Reviews

Musique Machine

Tape is the first and only wellspring of electronic music. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t done their homework. The medium gave rise to nearly anything that can be heard or listened to today by establishing the limit conditions for all sonic production: recording and playback. More modern forms of tape are having something of a renaissance of late, where artists like Eric Van Thyne have coaxed that magical erasure of fidelity that only analog tape can provide – the warbling and slow disintegration of a recorded impression. On his latest release, Tape 1, Van Thyne used the once-standard four-track Tascam recorder as his instrument of choice. There was a time when any amateur musician or group had one of these devices handy for making rather simple but ultimately warm and fuzzy recordings.
On Tape 1, the dirge of a few piano notes, softened by the hiss of the analog tape, pound out slow phrases, like on the aptly named, “Velver Hammer”. Here, the normal attack and decay of the piano’s strings is dissolved in a dreamy landscape of self-oscillating tape crackles, effectively turning the hammered notes into rhythmic staccatos that become absorbed by the ambient swells emerging without the traditional grammar of attack/delay. By the time we get to Tape 1’s final track, “Marbled Sky”, the piano has disappeared altogether, replaced by an undercurrent of hums and tape loops, building into concentric passages replete with their own form of crescendos amid higher tonal frequencies.
 
The sky that is here marbled can only be the one that we can never see with our own eyes, and whose soundtrack has been written long before an experience of outer space was even possible. Yes, tape was crucial to this imagined score, because in recording and playing back, something inevitably gets lost along the way. Tape is nothing more than a cultural technique for establishing distance, between the thing recorded and the erasure that ensues once it is returned to our ears as something audible. Van Hyne has produced compositions that is quite remarkable on Tape 1, by creating tape music that acknowledges its origins, becoming generative in the process. Perhaps a better term for Tape 1 would be “degenerative music”, for its creation is predicated on decay.
 
Very highly recommended for ambient tape music enthusiasts, and for anyone who wants to hear the origins of recorded sound.

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Organ Thing

A couple of quiet things, a couple of musical treats, I almost want to say two collections of things thar are kind of minimalist but there’s so much to be found in both of them, so much warmth, beautiful detail, depth A set of beautifully intimate compositions, one from London, the other from Los Angeles. Quiet music, that and tape culturte and the art of quietly doing it yourself and a positively unassuming kind of way…

Eric Van Thyne is a music producer, engineer, and composer based in Los Angeles, CA, he’s been performing and recording experimental sound work since 2014. “He takes interest in sonic extremes, oftentimes pushing the limits of an instrument or piece of equipment. This philosophy is present in all of his works, always seeking ways to reinvent and repurpose the tools at his disposal”. This is a very organic sounding album, a warm album, restrained, quiet, unassuming, easy. There’s a rather beautiful glow to Tape One, a sense of something that has all the time in the world to unwind, an almost delicate knowing of where to quietly place each note, each almost whispered sound, everything in just the right place, an understanding of the strength of the slience around the sounds he makes and the tunes he forms.. We’re told “none of the sounds were computer generated, it is composed of emotions inspired by machines, instruments and the ambient noise that permeates the backdrop of Tape 1”.

 

“Tape 1 was recorded and mixed on a Tascam 4 track cassette machine in 4 different sittings between May 2021 and June 2022. The music itself is a reflection on the distinct emotional states occurring during the recording of each track: some pieces meditative and others cathartic, all with an underlying visceral tone. Having a physical machine as a vessel to create the music makes the experience more tangible and human. This also means none of the sounds were computer generated, it is composed of emotions inspired by machines, instruments and the ambient noise that permeates the backdrop of Tape 1. No Illusion Pt. I and II were accompanied by musical collaborator Corey Gordon, bringing in another voice to this segmented tape-recording project”.

Eric Van Thyne, as we said up there, “is a music producer, engineer, and composer based in Los Angeles, CA, performing and recording experimental sound work since 2014. His process involves improvisation and experimental sound techniques, combining his engineering background with his deeply rooted musical intuition. Van Thyne’s music can be equally inspired by Strauss orchestral works as it is by Moog synthesizers. He takes interest in sonic extremes, oftentimes pushing the limits of an instrument or piece of equipment. This philosophy is present in all of his works, always seeking ways to reinvent and repurpose the tools at his disposal”.

Read original > HERE