#hidden tapes

Marc Baron - Hidden Tapes

Potlatch

The title is not merely evocative; it also at least partly describes Baron’s method. Each of these five pieces, constructed over the last few years, is made using cassette tapes supplemented by other recordings (“from movie soundtracks and classical or liturgical music extracts”) that Baron found in closets. We all know the feeling of stumbling upon a collection of dusty relics or withered papers, that sense of an encounter with an inscrutable history. Hidden Tapes makes gloriously dense, mangled sound of this sense of surprise and befuddlement. One can only imagine the bevy of beat-up, malformed sources in various states of degeneration. And when you listen to the pieces, you’ll be shocked to know Baron produced this fantastic array of sounds by only slowing down or speeding up the sources, which were then “layered and transformed with analog devices.”

“1991-2005” is all crackle and pop, with a steadily faded in dance track (along with brief appearances by a billiard ball) that suddenly gets annihilated to the sound of Defender. Baron moves very quickly with a vast dynamic and imaginative range that occasionally gives you a breather as he backs off into a small symphony of hiss or the endlessness of a needle on vinyl at the end of a side. Yet he’s equally fond of sudden smacks around the head: ominous clouds of nasty analog synth, pipe-tones, whipcracks. A bizarre auto shop/cyclotron seems to roar to life on “2010-2012,” a detuned throb pulsing beneath as if this is the club music for the creatures at the earth’s core (an impression deepened when fuzz tone gravity sucks you down relentlessly). A distorted, slowed-down human voice (vaguely Jabba the Hutt-ish) anchors “Interlude (Romania to Paris).”

One moment it sounds like the Butthole Surfers got hold of a Graham Lambkin track. And the next it’s like you’re prepping a meal: plopping water, salt shaking, veggies chopped. The trippy organ and drones of “2013 – A happy summer with children” are deceptive all the way, because not only are there electro-hiccups everywhere, there’s a moment when such sonic presence overwhelms you that you feel as if you’ve been devoured by some beast, the track riding out on its stomach acids. And the home tape of an acoustic guitar sing-along is quickly mangled on the closing “1965-2013,” which emits a flatulent moan, a creaking door, processed loudspeaker voices, and a snippet of Fennesz quickly gone.

It’s a pretty wild 40 minutes, consistently unpredictable and creative. In the fully immersive environments of Hidden Tapes, there is a continually feeling (mostly exhilarating, sometimes tense) that no sonic event is impossible. At times you feel like you’re listening to something from within one of those closets, evocation of apartment-block living, the music from various neighbors’ walls colliding to the accompaniment of appliances dying and coming to life continually. There are such pleasures to be had in sound that won’t be understood too quickly.

| Unit 4 - Hidden Faces |