Browse by Label: THE TAPEWORM (UK)

Artist:	VAN PATTERSON QUARTET, THE
Title:	Live At F.W.
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 005CS

This is a cassette-only limited edition of 250 copies. Who on earth are The Van Patterson Quartet? The Tapeworm stumbled upon the lost psych-rock recording, Live At F.W. by The Van Patterson Quartet, late during a sleepless night. A link started a chain of events -- the Wormery would not sleep until the answer had been found! "Who on earth are The Van Patterson Quartet?" they asked themselves. They sent out feelers via their contacts. They waited. Replies came back -- digital shrugs, all expressing a deep fascination that something sounding so splendid could remain unearthed for so long. Then, "Mr. Big" stepped in. Quite by chance, he was neighbors with one of the band members. Such serendipity. He hooked The Tapeworm up. Letters were written, requests made, permissions granted, and a few short weeks later, a copy of Live At F.W., mailed with a blurry Polaroid, landed on the label's desk. They sat back and listened properly for the first time. They were blown away. They had just been given possibly the last great unreleased psych-rock recording. Who on earth are The Van Patterson Quartet? This recording dates, apparently, from the late-'60s. It features this hitherto unknown band in full flight, live. It needs to be heard to be believed. Funky, fuzzed- up, flipped-out, fucked and fried. Forty minutes of hallucinating Hammond and ferocious feedback. That's who they are.

Artist:	SOULS ON BOARD
Title:	Souls On Board
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 007CS

Cassette-only release in a limited edition of 250 copies. Who on earth are Souls On Board? We know that UK guitarist/former member of Dome and Wire's Bruce Gilbert guests on a track, as does Portland, Oregon sound artist Daniel Menche... but we don't have much more information. Each side is 17 minutes, 45 seconds long. Recorded in Tangiers, Mallorca, London, Lisbon, Lanzarote, and other unknown locations. "Into a Limbo, large and broad, since called The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown." --John Milton

Artist:	MELTAOT
Title:	First And Second Rites
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 008CS

Cassette-only release in a limited-edition of 250 copies. Meltaot are a bass-heavy, improvised noise duo made up of UK artist/musician/broadcaster Sharon Gal and artist/writer/musician SavX (aka Savage Pencil aka Edwin Pouncey). After recording together at a session for Pestrepeller (the other band they are a part of), they decided to take the project one step further and record as a separate entity. Although black metal, drone and doom would seem to be at the core of what Meltaot are involved with here, the real intention was to paint a series of atmospheric sound pictures (not all of them dark) using voice, bass guitar and other instrumentation/effects as their materials. This is the first release by Meltaot. There will be others. SavX (electric "rooster" guitar); Sharon Gal (electric bass guitar, voice, percussion, feedback). Recorded at the SavLab, 6/17/2009. Illustration by SavX.

Artist:	BARACLOUGH
Title:	The Lampshade Is Not A Past Tense
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 009CS

Cassette-only release in a limited-edition of 250 copies only. Baraclough are a London-based trio consisting of a classically-trained musician, a self-taught musician, and a non-musician. With a distinctive palette of woozy electronics, raw and processed recordings, combined with vocals and abstract sounds, Baraclough produce a unique aural aesthetic that is hypnotic yet agitating, intimate yet awkward. Since their inception in 2006, Baraclough have performed in a variety of bizarre locations such as a Kilburn rock pub and a former Turner Prize winner's stock cupboard. In March of 2009, Baraclough released their debut album Hello Animal on Forris, their audio publishing cooperative. Members of Baraclough include: Paul de Casparis, Dale Cornish, and Eddie Nuttall.

Artist:	E-MAN
Title:	E-Man
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 010CS

Cassette-only release in a limited-edition of 350 copies only. E-Man was the first apparition of Norway's father of chilly ambient electronics, Geir Jenssen -- these days better known as Biosphere. This tape, originally released in 1984 on Likvidér, features contributions from Per Martinsen (Mental Overdrive) and Nils Johansen (Bel Canto). All tracks recorded on a Teac 4-track cassette recorder at Elverhøy Studenthjem, Tromsø and Nord-Norsk Studenthjem, Oslo, Norway between 1983-1984. All tracks written by Geir Jenssen except track A1. written by Jenssen/Martinsen, A4. written by Jenssen/Johansen/Larsen, A6. and B4. written by Jenssen/Larsen, B1. written by Jenssen/Høyer/Larsen. Geir Jenssen (electronics), Ragnar Larsen (vocals and bass) (A4., A6., B1., B4.), Frank Jensen (vocals) (A1., B5.), Per Martinsen (electronics) (A1., B7.). Cover illustration by SavX aka Savage Pencil.

Artist:	GOLDMANN, STEFAN
Title:	Haven't I Seen You Before
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 012CS

Cassette-only in a limited edition of 250 copies. Berlin-based producer and head of the Macro Recordings label Stefan Goldmann couches his release for The Tapeworm thusly: "Since I'm a less than mediocre guitar player, but a quite versatile editing engineer with a decade of experience of handling samplers and midi-sequencers, I could finally realize an old project which I can trace back to a lesson with my bass teacher in my teen days. He had found out a bass player with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra had recorded hours of improvisations and paid an engineer to cut it together into an enjoyable 'jazz' album. The teacher, a profound jazz player himself, found this to be some sort of scam, while I was deeply impressed by the idea of merging hi-tech and improvisation. Finally, I had a reason to play and record some guitar for this fine project and cut it to death afterwards. Haven't I Seen You Before is a cycle of five pieces, with two versions each, so it can be listened to as a continuous performance, as well as looped recordings when employing the reverse function some cassette players have. The latter can be done at any point, since the parts on the A and B sides match. All material on this album has a guitar (amplified and microphoned simultaneously) as its only sound source. These initial recordings were cut into loops with durations ranging from a fraction of a second to more than a minute. They were arranged into compositions, adding reverb, stereo panorama and volume adjustments. Layering the loops creates polymetric structures, but I've tried to avoid the usual loop minimalism by the sheer number of looped segments which appear and disappear at distinctly different rates. Micro-loops vs. macro-loops is the main structural feature of the music on this cassette, playing around with a key feature of the format. Three recordings inspired this effort: John McLaughlin's 1970 My Goal's Beyond album, which offered a side of multitrack solo guitar improvisations (I believe this was the first jazz record to do this) as well as his unreleased guitar/voice album with his wife (John and Eve McLaughlin). McLaughlin was heavily under the influence of guru Sri Chinmoy and both albums have this very unique, dark drug/sect edge, adding an extremely intense quality to the modal guitar figures (well, probably also due to the Indian music he has been studying and merging with some impressionist composition techniques). I have tried to capture a bit of the mood and apply it to a loop-based, cut-up orgy. Another crucial record to me has been Derek Bailey's Ballads -- I've been astonished by the tidal movements in and out of the standards he's playing around with. So there is a harmonic base to my guitar mishandling, which is present throughout the entire album -- moving in and out of it. I'd also like to note I applied an altered tuning to the guitar to achieve different natural harmonics than the ones one gets with the standard tuning -- and not to give in to the temptation of cutting some blues licks." --Stefan Goldmann, Berlin, 2009

Artist:	BUTCHER, JOHN
Title:	Trace
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 017CS

Cassette-only release. Edition of 250 copies. John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multi-tracked saxophone pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics. Originally a physicist, he left academia in 1982, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians. He is well known as a soloist, recently exploring unusual site-specific acoustics, and has released seven albums of solo saxophone music. His tape for The Tapeworm features two contrasting performance styles. The first is a live recording in three parts for tenor and soprano saxophones, recorded in concert October 30, 2009, L'Eglise Saint-Merri, Paris. Its flipside is a 20-minute piece for saxophone controlled feedback and piano (one player).

Artist:	PITA
Title:	Mesmer
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 018CS

Cassette-only release. Edition of 250 copies. Mesmer was Peter Rehberg's first-ever solo composition, originally released in 1995 as part of Mesmervariations, a (long-deleted) 2CD by Ash International presented in an oversized plastic wallet with eight card inserts. That release contained various original compositions influenced by the work of Friedrich Mesmer, and included pieces by Ryoji Ikeda, Gescom, Edvard Graham Lewis, Robert Hampson, Bruce Gilbert, CM Von Hausswolff and Drome (Bernd Friedmann). The artists featured on this release were given a copy of the vinyl recording Mesmer (Ash 1.8) and asked to compose a piece influenced by the work of Friedrich Mesmer, the 19th century "animal magnetist and hypnotist." The brief was -- there is no brief; method and style were left entirely to the discretion of the composer. Rehberg's contribution is reproduced in its entirety here, the B-side of the cassette containing a copy of the weathered dubplate of the track he cut in 1996 for personal DJ use.

Artist:	CHUGGA
Title:	Memphistophelis
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 020CS

Cassette release. Edition of 250 copies. Masterminded by Terre Thaemlitz and "fresh... for '96!" -- Memphistophelis by Chugga (aka Lester Fuero and Jeff Hanes) is a deliciously dated blend of trip-hop, '70s disco, funk, Jeep-dub and lounge, mixed well and served chilled. Each track on Memphistophelis picks up on a different '70s sound while tying in that unique Memphis combination of sparsity and orchestration. The album was mastered by an unlikely culprit -- and friend -- transgendered electro-acoustic/ambient/house Jack-of-all-genres Terre Thaemlitz (aka DJ Sprinkles). Although it was shopped around and two or three cuts trickled out over the years on obscure vinyl and compilation releases, Memphistophelis never found a home -- until The Tapeworm.

Artist:	UNSWORTH, CATHI
Title:	Johnny Remember Me
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 021CS

Cassette-only release. Edition of 250 copies. Two readings of the short story Johnny Remember Me by its author Cathi Unsworth and by Pete Woodhead (O Yuki Conjugate/The Sons Of Silence). Cathi Unsworth is a writer and editor who lives and works in London. She is the author of three pop-cultural crime novels, Bad Penny Blues, The Singer and The Not Knowing, and the editor of the short story collection London Noir, all published by Serpent's Tail. Cathi has written on music, film, art, fashion and culture for Sounds, Bizarre, BFI Flipside, Mojo and Uncut, amongst many others. Her collaborator on this release is Pete Woodhead, an electronic composer who cut his musical teeth as part of O Yuki Conjugate and The Sons Of Silence and is now best known for his soundtrack contribution to the hit British zombie movie Shaun Of The Dead.
"He stood at the back of the room, in a smartly cut pale blue suit, so cleanly shaven his skin still had a rosy glow from the razor's kiss, thick brown hair set into a shiny pompadour that looked as though it had been set in plastic. His bulbous dark blue eyes darted around the cellar, and he pulled on a cigarette fretfully. For a second it seemed that he was too nervous to come across the floor, but then his eyes became still as they settled on what he was searching for. With a sudden sense of purpose, he walked towards Johnny. And that was when all the trouble started."

Artist:	WATKINS, ZACHARY JAMES
Title:	Black Spirituals
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 022CS

Cassette-only release. Edition of 250 copies. "Black Spirituals was recorded during fall 2009 in Northern California. These four works grew out of intense dialogue with sound artist Morgan Craft that dealt with our mutual interests in questioning the stakes and pushing our art amidst a landscape of sameness. It's these spaces where ideas on race, gender, sex, politics, etc. inform the imaginations of artists in communities and influence new works. Also around this time, I found a dusty tape recording of a lecture from the late '70s on the topic of Black Spirituals given by scholar and musician Bernice Reagon, an original member of the vocal group Sweet Honey On The Rock. This tape has helped me incorporate into my performance, stories and voices of New America. These improvised tapestries are tuned by ear and offered as meditations. What does Black Spirituals mean to you?" --Zachary James Watkins, Santa Cruz, CA, March 24, 2010. Zachary James Watkins: PAIA analog synthesizer (A1, B2), guitar (A2, B1), bass (A2), SuperCollider (A2), cassette (B1), percussion (B1), Casio (B1, B2); Jordan Glenn: drums and percussion (B1). Tracks A2 and B1 engineered by The Norman Conquest in October 2009. Illustration by Sav X.

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Artist:	TONGUES OF MOUNT MERU
Title:	The Delight Of Assembly
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 011CS

Artist:	WINER, LESLIE
Title:	& That Dead Horse
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 015CS

Artist:	MENCHE, DANIEL
Title:	Raw Fall
Label:	THE TAPEWORM (UK)
Format:	Cassette
Price:	$7.00
Catalog #:	TTW 019CS