In 2013 the indomitable online music retailer Boomkat were planning on making a series of C60 cassettes. I was delighted to be asked to make one for them. Yay! One thing lead to another though and the whole idea was shelved. Boo.
I suspect that their enthusiasm had got the better of them and they hadn’t thought through the copyright ramifications. It would only take one annoyed artist who hadn’t agreed to have their work sold without them receiving any profits for the house of cards to come toppling down. Perhaps they were simply too busy being brilliant ol' Boomkat?
The nice thing about my tape was that I’d tried to use it as an opportunity to reach out to some of my musician colleagues whose work I respected, people who I felt were fellow travellers, and beg them for one of their tracks to include. If I had been crazy enough to have set up a label, and I did toy with the idea, these are people whose work I would have released.
Not any old tracks by this lot either, but personal favourites of mine. There’s connect_iCut, computer music’s own one-man blizzard of rocknoise, with the dazzling “Port Shale”; Xylitol, esoteric synth-punk, represented with his brilliant cover version of Conflict’s “Red Armies”: thorpe acre, bucolic, Brixton-ian, binaural daydreamer with “Ahoy Land Ahead”; and finally the majestic Ship Canal, crazed, degree-zero laptop innovator with “A Fucking Cuddle”. Together we were, momentarily at least, like Voltron.
Spliced amongst them are a carefully-chosen selection of the chilly and eldritch and the nicest track from the Woebiotic EP, ”Rain” dedicated as it was the deluge of Winter 2012. One last blast of winter then before the spring.
Woebot : Standard Quality C60
Side One
Li'l Louis - How I Feel
Ø - Röntgen
connect_icut - Port Shale
Blancmange - Sad Day
Cypher - Frozen Boom Erection
Actress - Crushed
Wladimir M - Evil
Xylitol - Red Brigades
Hashim - Primrose Path
Side Two
Borsig - Hiroshima
Casino Vs Japan - It's Very Sunny
Thorpeacre - Ahoy Land Ahead
Holger Czukay - Schaue vertauensvoll in die Zukunft
Holy Ghost - Magnet
Woebot - Rain
Nebula II - Peace Maker
Ship Canal - A Fucking Cuddle
