Cleaning Tapes - Helical Scans

Debut Compilation album on the Cleaning Tapes imprint, originally planned as a VHS release, this 10 track Cassette is now ready to ship. Complete with a 40minute video viewable via URL printed inside the cassette sleeves…. With each artist showcasing a unique palette of sonic experimentation, vivid colour and shape beam through the bulk of each track and a slouch towards low fidelity binds the tracks together. Almost a year in the making and certainly worth the wait, this cassette is packed with perfectly compiled and refreshingly unique tracks from the minute the tape is loaded in, all the way until the reels stop turning. The music is best listened to whilst watching the intoxicatingly hallucinogenic visuals alongside, but the label itself have done very well to picture the music and turn it into words, so here we go: “Upfront is Wanda Group laying an unsteady foundation with the blown out and oozing downer OVERR AREA. Over his shoulder drags the primordial cut n paste assemblage of EMV and DTCPU clustering together and falling to bits next to the bolstering of Huerco S’ claustrophilic 3000AB before the play-it-cool dysphoria of Sagat’s Sigh washes over the lot and falls back. Moving to the back we find Bantam Lions just sitting-off in a corner, dead laid back, with his warm, colourful and moderately experimental, off-trend house music and peculiar rhythms, yearning for simpler times. Microburst serves up gritty layers of found sound, dotted synthetics and lush ukelele that come together and sprawl out under a steady thud for UKED. Halp’s aptly named Caves opens up a cavernous decaying recess of fragmented beats and synths dripping with digital froth that refuses to form and floats off into the virtual biospheric echo of Dynooo’s Ravenz. Just when it feels like the end Stefan Blomeier’s Hoping You’ll Come Back chimes in all entropic and full of false promise, sounding like a theme tune to a self-help infomercial playing out into an empty room.” On the visual front tailoring closely to each track we have a psychotropic slurry of warped VHS, cheap early digital FX, found footage, video feedback and post Windows-Media-Player abstractions conjured and woven together by artist Ryan Lumley, who has recently crafted equally illusory visions for Babe Terror (Phantasy) and Chill Mega Chill. Ryan said of the process: “These tracks for me all have this gloomy mental interiority to them. They gave me a chance to sink deep into these uncharted visual spaces where I could really experiment with abstracted atmosphere and texture.” Seriously good first release and brilliant accompanying video from the Cleaning Tapes Label. Don’t miss out. This is the entire mixtape brought to you by Cleaning Tapes Records directed by ryan lumley

TRACKLIST

WANDA GROUP "OVER AREA" 
STEFAN BLOMEIER "HOPING YOU WILL COME BACK"
SAGAT "SIGH"
MICROBUSRT "UKED"
HUERCO S "3001AB 2"
HALP "CAVES"
EMV "IT'S ALMOST OVER"
DYNOO "RAVENZ"
DTCPU "HEHEE"
BANTAM LIONS "CAROUSEL"

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