Thursday, March 20, 2014

CASSETTE REVIEW: Uncle Meat ‘Live in London” (Dead Audio Tapes)


                I will begin listening to this tape by creating the impression in my mind that it was recorded live onto cassette.   These days, when I think of cassettes it’s kind of funny because there is a recording process that goes into them and I feel like most artists either record onto CD or digitally before then putting the files onto a tape, but I remember being a kid with a karaoke machine that let me record and putting my songs straight onto my blank cassettes.

                Granted, I have a tape player that could be used for in person interviews and my old karaoke machine (which needs work done) is in my parents’ attic, but there are some more complex (and less complex) ways to record onto cassette, so I imagine this somehow being rigged up through the sound system, yet still going onto a master tape rather than how most songs are really just CDs copied onto cassettes.

                These songs get pretty demonic at times.  They seem to either be very quiet, just that ambient type of noise, or blaringly loud and in your face.   A perfect example of this contrast is at one point in time you can hear what I can only describe as the sound of your soul being ripped from your body.  Then, moments later… crickets. 

                What will also probably stand out most to me about these songs is that they offer up a nice clip of H.A.L. from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which in many ways is the ultimate demonstration of man creating technology only to have technology turn on him and destroy him.  A lot of those qualities- of having the thing which you love and created come back to inevitably be your downfall- come out on this cassette in one way or another and the whole full circle-ness of it is thus sheer brilliance. 






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