stephan mathieu
flags
(limited edition of 200)
tapeworm
ttw#37
tapeworm
stephan mathieu
image ©japanese forms
As with the tape featured in my previous post I've been trying to get hold of some of the tapes issued by Tapeworm... Once more I got lucky and managed to acquire the cassette-only label's latest release from digital artist and renowned electroacoustic musician, Stephan Mathieu. I've followed Mathieu and have acquired several of his releases ever since I first heard the stunning "Heroin" collaboration with Ekkehard Ehlers about ten years ago. A lot of his releases; including The Sad Mac (Headz) Radioland (die schachtel) and the recent A Static Place (12k) are among my favourites but this tape has come as a disappointment. Flags sounds like an exercise in futility and releasing it, to me, seems pointless. But then, I'm not Mathieu; who describes Flags as "... a homage to the beauty of data. The pieces are created from photos of my studio equipment which were transformed to audio via header changes." Beauty of data maybe but one of the tracks actually sounds like a 35 ton truck blasting it's horn as it whizzes along the autobahn and forcing terrified drivers out of its path... For the moment, I'll class this either in the "so good it's unlistenable" category or the "so unlistenable its good" one... I'm undecided; but it's doubtful that I'll play it as often as the recordings mentioned above.
Comes in the generic Tapeworm white background inlay card with artwork illustration by Caro Mikalef. one2zero
"The audio [on this datasette] was processed in August 2008 with Soundhack and GraphicConvertor." Stephan Mathieu, July 2011
