“Unsuspected” - MTVGhosts
In opposition to many of my peers I tend to associate cassette tapes with forward motion. My memories of cassettes might color this impression; I always remember listening to them in conjunction with movement. We played them in the car. We listened to them on Walkmans. Even the tiny spools of tape move as they play. The cassette tapes represented dynamism. They were only static when they were silent. Cassette tapes intrigue me in a way that can be separated from the music they feature. MTVGhosts’ pulpy, propulsive dreampunk is engaging enough in its own right, but the circumstances of the single’s release are what really intrigues me. Impossible Colors, a tape-based label out of Chicago, released “Unsuspected” on a split cassingle (the other band on the single, Doleful Lions, also is quite choice). The cassingle is part of an ongoing project to release one cassette single a month for an entire year. In some respects this project is redolent of some hella heady nostalgia. Label curator Adele Nicholas is calling it “The Impossible Colors Club,” which calls to mind the Columbia Records music clubs of yore. Still, if “Unsuspected” is any indication these cassingles are going to mold that nostalgia in new and creative ways. “Unsuspected” has a retrospective quality to it; it wears aggression and intellect both on its sleeve in a way that calls to mind the heyday of new wave. And yet the sarcastic bite in the singer’s voice when he references “an old projectionist’s slide” marks the song as unquestionably modern. Impossible Colors has closed the loop for me. The cassette tape, with its peculiar aura of the past, is infused with a forward-thinking vitality when it features the music of artists like MTVGhosts. Seriously, check out Impossible Colors. Promises to be some awesome stuff every month.Â
- Peter Schultz