THE TAPES

SELECTED WORKS 1982-1992

• 21-track, 2LP compilation of obscure Italian post-industrial music

• Influenced by Cabaret Voltaire, J.G. Ballard, TG, William Burroughs, John Foxx

• File amongst Smersh, Pump, Tuning Circuits, Conrad Schnitzler

• Mastered and cut by Matt Colton

Ecstatic offer a fascinating, often dizzying insight to the primitive industrial minimalism of Italian siblings, Giancarlo and Roberto Drago, a.k.a. The Tapes, via Selected Works 1982 - 1992 sourced from original tapes and pressed to vinyl for the first time ever.

Following on from Ecstatic’s issue of “mail artist” Danielle Ciullini’s Domestic Exile Collected Works 82-86, this set surveys a blind-spot in most people’s knowledge of early ‘80s Italian underground music, framed against a backdrop of the Anni di Piombo, or Years of Lead - a period of domestic political turmoil between the late ‘60s and early ’80s - and the mushroom shadow of nuclear war.

Like their international tape-scene allies, The Tapes reacted to this world thru a matrix of mono- synths, drum machines, microphones and 4-track recorders, mostly recording/experimenting ideas direct-to-tape in one take and making a virtue of their lo-fi set-up’s infidelities and imperfections - randomness and mistakes were embraced rather than discarded - whilst absorbing the counter-cultural influence of William Burroughs or Throbbing Gristle, and the sci-fi dystopia of J.G. Ballard and John Foxx.

These 21 tracks, drawn from 10 different, limited tape releases, perfectly distill a wandering, weirdo spirit, ranging from the funereal swagger of Tanz Fabrik and the darkwave hip-thrust of The Day of Silence to freeform, motorik trajectories such as Time Out of Joint and singular enigmas like the Actress-esque bobble of The Wait and Falso Movimento B2’s weightless, hyaline spindles.

Collected and compiled by Alessio Natalizia (aka Not Waving) and remastered by Matt Colton, Selected Works 1982 - 1992 represents a decade of modest but searching and instinctively grooving experimentation of the rarest, precious and compelling kind.

As Giancarlo Drago explains:

“The Tapes was an unplanned experience, an unplanned need to express myself Looking back

on this music I wonder sometimes how I did it - the whole process from the concept to the completion. Everything I do now seems trivial and obvious and I just end up aborting the idea. And exactly for this reason I think that everything has its time, with a beginning and an end...”

Tracklisting

A1. Cinque

A2. Berlin

A3. Self Propelled Limb

A4. Time Out Of Joint

A5. Falso Movimento

B1. The Gate

B2. Il Tempio

B3. Low Gear

B4. Nervous Breakdown

B5. Doubts

C1. The Wait

C2. The Day Of Silence

C3. Otto

C4. Nove

C5. Totem 1351

D1. Sly Time

D2. Tanz Fabrik

D3. Il Manifesto

D4. Speak To Me

D5. Falso Movimento 82

D6. Emotional Warfare