From: The Cassette Mythos, Autonomedia 1990
It's interesting to note that, within the cassette medium, a few very strongly defined styles and musical directions seem more prevalent than others. True, the medium does represent a tremendous variety of musical genres, proving it to be as flexible as the record and compact disc formats, but the low cost of producing and distributing cassettes has given artists more freedom to work within "difficult" and inaccessible styles.
Most notable are the exploration being done with audio-collage, following the examples set by Stockhausen (Hymnen) and Cage (Variations IV); noise, also inspired by Cage (Cartridge Music) as well as works by Kagel and others; electronics (Stockhausen, Subotnick, Cage, Reynolds, Dockstader, etc.); and combinations of all of these experimental elements.
Cassettes allow musicians to take up and expand upon the avant-garde compositional ideas which flourished from the mid-sixties through the mid-seventies, but which have been largely abandoned by the so-called "academic" composers in favor of Neo-Romanticism and other more popular styles. Not that Cage, Stockhausen, and others have abandoned work which would follow up their previous experiments and explorations, but just try finding new albums of their recent work and the selection, you'll find, has been steadily decreasing.
It's also notable that most experimental collage/noise/electronic music today is being done by non-academic sound artists, taking the lead from the Cageian ethos that anyone can be a composer in the experimental style. It's not necessary to have a Master's Degree in Music in order to paste up an interesting and balanced audio work--all it takes is enthusiasm and a degree of skill in methods largely left untaught in most music schools.
The various artists who have been active in this field each seem to draw upon a specific range of influences and show remarkable discipline developing within their own individually determined guidelines. Zan Hoffman has taken collage and juxtaposition of found sound elements (mostly collaborative materials submitted by other cassette artists) to a unique level, creating surreal works with a dreamlike pacing and variety which, despite the use of a wide range of materials, sounds wholly his own. Minoy has taken a page from the more textural work of Ligeti and Xenakis; his often side-long pieces display a keen insight into the nuances and drama inherent in textural soundscapes. John Wiggins has combined his profound knowledge of serial structures with his development of digital software which aids him in utilizing intricately disguised natural sounds in delicately balanced compositions. Croiners (a.k.a. James Levine) has taken digital and tape-loop technology beyond its minimalist beginnings, blending complex layers of synthesized and natural sounds with occasional found-sound elements, weaving involved and colorful textures into nearly tangible sound objects. Loaded with color, these works are also substantial enough to skirt any accusations of being mere "ear candy," though he himself has (with tongue in cheek) taken that now-pejorative term as the title of one of his tapes. John Oswald (of Mystery Tape Laboratories) has gone even further, creating a whole new genre of "Plunderphonics": the wholesale appropriation of existing musics which are then altered in various ways. More than just "found sound" alterations (or conversely, "quotations" or "arrangements" of these works) Oswald "plays" individual pre-recorded musics in such a way as to enhance their compositional uniqueness and draw out their latent implications.
Other cassette artists have taken the realm of pop music as their springboard, and this too has yielded music boundary-stretching enough to redefine the genre. We would be hard pressed to pinpoint the exact sub-genre from which Ken Clinger's neo-dadaist narration-and-music epics derive, though we can safely guess that Lawrence Salvatore's distorted pop confections are the result of an unholy marriage of Salvador Dali and Jimmy Webb presided over by Sigmund Freud. Dino DiMuro's elaborate structural arrangements could be a knowing blend of the innovations fostered by Frank Zappa and Brian Wilson, but the smoothly enmeshed blends of rock influences purveyed by such talented folk as Don Campau or Greg Horn admit to no easy generalizations. Even so-called post-punk has been stretched to the limit by the brutally obnoxious anti-music of Brett Kirby and his band Ignorant (formerly Psychodrama). At any rate, he and the band would no doubt refute my pigeonholing.
So, it's safe to say that if the cassette medium had not come into being and expanded as it has, we would be culturally much poorer due to a decline in what was once the "academic" avant-garde, but is now the artistic realm of any enthusiast with a good tape deck or two, and loads of imagination.
Click on the logo to return to Cassette Mythos Home Page, table of contents