Back up and running after a long hiatus. I am now publishing tape rips on Youtube in lieu of file-sharing links. It's a much less cumbersome way to share the music. You can also follow my instagram account.
Not sure if I will continue posting here, I'll play it by ear and likely just all my comments / notes within the youtube descriptions. Same with the imgur galleries. I will still archive the audio and artwork scans but share them on requested basis. So while this will probably be the last blog post this is just the start of a new chapter of Tape Escape! Plenty of cassettes to come in the future.
This is the first of many cassettes that fall in my " I need to OCR this non-Western script" category. I can tell this is in Chinese, but no idea on whether it's Mandarin or Cantonese. Likewise, I'd assume it's from either Hong Kong or Taiwan, but that's mostly stemming from the fact that it dates from 1979. There are Roman characters indicating it is in stereo and item "SK-1012" of this particular music label. On the outside it has great j-card design and on the inside is a no-frills cassette shell that's held up nicely.
Really dig this tape overall, the music is lounge-y, instrumental goodness. An electric organ leads the way, sounding very akin to the wonderfully colorful and cheesey home organs companies like Hammond and Kimball made in the 1960s and 1970s. The built-in drum machine percussion forms the backing for most of the tracks, and the melodies sound like renditions of traditional Chinese music, or at least closely emulating that style. Because of this it has a remarkably similar vibe to classic 1950s and 1960s exotica. If there's ever been a tape that demands a Mai Tai in your hand as you give it a listen, it's surely this one.
Country: Unknown (likely Taiwan or Hong Kong)
Label: Unknown (will update upon further research/translation)
Case: Norelco
J-card: Cardstock, one-sided
C-45 Type I
Actual run-time: 22 minutes per side, Side B had only 19 minutes of audio content.
"Folk music from the Andes" is the best description I find searching for information on this cassette, and I'm afraid I don't have much to add. J-card only has a band picture and track-listing. Later albums attributed to Mashicuna from 1986 onward indicate they play folk music from the Andes (specifically Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), but with no indication on where the group is from specifically. Adding to the confusion, there seems to be a solo act by the name, as documented on youtube, and likewise "Mashicuna" is a track title on similar albums.
Only documented existence on this particular release was found here and I wonder if it was their debut, or least an early recording the group sold at performances overseas, specifically to the ever reliant niche of world music listeners in the U.S. and Europe.
This is lively tape, I like it even though it's probably, well, a Peruvian pan flute band. It's a bit compromised by the condition of the tape: stereo sounds iffy throughout, and side a kicks off with some wow-and-flutter. But playback is good in the middle and still very listenable, just weathered, something apt for bumpy road trip on the way to Machu Picchu.
Gamelan ensemble music at it's finest, specifically gamelan degung of West Java, purchased sometime in 1988 based on information found in the case. Compared to other gamelan recordings I've heard (full disclosure - I am not an expert) this has a more deliberate and percussive sound to it, less dense and droning but still "shimmery" in sound, likely do to the fact that it's a smaller ensemble. It's a lovely recording, with a suling flute playing over intricate percussion. There's a reflective, melancholy vibe for me personally, reminding me immediately of the song "Same Dream China" by Gold Panda, who has notably drawn from world music and found sound.
I could not find this particular cassette release online, but some research shows it's been reissued various times on CD, including different artwork, being a popular album for locals and tourists alike. Dian Records seems quite prolific, with examples appearing on ebay and blogs, though their discography seems only partially documented on Western sites.
The actual musicians are credited as "Gapura" who are cited elsewhere as Group Gapura and Grup Gapura, the latter link mentioning this very cassette, the former being the only release of theirs released in the U.S. The BASF tape used has held up well, very little hiss and great fidelity overall.
The packaging is unusual, and was a doozy to scan - it's not a Norelco case but a durable solid plastic case resembling the VHS cases Disney used in the 90s. It appears to be popular method in South Asia - the other tapes I've seen with it are from India. I figure that because these tapes were mostly played in outdoor boomboxes and car players, it's a far more apt case style.
"Tropical Rain Forest" is the rawest and least dressed-up of the many 'sounds of nature; tapes in my collection. Unlike most other releases of the same niche, there's no coupling of touched up field recordings with peaceful, meandering musical passages of piano. fact the first side kicks off with some kind of primate howl, and the rest of 30 minutes consist of an orchestra of mating calls, bird chirps and various deep jungle noises. In fact, I can only assume it's a barely edited field recording. This is quite neat, making it stand out from the usual studio produced affair of artificial and clean forest ambiance.
Unfortunately information of this is slim. I have no idea who actually made the recording or whether or not it was licensed elsewhere (though I believe it was, probably with midi pan flutes dubbed over). It was put out by Silver Bells Music, a defunct affiliate of Nashville publisher Thomas Nelson, which mostly produces biblical-related books and media. Back in the late 80s they dabbled in World and New Age music market (to their defense, just about everyone did) and this is clearly a byproduct of that effort. There seems to be a CD copy on Amazon.com from 1993, and I deduce this mostly because a 1-star review said "This almost is identical to the one I was looking for (rain with pan flute and harp) but the copy I had in the past didn't have all these screaming monkeys on it."
The tape says 'same on both sides' but side b clearly begins with a completely different monkey ranting about something different altogether. My guess is the tapes were dubbed off a loop without any proper start/stop, so the content is the same but the tapes begin at different points.
Odd tape overall. Can't be for relaxing nor meditation - I doubt anyone can quickly falling asleep to the real cacophonous beauty of the rain forest. It's not clearly documented as an environmental recording.
Maybe it's like those Halloween 'spooky sounds' tapes, but for like, I dunno, Jurassic Park themed parties. Yeah I bet that's it.
A striking black and white photograph of a man with long black hair stares at me. Who is this? A young Tommy Wiseau? A Norwegian black metal legend sans make-up? Did Brandon Lee put out an album I wasn't aware of?
No, it's a dude named Julian Silversuit who, at some point in the 1996, recorded this four song demo tape in Houston, TX. While made in the era of alternative rock and then emerging post-grunge, this demo encapsulates pop rock of the 80s, an era of trends like glam metal and hard rock, genres that are best known for their ironically "soft" power ballads.
Two original songs and two covers make up the EP, trading off from straight-forward rock that wouldn't sound out of place at the end of Top Gun and/or adapted to Street Fighter ("If I had A Girl..."/"Looking For Love") and between two slower ballads ("Tears of Joy"/"He Don't Know You"). The ballads feature sax and piano solos and place Julian's vocals at the forefront. He's a actually a decent singer, I can't help but compare him to Meatloaf, with whom he shares a unrestrained, quasi-operatic style. Similarly, the lyrics are anything but subtle, opening with "If I had a girl like you / I'd shoot myself, I'd shooot myself." Yep, no minced words here.
For a demo tape, this is well-recorded, duplicated onto a type II cassetted and recorded by engineer/mixer Rock Romano, the only person credited who I could track down online. Most would conclude this oozes of cheesiness, and I'd be hard-pressed to argue that point, but I think it's endearing too. I have no idea how many times I repeated the last few seconds of the tape, which concludes with this epic delivery of these lyrics: "-I swear he's never known the ways of luh-uuuve-ah" So wherever you are Julian Silversuit, a sincere thank you, I got a kick out of this tape.
One of many Vietnamese pop cassettes I've found in North Austin and Round Rock is this compilation entitled Hung Ho, #111 in the Làng Văn catalog. I've gathered that few, if any, of these are from Vietnam directly, but instead produced by Vietnamese expatriates. Làng Văn is one such label, founded in 1985 in Orange County, California. The label is still very active, although I can't seem to track down any list of their older discography and this is most likely out-of-print. I picked this one first for digitizing because of it's eye-catching purple j-card and the convenient fact that much of it is written with western script.
Hung Ho appears to be a sampler of then upcoming releases on the label, some of the more prominent Vietnamese-American pop singers are on here, including the late Ngọc Lan and Hương Lan. The former was "known for covering nostalgic French-language pop hits of the 1970s." Most of the tracks are ballads, poppy but not exactly upbeat; no bubblegum pop or dance singles on this tape. There's clear sense of sentimentalism in these songs, parallels to Enka music immediately come to mind. With the context of post-1975 Vietnamese diaspora considered, the source of the nostalgic, melancholy tones of these songs are quite obvious. Makes for odd juxtaposition to the valley girl-esque glamour shots on the cover, which clearly screams late 80s American pop culture.
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