cassette DECAYCAST REVIEWS : DECAYCAST REVIEWS: BLACK LOVE “Soundtrack for Black Power” This tape has been in the review pile for a minute and the title and project name were rather intriguing, especially with the juxtaposition of the tape cove BLACK LOVE starts out with a low fi, buzzy crackling modem sound distortion. Upon reading the liner notes, we learned the sound source was STRANGE ODYSSEY, an early 80’s calculator game. The sounds themselves seem to be a strange hybrid of early digital and analog tape messiness. The piece builds up in a rhythmic, yet abstract fervor and ends just as quickly and awkwardly as it started. Black Love lays forth low fi, simple, frequency crunched and squashed textures which changes radically sound wise when played on a Walkman versus the stereo system, this noisy little tape seems to have a sound mind of its own, which references the media in a subtle but important way. source sounds are said to be various forms of tape; torn , ripped, spliced, manipulated, secure, sticky, malleable. The sound itself has little variance, yet at certain points sounds like a guitar running through a cable modem, sonically an interesting piece , but the title and project name seem quite detached from the sound source, and rather confusing.
Perhaps there’s some context we are left in the dark dealing with, as this tape was part of a performance, but the title does add an amount of confusion /mystery when trying to review this tape as a whole. Black Love was a performance by David Cotner and Sergio Segovia at Redcat in LA in 2008, released on the Hertz-Liolabel.
D E C A Y C A S T Magazine 