Look At These Tapes is a monthly roundup of our favorites in recent cassette artwork and packaging, along with short, stream-of-thought blurbs. Whatever pops into our heads when we look at/hold them. Selections by Jesse DeRosa, Mike Haley, and Scott Scholz.
Art by ?
Yo. What? The ever-inspiring Ultra Violet Light kick their already impressive tape game to the next level with Jimmy Joe Roche's newest tape under his Piss Kills Mold pseudonym. "Sentient Fungus" sports some serious next level packaging that can't help but make you stop, put down your drink (or medicinal jass cigarette), and go "Damn. Look. At. These. Tapes." Serious bar-raising going on here. Laser-cut abstract Rorschach WTF Jcards envelop a collection of equally gnarly laser-cut improvisations on Cocoquantus, Double Knot and Modular Synthesizer. Even the spines are f*cking laser-sheared. Goddamn.
Blak Saagan - A Personal Journey (Maple Death)
Art by Giulia Mazza
Some seriously wild cosmic/library-music jams find their perfect match in the mysterious art of Giulia Mazza. Night is baked by the Sun, genders melt, and there's a curious sort of Residents-ish vibe in silhouette. For stateside folks, here's your chance to lay your grubby paws on some deluxe 200-gram "pure Italian" paper, too, a real treat if you're into Medieval-era paper traditions that make Moleskine notebooks like like newsprint.
V/A - Peaceful Protest (RVNGintl.)
Art by WWFG and Hailey Desjardins
When I was a kid, my Dad used to say that getting me into the backseat of our family's tiny two door coupe was like 'putting 10lbs of potatoes in a 5lb bag'. RVNG's newest 3xCS comp summons equal feats of storage magic, cramming 3 hours of tranquil heady zones inside a beautifully screened & stitched canvas envelope. Assembled to soundtrack a meditation space at this year's Moogfest, RVNG enlisted the talents of Baltra, Kate NV, Zach Cooper, You’re Me, C. Lavender, and Raica, with all proceeds from this edition going to the LGBTQ Center of Durham. Zone on!
Moltar - Eclypse Inside (Unifactor)
Art by ?
We are in the infancy of VR, so our virtual experiences aren't exactly fool proof. The cover of Moltar's latest on Unifactor looks like a nasty glitch while you attempt to virtually slice a virtual lemon. Why you would waste your time making virtual lemonade is beyond me, but what you ended up with is a virtual citrus confetti that looks wonderful, so maybe it was worth it?
J. Soliday - Convolution Hive (Fluxus MT / Crank Satori)
Art by J. Soliday
Luer and J. Soliday just came crashing through town on an east coast tour and left a veritable pile of tapes in their wake. This one, a joint venture release between their respective Fluxus MT and Crank Satori labels, pulls no punches with a double-whammy attack on the senses. Beyond a heavy slab of the audio devastation you’ve come to relish from Soliday, this jammer doubles as eye-candy, incorporating a mini-book of manipulated photos of a completely wrecked organ he discovered in the back allies near his Chicago home, bringing the Soliday-brand of WTF/pandemonium you’ve come to cherish to a whole new set of senses.
Matthew Revert - Illness Seminars (No Rent Records)
Art by Matthew Revert
Matthew Revert masterfully mocks obscure 80's video game packaging with "Illness Seminars," creating a layout that resembles an overly complicated, bootleg game that no one could figure out how to play for a rare - and immediately discontinued - system from Turkey or something. Each panel on this double-sided Jcards adds to the narrative of complex controls and bizarre, low-bit confusion.
JESSOP&CO. - Cream (SØVN)
Art by SØVN
I'm always a sucker for designs that emulate food safety/contents packaging, and JESSOP&CO's latest tape on SØVN delivers the goods on that front. Some questions remain, though: who knew that "Cream" was best served grilled? And who knew that cream could be made from properly-inspected meat or poultry? Anatomy lessons abound.
Eric Schmid - Artist Statement (Editions Erich Schmid)
Art by ?
Another righteous dose from Eric Schmid's demanding, and nearly internet-invisible, 'Edition Erich Schmid' imprint. 'Artist Statement' continues the chronicle of an artist whose catalog stands alone and defies any rational compartmentalizing therein. It is unmistakeably Schmid and delivers on it's hefty promise, densely packing in 34 minutes of deep discourse on political theology, pluralism, messianism, gnoticism and transcendence.
Don Gero - Wizarding (Crash Symbols)
Art by J.D.
Really excellent layout here, contrasting black and white formal layout with color and unexpected layering to form a memorable image. One becomes somewhat fixated on the little melting color shapes, and if you look at them long enough, they totally become upside-down pastel mountains that relate to the background scene in some mystical fashion. Now that's wizarding!
Head Crash - Subroutine (Phinery)
Art by Sara Brinkmann Jønler
When I was a wee lad, all of my friends had Jenga, which looked like a great time, mostly spent carefully removing the little blocks without destroying the game's column. But my 'rents tried to get all ahead of the game and set us up with Bandu instead, "the stacking game that's never the same." You build upward off a little platform, using irregularly-shaped blocks just begging to slide toward the center of the earth. If you combined Jenga and Bandu strategically, you'd have something just like this.