Tape Manipulation artists

[NO PART OF IT]

Have you heard the trilogy of P16.D4 - Distruct,  Mixed Band Philanthropist - The Impossible Humane, and  Nurse With Wound - The Sylvie And Babs Hi-Fi Companion?  Also maybe  Bladder Flask - One Day I Was So Sad That The Corners Of My Mouth Met & Everybody Thought I Was Whistling.

Good suggestions!  I haven't heard Bladder Flask at all, and MBP is still something I could use to be more familiar with.  

My reply reads way more facetiously than intended. It was more thinking out loud (or on a computer) about the topic as I'd spent a lot of the day pondering it on and off. It was a tougher question to answer than I first thought it would be which makes it a question well worth asking.

When I talk about '95% of artists using tape' that's obviously quite hyperbolic and not something that could be accurately measured. I just see it a lot personally in the music I listen to and happen to see live.

But I do think that prolific use of tape can fall into a number of camps: focussing on the possibilities of the machines or simply the sound quality of the tape or even just the portability of the format as much as the manipulatable aspects of the material i.e. cutting, splicing and physically moving it around the heads. Things get further muddied when you consider whether an artist commits specifically to any of these methods or it's just a part of what they do. But I enjoy working out the differences and crossover.

What you are talking about is definitely a recognisable and identifiable sound though and I may back and add some more suggestions as they come to me. Lots of Chocolate Monk releases - especially of the last few years - have this kind of thing in spades and sound great. Highly recommend checking out any of Bob Delsaulniers projects on that note. So good.

Glad Noetinger is working for you. I haven't heard this one but saw him perform live recently with a Revox and a couple of loops. Utterly insane. Using the thing as a sound making device far beyond anything i'd ever seen before. Got something like a 5 minute standing ovation! One of the best performances of experimental music I've ever seen.

I understand the difficulty in drawing the line, and I appreciate you listing these things.  When I posted, I initially was looking mostly for that good 'ol tape loop grit, but I am generally into the sound of tape manipulation itself, regardless of the audio that is actually on the tape.  People like Severed Heads or Kurt Volentine making bizarre music with tape loops is even more appealing, but obviously a little harder to suss out.  I'm very much a fan of loops,  repetition, and dare I say "rhythm" in noise and experimental music, and I posted partly to hone in on these things.  If there is a more experimental Renaldo & The Loaf out there, I'd love to know about it.

On that note, I should add that Nachtluft is great for this, if anyone hasn't heard them.  They are not strictly tape manipulation, but I definitely wish they were sometimes.   https://www.discogs.com/artist/157642-Nachtluft  

[Tommy Carlsson]

So this is obviously not what this board is about musically speaking -- although I know a lot of you absolutely worship Italo Disco -- but I wanted to share a couple of videos I stumbled across recently... you rarely see tape splicing in action like this, and I figured anyone interested in tape manipulation would get a kick out of watching this. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/M7SinqdoKeQ
https://youtu.be/IBMHvJmPZSk

[pentd]

anyone interested in tape manipulation would get a kick out of watching this.

hot dam!!

[pentd]

man, that anton bruhin clip is insane too

[Duncan]

That's crazy clean! We have it so easy these days.

A favourite nutso work of mine utilising the good ol' rapid pause-record-pause method of audio-brut cut ups is Anton Bruhin's InOut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUINCSoWhQ4

This is utterly mental.  You can hear Adam Bohman doing a lot of pause button stuff in a similar vein on his albums but nothing so detailed and organised as this.

I saw Bruhin give a talk on his work a couple of years ago and during the Q&A he revealed that he was totally ambivalent about cassette tape as a medium, using it mostly just because it was cheap and available rather than attraction to any special possibilities of the format.  He even casually mentioned moving onto Fruity Loops when he got a computer.  The fact that he was still making stuff like this with that in mind is astonishing really.


edit - here's a passage of him discussing this piece taken from soundohm, what a hero:

'INOUT was recorded on a Sanyo M7300L stereo radio cassette recorder with both an integrated and external microphone. The recorder is in the recording standby position, both RECORD and PAUSE buttons are pushed. Then I sing or play a tone into the microphone. During this tone, I release the PAUSE button by pushing it. Subsequently, I press the PAUSE button again within a fraction of a second. Now the first short note is recorded. In InOut I added this way thousands of very short notes like a patchwork, like an acoustic quilt with geometric irregularities and varied patterns. The percussive effect was produced by the clicking noise of the PAUSE button. Recorded with the integrated microphone, those clickings appear with pretty high amplitude, depending on the vehemence by which I pushed the button. Recorded with the external microphone, the clicking will not be recorded and remain silent on tape. For InOut I alternated both possibilities; for a longer passage I recorded solely clicking noises to obtain a percussion solo.'

[Cementimental]

absolutely incredible stuff!!

[Mr Klang]

Mixed Band Philanhtropist 'The Man Who Mistook A Real Woman For His Muse And Acted Accordingly' 7" (Hypnagogia, 2003) is an excellent example of absurdist Musique Concrete / sound collage. Although released in 2003, the majority of the track was recorded in 1983:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxIDol3dJtA

[Mr Klang]

The forthcoming Nurse With Wound Play Bladder Flask CD (United Dairies) should be amazing!

[bibleblack]

Sorry if someone has mentioned this but Evil Moisture would be a classic tape go to

[NO PART OF IT]

I made a big long list of suggestions here to listen to at work, and I ended up not getting to much of it.   Now I quit my job, and I don't get too much time to listen, but I'll get to it.  Some newer things I didn't get to listen to on youtube until now, crazy stuff! 

Does anyone know if Henry Flynt did some true tape work?  I know there is "Hillbilly Tape Music" but that's not intrinsically tape work to me, it just seems like experimental music recorded on tape for the most part.  I like what I've heard of his work, just curious.   

[pentd]

http://www.radio-on-berlin.com/?p=8666&

Some of Dai Coelacanth's shows are played on Radio-ON Berlin.  Spliced tape manipulation of spoken word, field recordings , overdubs and sound collage.  Mostly vocals but old radio sounds, noise, etc all in there.  

cool, thanks!

edit: wtf haha xlent total brainmelter

edit 2: ok took me a while to figure this out, so i been listening to this for the last hour or so and it's this "radio nuda"

http://www.radio-on-berlin.com/?p=10011

but still quite a fuckin rollercoaster!!