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WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT?
We are Blue Tapes, a boutique tape label specialising in sound art and alternative process artwork. We release music from Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
WHY TAPES? ISN'T IT ALL A BIT SELF-CONSCIOUSLY RETRO?
No, tapes are not a dead format. They never went away. They’ve been the format of choice for distributing home-recorded or experimental music pretty much since the inception of that technology, and even the advent of peer-to-peer, cloud-based music services, and social networking hasn’t particularly eroded this - it’s only added more strings to our bow in terms of connecting with other human heads.
Tapes are a good format. Even audio purists like Autechre are insistent that - sonically - cassette tape is their favourite playback format. Even until recently, Autechre promos were issued on cassette tape rather than CD - wanting to sidestep lazy digital pirating was only one small part of the reason for this.
One thing you need to know about Blue Tapes. If something is good enough for Autechre, then it’s good enough for us.
Tapes are still the most economical way of producing physical music product, and the one that can be produced to a high standard in the lowest print run. This is liberating in a number of ways. Firstly, it releases us from any business-based demand of recouping, covering overheads, etc, which in turn prevents us from having to prioritise releasing musically that is “commercially viable”. If a particular piece of music is so niche that about only one person in the whole world other than us and the musician who invented it would ever get it, then it doesn’t appear commercially unviable for to release that. It’s cool by us. If we love it, we will produce it, we’ll add artwork and interesting packaging - and sometimes books, and large-format art you can hang on your wall, and other strange things - and we’ll put our heart and guts into trying to get it out there to people.
OK, BUT WHY NOT JUST RELEASE STUFF ON VINYL? DOES ANYONE EVEN HAVE A TAPE PLAYER ANYMORE?
OK, so for you heathens who don’t own a Walkman, we’ll chuck in a download code with each release. Something that any music fan should have worked out by 2012 - different formats are appropriate for different listening experiences. There isn’t necessarily any one better or best format. You can’t take tapes out running with you, or listening on the bus. Most mobile telephones do this job just fine. Richard Youngs recently correctly observed that vinyl was good living room music, for when you’ve got people round or for a glass of wine in the evening. I don’t think anyone ever really liked CDs.
Tapes are something even more different. The experience of listening to a tape is not at all like listening to a Spotify playlist. Tapes cannot be shuffled. Tracks cannot easily even be skipped. You are submitting yourself as a listener to music on tape in a way which you are not particularly used to anymore, because your control over the experience is limited and passive. You cannot author your own tracklists or create your own sequencing. Tumblr, Flickr, Soundcloud, This Is My Jam etc have trained us all to be maddeningly proficient archivers of content, but in this context your faculties as an editor have been diminished. On some level this somehow stops you from thinking too much about the music, and leaves you more susceptible to its twists and turns, it leads you down the internal logic of its soundworld and you either surf with it or switch it off and come back to it.
And that is the truly great part. Tape is the ONLY format where a recording can be played from halfway through a piece. Most tape players will flip the side over for you, so you can drop in and out of the music at any time, or it can loop forever. As listeners we are freed from the tyranny of the tracklisting and the linear music narrative. Any browsing of last.fm stats reveals all album-type releases to have the greatest number of listeners for track 1, second highest number of listeners for track 2, third highest for etc… if you’re in a band and you put your best track at the end of your album then you are fucked. In our world though, the listening experience becomes cyclical. Each note of music at the ‘end’ of the tape is listened to equally as much as the music at the ‘start’ of the tape.
In future releases we will experiment with this further by releasing actual tape loops: a truly continuous music. Infinite and indestructible.
(Apart from by magnets.)
But vinyl, of course we love vinyl. Everybody loves vinyl. But vinyl is expensive. And can only be produced in mass quantity. Anyone releasing a very niche music on vinyl is taking a huge gamble - often doomed to just become an expensive vanity project. Tapes are utilitarian and bullshit-free. If you hate the music on your tape then you can record something else over the top if it. By contrast, vinyl is positively bourgouis and decadent.
This week, I paid £25 for Sunn O)))’s Monoliths & Dimensions LP. I aim to price all of our releases at £3.33 for music and artwork of comparable quality and imagination.
WHY £3.33?
It’s the number of a bus that goes past my house. Sorry, that’s such a Sarah Records thing to say.
WHY DO MUSICIANS EVEN NEED A LABEL ANYORE? WHEN THEY CAN SELL THEIR OWN MUSIC DIRECT THROUGH BANDCAMP, ITUNES, EVEN AMAZON...
They don’t. But then, they never did. Of all the reasons for wanting to start a label I think this is actually the one that’s hardest to answer. The function of Blue Tapes here isn’t to act as a benefactor, a sort of kindly uncle who chucks money at musicians so he can adopt some of their glamour by association. If anything, it’s to be a collaborator. We’ve constructed so many annoying rules about how and what we release that by the time any actual sound has emerged out the other end of the process it’s practically generative.
Each Blue Tape will consist of one piece of music per tape (or one piece per side) and will come in artwork and packaging supplied by the label. The audio almost becomes soundtracks for still images.
Further down the line, we’re hoping to get all of the musicians actually collaborating with each other, in a kind of international house band, with Blue Tapes acting as the conduit or curator for this. This was something that 4AD did very well.
Of the current crop of traditional labels, only Southern’s excellent Latitudes series is doing anything similarly exciting (although again, trying to collect the full series will kick your wallet about the balls somewhat).
The two labels I have been most excited about in the past five years have both been tape labels: Stunned (RIP), whose every release you wanted to cling to your heart and never let go, and The Tapeworm, who are practically the Penguin Books of the tape scene.
SO WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY SOUND LIKE?
Really, we want stuff that inhabits its own soundworld. That isn’t too ‘genre’. Sound that sort of makes up its own rules. A lot of this stuff will probably be home-recorded. A lot of it will probably be instrumental. Apart from the releases that are spoken word. No pop songs.
But, of course, we love pop songs. Everyone loves pop songs. Pop songs were the ultimate art-form of the 20th Century, and there’s no reason to assume that the 21st Century is going to be any different so far. Pop music superseded all other art because of its hungry commercial appetite - it was capitalism as high art. Pop music existed to sell things, so it had to evolve to be fibre optic-fast, to continually outdo itself, to extinguish the competition with the cold and precise mechanics of the killing machine.
Pop songs are the source code around which all of our cultural life is programmed. They are a highly-advanced from of brainwashing. They permeate everything. You don’t have to hunt for pop: it hunts you.
Like I said, we love that shit. But if we want anything from this label it is to create a bit of a sanctuary from real life. Tiny tape-sized pockets of time and space that the rest of the world can’t get into.
THAT’S what we sound like. Forcefields.
But seriously, artists who we are currently in talks with releasing stuff from include the modern classical composer and librettist Missy Mazzoli, the avant-playwright and journalist kicking_k, a collaboration between San Franciscan sound artist Zachary James Watkins and Moroccan poet Abderrahim Elkhassar; minimalist electronic composers The Fractal Skulls, Cherry, and 51717, and the improv-doom group Kellar. Our first release (blue one) is The Grin Without The Cat or The Cat Without an Outline by Matt Collins of Toronto.
It’s all very exciting stuff.
WHICH IS BETTER: ANALOGUE OR DIGITAL?
There are no betters in life, only differents! But everything about this label, from the processes used to create the artwork to the tiny-teethed grinding cogs in the cassettes we release is going to be steeped in the former. For some reason, the physics involved in the processes of sunlight burning through a chemical barrier to x-ray an image into paper or film, or how audio information can be remembered by magnetised ferric oxide is easier to grasp and more fun to think about than how a digital camera or MP3 works.
Also, what I like about tapes is they don’t just disappear into the vaults of your iTunes. Instead they turn up randomly in your sock drawer, or behind the sofa, like little lost amulets; staring at you accusingly. And you think YOU, fuck - you. Let me put you on and just forget about this cleaning the house business for five minutes.
We’re launching a website soon. From it you can buy music. £10 for a subscription series, where you will receive a tape a month for four months, or individually for £3.33 each.
Cyanotype print on watercolor paper from a digital negative. Original image made with a Mamiya 645 Super.
Canon EOS 3 / Expired Svema A2Sh
Developed in Wineol
Red wine: 500 ml
Soda ash: 2 full tablespoons
Vitamin C (no sugar): 2,5 gr
~24C, 46 min.
Handmade platinum/palladium-toned Kallitype print (5.5" x 6.5"). Original photo made with a Graflex Crown Graphic 4x5 camera on Ilford film and developed in Kodak HC-100 at 63:1 dilution.
Minolta 507si, Minolta 24-50/4, AGFA Aviphot PAN200, dark room, enlarger Meopta Magnifax 2, author's hand lith print 24x30, Fotospeed lith developer LD20, paper Bromekspress-1
Contax G1 (Carl Zeiss Biogon 28mm F2.8). Author's hand print (Lith-print). Enlarger Meopta Opemus 5. Developer Fotospeed LD20. Photo paper Bromekspress-1.
Cyanotype N°85 - Tonifié au maté + café / yerba maté + cofee toned
Papier - Moulin du coq - le rouge
Prise de vue - Bronica EC + 50mm - foma200@400
Inter-négatif numérique
#cyanotypes #cyanotype #cyanotypeprint #cyanotypeprocess #alternativeprinting #alternativephotography #argentique #analoguephoto #blueprint #ishootfilm #alternativephotographicprocesses #alternativeprocesses #alternativeprocessphotography #todaysalternative #analogphoto #analogphotography #fisheyelemag #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #cianotipia #cianotipo #experimentalphotography #arbre #trees #treephotography #canopee #arbres #bronica #mediumformat #6x6
28/6/20 / 24ºC / 48% RH
10x8 contact print from FP4+ negative on 14x11 Bergger Cot320
Paper dried 55 mins, no prehumidification
4’30” daylight exposure in full sun
5mins wash in 1.5l distilled water with squeeze of lemon juice
5mins wash in 1.5l tap water
3mins fix in hypo
1hr final soak
Dried flat for 48hrs
Digitized with 2-frame stitch, D800E and 85mm tilt-shift
Palladium/blue toned kallitype on Arches Platine. Searching for a color palette that more closely resembles the local landscape. Colors split from brown to blue grey at step 11.
Cyanotype N°96- Tonification au maté + café / yerba maté and cofee toned
Papier - Moulin du coq - Le rouge
Prise de vue - konica hexar af + trix
Inter-négatif numérique
#cyanotypes #cyanotype #cyanotypeprint #cyanotypeprocess #alternativeprinting #alternativephotography #argentique #analoguephoto #blueprint #ishootfilm #alternativephotographicprocesses #alternativeprocesses #alternativeprocessphotography #todaysalternative #analogphoto #analogphotography #fisheyelemag #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #cianotipia #cianotipo #experimentalphotography #konicahexaraf #citetapisserieaubusson #tapisserieaubusson #bnwminimalism #incredible_minimal
Print made 5th June 2021 / 20ºC / 50% RH
10x8 contact print from Ilford FP4+ negative on 14x11 Bergger Cot320
Paper dried 1hr10mins, no prehumidification
3mins30” daylight exposure in full sun, 12:10pm
5mins wash in 1.5l distilled water with squeeze of lemon juice
5mins wash in 1.5l tap water
3mins fix in hypo
1hr final soak
Dried flat
Digitized with 2-frame stitch, D800E and 85mm tilt-shift
Original exposure:
2nd June 2021, 2.15pm
Chamonix 810V, Rodenstock Apo-Sironar S 240mm f/5.6
Ilford FP4+ 125 (EI 64) 10x8
400mm bellows extension
11” f/5.6, Lee #23A light red filter
Stearman Press SP810, Pyrocat HD 2:2:100, 21ºC, 8’53” for N
Acetic acid stop, TF4 Fix, Hypoclear
Minolta 507si, Minolta 24-50/4, AGFA Aviphot PAN200, dark room, enlarger Meopta Opemus 5, author's hand lith print 24x30, Fotospeed lith developer LD20, paper Bromekspress-1
Platinum/palladium-toned Kallitype test print, 5.5" x 8.5", on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper. In this series of test prints I'm trying to perfect my digitial negatives before I start to make large prints.
Gumprint, gomdruk. See also www.gomdruk.eu
Papier: Fabriano Artistico HP.
Maat: A4
Pigmenten:
Parijs blauw
Gummigut
Kraprood
Gummigut
Magenta
Phthalo blauw
Homes full of games, smiles and emotions, today they are empty, and some are full of pain and disappointment.
Great Coxwell Barn, Oxfordshire
29th July 2019
6:47pm
Chamonix 810V
Nikkor-SW 150 f/8
Ilford FP4+ 8x10
25mm front rise
15 minutes f/45
N development for Argyrotype, BTZS tubes, Pyrocat HD 2:2:100, 12’20”, 21ºC
Acetic acid stop, TF-4 Fix, Hypoclear, 30min wash
(I now estimate that this is probably about 2/3 stop overdeveloped: I'm now trying out a film test for Argyrotype to settle on a solid go-to time.)
Lotus 12x16" contact printing frame, Bergger Cot320 11x14" paper in Krystal Clear envelope, 3ml Fotospeed sensitiser with 1 drop of let-down Tween 20 (1 drop per 5 drops distilled water).
10'10" exposure in mid-morning sunlight, freshly coated but allowed to dry for a few minutes, no prehumidication, full sun with some cloud.
5 mins wash in distilled water with squeeze of lemon juice,
5 mins wash in tap water
3 min wash in 2% hypo solution
1 hour float in tap water (30 mins face down, 30 mins face up).
Dried for a day on clothes rack, then flattened under mount boards/tracing paper for a week (NB very significant dry-down over a few days).
Majority of chemistry from www.wetplatesupplies.com apart from Fotospeed sensitiser and Adox acetic acid (Silverprint), and TF4 fixer (www.stillphotographic.com). Lotus printing frame from linhofstudio.com.
Cyanotype contact print from 4x5 negative / Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper.
Crown Graphic w/ 105mm Rodenstock 3.5 lens
Cyanotype print on Stonehenge watercolor paper. Digital negative made from Noon 6x6 pinhole negative.
Gumprint, gum bichromate. Gomdruk
Paper Fabriano Artistico HP 300gr.
Size about 18X24.
6 layers:
1: Phthalo blue;
2: Gamboge gum modern;
3: Madder red dark;
4: Gamboge gum light;
5: Alizarin Carmin;
6: Paris blue.
15 years ago we were here also and then we had a drink in this bar...
Gum bichromate, gumprint, gomdruk.
7 layers:
Size: 40X24 cm.
1 Phthalo blue, just very thin, to help further registration.
2 Gamboge gum
3 Madder red dark
4 Gamboge gum
5 Madder red dark
6 Prussian blue
7 Phthalo blue
Platinum/palladium-toned Kallitype test print, 5.5" x 8.5", on Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag paper. In this series of test prints I'm trying to perfect my digitial negatives before I start to make large prints.
2006. Mamiya 645. Studio. 2012. Сyanotype, author handmade, paper Daler Rowney 300 g/m2, 20x30cm, scanner Epson 3200
Cyanotype print directly from the feathers themselves. Even the stripes on the feathers came through...
Minolta 507si, Minolta 24-50/4, AGFA Aviphot PAN200, dark room, enlarger Meopta Magnifax 2, author's hand lith print 24x30, Fotospeed lith developer LD20, paper Bromekspress-1
Minolta 507si, Minolta 24-50/4, AGFA Aviphot PAN200, dark room, enlarger Meopta Opemus 5, author's hand lith print 24x30, Fotospeed lith developer LD20, paper Bromekspress-1
Original Photograph and Development:
May 3rd 2023
Mamiya RZ67 Pro II, 110mm f/2.8, bellows extended
Ilford HP5+ at 400
1/125 f/16
Caffenol C-L/S 60' stand, 20ºC
DIY TF-2 fixer
Digital Negative:
Digitized film negative with custom Argyrotype curve in Photoshop
Printed at 12.5x10” on A3+ Innova Pictorico Pro OHP Ultra Transparency Film with Canon Pro-300 Inkjet
Argyrotype Print:
Exposure and Development 13th May 2023
Hahnemühle Platinum Rag 11x15” Paper
Masked margins before coating with yellow Frog Tape, removed after drying (paper dried 4hrs10mins)
18ºC RH 56%
3ml sensitiser + 2 drops Tween20 mix
6mins daylight exposure, 4:20pm, bright overcast, margins masked with Ruby Lith
5mins first wash, distilled water + squeeze of lemon juice
5mins second wash, tap water
3mins hypo fix
1hr final soak
Dried 24hours; digitised with Nikon D800E and 85 tilt-shift, stitch of three frames