Anticyclonic gloom isn’t a dungeon synth project from 2024, but someone should patent the name if they haven’t already. It’s what the Met Office called the wave of relentless grey weather across the UK in early autumn, when skies stayed the same colour as the roads. That explains early November, but what about the rest of the year?
2024 has been bleak on levels more than climatic, although the prospects for the climate’s future are also pretty depressing. War, violent oppression, far-right thugs. The perennial cost-of-living crisis. In 2024 everything has seemed wrong.
So, what’s the sound of the cassette scene in 2024? Tintin Patrone’s trombone groaning over a ranting voice as she hymns the inner turmoil of hooligans? Sun Yizhou rocking out with electrical currents? Natalia Beylis montaging birdsong recordings into machine noise and scrunching footsteps as if conjuring an ecosystem slowly petrifying? The answer is whatever you want it to be. There’s so much happening on tape that a meta-narrative is ridiculous. My ears though, have been drawn to sounds that find new possibilities in abrasion. Evocations of sterile, dread filled or scattered spaces with glimpses of light beneath.
Part of this is a distinct type of heaviness. I hear it in tapes by Phicus, and the trio of Jad Atoui, Jawad Nawfal & Sharif Sehnaoui. Neither band riffs, their players come from the worlds of jazz, free improvisation and experimental electronics. But their embrace of tension and texture is undeniably heavy. The sonic equivalent of a high pressure front.
Elsewhere, artists have shown that traditional can be radical, and paths to cutting edge music don’t have to start in the places they’re typically assumed to. Tapes from Sipaningkah, Gary Gwadera and Carme López have all looked backwards to go forwards. In their music, traditional instruments and sounds come alive and stake new claims to the present.
I couldn’t hope to hint at all the brilliant sounds released on tape in 2024. As usual I’ll start with my favourite tape label of 2024, before a whistlestop tour of my favourite releases. Some I covered previously, others I missed. All are gateways to side quests through the gloom.
Tape Label Of The Year: Nuova Materia
Nuova Materia is operated by two Spaniards currently based in Antwerp and London. Their three tapes this year all feel momentous. Zofie Siege’s Gems In Dirt voyages through early music echoes and dungeon atmospherics, folding them into a creepy, spellbound, parallel realm. On Kaval’s Solastasis, synthesizers and occasional acoustic instruments forge music which feels completely outside of linear history, medieval and sci-fi soundscapes overlapping in a singularity. Nuova Materia have also just released Loop Blood by Nad Spiro, aka Rosa Arruti. Her tools – guitar, loopers and effects – might be familiar, but the output is unique. The creaks and rattles of her instrument are amplified as well its music. She calls it ‘limbo guitar’, a perfect description for these mediative, glitching shards of buzzing electricity and portentous distortion. Like Siege or Kaval’s tapes, Loop Blood has oceans of immersive depth.
Nuova Materia releases lean into music’s phantasmagorical quality. How it can be a strange apparition folding eras into each other. Perhaps tellingly, the founders initially intended to publish books: “Although we didn’t follow through with that, this idea greatly influenced the label. We seek narrative music with a strong evocative power—some of our artists have created their albums as if they were stories,” they explain.
Spool’s Out’s Favourite Tapes Of 2024 (in alphabetical order)
Jad Atoui, Jawad Nawfal, Sharif SehnaouiModern IndividualRuptured
Modern Individual confoundingly sounds like it was recorded simultaneously in a metallic cathedral and a close mic’d circuit board. Frayed guitars meet brutalist electronics and caustic glimmers, while the use of negative space recalls dub as much as anything else. Heavy, febrile and meditative all at once. The trio’s focused, unhurried exploration of texture turns what could be oppressive obliqueness into a compelling sound world.
Ayrtbh辛口 (Synthetic Weather Reporter)Aloe
Sun Yizhou’s Aloe Records has released a stream of brilliant tapes this year working in the spaces around sound art and musique concrete. Aloe’s releases are typically discrete and mind-bending all at once, saying much with astoundingly little. Shanghai-based Ayrtbh’s Synthetic Weather Reporter marked a highpoint for the label. Computer generated and processed sounds create vivid digital ecosystems on the a-side and playful babbling voice experiments on the b-side. Both are realised with intriguing depth and volatility that prevents them from ever becoming remotely predictable.
BantuInstabilityDark Energy
Bantu is Gary Stewart, co-founder of radical multimedia duo Dub Morphology alongside Trevor Mathison. Instability marks his debut solo full length, following an appearance on 2023’s vital Disruptive Frequencies compilation. As his release notes explain, “Instability draws upon both personal experience and collective trauma – that of a diaspora subjected to the rigours of a prolonged “hostile environment.”” It’s fierce yet coruscating, electronic music as path to defiance and confrontation rather than numbing escape. Rhythms scatter as synthesisers evoke shards of broken metal and gurgling electricity. Bantu’s music feels constructive rather than deconstructive. A vivid atmosphere of despair and dread, but also a sense that the controls of the machine are there to be seized and rerouted.
Natalia BeylisLost – For AnnieOutside Time
Natalia Beylis burrows deep into her County Leitrim environs on Lost – For Annie. From interviews with locals about disused sweathouses to a solo organ performance whose rickety drones are completely at one with the way air moves through abandoned buildings, Lost – For Annie dwells elegantly on how markers of a place meander and creak through time. How, to really hear somewhere, you need to listen to who inhabits it and the things they leave behind. Beylis’ has a unique grace and attentiveness when exploring these things. Grasping her surroundings as a palimpsest of lives and times.
Ensemble TikoroHell ChamberArtetetra
Ensemble Tikoro is an eight-person choir of vocalists from Bandung, Indonesia’s metal scene assembled by composer Robi Rusdiana. They chant, rasp, shriek and rant through a hybrid space of metal heaviness and the full disturbing range of what can be pulled from throat and voice. Familiarity with this music only amplifies how confounding it is. Every listen makes the world Ensemble Tikoro create seem vaster.
Gary GwaderaFar, far in Chicago. Footberk SuitePointless Geometry
Gary Gwadera, aka drummer Piotr Gwadera’s Far, far in Chicago. Footberk Suite stems from similarities he noticed in Chicago footwork and oberek – a centuries old traditional Polish folk dance rooted in high-spirited triplet rhythms. While voice and instrumental samples enter occasionally, this album is grounded in the hypnotic power of beats and rhythms. Using an acoustic drum kit augmented with electronics (including samples from vintage Roland drum machines and Polish drum sets made by LEM), Gwadera produces high velocity metamorphosis. Zooming in on the joyful common ground between far-flung dances.
Grimório de AbrilCastelo d’ÁguaMunicipal K7
The vocal line to Castelo d’Água’s first track, ‘O Eremita e O Leão’, keeps creeping back into my head at unexpected moments this year. Partly because it’s so catchy. Mostly because it’s a gateway into the Sao Paulo-based artist, real-name Veridiana Sanchez’s lush, interdimensional pop music. In some ways her songs are quite simple in their melodicism. But they’re also vast, her tracks acting as portals into surreal, sonically rich vistas. Terrestrial and fantastic balanced perfectly.
HI! CAPYBARASS/I/L/L/Y G/O/O/S/EPeach
I wrote about London-based HI! CAPYBARAS first EP, A/M/Y/G/D/A/L/A, at the start of this year. It began a triptych, S/I/L/L/Y G/O/O/S/E came out in April, while the final part, A/X/O/L/O/T/Y/L EP, just dropped. The palette across all three is similar, warm synths, spoken word and Leonard Susskind lectures playing in the background. It’s full of playful humour while also being profoundly moving in its tracking of the erratic spikes and bizarre temporality of grief. The most tender, generous and poignantly hilarious music I’ve heard in 2024.
Carmé LopezQuintelaWarm Winters
On Quintela Carme Lópezmakes revolutions beautiful. Frustrated that the Galician bagpipe has been typically locked into a problematic and male-dominated history, she sought to break it free by deploying it in the lineage of deep-listening practices forged by the likes of Éliane Radigue and Pauline Oliveros. The results are astounding. Lush drones rich in overtone and intricacy, are as enchanting to listen to as they are conceptually nuanced.
Tintin PatroneBocklos am WegesrandHet Generiek
Bocklos am Wegesrand is an album inspired by hooligans. Accompanied by the occasional voice ranting and sneering away, Patrone fully embraces her trombone’s peculiar sonics. Sounds swarm and mass with the unpredictability of an agitated crowd. The evasion of smooth edges and stable temperament are a playful and poignant reflection on human volatility. Patrone evoking the maelstroms burbling away under civilised surfaces.
PhicusREDOXHera Corp
Phicus is the trio of Ferran Fages, Àlex Reviriego and Vasco Trilla. REDOX, released on bassist Reviriego’s Hera Corp label, is doused in a slow simmering, pervasive heaviness. They work in unorthodox approaches to their respective instruments, swaying tension and bottled brute force simmering away beneath deep textural exploration. Occasionally, the tension breaks and a fiery deluge is let loose. Like metal breaking under pressure and erupting in dazzling shrapnel.
Mariam RezaeiFracturedHeat Crimes
Mariam Rezaei continues pushing the limits of her instrument on Fractured, as the liner notes explaining the full scope of her expanded turntablism make clear. It culminates in Rezaei’s most expansive, nuanced work yet, moving from high energy frenzies into tender droning pieces. Sometimes, her groove-bending interventions are blatant, other times they’re subtle, her actions barely perceptible among the playing of her collaborators. From the screeching glitch in the pair of duos with Elvin Brandhi to ‘Vengabussed’s unexpected treatment of the Venga Boys, Fractured is joyfully bamboozling. Elegantly contorted, playfully fierce, coherently scattered as it rips apart form and expectation.
Rosso PolareCampo AmaroStudents Of Decay
Rosso Polare’s music reflects a distinct ear on the world, where acoustic and electronic, incidental and composed, human and non-human sounds bleed into each other with no hierarchy. On Campo Amaro, they venture further into song and story than previously. Spoken and sung passages are influenced by Mondine chants – songs from predominantly female workers in Italian rice fields in the early twentieth century. They imbue the tape’s layered sonics and pounding drums with gorgeous ear worms without upsetting the intricate balance of Rosso Polare’s music.
Sã BernardoVariações Poses PetrosColectivo Casa Amarela
Variações Poses Petros is a set of compositions for wind trio and feedback duo. Flute, trumpet and alto saxophone, played by Violeta Azevedo, Yaw Tembe, and Nuno Torres respectively, glide through feedback tones generated by Mestre André’s no-input mixer and Bernardo Álvares’ double bass. Air and feedback move as one, with the consistency of barely solidified glass. Harmony bending and twisting as it seeps out of the speakers.
SipaningkahLangkah SuruikChinabot
Sipaningkah took inspiration from the Minangkabau culture from the area of West Sumatra where he grew up for Langkah Suruik. Wielding traditional instruments and those he invented, it’s a tape of unrelenting, ecstatic forward motion. Wailing horns and strings, hypnotic percussion, at the end two meditative vocal tracks. On Langkah Suruik tradition isn’t time-locked and unflinching. It’s a luminous, high-energy vehicle constantly changing and evolving as it collides with the present.
STABSSadursmeSāpes Skaņas
The fourth track on STABS’ Sadursme opens with feral noise underpinning a crenellated groove. Things escalate from there, pummeling skywards then imploding into sheets of squealing static. It feels like entropy in song form, epic energy hurtling into a catastrophe of its own devising. It’s an intensity the Latvian trio, Aleksandrs Barons on drums, Uģis Jansons-Krastiņš on synths and guitarist Roberts Šūmanis, maintain for every second of the album. You could call it noise rock, useful shorthand that doesn’t do justice to how far they out they go from those two descriptors, nor how unpretentiously they blend the extremes together. An inventive, ferociously effective blast of catharsis.
The Concept HorseMore Meaningful AlgebraMolt Fluid
Both The Concept Horse tapes from 2024 are brilliant. I’m including More Meaningful Algebra primarily because the duration afforded by the double cassette is so well suited to the music. It’s a tape of beats, and those beats are slightly clunky, a little lopsided and very seldom actually made by drums. It sounds geometric, but filled with garish colours and unevenly sized blocks. It’s a lovely place to be. Like living in a torn Mondrian painting.
Sun Yizhou辛口 (Super Dry)Brachliegen
Beijing-based Sun Yizhou works with electricity. Mains hum, unplugged cables, feedback and the latent static and whines of audio technology. Befitting its name, Super Dry presents his haptic embrace of noisy currents in their most undistilled form. Full of dynamics and movement, he finds acres of variation and possibility in a restricted tool kit. On ‘2’, he almost makes electrical feedback sing. Its music built from circuits, but Sun doesn’t let those circuits rest. He grabs hold of the current and makes it dance. Once your ears adjust to the coarseness, it’s exhilarating.
