All my favorite music was on tape for 2022. Not Not Fun churned out a ton of great stuff, even if their tapes skewed too heavy on the dudes with synthesizers side. Hot Releases quietly maybe had the best year ever. No Rent was consistently pushing the boundaries of noise and experimental music.
Constellation Tatsu and Hausu Mountain celebrated ten years in the biz with reissues of classic cassettes from their olden days. It was cool to pick up a couple releases I had missed.
I capped any label at two tapes and tried to get as much variety on the list as possible, although I bent the rule to allow three from Not Not Fun. It was once again a case of buying from the same small pool of labels I regularly buy from. I need to get back into exploring a little more for different sounds.
The best piece of music for 2022 was Moth Cock's triple cassette, Whipped Stream and Other Earthly Delights. It featured over three hours of Doug Gent and Pat Modugno's performances from livestreams on Twitch. The duo play an assortment of busted electronics and wind instruments. They truly took us to the fabled other zones with this tape set.
Argentina's Acid Twilight's fuller sounding sophomore effort expanded upon their mysterious hypnagogic sprawl. Marcia Bassett crafted more droning sonic landscapes on synths as a solo artist and on guitar with violinist Samara Lubelski. Tarotplane channeled the spirit of the now departed Manuel Göttsching for some contemporary Krautrock. I really liked the dark moods of AndLace and Broken Pillar. Chucha and DJ Chooch both made fine low tech techno tapes. Leslie Keffer and Rodger Stella, along with the White Suns, provided the much needed harsh noise for the year. Finally, Dan Friel returned with a new cassette of his signature sounds from the Yamaha toy keyboard he is famous for using.
As always any tape had to be released in the calendar year and I had to listen to it a lot. And if you are one of those types who needs a definitive cassette of the year, then that honor goes to Laurentian Voyage by Scout Island on Not Not Fun. Scout Island's Jared Carrigan created a collection of 19 brief instrumentals about a trip down a river in Minnesota that somehow occupy a vague space resembling early Cure and solo Roy Montgomery. Each song is a very catchy melody that perhaps could be developed further, but that would take away the casual charm. Less is usually more in most cases.
The list goes band/album/label for those with questions of that nature.
01. Acid Twilight - Mustang Zodiac - Not Not Fun
02. AndLace - Fabrik - Unifactor
03. Todd Barton - Spectral - Ultra Violet Light
04. Marcia Bassett - Undulating Akrasboning - Artsy Records
05. Marcia Bassett & Samara Lubelski - West Coast Live - Feeding Tube
06. Broken Pillar - Red Spider Lady - No Rent
07. Chucha - What Remains - Hot Releases
08. Cloning - Wet Circuits - Humanhood Recordings
09. Comfort Link - Cement Music - Spleen Coffin
10. DJ Chooch - Moongazer - Hot Releases
11. Dan Friel - Factoryland - Thrill Jockey
12. HelioGrave - s/t - Unifactor
13. Inkarose - A Love Letter To Water - Constellation Tatsu
14. Leslie Keffer & Rodger Stella - Angel Fix - No Rent
15. Chantal Michelle - Pulse, Puls-ar, Procession - Dinzu Artefacts
16. Moth Cock - Whipped Stream and Other Earthly Delights - Hausu Mountain
17. Scout Island - Laurentian Voyage - Not Not Fun
18. Severed+Said - Tragic Seeker - Not Not Fun
19. Tarotplane - Aeonium - Constellation Tatsu
20. White Suns - Dead Time - Orange Milk
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