Show Invisibles by Matt Baldwin & tp Dutchkiss
Spencer Hartling (tp Dutchkiss) and I began this project without any plans.
I had seen him spontaneously make live tape loops in the studio before, running the loop around the shaft of a microphone stand that was positioned a couple feet away from the tape machine. He worked with this technology in a fast and fluent way and it was amazing to see him create a world of sound that was clearly based on the signals going into it but which transformed this information into a sonic experience that was totally new and strange and unpredictable.
The tape manipulation process described in the following sections can lead to the creation of music that is unlike anything else I have ever heard. This involves the unique sonic character of tape, trance effects and other strange possibilities that arise when a tape machine is approached as a musical instrument.
We recorded Show Invisibles in one full day (2/5/22) during which I sat on the studio floor at Wiggle World and improvised guitar parts while Spencer created multitrack loops and manipulated them - doing things like manually flanging the reels, using sound-on-sound and altering the playback speed. I could hear the loops being created as I played and this would influence my decisions about what to play next that would go into the looping system. It became a three way collaboration between Spencer, the machine and I. A few weeks later we did a mixing/editing session in which we added treatments with a granular synthesizer.
Our guiding metaphor for the entire process was the idea of Dumb Fripp & Eno. We would ask ourselves: What would Dumb Fripp & Eno do? This made us laugh quite a bit but also served the real purpose of helping us to imagine an approach to making expansive tape music that was less precious and rigid than many of its popular antecedents. There was no sense in trying to escape the influence of our punk backgrounds which involve a certain roughness and weirdness that comes from granting yourself permission to begin experimenting with things before you actually know what you are doing. Hopefully this book will give a similar feeling of permission and provide some useful sign posts in the process of exploring your own inner twilight spaces.
-Matt Baldwin, 2022
Tracklist
| 1. | Trauma Rehearsal | 1:37 |
| 2. | Fungus In Flight | 5:33 |
| 3. | Renata | 4:01 |
| 4. | Uncovered Gems | 13:52 |
Credits
This album was recorded February 5th 2022 as a series of improvisations for guitar, tape loop systems and granular synthesis. It is the sonic companion to the zine, Show Invisibles or How To Make A Tape Loop.
Recorded at Wiggle World in Altadena by Spencer Hartling
Mastered by Omar Akrouche
8mm still images by Erren Franklin
Layout & Design by Jeffery Cravath
Matt Baldwin is a writer, musician, and psychotherapist trained in psychedelic psychotherapy (CIIS 2017 & Field Trip 2022)
baldwinunlimited@gmail.com
tp Dutchkiss (Spencer Hartling) is an experimental musician and engineer/producer. He owns and operates the recording studio, Wiggle World in Altadena, CA.
spencerhartling@gmail.com
