The Modern Tapes debut from Chicago experimentalist Andy Klingensmith is a post-lowercase exploration of time and place manifested in a musique concreté informed assembly of field recorded texture and sub-bass conflict.
Textured, hissing tones give way to the sound of slowly dragging a cassette recorder behind you that is playing the recordings of slowly dragging a cassette recorder behind you.
Rovellasca is the prolific solo presence of sound and visual artist Craig Stewart Johnson, also of Death In Scarsdale, Liminal Haze and the curator of the impeccable Invisible City Records label.
Half-slept soundscapes succumb to the resonant rumblings of an unsettled sense of self on Derek Rush’s second release as UNFEELING, the first for Modern Tapes. The title NEUROBIOLOGICAL TRAUMATOLOGY, refers to actual physical changes that can occur in the brain due to emotional trauma. The music stirs misfiring synapses, pulsating blood vessels, and woozy sensations into the kind fog you can only remember in the moments just after you wake up.
mt042- SHAAN‘In A Land Far Away A Desecrated Essence Is Putting Itself Together’ c50 Utilizing a minimal set of tools (a korg sampler and a roland tb303) SHAAN takes us through three extended tracks of experimental electronics. The sounds bounce off one another with a nervous curiosity balanced by a focused, technical control. The tracks have a central nervous system similar to early electronic music experiments if they had been made with currently available machinery. The songs explore rhythm in a fashion akin to outsider-techno while, at other times, SHAAN reassembles the nuance of manipulated samples into jittery collages.
Following up to her 2018 debut, “Notes From A Peculiar Time In Space” Pancevo, Serbia-based multimedia artist, Jovana Ivanac, under her SHAAN moniker, spreads her wings and explores the space/time continuum more extensively than ever before.. This is a kinetic, inquisitive release and an excellent evolution of this artist’s sound.
mt043- PERMANENT ‘Social Disease’ c50 The debut from PERMANENT, the solo project of Durham, NC based musician Mimi Luse. While some may be familiar with her work as the bassist and vocalist for the post punk band Cochonne, here she handles everything (with the exception of a collaboration track with Yung Target). With nods to the early days of industrial music in the minimalist, distorted drum machines and an experimental/DIY approach to production, PERMANENT takes her influences and molds them into a sound all her own, equally at home in your headphones on a dark night as it is on the weirder dancefloors of the world.
mt044- PEPPY PEP PEPPER ‘Forced Distance’ c38 Violet Candide needs no introduction to those who have been following Modern Tapes or the contemporary european minimal synth scene for the past few years. For the uninitiated, she is half of the Vienna-based duos Mitra Mitra and Violetiger and has released a pair of tapes on her own as Peppy Pep Pepper. “Forced Distance “ is her second solo release with Modern Tapes and further pushes the high standard set for herself with the solid songwriting and steely production of 2020’s “Granny Chic”.
all are available as limited edition cassettes with silkscreened jackets and a digital downloads from the modern tapes bandcamp (june 25, 2021) as well as from the usual streaming subjects (july 16, 2021).
16 tracks of disjointed and relentless harsh noise. From cut up to chaos this frenetic collection of blistering sentence fragments does not let up. SBTDOH is a prolific artist with a deep catalog and Modern Tapes is incredibly grateful to have this release, its silences are just as powerful as it is at full blast. Limited edition with silkscreened jackets and photocopied insert.
3 tapes. 6 projects. an hour and a half of minimalist sound. 15 minutes each from:
Sergey Pakhomov, James Shearman, E.F. Stoermer, Dosis Letalis, PTRKLLR, V.H.
The phrase “flirting with the noise floor” has been floating around my head since the mid 1990s. I’ve even said the phrase out loud a few times. Mostly in reference to silence, incidental sounds and space used in improvisation and composition. I spent a good part of the early 2000s focusing on variations of this idea in both what I was making and listening to. Years later, I became aware of a renewed interest in what had by then become known as ‘lowercase sound’ coming from people in the Harsh Noise Wall community. The overlap made sense to me considering HNW’s approach to the other pole of extreme minimalism. It was only a matter of time before the extremes would cross over to one another. This is a collection of artists who are doing just that; coming from a harsh noise background exploring nuance and texture with extreme focus and intensity but not necessarily the relentlessness normally associated with HNW.
The debut from this Vienna based duo finds Violet Candide aka Peppy Pep Pepper, also from Mitra Mitra teaming up with the enigmatic Tigerlilly to bring us 5 tracks of stark, hook-filled, DIY, minimal synth greatness. A stellar introduction to this new project.
vinyl released on Sept 30, 2020 go here to order it for EU friends, it will be available from Kernkrach as well so you can save on shipping
Early goth overtones, proto-shoegaze allure and raw DIY production have informed this incredible collection of songs. With themes ranging from love and loss to science fiction as well as flora and fauna, Chicago’s Staring Problem give us their strongest work to date in celebration of their and Modern Tapes’ 10th year not only in collaboration but in existence.
Harsh noise expose of the unspoken usage of human originated meat (HOM) as a part of the american food supply since 1942. cassette is pro-dubbed and printed in a two color silkscreened cardstock jacket with photocopied booklet. download includes pdf booklet of notes including an excerpt from FDA depositions on the history of the Human Salvage Program and a video edit (mp4) of “The Whistle Is Blown” which can also be viewed here: youtu.be/TnKDBA6FnZE
Dissonant drones and a hissing, murky ambience. The sound of isolation, slumber, depravity, rebellion, lonliness, whatever you want to project onto it. Grim minimalism for weary ears. cassette is hand dubbed with a silkscreened jacket and photocopied insert.
mt035- Dosis LetalisSurroundings c60 this prolific serbian noise wall artist goes understated for his modern tapes debut. static and what feels like the hum of living are buried underneath the textures, ambient in an uncomfortable way.
mt034- Verhalten Corrupted Structures v.3 c40 third in the series of releases focused on humanity’s obsession with designing its own obsolescence. This time the focus is pointed inward. Electromagnetic field recordings from various points in the town where this transient sound mangler was raised. Chopped up, spit out in misaligned patterns and clipped beyond recognition.
there will be/are copies available from Scream + Writhe in canada and Skeleton Dust in the states if you’d like to stock up on these releases as well as tons of other stellar noise and experimental releases.
March 20, 2020 sees the release of two new releases from two old friends of the label. Both in the works for a while and also a return to more synth based songs where the label has been pushing more and more into the noise and experimental realm as of late. Don’t worry, though, there is still plenty of weird noisy shit up our sleeves coming soon as well.
mt032- Peppy Pep Pepper- Granny Chic– C40 a friend of the label for a number of years now, Violet Candide made her debut (outside of the DJ booth that is) with the duo Mitra Mitra (mt016) and has returned with a stellar solo offering. Her second (the first on Transformer music) and first proper full length solo release of cold and beautifully constructed minimal synth.
mt033- LANA – S/T– C25 this release has been in the works since Nail Club and Verhalten toured florida together in 2018. Sara takes on a new solo alias as LANA, jumping into the midwestern midnight mourning world of Lana Tisdel. “The scene is a karaoke bar where Brandon Teena’s lost love sings to her former lover hoping she can mean what she sings enough that Brandon will hear it. The room is smoky and everyone is a little drunk, but everyone sits rapt as Lana spills out her heart through a set of old favorites.” distorted and melancholy. just how we like it. a moving tribute.
both are physically sold out from Modern Tapes.
Kernkrach has just a couple copies of the LANA tape left for those of you in the EU.
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