ambient/experimental/dubby tape loops

This is all built out of tape loops created using hacked tapes and tape players and a four track. The source material for the textures is everything from recorded sampled instruments to whatever found sound was on the tapes that were used in the looping machines, but it’s all so thoroughly manipulated and fed back in on itself, that there’s no feeling of sample collage. Instead, this is one cohesive, fuzzy, droney, listen. In the musician’s own words, a fellow producer taught him “how to make a tape loop that could be put inside a cassette tape. I got really into this, and got a 4 track, knowing this would allow me to have four synchronized loops per tape. I would then run each channel through a series of effects and 'perform' live mixes using the loops. I alternated between using source material of my own devising and using whatever source material happened to be on the cassettes I was hacking.”

RIYL: Fennesz, old Boards of Canada vibes (fuzzier versions of their nostalgic textures, less dark undercurrent), Basic Channel sans drums, Tim Hecker’s fuzz

(instrumental, FCC clean)

1. alternating fuzz tones with a little friction as the notes switch. slowly building dubby echoes, a bit of shimmer. another slightly stormier layer gets added, original layer fades in and out as echoes grow. fades out on waves of lo-fi echo. 6:22
2. foggy reverby bells sway gently, starting quiet and getting just a bit louder. ringing droney layer underneath very slowly asserts itself, occasionally taking the foreground before dropping back. 6:08
3. warm washes of dubby echoed midrange synth tones. drifting melodic tone comes up and weaves in and out, then another. main part’s texture feels like basic channel, complementary melody feels like the chillier textures of autechre. 4:21
4. more dubby pulsing warm synth wash, a bit of filtered wind (?) in the background. eventually, echoed clicking and rustling, the shadows of something percussive, maybe just the slightly sharp edge of the echo effect. another more fluid tone added toward the end, with a bit of filter. even more than #3, this feels like someone deboned a basic channel song and just left the non-percussive atmosphere. 6:43
5. gently pulsing warm tone, small glitchy clicks, static, main tone changes pitch and warbles a bit as it goes along. 3:21
6. twangy buzzing psych tone, rises and falls, pans side to side, gets echo-y. clicks woosh by, presumably the edges of the echo effect. eventually, richer buzzing midrange space age tone enters. buzzing becomes a bit more insistent and preoccupied, but not too worried. closes in on itself abruptly to end. 8:51


recommended: 4, 8, 1, any