-tape pressing is already sold out, and the first cassette is available digitally at Martin’s request — a tribute, perhaps, to the uniqueness of the medium.

Free Cake For Every Creature, Moving Songs (Double Double Whammy)

Emotions Secret Boyfriend, They’re Playing Themselves (GROVL) Carrboro, North Carolina producer Ryan Martin’s

On last year’s “pretty good,” Katie Bennett’s previously muffled Free Cake For Every Creature project went widescreen with a full band. For Moving Songs, she receded back into the hushed sounds of bedroom recorded indie pop, making music that’s as intimate and important as a best friend’s whisper, proof maybe that we can have an expansive Free Cake and eat the solo version too.

fractured music forages the oft-unexplored borderlands between downer drones, neurotic noise, and more traditional (but still austere) singersongwriter fare. This year’s two-cassette release, They’re Playing Themselves, contains some of Martin’s most crucial and jarring experiments yet — or at least the first tape of the set does. As these releases sometimes go.

Habitat

22 / The Walkman Journal No 1 #C S D1 5 S PEC I A L

Cassette Stor written by JEN LONG

Why We’ve Created

’ve been a fan of the cassette for as long as I can remember. My mum gave me my first tapes when I was little; a copy of ABBA’s ’Greatest Hits’ and Michael Jackson’s ’Thriller’ which didn’t leave my ears for the entire summer. Since then, even as my Walkman changed to a Discman, changed to an iPod, cassette tapes have stayed a large part of my music collection. In 2011 I started Kissability, the label on which I’ve released tapes for the likes of DZ Deathrays, Splashh, and Thumpers. The inaugural Cassette Store Day will take place on September 7. It began with an email from Steve Rose who runs the Sexbeat label (Fear of Men, Eagulls). “I had an idea this weekend… Why not International Cassette Store Day?” Steve emailed Matt Flag from Suplex Cassettes (Spectrals, Fair Ohs), and the three of us set about contacting a few of our friends who run tape labels in the UK and US. And then it snowballed. Releases now include At The Drive In’s ‘Relationship of Command’, Haim’s ‘Forever’ EP, and Deerhunter’s ‘Monomania’.

In London, we will run an afternoon at Rough Trade East with a couple of instore performances, and there will also be events at Burger Records in LA, Big Love in Tokyo, and Mirror Universe, Godmode, and Gimme Tinnitus blog are doing a cassette fair and show at Silent Barn in Brooklyn. Unlike Record Store Day, this is less about supporting shops and more about celebrating the cassette format that has been making a comeback for a while. I can imagine that outside my indie circle this announcement is being greeted with rolls of eyes and a sigh of, “Fucking hipsters.” But it’s not all nostalgic cool. Tapes make sense in not only our current economic climate, but in our musical one too.

And Why It’s Not Just Hipster Nonsense

Music today moves faster than ever before. We are swamped hourly with new acts, new tracks, and endless free downloads. It becomes addictive, with more and more bands wanting to release their music, and most importantly, more fans than ever wanting to become a part of this world and start a label. However, you can’t sell mp3s from the merch table (and it isn’t the most romantic way of introducing someone to a great band). Plus cassettes are cheap to make and you don’t have to commit to large quantities, unlike vinyl. I’ll leave Matt from Suplex to have the final say: Tapes have been the most constant musical format in my life. As a kid it enabled me to cheaply buy new releases but more importantly, it allowed my friendship group to grow our music tastes by swapping blank tapes filled with gems and even our own home-recorded forays into music. Today it is the most affordable showcase for a band that is not ready to spend £1000 to drop 500 7"s into the world, so I can run a label that takes chances and puts out as many releases as I want to due to the cheapness and convenience of the format. Plus they look rad!

Today it is the most affordable showcase for a band that is not ready to spend £1000 to drop 500 7"s into the world, so I can run a label that takes chances and puts out as many releases as I want to due to the cheapness and convenience of the format. Plus they look rad!

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news

Cassette Store Day returns in October, expands to Germany, Australia, NZ Annual analogue celebration continues to grow in its third year.

he 2015 edition of Cassette Store Day (CSD) will take place on October 17, with the event expanding beyond the UK and US this year with Germany, Australia and New Zealand taking part. Founded in 2013 by UK indie labels Suplex Cassettes, Kissability, and Sexbeat, the event celebrates tape culture with events and special releases in a similar format as Record Store Day. This year Rice is Nice in Australia, Arch Hill in New Zeland and Mansions and Millions in Germany will head country specific events and releases.

written by ROBIN MURRAY

ore Day In a statement on the CSD website, co-founder Jen Long discussed their desire to continue growing. “This year we’ve gone even further to try and include as many tape fans around the world. We want as many people as possible to be able to get involved and put out a tape, put on a gig or event, or get hold of that release they really want.” This year also marks the first time that labels can sell their releases online on the day without having to wait a week, as in previous years. Anyone wishing to add a release or event to CSD can do so via the website, but only until September 1. An early list of US releases is currently available online including Quasimoto’s The Further Adventures of Lord Quas and Foal’s What Went Down. Germany meanwhile has announced that the likes of Erased Tapes will join the celebration.

See our summary of the releases of 2013-15 on the next page

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Cassette Store Day releases 2013-15

special releases

319 special releases

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697 special releases

illustration by VALERIO PELLEGRINI

written by RROBIN MURRAY

Full 2015 Catalogue

ASSETTE STORE DAY RETURNS ON OCTOBER 17TH with its biggest catalogue of releases yet. The summer has ended which means Cassette Store Day is upon us once again. For the third annual celebration the festivities have expanded beyond the US and UK to include Germany, New Zealand, and Australia. The big day isn’t until October 17, but now you can browse the full release list. A few immediate highlights pop out. STONES THROW will reissue Madlib’s second album as QUASIMOTO, THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF LORD QUAS while KILL ROCK STARS will deliver Bratmobile’s classic Pottymouth. Still, the reissue game might have been won by LIGHT IN THE ATTIC who have reissued the soundtrack to Shogun Assassin. As for newer music, AUTRE NE VEUT will release The Age Of Transparency: The Avatar Sessions, a likely companion to his upcoming album. And 100%, the project from of ELAIZA SANTOS, will receive her first physical release ever. If you’re unfamiliar with Santos’ music look no further than our Best Of Bandcamp column, which she topped in February with her crushing, anonymously released recording. Cassette Store Day ta place on October 17th.

Think Pieces

Secret Music Exploring nine underground tape labels on the occasion of Cassette Store Day.

assettes are currently the simplest and most artistically pure way of sharing sound, wrote journalist Neil Strauss in Cassette Mythos, a cult classic of an anthology on homemade tape culture. The book, published in 1990, traced the roots of the medium in experimental and outsider music, emphasizing the format’s accessibility. One would only need blank tapes, cassette decks, envelopes, and stamps to particpate in what Strauss then called “a perfect environment for an underground to develop.”

Flash forward 23 years and not so much has changed. In the underground, the sentiment still rings true. Cassettes continue on as a medium of choice among noise artists, punks, and fringe experimentalists. The roots of the cassette world subvert a need for the greater music industry, and often rule out the necessity for any monetary exchange in music at all. Trading is a longstanding element to tape culture. Tape labels and roving mini tape distros remain at the heart of what makes underground cassette culture cohesive, alive, and exciting. But the recent past has seen higherprofile bands take newfound interest in tapes, as the roster for today’s “Cassette Store Day” proves. Much like the annual Record Store Day tradition, this day is a loosely-organized international effort, with shops around the world hosting events and various labels issuing limited

edition tapes. Some of these tapes are coming from massive bands like Flaming Lips, Animal Collective, and Haim, but the event was conceptualized by three labels in the UK functioning on much smaller scales— Sexbeat, Kissability, and Supplex. “It’s a celebration for people who already love cassettes,” says organizer Jen Long, a BBC radio DJ who runs Kissability. One of her partners thought up CSD in April. “He was like, ‘I had this stupid idea this weekend,” Long said, “and I was like, Yeah, that sounds really funny.” The idea was to set up “a day we could spend hanging out, drinking some cans of beer, and selling some tapes,” a fun, small-scale affair for UK labels at the Rough Trade store in London. It took on a different life after Bella Union proposed the Flaming Lips tape. Soon the organizers saw potential for bigger labels to get involved and reached out. “It’s gotten a bit mental,” Long admits with a laugh. In New York, Mirror Universe Tapes and GODMODE Records (run by Pitchfork contributor Nick Sylvester) are presenting a tape fair at Brooklyn’s Silent Barn. At Oma333 in Stockholm, a tape-only market will include five live tape-only acts. DJs playing music from their personal collections. Rizzo Manufacture Studio in Palermo, Italy will host a vintage cassette exhibition. Bridgetown DIY in La Puente, Calif., will host a day of cassette trading.

A second goal of Cassette Store Day, Long explains, is to raise awareness that cassettes are still a viable format with sizable audiences that take tape labels seriously. “It’s about giving labels more of a platform and a little more authority,” she said. “Tape l abels are real labels. You are putting out releases with download codes and on iTunes. It’s still a legitimate label.” The intention is no doubt admirable, but does raise some questions — what makes a label “serious” or “real”? Does a day of consumption “legitimize” the cassette medium? Is the amateur nature of cassettes part of their charm? Moreover, do cassettes need to be taken seriously by anyone other than the audiences they naturally attract?

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Chrome Brulée Or how the cassette came to be reborn in Belgium. ife goes in cycles and what goes around always seems to come back around, but the fact that compact cassettes are enjoying a second life still comes as something of a surprise. The infinitely more practical and superior quality CD, followed later by digital formats, had appeared to have relegated compact cassettes to little more than a memory from our parents’ era. But at a market for independent labels, organised at Brussels Café Central every few months, it’s the one item sold by almost every label. Cassette-only labels aren’t even that rare, and they’re an ideal way to discover the more obscure and avant-garde styles of music out there.

A highly impractical and shabby medium like this is, of course, tailor-made for Belgians. They speak to our surrealist nature, and it’s no wonder that the cassette –revival is in full swing in Brussels with labels wrapping them in toilet tube rolls or limiting the release to 225 tapes each with unique handmade artwork, and all for very easy-on-thewallet prices. Most of them can be yours for only 5€ or less. The fact that they cost far less to make than vinyl (coupled with the fact that it’s far easier to avoid paying for copyright) is certainly appealing to music entrepreneurs just starting out. As they only require a couple of decks – which can be found easily for little money – some even make the copies themselves, and unlike CDRs, they are perceived as a lot less “disposable” . But low cost isn’t the only reason to glorify the cassette. A love for the music, synthesisers and aesthetics of the 80s makes chrome tape a logical medium from

which to take inspiration. Robert Magnet, Ricky Sunset, Tony Johnson, Michael Shredlove, Alex Mayhem, Kid Supreme & Club Cannibal, also known as the Chrome Brulée collective, make music “that’s an ode to the golden days of chrome cassettes”. Not that they’ve released anything yet. Apart from a couple of live gigs and a sparse and mysterious web presence, little is known about them and they seem to want to keep it that way. They perform in masks and don’t share much more than what you’ll find in the teaser above.

“In a world where music has become irrelevant, in a time where quantity comes over quality … a new force rises from within.”

The music is not unlike that of artists like DâmFunk or Onra, who both played a key role in bringing back the synthfuelled 80s Funk sound – with a twist. Far less restricted and purist than the first, and not based on samples like the latter, it’s fresher and harderedged with hints of the Detroit Electro sound of Cybotron or Model 500 and the sonic excursions of Vangelis or Paul Hardcastle. Even though there’s hardly any ground for notoriety, the world of vintage electronic instruments is on board. The few live shows they’ve done have hit hard and everyone who has experienced them is quickly hooked. Expect half a studio on stage, with lots of smoke and masked men twiddling knobs, playing keys and hitting electronic drums over soundscapes coming from a chrome tape – far more exciting than your usual laptop live gig. Hopefully a release, even just on cassette, is soon to follow. Another bunch of Belgians that sound like they came straight from the 80s is Maseratay, a new On-Point record signee about to release a 12”. No info about the members has yet been shared but the music sounds mighty tight – the kind of stuff that calls for hotpants and shiny track suits. A cassette release isn’t planned, which is a mighty shame, but maybe label-boss Alex should take it up a notch and go for a flexi-disc. However bleak the 80s were in Belgium, they seem not only to claim our proudest moments in electronic music history, but they keep on inspiring our young new artists. Musically at least, we definitely thrive during them. All nonsense aside, these two acts have the potential to go a long way. Far further, perhaps, than the cassette craze itself.

30 / The Walkman Journal No 1

Are cassettes the new records? Cassette labels across the UK and the US celebrate the analogue format September 27 with new releases, rare reissues, special gigs and all-out tape-themed geekery.

f you grew up in the ’80s or ’90s the chances are the first music you ever owned was in a cassette format. Cheap, compact, shareable and easy to record onto, cassettes were the perfect medium for a DIY youth who gave rise to punk and hip hop.

It was cassettes that channelled sound through boomboxes in the Bronx when the Beasties were fighting for their right to party. It was cassettes of “loud and aggressive” music found in bargain bins in Hermosa Beach that inspired Keith Morris and Greg Ginn to strike out and form Black Flag. Tupac blasted a dubbed cassette of Nas’ seminal Illmatic in court during one of his 1994 trials. Joey Ramone made rare solo recordings on cassettes that were discovered after his death in 2001. Mixed cassettes were made for lovers and demo cassettes were posted to labels. Cassettes literally made the music world go round. But cassettes quickly fell into obscurity after CDs dominated the game in the late ’90s/early naughties. And now, the majority of music finds life in a digital format. So, taking inspiration from the vinyl renaissance and their annual Record Store Day, a group of analogue revivalists are revisiting the cassette format and breathing new life into its plastic shell. Launched just last year by a group of UK cassette label owners including Steven Rose of Sexbeat Records, Matt Flag of Suplex Cassettes, and Jen Long of Kissability, Cassette Store Day is raising its game this year with a ton more releases and a US branch run by American cassette aficionados Burger Records. Is the cassette safe from extinction? We caught up with Matt from Suplex to find out more. What exactly is Cassette Store Day? Cassette Store Day is a celebration of the humble cassette, a format that, although not a major competitor to Vinyl/CDs/ Downloads, is still alive and holding its own. As the past five years have seen a ton of new cassette labels pop up, the majority of which are based online, CSD tries to bring these releases into shops again, even if it is for just one day a year. In basic terms, it follows the Record Store Day formula, but just a little bit different! Why did you start it? Primarily because we all run cassette labels and thought it would be funny to have a cassette version of RSD. The original premise had a lot of emphasis on just having fun and seeing where we could take it. I don’t think we anticipated the potential that other labels/shops/ people would think it was a good idea!

How do you hope it will have an impact? My main hope is that people realise what a great format cassettes are, and why we all loved them in the first place. For me personally, I love a physical product and have never been able to wrap my head around the concept of mp3s on my computer as ‘owning’ the music. Due to their affordability, cassettes are that perfect middle ground for many artists and labels who only want to make a small run, or a release something a little bit weirder that they don’t have the funds to put onto vinyl. This also then means you get lots of tape labels who release some really awesome releases that might never have seen the light of day otherwise. What’s the international cassette community like? I’ve been releasing tapes for five years as Suplex Cassettes and have spoken to many labels over the years who have all been really cool and supportive, sharing tape plant or printers details or places to distro tapes. I’ve only ever encountered really awesome people who have a genuine love for music and for being involved. The guys at Burger records are a great example of a cassette label that have released some incredible tapes (and a whole lot more), who are genuine fans and have been super nice to work with this year taking on the USA for CSD. Who’s involved in CSD and what does everyone do? At the moment CSD is just Jen and I and we pretty much do everything between the two of us, apart from PR, which needed a professional! We both have full-time jobs so a lot of our personal time is spent doing admin. I can’t count the amount of hours are spent in the run up replying to emails and updating spreadsheets, but it is all worthwhile when you see the amazing releases that come out every year and the people excited to buy a cassette by someone they love! How can people get involved/show support this year? The best way to get involved is to get down to one of the participating shops on September 27 (check the website to see who is involved) and pick up a tape, maybe even buy something else from the shop. You can also tweet (we are @cassetteday) about all the tapes you want to buy and which shops you will be visiting. What have been the challenges in bringing CSD to life? I have to say, we have been pretty lucky so far. Maybe the biggest challenge from the first CSD last year was that is was way bigger than we anticipated and we had to react accordingly to that. I did not ever believe it would get the attention of

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the mainstream media such as the BBC or the support of record labels and bands who I have looked up to since I started listening to music. What have been the major inspirations? The obvious inspiration is RSD, as they really paved the way with a day celebrating a format.The first albums I bought were on cassette, my formative years were formed around taping friends’ records and making/receiving mixtapes was a way of life. They look cool and are pretty durable, come in all colours and can be packaged in way more ways than an LP can.

What’s the future for CSD? Hopefully to carry on the celebrations every year, while bringing cassettes back a little. I would personally love to see some of my favourite indie labels doing tape versions of certain releases at a price that reflects their affordability. What I would hate to see is tape releases being sold for high prices at retail, and for the releases on CSD to become eBay fodder. I can’t control these things, nor is it my place to. I’d just prefer it not to go that way. Cassette Store Day will be celebrated in 2015 as well.

“As vinyl had its resurgence four years ago, cassette had its two years ago. There’s a bunch of small indie labels across the world that are doing this and they’re killing it.”

#discovertheinside