Drop the bomb
Chris, Kieran and Shelagh from Sydney band Yes Nukes tell me they’ve been selling t-shirts and tapes at their raucous warehouse and Sydney Park gigs.
I was in Melbourne last week and got a couple of tapes from Daniel Spencer after seeing his band Blank Realm play a show at the Bus Gallery on Little Lonsdale. It’s not the first time I’ve been given tapes lately either.
How many people trading tapes even had tapes when they were growing up, and how much effort does it take to record that way rather than using computers or whatever else? Do you think it’s a contrived kinda aesthetic decision - that links these artists into ’80s noise tape scenes - or something more natural?
If you haven’t heard Yes Nukes, listen on their myspace or read this gig review from We Come From Garageland:
yes nukes were next, whom have recently lost their synth and acquired a bass player by the name of shelagh. this move has made their great songs sound 500% better, and basically just completed what was already a fantastic band.
yes nukes recently decided that the easiest way to have a good set is to turn their amps up as loud as possible, which they put into effect tonight. chris managed to bleed all over my drum kit too, which was a bit special! splattered snare! burst ear drums! so punk rock.
the new sound has added a definite grunge to yes nukes, which i can only assume was their intention. i strongly recommend checking them out.
Yes Nukes will be in to the FBI studios on Thursday night to talk tapes, DIY gigs and contrary band names on Join the Dots (from 9pm on 94.5FM).
In my personal experience, people who are trading tapes nowadays were the ones making tapes when they were kids and teenagers. People my age (mid-20s) still spent their adolescence in a largely pre-internet, pre-file sharing era, and mix tapes were the most accessible way of sharing your music with friends. I myself am a tape die-hard, for evidence of which:
http://www.messandnoise.com/articles/10338
(The first article I ever wrote for M+N)
I suppose these days it does represent a conscious aesthetic decision to go with tape, but I don’t know if ‘contrived’ would be the right term. Deliberate, certainly. Contrary, for sure.
emmy hennings
26 Feb 08 at 5:17 am
The Moonmilk and Crab Smasher cassettes I own (released in 2007) both sound better for being on tape. A lot of noise labels past and present use tapes because they’re cheap, easy and hands-on. The sonic limitations normally aren’t an issue either (see any Dead C stuff, really).
I relied heavily on tapes as a teenager. CDs are arguably cheaper to reproduce and easier to listen to. The folk releasing tapes nowadays probably do it for the love of the format, similar to vinyl lovers.
There’s another factor though. A lot of DIY/private press stuff relies on the fetishisation of their product, I think. Scroll through the pages of Volcanic Tongue and you’ll notice that a great deal of the blurbs describe in some detail what type of packaging the item comes in. People love to own something they know is scarce and imminently rare.
Shaun
26 Feb 08 at 2:03 pm
i still totally rely on tapes … my car doesn’t play anything else unless i hook up one of those adapters, so i transfer my most-loved albums on there. and if anything, it’s easier these days to make mix tapes as cd players can be programmed better, rather than the old stop start method (and sometimes i cheat a bit by compiling the tracks in an itunes playlist first to see the time limits). it’ll be a while off before they completely die off (for me at least).
i agree with emmy too, because i think tapes are the 7-inch singles for the kids born in the late 70s (like me) and 80s. i know a lot of younger folk who aren’t so au fait with vinyl because they were dying out already by the time i reached music buying age, and for me it was all about cassingles, cassette albums and cds.
LT
26 Feb 08 at 6:10 pm