It is not really a
surprise to see the cassette tape surging in popularity as a medium
for getting your music out there. For a DIY music venture it's
fairly perfect – with some basic equipment you can actually do it
all yourself from home. Popularity of the medium has soared in recent years as we were all forced to stay at home.
Creating a good looking and sounding tape can certainly
not be straightforward, and its easy to get rubbish results.
You don't want to
record too hot and get unwanted clipping / distortion on the
recording.
You need a tape
recorder, blank tapes, packaging, and probably a printer unless you
plan to do all of that by hand.
I purchased sheets of
sticky tape labels, blank tape shells and plastic cases from
TapeLine. Very quick delivery and reasonably priced. I note on
their website they state they are seeing high demand for dubbing
services!
Given that the
dwindling number of vinyl pressing plants out there are seeing huge
demand (with COVID and raw material sourcing issues also causing
problems) there is no wonder that growing numbers of artists and
labels are turning to tapes.
I personally love tapes
as they force me to listen to an album as the artist intended (all
the tracks, in the correct order) and they also remove me from my
phone for a while – I take my portable player out for a walk and
leave my phone at home!
So I thought I would
use my blog to talk about how I put together my first tape project
alongside the mighty fine noise beast that is BLACKCLOUDSUMMONER. BCS
contributed a wonderful interview (and some art) for my recent
Intrusive Signals zine. He mentioned that he loved working on split
releases, and we went from there. Luckily we both had a long form
track that was suitable – both clocking in at around 16 minutes.
I had wanted to work on
a longer piece for a while, attempting something with harsh noise
elements as well as using a stainless steel percussive instrument I
had made last year (I might do a seperate blog post about this creation that I have called the "Spyrimba"). I recorded the session as live as possible –
but there was a degree of post processing. I used audacity and FL
Studio to add additional layers and play with the EQ. I wanted to
make something oppressive sounding, but with moments of clarity. I
have listened to a lot of Scald Hymn and Moss Harvest recently and so
I take these as an influence here.
The TEAC tape recorder
I bought during lockdown for £25 on gumtree works fine 90% of the
time, but occasionally the head mechanism sticks up which means you
cannot eject the tape or operate any of the controls. So I had to
remove the door giving me screwdriver access to the mechanism so you
can carefully ease it out. There is probably something I can do to
sort this out but I don't know what yet. I can foresee that one day
one of the soldered joints will give way and it will stop working
altogether.
I dubbed all of side A
first (BLACKCLOUDSUMMONER's harrowing offering called Wheeze &
Junk), in real time, marked the side A label. Then rewound to the
start of side B with a trusty HB pencil, before dubbing my track
called Engorge. Both tracks are around 16 minutes each, and with 25
copies, that's around 800 minutes of recording.
In between recording I
was designing then printing the J cards which I drew in my CAD
software and good old MS Paint. I'm lucky enough to have a laser
printer at home so using slightly thicker paper for the cards was not
a problem, and also printing out the tape labels became a simple task.
Each sticker sheet had 12 labels (6 cassettes worth) and I did not want to try
and line up text to each specific label, so I made a random repeating
pattern that ensured that both our artist names would appear
somewhere on each label. I then ran a highlighter over our names to
show which track was on which side. The bonus of doing it this way
is that there is loads of bits of printed label left over that include the
pattern – I can use these for sealing the envelopes or using on future zines.
Sometimes the sticker
labels go on wonky to the tape and they are a bugger to get off and
realign.
The tapes I bought had
the recording tabs already taken out (even though they were brand new) so I
had to cut little bits of sellotape to stick over.
With a combination of
borrowing my wife's paper guillotine and the kitchen scissors, I
carefully cut out each J-Card, made a folding template, then used a steel ruler and scissor
blade to score each fold line.
Why have I gone to
lengths to detail all of this?
Well, firstly it shows how
bloody awkward the tape can be. There are very good reasons why the
medium was superseded in the 90s by the CD. So I take my hats off to
the existing tape labels out there who are still releasing these on a regular basis.
I would imagine if I release some more in the future (and I probably
will, I have plenty of labels and a few blank shells left over) then
the entire process might be a bit easier. I might also look into
replacing or repairing the tape recorded because when the head shell
sticks it really is awkward to reset.
But anyway, I am really
happy with the final product and I love the BCS track. Its a full
on noise wig out with a savage kick drum that comes in near the end,
and its mixed really well by Foul Prey. I did consider asking them
to master my track too – it bugs me when one side of a split is
weaker compared to the other and in this case my track probably is
the weaker of the two – however I wanted this project to be
completely DIY from my point of view so I stuck with my mixing and
mastering efforts. Maybe in the future I will look for a fresh pair
of ears to sort my mess out.....
And all this for
selling the tapes at £5 each, with plenty of initial start up costs.
But then if I wanted to make money at this, I would probably become
a deep house DJ or whatever it is the kids are listening to these
days.... noise / experimental / DIY music is for the love and the
experience. But now I have the means for doing this again.... but do
I want to? Yeah, probably. They look cool and hopefully a few people
will buy them! I will also trade a few, and there are a few people
who have sent me stuff in the past so there will be copies going
their way.
The tape will be released soon via bandcamp. I will do another post detailing the actual release....
PS I'm still a kid and I love raving when I get the chance.
