A Million Keys

In honor of the Leaderless: Underground Cassette Culture Now show which opens today at Printed Matter, I’d thought I’d wax a little bit about this increasingly obscured medium. Apparently I am not the only one- as cassette nostalgia seems to be everywhere these days.

For the Leaderless exhibition, Printed Matter transformed their backroom into a cassette shop, and will sell tapes from a bunch of different labels, including: 23 Productions (WI), AA (MI), American Tapes (MI), Animal Disguise (MI), Bone Tooth Horn, Callow God (CA), Cherried Out Merch (OR), Chondritic Sound (MI), Drone Disco (OH), Ecstatic Peace (MA), Fag Tapes (MI), Fuckit Tapes (NY), Gods of Tundra (MI), Hanson Records (MI), Heavy Tapes (NY), Hospital Productions (NY), Iatrogenesis (OR), Ides (IL), Friendship Bracelet (MA), Loveless Tapes (NJ), Middle James CO (ON/CA), Monorail Trespassing (CA), Nihilist Productions (IL), Not Not Fun (CA), Psychform (WA), RRRecords (MA), Rundownsun (BC), Since 1972 (NY), Spite (NY), Stammer Tapes (NY), Swampland Noise (CA), Throne Heap (NY), Tone Filth (MN), Trash Ritual (NY), and Troniks (CA), among many others. The show is curated by Dominick Fernow (Hospital Productions), Chris Freeman (Fusetron), Ken Montgomery (Generator), Barbara Moore (Bound/Unbound), and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth/Ecstatic Peace).

I also noticed that William Berger- who started the Lo-Fi Show on WFMU in the late 80s showcasing cassette-only releases- began digitizing his collection and posting them on the WFMU blog (Unfortunately, the files are in rar. Bummer.)

Through Berger’s post on WFMU, I discovered the Club Moral Stocklist blog/podcast. Club Moral was a noise group formed in 1981 by Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven and Danny Devos in Antwerp. It was also the name of a performance space from 1981 to 1983. Each podcast provides a digitized version of a cassette release by a performer or an artist associated with the band or the space, and the blog lists tracks and photos of the release.

Essentially an archive of underground cassette culture in the early 1980s, the Club Moral site is nothing short of amazing. One of the cassettes presented on the site, a compilation called White Power includes recordings by a number of artists who come under the power electronics header, such as Consumer Electronics, Maurizio Bianchi, Ramleh, etc. (Despite the name and the swastika on the front cover, its producers were pretty clear that it was for shock effect only.) These artists also released recordings (primarily cassettes) on the UK-based label Broken Flag, whose releases from 1982-1985 are now readily available for the first time ever as an LP box set from Vinyl-On-Demand.

Dominick Fernow, who runs Hospital Productions and co-curated the Leaderless show, is responsible for bringing the Broken Flag box set to my attention. (He brought it in to EVR the other week when he guest DJed, with the intention of exclusively playing tracks off its 5+ hours for the entire duration of my two hours slot. Cool but yikes!) As the story goes, Gary Mundy was inspired to found the label Broken Flag and his band Ramleh after viewing Whitehouse’s first Live Aktion at the Whisky-A-Go-Go in the early 1980s. His label emerged as one of the premier labels of the early power electronics scene, a particular strain of post punk that veered sternly opposite of its more pop influenced contemporaries. The liner notes provide a full discography with tracklistings and, overall, the set is an unparalled document of the scene and the label. Includes ear scorchers by: Sutcliffe Jugend, Consumer Electronics, Un-Kommuniti, Maurizio Bianchi, Controlled Bleeding, Ramleh, Male Rape Group, Kleistwahr, TOLL, New Blockaders, Mauthausen Orchestra, Falx Cerebri, Giancarlo Toniutti and many more. Click below for an excerpt:

Listen to Maurizio Bianchi + S.F.A.G. (Extract)