Cassette Gods: RUSSIAN TSARLAG (Green Tape)

RUSSIAN TSARLAG (Green Tape)

Fucked up C3 of stone-classic bafflement from America’s greatest living weirdo visionary nomad, Carlos Gonzales. Far, far, far away from the relative sanity of his art-thrash days in Dynasty and Byron House, Russian Tsarlag captures a couple of the bad trip sing-alongs he was pushing during his last doomed leg of U.S. shows in December/January-ish. Drugged monotone ramblings about egg sandwiches and bleach parties over incompetent hand-clapping accompaniment. Naked, disturbing, minimal, and insane. Anyone who caught one of his shows from this era knows what I’m talking about. Green slime face paint, Manson-damaged lyrics, and underground music’s most charismatic moustache. For fans of living life in a straightjacket.

It should be obvious, this is a webzine we created to put cassette releases and the format of cassette itself on a pedestal. We are not doing this to be some sort of cassette snob, more-DIY-than-thou elitists or anything. We are doing it because all the formats that sound can be presented on are exciting and provide unique ways of shaping the listeners experience... so it is a shame that any one of these formats would fall by the wayside. Cassettes provide a listening experience that is similar to vinyl because of the intermission/moment of pause created by changing sides of the tape, but can be of almost any length between 30 seconds a side to an hour. Tapes can also be listened to in a car or while jogging.
While today this format helps keep the home label alive, its almost a dream to remember that once every musician from Michael Jackson to REM had their releases on cassette. Cassettes were a legitimate format, not just for the DIY underground. Maybe we (thats you too) are the last guardians of this format. Maybe someone, someday will popularize cassettes again. In the meantime we keep the reels turning. A little offering because at least there are a few of you that know there is more than one god of this land.

-- first CG post by Brian Miller April 2007

RUSSIAN TSARLAG (Green Tape)

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