Welcome to The Tape Label Report, where we introduce you to five cassette-focused labels you should know about, and highlight key releases from each.
Godless America
Cassette
When I first get in touch with Jordan Duttinger, “Founder/CEO†of the label Godless America, the situation in Orlando, Florida is still in flux thanks to a path of destruction wrought by Hurricane Milton. He’s without power, but manages to answer a few questions about his long-running label while assessing damage and dealing with the clean-up.
In 2006, after his band broke up and he lost his job, Jordan knew he had to get out of his hometown of Sunbury, Pennsylvania. “I reduced my life to a duffle bag and bought a one-way ticket to Orlando,†he says. He started a new band, Tam Tam The Sandwich Man & The Magical Sugar Cookies, and when it came time to release something, Godless America was born.
While living at the House of Dank punk house, a nearby store liquidated its inventory and Duttinger scored a swath of “God Bless America†swag, which he promptly détourned: “I used an X-Acto knife to remove the ‘B’ from stickers and a seam ripper to remove it from hats. The result was ‘God Less America.’ It was a natural fit when it came time for a label name.†When he scored a cassette duplicator from a local church, fate and irony seemed to be on his side. It was 2008, though, and tapes were still looked down upon. “When I started, people would laugh in my face when I showed them my cassettes,†Jordan remembers. But as a lifelong fan of artists like “Weird Al†Yankovic, The Dead Milkmen, and Frank Zappa, Duttinger says he’s a “sucker for a silly song,†so this didn’t faze him. Soon, he was deeply entrenched in the Orlando scene, rubbing shoulders with Total Punk and putting out tapes by Cherry Cheeks, Wet Nurse, Sad Jeremy, and Baby Adam, among others.
Thanks to word-of-mouth and contacts Duttinger made on tour, the label’s roster has expanded beyond the Sunshine State. Brazil’s Cool Sorcery and Turkey’s Goblin Daycare bring freaky egg punk to the party, while GUJI, from Shanghai, China, hides big thoughts and feelings in deceptively sophisticated songs. Closer to home, a new tape from New York City’s Pop Music Fever Dream lives up to their name, delivering agitated post-punk that flirts with noise rock and no wave. Duttinger also discovers bands via his mixtape series, which just released its ninth edition. Intended to recall the tapes he made for curious friends as a teenager, Duttinger explains the process by which these compilations come together: “I open submissions for two months, and I let anyone who sees the form enter as many songs as they want. I don’t listen to any songs until the window has closed. Then the challenge is to craft a mixtape with two cohesive sides that make sense out of the submitted songs. It’s equal parts leap of faith and labor of love.†So much for lack of belief in this Godless America.
Release To Start With
Mythological Horses
Sky King
Cassette
In 2009, Duttinger met singer-songwriter Shawn Holley on tour; over the years, Godless America has released a cassingle (don’t laugh, they still exist) and some mixtape tracks by the Seattle musician. When Holley was preparing to record a new album, his regular drummer wasn’t available, so he asked Duttinger, who has been playing since he was a kid, to fill in. But Holley’s band wasn’t just any old pick-up band recording at the local practice space. Sky King was produced by the legendary Tad Doyle at his Witch Ape Studio and fielded a murderer’s row of local talent, including Kurt Bloch from The Fastbacks, Kurt Danielson from TAD, Kevin Whitworth from Love Battery and Nirvana cellist Lori Goldston. Besides the bonafides of the players, Sky King features original art by Hate comics auteur Peter Bagge and photos by Charles Peterson. While those credits might imply that Mythological Horses is nothing more than a grunge tribute band, Sky King’s soaring rock ‘n’ roll and earthbound ballads are more inspired by Dinosaur Jr. and Neil Young and Crazy Horse. As Duttinger puts it, “I still have to pinch myself to believe that it happened, but I’m pretty proud of that one.’
—Erick Bradshaw
Lighten Up Sounds
Cassette
Founded in 2007, Minnesota’s Lighten Up Sounds began as a proper platform for Matthew Himes to release the weird, improvisational tapes he’d spent the past few years recording with friends. Drawing inspiration from cassette labels like Chocolate Monk, Hanson Records, and Chondritic Sound, Himes’s label was initially an offline operation, moving field recordings and avant-garde jams in person, exclusively.
“In the early era of the internet, the modes of connection were blogs and message boards, and I learned a lot from a few friends to recognize and understand the possibilities,†Himes says.
Since then, the label has grown far beyond his small circle, collaborating with an international roster of experimentalists. Over nearly two decades of running Lighten Up, Himes says that the discography’s overall sound has expanded from its noisy, murkier roots to accommodate more meditative recordings. Eccentricity and rawness are a through line.
“In a way, the label represents a lack of strictly defined artistic boundaries, and I’d say that still holds true,†Himes explains. “I make a point to give each release my full attention and try not to fall into predictable templates or modes of convenience. With a few small exceptions I do everything myself, so it’s a creative process and an outlet for me that way. It all adds up, with the design, production, printing, assembly, coding, video, photography, social, promotion, distribution, packing orders, shipping, managing email, and customer service.â€
For Himes, the allure of cassettes lies in their collectibility, and the way that the format’s physical features influence the art it contains. “I like the pause in the middle: the separation of Side A and Side B,†he says. “The idea of channeling creative energy, and making a physical form for the music, and then sending that little object out into the world to accompany people and provide a soundtrack to their lives—that’s the coolest part.â€
Release to Start With
Günter Schlienz
Kurpark
Cassette
Backing delicate modular synthesis with field recordings captured in the area surrounding a health spa, German producer Günter Schlienz’s Kurpark is squarely on the serene end of the Lighten Up spectrum. Himes has been a fan of Schlienz since the early 2010s, discovering him through Schlienz’s own tape label, Cosmic Winnetou.
“Günter reached out to share Kurpark for potential release, and I knew immediately that we had to work together on this project,†Himes says. “We discussed a few concepts that felt aligned to the music, and things came together pretty quickly. I shot the cover art photography a while back in Palm Springs, and the artist and I both agreed that the colorful floral image felt just right.â€
–Jude Noel
Lonely Ghost Records
Cassette
Lonely Ghost Records started in Columbus, Ohio, but they package every release like an artifact from its own alternate universe. Since co-founding the DIY label in 2018, John—a semi-anonymous fifth-wave emo artist also known as Superdestroyer—has pursued unorthodox physical releases and social media campaigns: He created an imitation MySpace profile for the cover of JEFF and a cassette split with Count Your Lucky Stars Records; crafted an interactive website based on the video for May Leitz’s single “Track 9†where you can leave reviews on fake products like “Replacement Face Skinâ€; and designed a limited edition Sega cartridge (complete with instruction booklet) for Nelson Comes to Visit, a collab between Superdestroyer and instrumental hip-hop producer (leave) nelson b.
“I don’t think there’s publicists tripping over themselves to try to promote Lonely Ghost,†says John. “Most of the people I’ve talked to—usually in a kind way—will be like, ‘What the fuck is this?’â€
Unusual or not, an individual touch can set a label apart in the supersaturated online landscape. It’s the same reason John used to dub every Lonely Ghost cassette by hand—thousands in total—for in-house artists like Oldphone and The Merrier as well as friends in the scene like Guitar Fight from Fooly Cooly. John’s trusty Tascam 202MKVII recently gave up the (lonely) ghost, so the label now gets their tapes from duplication.ca—but that just gives John more time to design counterfeit Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and other promotional oddities.
“When you know somebody wanted to make something cool for you, you’re way more likely to think it’s cool,†he says. “Because it is, right?â€
Release to Start With
Hey Ily!
Hey, I Loathe You!
Cassette, Vinyl LP
“People think they wanna hear the same band over and over, but they always end up loving bands that aren’t that,†says John. So, over six years of signing artists, Lonely Ghost has sought out those that defy taxonomy, like Cheem (nu-metal pop?) or Funeral Homes (everything-gaze?). Billings, Montana band Hey, Ily! fits the same broken mold. In typical Lonely Ghost fashion, they don’t even sound like the same band from one song to the next, or from verse to chorus to bridge. On sophomore album Hey, I Loathe You!, glossy chiptune synths and power pop melodies drop into glitchy, screaming breakdowns, like an Animorphs transformation stuck halfway between William Bonney and Anamanaguchi.
–Taylor Ruckle
Muzan Editions
Cassette
Located at the intersection of four tectonic plates, Japan has long been a hotbed for seismic activity, a history that hides itself in the dramatic mountain ranges that stretch across the island nation. These mountains, it turns out, are great places to throw parties, like the one that Joshua Stefane and Andreas Holderbach organized on Mount Ikoma, between Osaka and their adopted home of Nara. Eventually, Stefane suggested the two start a label to showcase some of the Japanese electronic artists that they had gotten to know since moving to the country. Holderbach agreed and in 2017, Muzan Editions was born.
Taking their name from their high-altitude party site, (muzan translates roughly to “dream mountainâ€), the two developed a catalog of releases by Japan’s ambient music community. This stylistic focus on ambient led naturally to a parallel focus on cassettes. “I had been collecting cassettes for many decades, mostly experimental and ambient music and had found a lot of inspiration from the DIY-aspect of the scene in Europe and the U.S.,†said Holderbach.
Stefane, who releases his own work under the name Endurance, agrees that the low-cost, high-quality nature of cassettes was a major selling point for the bootstrapped label. Seven years later, the Muzan Editions now represents many European artists as well, mostly personal connections who came to Japan to do shows (Stefane is Canadian, while Holderbach hails from Germany). But the label itself remains rooted in Nara and committed to, in Stefan’s words, “allow[ing] people all over the world to hear some of the incredible music being made in Japan.â€
Release to Start With
Chie Otomi
Touch Again
Cassette
Muzan Editions’s discography largely leans into the more peaceful side of ambient, a side better suited to soundtrack meditative hikes than mountain raves. Most releases are synth-based, offering soothingly spacious soundscapes that glimmer with an almost internal glow. Touch Again, by Osaka-based artist Chie Otomi, is a fitting gateway into this world, one guided by slowly orbiting waves of sound that seem designed to light the air in multicolored hues.
See, for example, “Goodbye my ghost,†Otomi’s 14-minute opus whose soft, low-swooping synths capture the best of what makes Muzan Editions what it is. Then, on the other side of that spectrum, check out “Intro – One Shot,†a sub-two minute track that opens the album with a sequence of jagged melodies, grabbing the listener’s attention so that the rest of the album can let it gently drift away.
–Collin Smith
Nonlocal Research
Cassette
The seeds of Nonlocal Research took root in 2010 when Chilean musicians Nicolás Carcavilla, Reverendo 23 (aka Tomás Dittborn), and their friend Dodds began exploring the possibilities of multi-track cassette recordings and reel-to-reel tapes woven into fantastical environments under the name Congregation Of Spirits. Carcavilla describes a vision of “archaic futurism and time-traveling….a fantasy timeless folklore.†Soon the project rebranded as Nonlocal Society, necessitating the launch of a label to propagate their evolving electro-acoustic abstractions.
Nonlocal Research officially debuted in 2013 with the release of Carcavilla’s solo LP as False Sir Nicholas, Myriad Tongues. A twisting, murky hallucination of keyboards, tape-processed string instruments, and loop pedals, the album serves as a useful gateway drug to the label’s altered state wavelength.
Over the past 14 years Nonlocal Research has issued 33 titles, across many formats (cassettes, LPs, lathes, CDs). While Carcavilla is still based in Chigualoco, Chile, Reverendo 23 and his partner, Siet Raemaekers (the third pillar of NR), are headquartered in Belgium, giving the label an international scope. Highlights include the angelic ethnographic transmissions of Tristan & Titania, the murmuring ectoplasmic alchemy of Borange, the shimmering translucent synthetics of Galaxy Express 555, and the bewildering 5th-world fantasias of Grykë Pyje.
Throughout the catalog, there’s a cohesive but cryptic fusion of the alien and the organic, like some biomorphic Morse code not yet fully deciphered. R23’s cites the label’s muse in terms similarly intuitive and vibrational: “What we refer to as ‘nonlocal’ is a resonance that we feel with some art which is not bound by locality or a predefined culture, but a culture that manifests from a deeper pattern that we don’t fully know or understand but that we feel part of.â€
Release to Start With
Alejandro Palacios
Equis I Griega Zeta
Cassette
The second label offering by Chilean painter and multi-instrumentalist Alejandro Palacios (following 2016’s Atifambersapel) expands the label’s palette across a perplexing, hazy suite of soupy bedroom fusion, narcoleptic crooning, and ramshackle exotica. Like so much of Nonlocal Research’s discography, it’s music simultaneously disorienting and dynamic, chaotic and exquisite, falling apart and coming together.
From the lurching atonal waltz “Guarilias†to the smoky junk-shop noir of “Shajira†to the mesmerizing ethno-vamp closer “Trumbesihop,†Palacios’s craft is deceptive. Melodies stray off course, instruments sway in and out of tune, the songs at times feel distracted from themselves. But just as often the elements congeal in abrupt and asymmetrical ways. “Cantone†ranks as stone cold a classic as may currently exist in the label’s canon. A dubby drumbox rhythm buoys mystic Terry Riley-esque keys over snaky bass, whispery surf guitar, reggae counterpoint horns, ghosted vocals, and jarring reverbed percussion, eventually deconstructing into an elegant aftermath of dust and echo.
