FIDELITY ASTRO "Genushenka" C55 (Shadowtrash Tape Group)

If someone on the street hands you a brand new Fidelity Astro tape, you keep it. You put it in your breast pocket and walk carefully but immediately towards your most trusted tape deck back home and you wonder what the themes on the tape will be. You know they’ll have a hip-hop beat behind them, and some kind of easy listening vibe, sure, but will there be ambient soundscapes on this one, or will it have remixed devotional singing soundbites? Or both? Will it be jazzy, romantic, or new agey? Will there be field recordings of local birds or city noise? That there will be loops upon loops of relative chillness is for certain, but what qualities will they possess? What instrumentation? What pilfered pre-existences will get new life breathed into them? Through each release, quality has been the only consistency, and that’s one hell of a trick to pull off in a world of “I farted into a microphone and dubbed thirty copies!” May we all aspire to be so concerted in our craft.

This particular artifact contains (per Shadowtrash Tape Group’s website):
“a tribute to '70s lounges, scratching, breakups,
new love, gospel wisdom, and actress gena rowlands.
sad beats and victory anthems for late nights.”

I couldn’t agree more.

http://www.shadowtrashtapegroup.com/

-- Jacob An Kittenplan

RUMPILOTS “Think It Over, Captain Hamilton” (Shadowtrash Tape Group)

I thought this was going to be some sort of glitch loop tape from the cover design; psych-collage with futuristic nodding type work (I thought the artist name was RUMPLMINTS for the longest time). Upon diving in, I was insanely mistaken as to where this cassette was going to take me. Instead of the future, I was placed inside a live performance of spooky swells and modified vocal transmissions seemingly taken from radio or television broadcasts from years past.

While the initial vibe was interesting for me, the lack of dimension in the tape left me a bit disappointed. I do think plenty of more established long form listeners will enjoy this performance, but I just felt like I was listening to a playthrough of Bioshock. The vocal transmissions are a bit hard to decipher and pop in and out of frame like I am pacing through a mall of youtube channels dedicated to compiling historic radio broadcasts.

Shadowtrash Tape Group’s description “quantum cherries, picked and collided to form a conflicted travel log, detailing saturn's rings live from Fiske Planetarium” helps me appreciate the performance a bit more, but once the finisher of the album hits, I am spent. This album ends with a crowd clapping sample that echoes and decays for 10 minutes (that is far too much for me to enjoy).

LIYL: Valerio Tricoli, Aaron Dilloway, The SFX of Bioshock

http://www.shadowtrashtapegroup.com/tapes

-- Joseph Morris

DUST "Terraforms"(Shadowtrash Tape Group)

We have more a whimper than a bang. In fact, my coffee maker drowns out the first minute or so and I have to start over-once coffee is firmly in hand of course. The second time through is no different. A slowly building ambience of noises.

Various noises-some familiar, others not so.

There is no indication of track breakdown. It is apparently all "Terraforms," a soundscape that rolls and builds, then fades and transforms. I used to have an uncle down in Oklahoma. When he heard a car approach, he would go to the bathroom, brush his teeth, get a bag of snacks from the kitchen and then great his guests. Dust is like that, taking you down multiple side roads and blue highways to reach its destination. It's a lovely view along the way, just sit back and enjoy...

A word about Shadowtrash Tape Group. After examining heir web store, you find they have a good number of releases and even offer a tape "of the month" club. Interesting stuff. Well worth checking Into.

www.shadowtrashtapegroup.com

-Bob Zilli