Sound UbuWeb

The Tape-beatles The Tape-beatles on UbuWeb Good Times (1999) 01 Call of the carpenter 02 Lessons in truth 03 Beautiful necessity 04 New thought 05 Point within a circle 06 Joy and power 07 The simple way 08 Reality of matter 09 Our invisible supply 10 The urge of the idea 11 Dashed against the rock 12 The man of to morrow 13 Education of the will 14 The human machine 15 Byways of ghostland 16 Success through vibration 17 Every man a king 18 The changing world 19 Great within 20 A strange story 21 The keystone 22 Body of his desire 23 All's right with the world Here as in previous releases, the Tape-beatles make exclusive use of found sound which they bend, shape and otherwise change to suit their ends. These sonic manipulations, sometimes subtle, often drastic, create new works that can unambiguously be attributed to the Tape-beatles, while at the same time freely pilfering from recordings of the past. The result is a richly layered, sumptuously produced, carefully conceived and realized audio banquet that may sound familiar, yet is completely new. Freq E-zine's Antron S. Meister says of this: ""There is a hallucinatory aspect to the constant shift and recapitulation of orchestral and folk-song themes, flowing from the time-stretched soundbites to the juxtaposition of word and sound, which makes for a stimulating listen in its own right. Clouds of recursive echo build on 'The Keystone', symbolising both disorder and decay and making for a rousing piece of discordia along the way. There's even brash funk sampling on 'The Urge Of The Idea', contrasting the work ethic with pleasure, and at the end it's like having taken a trip under the guidance of a deconstructionist prankster through the miasma of emotions attached to the driving demons of Western so-called civilization...." The title Good Times refers explicitly to the current state of the economy in the West, and the defining role economic realities play in determining human and cultural possibility. Further, all the tracks on the album form a tightly knit sequence that looks at the 90s Economic Boom from a number of perspectives. Some hopeful, some humorous, some disparaging, some almost mystical, wistful and yearning. The tracks on Good Times make use of, for example, a speech by 19th-century industrialist Andrew Carnegie, musical riffs from Aaron Copland, a Georgian folk song, physicist Edward Teller discussing the origin of the cosmos, happy ad-speak from a woman's products syndicate, aggressive drums from a stereo test recording by a microphone manufacturer, testimony of Oliver North before the U.S. Congress, a Coca-Cola television commercial, radio interviews with pop musicians, and much more. Composed by: Lloyd Dunn John Heck Ralph Johson Live peformance by: Lloyd Dunn John Heck Film by: Lloyd Dunn John Heck CD release (1999): Staalplaat, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Berlin, Germany Additional material at: http://pwp.detritus.net/works/recordings