#prequel tapes

[disease]

PREQUEL TAPES // MIND CORNER REMIXED by FILMMAKER [THE GOLDEN CAGE: REMIXES, FEB 2023]

[3000s]

[thesugardiaries]

perfection

[dustedmagazine]

Prequel Tapes — Everything is Quite Now (Gaffa Tape Records)

The artist's description of Everything is Quite Now makes extensive mention of memory and personal history, an attempt to use electronics to document a fragmented chronology. Like a collage of influences, the album's songs — which could just as well have been woven together into a single hour-long piece — blend genres like they do sounds. While there's a consistent ambience, beats are rarely used; the club is a presence, but a shadowy one. 

Industrial machinery, cold Kraftwerkian synths and, above all, atmospheric electronics mix in a world where every sound is tampered with in some way. Sounds flicker and reverberate, circuits are stressed and tones are broken or pulled apart, floating into sonic clouds or pulled down into basso depths. Whatever stories are being told here are abstract ones known only to the artist, but the combination of hard surfaces and organic feeling is the key to making it work.

Everything is Quite Now has a melancholy mood, from its opening song's ominous distant machinery and distressed synths to the wavering organ and heavy beat of "Clouds," but the title track is one of the album's bright spots. Its pretty little synth melody burbles atop a sparse rhythm and slowly-building layers of wavering, reverb-laden synths. After the darkly pulsing space odyssey of "This Hidden Place," it's like climbing from a dark cavern into a dawning day.  

But there's also "Night Noise Lullabye" with bright, reverbed synth notes sparkling amidst a chittering buzz like a flock of mechanical insects, and the unexpected guitar notes looped to form the basis of "Soon" — the loop attracts electronic bloops and bleeps that fly around it, until a kick drum thud pushes its way in and a white noise throb carries the song forward.  

The closing song, "Core (Red)," summarizes things nicely. Rhythmic pads and a rubbery chug taken from a factory floor slowly pull the listener into stressed electronics and slow steamy throb. The sounds get pulled apart taffy-like as the layers grow denser and more intense, till at the end it all blows apart like a dissipating storm, leaving a calm, optimistic organ tone that fades away.  

It may be reading too much into it to say that the song, like the album, serves as a metaphor for difficult, dark history making way for a future of open possibilities. Nonetheless, it's a nice theory that describes the listening experience well enough that we'll keep it for the time being. Everything is Quite Now won't brighten up your next listening party. Let yourself fall into its deep well of sound and you're bound to find something.

Mason Jones

[vegetalpitbull]

(Prequel Tapes)

[lea-maria]

(Prequel Tapes)

[bonrecordsetgooddisques]

(Prequel Tapes)

[new-music-daily]

Prequel Tapes - Inner Systems

“There’s almost no information about the person behind Prequel Tapes, but the little details tell you a lot. The artist grew up by a forest, a frequent escape during a time soundtracked by the neon melodies of the Cure. Eventually that led to an interest in music production, an early passion for techno and a move to Berlin, later supplemented by an obsession with DAT and VHS tapes. Now we have Inner Systems, a debut album that channels many of those memories into something immersive and beautiful.” (x)

RIYL: Nicolas Jaar, The Field