haunted by tape

the universe is a giant tape delay

house keeping

• i’m playing an ambient show on December 10 at Fort Greene in Denver. you should come.

• a note on The Blood Brothers reunion tour: it's transcendent, mystical – witness it if you can.

paranormal echoes

the Tascam 424 MkII found me through a stranger in Redlands, Ca. i’ve been haunted by the tape sound for the last 15 years. hiss and warble from my childhood. itself artifacts of my own memory. they're memories of memories, degrading and transforming like magnetic tape worn thin with time.

i’ve recorded a short demo track onto tape for your ears. yes, this arrives shortly after my essay on joy in music – perhaps there's a certain pleasure in haunting, too.

technical apparatus

committed first to tape, then into ableton. hiss and warble are authentic artifacts of the physical medium. digital intervention remains sparse: just the essentials of mastering (3-band eq, glue compressor, limiter). a failed RCA cable forced an unintended path: mono output split and widened into stereo space. sometimes technical limitations reveal themselves as gifts.

recommendations

• Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. a feverish descent through mezcal vapors — the consul dissolves into his final day like a memory eating itself.

• The Bloody Lady by Claire Rousay. a reimagined score for Viktor Kubal's 1980 eponymous animated film.