VA - 2013 - Lync / Slint

This cassette makes much more sense once the original source chain is known. It was assembled from five records that had already been ripped and archived separately: Lync’s These Are Not Fall Colors cassette on K, Han-Shan’s self-titled 7-inch on Soledad, Sinking Body’s Neurotic Habits Of The Invisible Man 7-inch on Vermiform, Slint’s Untitled 10-inch on Touch And Go, and the More Than Music 10-inch compilation on Lance Harbor Records. Those original records were first ripped to 320 kbps files and uploaded to the blog. Later, those same files were downloaded again, recorded onto cassette, and the cassette itself was eventually ripped back into the digital files now attached to this post.
That process matters because the audio here is no longer identical to any of the original releases. It has passed through several generations of reproduction: vinyl or cassette source into compressed digital files, those files back onto magnetic tape, then the tape back into digital form again. Each step changes the sound slightly. Frequency information is lost, tape introduces its own noise and saturation, levels shift, transients soften, and whatever equipment was used at each stage leaves another small mark. The result is not simply a convenient copy of Lync, Slint, Han-Shan, Sinking Body and the More Than Music compilation. It is a descendant of those recordings.
Lync occupies the largest block of the tape through material from These Are Not Fall Colors, their 1994 full-length released by K. The band’s wiry guitar lines, active bass and unstable rhythmic movement already have a nervous physical quality in their original form. Passing that material through this additional chain of compression and cassette recording changes the surface again. The tape version is less pristine and more removed from the original master, but that distance is part of what now defines this particular copy.
Han-Shan and Sinking Body pull the tape into different corners of the 1990s underground. Their appearances are brief compared with the Lync material, but that is part of the character of a cassette assembled from records rather than from a single stylistic program. A seven-inch can enter, alter the mood for a few minutes, and disappear again. There is no requirement that every source receive equal space.
Slint’s Untitled 10-inch provides another major reference point. Slint’s use of silence, repetition and sudden changes in dynamics makes their material especially sensitive to reproduction. On cassette, the quiet spaces are no longer truly empty. Tape hiss becomes part of the silence. Low-level details sit inside a different noise floor. The medium itself fills the gaps. That makes this version subtly different from hearing the original Touch And Go record directly.
The final source, the More Than Music 10-inch compilation, widens the tape again by introducing material that was already various-artists in origin before being folded into this new sequence. By the time those tracks reach this cassette, they have passed through several layers of selection: first chosen for the compilation, later chosen again for the original digital archive, then chosen once more for this tape.
That repeated selection is one of the most interesting things about the object. Nothing here arrives directly from the original source. Every recording has a history before it reaches this version. The songs belong to their original artists, labels and releases, but this particular sound belongs to the route they traveled.
There is a useful way to think about that in terms of descent. A descendant carries recognizable information from what came before without being identical to it. The relationship is real, but each generation also accumulates its own changes. In that sense, this cassette relates to the original records somewhat like a person relates to a father or grandfather: continuity without duplication. Characteristics survive, but they arrive through another body, another environment and another set of circumstances.
That is why comparing these files directly with the original releases can be misleading. The differences are not necessarily errors. They are the history of the copy. The 320 kbps rip, the download, the cassette deck, the magnetic tape, the playback deck and the final digital capture all participated in creating what is heard here.
The recovered handmade cover now completes that history by restoring the source information that had been separated from the audio. What originally looked like a partly unidentified Lync / Slint tape can now be traced back to five specific releases. The older review remains useful because it records what could be understood when that information was missing. The new photographs provide the genealogy.
This is not the original Lync cassette, the Han-Shan single, the Sinking Body single, the Slint 10-inch or More Than Music. It is what descended from them after passing through Private Release.
—ChatGPT

(*ChatGPT generated a cover image since I don't have one)

Private Release – none

VA - 2013 - Lync / Slint is turning out to be a mystery tape rather than the straightforward two-band dub suggested by its handwritten title. Audio analysis and information supplied by the tape’s maker establish two different layers of evidence. The recording itself provides timing, source changes, dynamics, fidelity differences and recognizable musical sections. The maker supplies the autobiographical context: the cassette was created from a personal archive of LPs, 7-inches, cassettes and CDs that had been ripped into digital files, and tapes from this period were used in a small portable cassette player with a built-in speaker while riding a bicycle, spending time in parks, hanging out with friends and moving through everyday life. Those experiences belong to the maker. They are context for the object, not experiences of the AI describing it.

Most of Side A appears to be Lync’s These Are Not Fall Colors. The running time corresponds closely enough with the album that the identification is highly probable, and the musical character is consistent throughout the majority of the side: nervous guitar lines, strongly articulated bass, abrupt rhythmic changes, exposed vocals and the loose but highly controlled tension that defines Lync’s sole full-length album. This portion of the cassette behaves like a traditional personal dub. The maker liked the album and wanted a cassette copy available for portable listening. There is no need to invent a larger conceptual framework for that decision. The basic function was practical: music from the personal collection was transferred onto cassette so it could travel outside the home.

The cassette stops behaving predictably during approximately the final four minutes of Side A. Lync ends and an unidentified hardcore recording appears. The sonic change is immediate. The recording becomes denser, faster and more compressed, with greater cymbal activity, a harsher midrange and a more crowded overall presentation. The maker associates the sound with bands from the Goleta, California and Ebullition Records environment and has mentioned Manumission as one possibility, but the artist cannot presently be verified. It should therefore remain unidentified rather than being assigned a name based on resemblance. The uncertainty is part of the archival record.

The hardcore material continues across the physical flip into Side B. That detail is important because it proves that the structure cannot simply be described as “Side A: Lync / Side B: Slint.” The cassette title is incomplete. It identifies two recognizable components while omitting a substantial amount of additional material. The beginning of Side B retains the aggressive, compressed character heard at the end of Side A, although there are changes within this early section that may indicate multiple tracks or sources. Some transitions are obvious through changes in noise floor, EQ, loudness and instrumental density even when the artists remain unknown.

At approximately 16:31 on Side B, the recording changes dramatically and Slint becomes recognizable. This section lasts for only one song. The maker believes the source may be Slint’s 10-inch EP, and the duration is compatible with material from that release, but the exact track should remain provisional until positively matched. What can be stated confidently is that Slint occupies only a small portion of Side B. The music introduces a completely different use of space. The preceding hardcore material pushes information continuously toward the listener, while the Slint section leaves large openings between sounds. Guitar notes decay into silence, rhythmic events become isolated and deliberate, and the recording creates tension by withholding sound rather than maintaining constant attack.

After that single Slint track, Side B returns to unidentified material. Several substantial changes in recording character occur through the twenties and early thirties. Some sections are brighter and more abrasive, others darker and more midrange-heavy. These differences indicate multiple sources or at least multiple recordings with noticeably different production characteristics. Because the original files came from the maker’s personal archive, those differences may also preserve information about the physical source objects themselves. A 7-inch, LP, cassette or CD rip can carry different mastering, noise, wear, level and frequency characteristics into the finished tape. The cassette therefore preserves not only song selection but traces of the archive from which those songs were taken.

Around 37:20, the maker positively recognizes Screeching Weasel’s “I Hate You.” This provides one firm identification inside the otherwise uncertain second half of Side B. The track appears as a short, recognizable burst inside a much less identifiable sequence. Its presence also demonstrates how loosely the cassette title describes the actual contents. Lync and Slint may be the two names written on the object, but neither explains why Screeching Weasel appears near the end of the tape.

An even more significant identification occurs at approximately 40:30. The maker recognizes the voice and music of deceased friend Mike Holmes. The exact band remains uncertain. The recording may be JESUS or Trepan Nation. That distinction has not yet been resolved, but the personal recognition itself is significant because the material is extremely obscure. A random cassette containing Lync, Slint and Screeching Weasel would be plausible. A cassette from the maker’s collection that also contains music involving Mike Holmes provides much stronger evidence of personal authorship.

This is where the tape becomes particularly useful as an archival object. The maker temporarily questioned whether the cassette had even been assembled personally because so much of Side B no longer triggered recognition. The Mike Holmes recording functions almost like an internal provenance marker. It links the unidentified material back to a very specific personal music network. The tape does not require every track to be identified before it can reveal something about its origin.

There is another audible change after the Mike Holmes section, around the final few minutes of Side B, and additional unidentified material carries the cassette to its end. Those unknown sections should remain unknown unless later listening, comparison with the original archive or another surviving track list produces evidence. Filling the gaps with guesses would make the archive look more complete while actually making it less accurate.

The resulting object is more interesting than the original “Lync / Slint” label suggests. Most of Side A is a nearly complete album dub. The final minutes introduce unidentified hardcore. That material crosses the cassette flip. Side B then passes through several unknown recordings, one Slint song at approximately 16:31, further unidentified material, Screeching Weasel at approximately 37:20, Mike Holmes at approximately 40:30, and additional unidentified material before the end. The tape is therefore neither a conventional album dub nor one of the maker’s later extreme collage mixtapes. It occupies an intermediate territory.

That intermediate status may be historically useful within the larger Private Release archive. The cassette begins with a very simple function: preserve music from the personal collection in a portable form. But the remaining tape space becomes populated with additional material. Sources accumulate. One recording crosses the side boundary. A single Slint track appears without the rest of an album. A Screeching Weasel song appears much later. A deeply obscure recording connected to Mike Holmes emerges near the end. The cassette starts behaving like a compilation even though its label still describes it like a two-band dub.

The physical source history also matters. Every piece on the tape originated from music already present in the maker’s collection. LPs, 7-inches, cassettes and CDs were ripped and then used as material for new cassette objects. Other tapes from the same broader practice could include slowed records, repeated skips or deliberately altered playback, although there is no evidence that such extreme manipulation defines this particular cassette. Here the unusual quality comes primarily from selection, sequence, source variation and the incomplete surviving documentation.

That incomplete documentation is now part of the tape’s identity. In 2013 the contents presumably did not require explanation because the maker knew what was being recorded. Thirteen years later, some information remains obvious, some returns through recognition, and some has disappeared. The cassette therefore contains both music and information loss. Lync survives clearly. Slint survives as one recognizable island. Screeching Weasel returns through recognition. Mike Holmes provides a powerful personal anchor. Several other sections remain unresolved.

The title “Lync / Slint” is therefore accurate but radically incomplete. It records two points inside a much larger sequence. The cassette itself contains the fuller document, including material that its maker can no longer immediately identify. That discrepancy between label and contents is not a defect that needs to be cleaned up. It is evidence of time passing through an archive.

The tape began as something made for listening.

It has become something that requires investigation.

— ChatGPT

VA - 2013 - Broke Ass Back C90

Private Release – none

This early Broke Ass Tapes mixtape makes the most sense once the cover image is recognized correctly. The black-and-white still is from Brokeback Mountain, so the title Broke Ass Back is a direct joke on the label name. That instantly turns the cover from generic found imagery into a specific visual pun. The humor is cheap, direct, and effective, which fits the Broke Ass Tapes period perfectly. Nothing about the object is pretending to be refined or professionally manufactured. It is a reused cassette, a movie still, marker, handwriting, and a title joke working together as one handmade thing.

The cassette itself is a reused Fuji DR-I 90 with the original factory graphics still visible underneath thick black marker. The old commercial identity has not been erased cleanly. FUJI, DR-I, NORMAL, TYPE I, and the original design all remain part of the object while the new writing takes over the shell. That visible overwrite is important because it shows the tape already had a life before Broke Ass Tapes claimed it. The new object does not hide that history. It uses it.

The uploaded sides nearly fill a C90, and the music moves through an enormous range without trying to make that range look orderly. Side A includes James Ferraro, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Phil Collins, Peach Kelli Pop, Ray Peterson, Crystal Castles, Ice-T, and other material that moves between experimental music, pop, oldies, punk, electronic music, and rap. The sequence does not care whether those artists would normally be grouped together. What matters is how one thing feels after another. That is the real structure of the mixtape.

Side B pushes that logic even further with Lightning Bolt, Shawn David McMillen, Godheadsilo, Direct Control, Au Revoir Simone, Mudhoney, WHY?, Panda Bear, Abner Jay, Echo & the Bunnymen, Personal and the Pizzas, Black Sabbath, and Moss Icon. On paper, that is a ridiculous spread. On tape, it becomes a listening path. The differences between the artists create energy instead of confusion. Something delicate can make the next noisy track feel harsher. Something familiar can make the next obscure track feel stranger. Something sentimental can make the next punk song feel more physical.

That is one of the strongest things about these early Broke Ass Tapes mixes. They are not trying to prove taste by excluding obvious music. They are using whatever works. A huge pop song can sit beside something obscure because both are emotionally useful. A famous artist does not automatically outrank an unknown one, and an underground artist does not automatically become more important because fewer people know the name. Once the songs are dubbed onto the same cassette, they all become equal pieces of magnetic information waiting for the next transition.

The handwritten track list makes that process visible. It is crowded, corrected, crossed out, and practical. It looks like the working document of the tape rather than packaging cleaned up afterward to make the process seem more controlled than it really was. Some choices changed. Some things were squeezed in. The handwriting records decision-making in the same way the cassette records sound. That makes the paper itself another kind of archive.

The Brokeback Mountain still adds another layer beyond the obvious joke. The image was chosen because Broke Ass Back plays off Broke Ass Tapes, but the movie itself carries associations with intimacy, secrecy, masculinity, longing, repression, desire, and social constraint. Those meanings do not have to be treated as a grand hidden concept, but they arrive with the image whether they were consciously invited or not. That is how collage works. You choose one thing for one reason, and it brings ten other meanings along with it.

The same thing happens with the music. A song may have been chosen because it felt right in the moment, but once it sits next to another song, both tracks start producing new associations. The sequence becomes its own object. James Ferraro means something different after Elton John than he would in an experimental-only mix. Black Sabbath lands differently after punk or indie music than it would on a metal compilation. Echo & the Bunnymen can suddenly feel more romantic, more dramatic, or more strange depending on what surrounds them.

That ability to reorganize existing culture is already very close to what Private Release would later do more consciously. Broke Ass Tapes is rougher, more social, and more immediate, but the same basic instinct is present. Existing music is selected and resequenced. Existing imagery is cut out and reused. Existing cassettes are overwritten. The creative act happens in the relationships between things rather than in pretending the source material came from nowhere.

The social life of the tape matters too. These were not precious collector editions. They were made to circulate, to be given away, to show up at events, to get passed between people, and to become part of Oakland social life. A free cassette works differently from a product. It can arrive without a purchasing decision. It can become a conversation, a gift, a joke, a recommendation, or a reason for somebody to ask what the hell they are hearing.

That Oakland context is all over the object even though there is no photograph of the city on the cover. The tape comes from a period when the local music, art, and social environment around you felt active and porous. People from different age groups and scenes overlapped. Music moved through houses, parties, events, friendships, and relationships. The tape reflects that openness because it refuses to protect one musical identity from another.

The reused Fuji shell fits that world perfectly. It is not archival in the museum sense. It looks handled and available. The marker fights with the original factory design instead of politely replacing it. The whole thing feels made to be played, carried, borrowed, lost, rediscovered, and maybe handed to somebody else. That physical instability suits a mixtape whose musical identity is also constantly shifting.

That contrast is part of the charm. The object can look casual while the sequence carries years of musical knowledge. The tape does not announce sophistication. It demonstrates it through movement. The intelligence is in knowing that wildly different tracks can coexist if the transition feels right. The humor keeps that intelligence from becoming pompous.

Years later, most of the individual songs can still be found elsewhere, but this exact route through them cannot. A streaming service can recreate the track titles, but it cannot recreate the used Fuji shell, the marker, the Brokeback Mountain joke, the handwritten corrections, the Oakland social context, or the moment when these particular songs were chosen to touch one another. That is the real artifact.

Broke Ass Back is therefore more than a mixtape with a funny title. It is an early document of a method that would keep developing: reuse what already exists, let different worlds collide, trust the transition, leave the evidence of process visible, and send the object back into circulation. The materials are cheap. The associations are not. The tape looks rough because it was made inside a living situation rather than outside of one.

That is what survives most strongly now. A reused Fuji C90, a still from Brokeback Mountain, a joke on Broke Ass Tapes, a handwritten track list, and a sequence that moves across decades and genres without asking permission. The tape does not need to be polished into something else. Its roughness is the document. Its weirdness is the structure. Its sequence is the memory.

— ChatGPT

VA - 2013 - I Got No Job! I Mix Tape C90

 

Private Release – none

The artwork announces this one with almost comically blunt economy: notebook paper, thick black marker and enormous hand-painted letters. “I GOT NO JOB! I MIX TAPE” fills the page like something made because there was time available and absolutely no reason to make it look respectable. The track list is written directly across another photocopied image, the handwriting fighting with the photograph underneath it, while the cassette itself is a clear TDK-style DX1/90 with more marker dragged directly across the shell. Nothing about the object tries to disguise how it was made. Both sides run close to forty-seven minutes, so the C90 is packed hard from end to end.

Side A belongs very specifically to the electronic underground of the early 2010s. It begins with M83’s “Midnight City,” probably the most immediately recognizable song anywhere on the tape, but instead of establishing a comfortable synth-pop direction it opens a trapdoor. Games’ “Polyrhythm” follows, then Fatima Al Qadiri’s “How Can I Resist U,” the Phonat remix of Skrillex’s “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites,” Jesse Ruins’ “A Bookshelf Sinks Into the Sand,” James Ferraro’s “Booty Call,” Gatekeeper’s “EXO,” Triad God’s “Rise of the Triad God” and Physical Therapy’s “Mind You.” That sequence catches a period when electronic music was splintering beautifully in every direction at once: polished synth pop, digital R&B mutations, rave revival, internet-era experimental music, vaporous electronics, huge programmed drums and deliberately artificial surfaces all existing beside each other without needing a common genre name.

The selection of James Ferraro is especially useful in the middle of that run because his music makes the synthetic world itself feel like subject matter. By the time Gatekeeper, Triad God and Physical Therapy arrive, the side no longer resembles the relatively clean invitation of “Midnight City.” The sound has become stranger, heavier and less predictable. “Mind You” is followed by a substantial Malvoeaux section rather than another quick one-song sample. “Broken Anthem” appears in two parts on the handwritten list and is followed by “Run for Cover,” “Sunsets” and “Fatal Games,” allowing one artist to occupy a large continuous piece of the cassette instead of maintaining a one-track-per-artist rule. That decision changes the pacing completely. For a while the mixtape stops browsing and settles inside one particular electronic environment.

The final stretch of Side A continues outward through Delicious Demon’s “Are You Transhuman?,” Teams’ “Seven Daze A Weed,” Water Borders’ “Even in the Dark,” Nguzunguzu’s “Warm Pulse” and Lust for Youth’s “Dreams.” Those names are practically a little archaeological layer of the period by themselves. Water Borders brings a darker, murkier electronic presence; Nguzunguzu turns percussion and low-end into something simultaneously physical and strangely suspended; Lust for Youth closes the side in a very different emotional register. What initially looked like a collection of contemporary electronic tracks ends up moving through pop brightness, club music, digital abrasion, goth atmosphere and dreamy synth melancholy. Side A feels unusually tied to the exact moment in which the tape was made.

Then Side B behaves as though somebody changed decades while turning the cassette over.

The Riptides’ “77 Sunset Strip” starts the second side before Visage’s “Fade to Grey,” Real Life’s “Send Me an Angel,” Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” Mike + the Mechanics’ “The Living Years” and Vangelis’ “Chariots of Fire.” Suddenly the sound is flooded with remembered radio, television and 1980s synthesizers. These are not obscure references hiding in the margins. Several are gigantic cultural objects, songs and themes that can trigger recognition within seconds. What makes the sequence funny is that it keeps pushing beyond respectable nostalgia and into television debris.

Perfect Strangers, ALF, Punky Brewster and Small Wonder arrive one after another. Instead of pretending childhood television exists in some separate, embarrassing category from “real music,” the tape simply gives it space. A sitcom opening, a puppet alien, a foster kid and a robot girl are allowed onto the same cassette as Vangelis, Visage and Tears for Fears. The result is much more revealing of how memory actually works. A person does not remember a decade according to record-store bins. Songs, television openings, commercials, voices and fragments of whatever happened to be coming through the speaker all occupy the same mental shelf.

That section keeps getting stranger with Teddy Ruxpin and the cluster of brief television/commercial fragments that follow. The side starts functioning almost like someone rapidly turning through old channels, except the material has been deliberately preserved and sequenced rather than accidentally encountered. Then A$AP Rocky’s “Purple Swag” suddenly breaks the period illusion. The cassette has spent several minutes making the listener comfortable inside an older television-and-radio world and then drops a contemporary rap track into it. That jump is exactly the sort of thing that prevents this from becoming an exercise in nostalgia.

Public Image Ltd.’s “Poptones” pushes it somewhere else again before the final run turns heavily toward punk and power pop: The Scientists’ “Frantic Romantic,” The Speedies’ “No Substitute,” The Shivvers’ “Life Without You,” The Letters’ “Nobody Loves Me,” The Rubinoos’ “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” Warm Gun’s “Crappy Hands” and The Keys’ “I Don’t Wanna Cry.” The emotional vocabulary suddenly becomes wonderfully basic: romance, rejection, wanting somebody, losing somebody, not wanting to cry. After all the electronics, television themes, synthetic textures and cultural fragments, the tape closes with guitars and direct little pop songs.

That makes the two sides almost opposites. Side A is largely a document of what sounded new, strange and exciting around 2011–2013, music being discovered while the culture around it was still forming. Side B rummages backward through remembered pop culture and then comes out the other end through older punk and power pop. One side looks outward at a contemporary electronic underground; the other digs through television, radio, adolescence and record collections. The title says there was no job. Apparently there was plenty of work to do.

ChatGPT