Tape loops, vol. 1

The four-track was ten euros at a flea market and broken in the only way that matters: the capstan drags, so everything it plays back comes out slightly seasick, and everything it records degrades a little with each pass. A sensible person would fix it. I recorded three pieces with it instead.

Each loop starts as a short phrase — piano, a bowed note, half a chord from a choir record — dubbed from tape to tape until the copy of the copy of the copy begins to bloom. Tape degradation isn't subtraction; it's a slow trade. You lose edges and gain fog, lose pitch and gain weather. Around the seventh generation each phrase stopped being a recording of an instrument and became a recording of the machine remembering an instrument.

The titles are honest: these are functional loops, made for specific situations. One for washing dishes in the evening. One the exact length of my old bus ride. One for the hour when the building goes quiet and you can finally hear how much sound "silence" was.

Volume two exists already, on three cassettes, waiting for the machine to break a little further. The playable excerpt is synthesized placeholder audio until the tapes are digitised.