Best Available Technology

Untitled

blundar • 2021 • from 13.99€

Since 2015 Blundar has been an outlet for the ambient productions of house and techno artists like Lowtec or STL. While before, those albums were released on vinyl, this equally ambitious and understated approach is now being continued on cassette. Best Available Technology dug deeply into his own archive for this tape and came back with droning dub mutants that sometimes do without the kick but still move forwards and forwards and forwards. It’s the perfect soundtrack for autumn walks, the next lockdown or stoned Sundays that don’t end until Wednesday. Kristoffer Cornils

Black Nash

Black Nash

Ramp Local • 2021 • from 8.44€

Creating music to soundtrack a West Coast trip, but also a stay at the Chelsea Hotel is no small feat. Jody Smith, who simply calls himself Black Nash, has done it with ease. In the hands of the ex-military man the guitars start to sweat, his voice smells of Camel Blue, and the living room turns into a transistor radio. It makes you want to taste alternately from the white and the brown stuff. But you don’t and instead end up listening to someone banging away on the guitar out of sheer boredom. Christoph Benkeser

Death Is Not The End

Death Is Not The End

Death Is Not The End • 2021 • from 9.99€

So »Death Is Not the End« is the name of Death Is Not The End’s debut album on the label Death Is Not The End, huh. All of this makes as much sense as the underlying principle itself: two dusty records, a turntable with modified pitch and a tape delay do the trick. The result is of course reminiscent of Japan Blues, but leans toward minimal folk and is extremely spooky in a naive way. Indeed: the approach of this all-encompassing project can hardly be better summarized than on these two cassette sides. Kristoffer Cornils

Earth Mother Spectral Pilot

Earth Mother Spectral Pilot

Swims • 2021 • from 12.99€

Ed Cheverton from Bristol makes music under the name Earth Mother Spectral Pilot, which does not sound like a psychonautical mixture of mushrooms nad laughing gas for nothing. On his self-titled album, he offers synthesizer solipsism and a trip for people for whom Atonal is too dark and the Berghain too ket. Christoph Benkeser

Filthy Huns

Cursed At Birth

Not Not Fun • 2021 • from 10.99€

Why wasn’t dungeon synth the sound of the pandemic? Filthy Huns at least takes the genre to a new level: »Cursed at Birth« is part four of Nick Koenigs’ series about a, erm, cursed motor biker, and throws minimal electro, woozy synth-pop and industrial music together before everything is wrapped in tape noise. Most importantly however, he lets heroic chord progressions rise from his equipment, the kind of sound that would be just as suitable for lockdown claustrophobia as for imaginary trips down summer freeways. It’s a fucking weird, i.e. fucking awesome album. Kristoffer Cornils

Hara Alonso

Somatic Suspension

Eotrax • 2021 • from 8.99€

Before the vinyl crisis of 2020/2021, nobody would probably have expected Eomac to enter the tape game. But Hara Alonso doesn’t make the kind of leftfield techno that feels tailor-made for the next CTM closing event and instead offers delicate IDM decorated with piano sounds, the kind which comes across all the more atmospheric when garnished with a bit of magnetic tape noise. »Somatic Suspension« combines free composition and electronic manipulation sprinkled with clicky, clacky rhythms that slowly wind their way into the brain. This is proper headphone music, so dust off your Sony, will you? Kristoffer Cornils

Jacob Stoy

Das Unendliche Konstrukt

Uncanny Valley • 2021 • from 16.99€

Jacob Stoy has been part of the Uncanny Valley clique since the beginning, but has held back with releases on the Dresden label so far. »Das unendliche Konstrukt« though offers 16 tracks ranging from weightless ambient to rattling post-industrial and bone-dry electro cuts. Sometimes all of this may feel esoteric, frequently overwhelming even, but also occasionally apathetic, before – in the very next moment – a hip-hop groove punctuated by glistening synths emerges like the first sunrays of the day. This music was mainly produced in bed and well, that’s exactly how it sounds like. Kristoffer Cornils

Logos

North Volume 01

Logos • 2021 • from 11.99€

For those who did not have the capital to shill out a few (dozen) bucks for transatlantic shipping costs, Logos offers a doable alternative. Britain-born James Parker licks on a Colundi crystal for his tape »North Volume 01« and crumbles some Xanax into the Hyperdub iced tea, which means that you may need a degree in applied minimalism if you really want to dance to this stuff, but it’s more than worth it to enrol for that. Christoph Benkeser

Mad Miran B2B DJ Python

Waffles

Climate Of Fear • 2021 • from 11.99€

DJ Python and mad miran — what sounds like the line-up for an opening party in the metaverse is actually a pack of dynamite shoved deep into your business techno rectum by the Berlin label Climate of Fear. On »waffles« , the two reggaeton rascals deliver a frenzied hour of drum’n’bass that turn your stomach upside down and empty it out on the dancefloor. Bang, boom, bang! And then some. Christoph Benkeser

Mary Yalex

Sentimental Journey

Frank Music • 2021 • from 13.49€

The year before last I wrote that Mary Yalex’s music sounded like an underwater safari on ketamine. That was a lie, of course. What Yalex, who lives in Leipzig and releases music on labels like Kann and through her own imprint, puts down on two cassette sides for Berlin’s Frank Music is indescribable. More a feeling than a genre, honestly. Her »Sentimental Journey« hits you harder than any trip could, anyway. A massage for the earlobes, a long caress. In one word, bliss. Christoph Benkeser

Mazzo

Soft Breeze Of Silence

Cudighi • 2021 • from 11.99€

What can you expect from a guy who poses around with a ceramic pooch and a gold Rolex on his own cover? Noisy dreams and lost futures, of course! Mazzo fortunately had enough spare-time between skateboarding sessions to produce a tape for Cudighi Records that warm up the pelvic floor muscles. »Soft Breeze of Silence« works like two sips of good CBD oil, that means like a charm! Christoph Benkeser

Modeselektor

Extended

Monkeytown • 2021 • from 12.99€

Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary were not the only professional ravers who in this year rediscovered the mixtape as a format – see Posthuman’s latest album – but they were definitely the most determined in fully exploring its advantages. »Extended« is the result of a lot of culling musical sketches from old hard drives and brings together abandoned Ableton projects from different creative phases. It’s also – yes, really – crazy fun. Modeselektor offer banging riddims and sometimes even straight techno that are put into an irresistible flow. Now that’s what we call a mixtape! Kristoffer Cornils

O$VMV$M

Manonmars / In Colour Instrumentals

Young Echo • 2021 • from 16.49€

The Young Echo posse member ManonMars is somewhat of a rap overachiever amongst the bunch and that’s also, though not solely due to the ones providing the beats for him: Amos Childs and Sam Barrett are O$VMV$M and for many by now that name reads like a promise. With »ManonMars/In Colour Instrumentals« it is kept twice: the instrumental versions of the beats for ManonMars’ two albums sound narcotic and attention-grabbing in equal measure, sweetly acidic and extremely soulful, even when detached from the molasses-like flows of ManonMars. Kristoffer Cornils

Phillip Sollmann (Efdemin)

Something Is Missing

Dial • 2021 • from 11.99€

Nothing’s missing here! Although Phillip Sollmann’s aka Efdemin’s dark and drone-y album »Something Is Missing«, influenced by his studies of computer music in Vienna, has been originally released in the mid-noughties, this tape reissue through Dial proves that this music still manages to close the gaps between one world and the other. Or even to open new ones, full of unheard sounds. Christoph Benkeser

Rasham

Violent Influence

Raash • 2021 • from 16.99€

Jerusalem’s underground is keeping busy and Raash Records has been contributing to that with abrasive tape releases. Rasham, previously known as Ido Mandil, also doesn’t produce the kind of music that makes you want to stop and smell the flowers. »Violent Influence« rather offers five tracks that brutal, industrial, loud, and most of all Rasham. Christoph Benkeser

She Was A Visitor

ISO 220320

Bare Hands • 2021 • from 6.99€

For his project She Was A Visitor, interior designer and noisemaker Robert Schwarz chatted with ghosts of the past in order to hide with them behind the church organ of St. Stephen’s Cathedral during the pandemic. He came back with a record that feels like nothing short of a proper mass. Blessed be the fury of the Viennese label Bare Hands! Christoph Benkeser

V.A.

2nd Life Silk

100% Silk • 2021 • from 13.99€

100% Silk were already putting out tapes when nobody even dared to use the term »hype«. Whether Soshi Tekada and Indopan’s garish synth sounds and lo-fi house beats are similarly ahead of their time is another story, but one thing is certain: René Najera’s MIDI flute dub house, Head Kandy’s industrial grooves and Cafe Ale’s outlandish rhythms make »2nd Life Silk« a worthy anniversary compilation that may set a new course for the ten-year-old label – towards more weirdness while staying true to its rough-edged sound. Not a bad outlook for one of the most reliable tape labels of the past decade. Kristoffer Cornils

V.A.

A Thousand Promo Shotz Could Never Compare

Infinite Wisdom • 2021 • from 12.99€

Glasgow is not exactly known for cocktails, convertibles and calypso. But the fact that the Scotsmen of Infinite Wisdom have put together a sampler that has you twirling flamingo straws into your palomas may have you reconsider the city as a destination for your next summer vacation. Behind the unwieldy title »A Thousand Promo Shotz Could Never Compare« a world opens up where you fidget in neon green leggings to aerobics videos from the early nineties. 1080p couldn’t have done it any better back then! Christoph Benkeser

V.A.

Donne Che Corrono Coi Lupi

Osàre! Editions • 2021 • from 14.99€

So here’s a compilation for and by »women who run with wolves«, named after a book by Clarissa Pinkola Estés about how women should return to their wild roots – just what, exactly, does all of this mean? It means that Cucina Povera, Borusiade, Lolina and Silvia Kastel, among others, are all on board here, drawing from a broad musical palette across the 21 tracks and also offering a few surprises along the way. »Donne che corrono coi lupi« is further proof that Elena Colombi’s label Òsare! remains far ahead and even further out. Kristoffer Cornils

V.A.

No Recording III

No • 2021 • from 7.79€

The third edition of group A’s »No Recording« brings together even more artists from all over the world than the previous editions of the lockdown-inspired series. Wilted Woman, Joachim Nordwall, Cienfuegos, Isabella, Tot Onyx or Nick Klein: fans of abrasive sounds, whether noise, industrial and weirdo techno, get served seven extremely exhausting jams on this tape. All the music has been made according to the Cadavre Exquis principle, of course, and yet the end results sound as if from one cast. Someone please hand over Alka Seltzer, the only way out of these claustrophobic compositions is through. And in the end, it will have been worth it, regardless of how much it hurt. Kristoffer Cornils