MT008 - Conrad Schnitzler / Wolfgang Seidel 'CONSEQUENZ 010B' C65 cassette

In an unlikely abandoned subterranean bunker at the monumental Tempelhof Airport of Berlin, a secret recording of two long-time friends - Conrad Schnitzler & Wolfgang Seidel - had been given existence from the depths of the hidden space.

Includes:

Pro-duplicated C65 with offset-printed inlay. 

    

Limited Edition : 250 copies

David Keenan - Volcanic Tongue 

Another excellent cassette on the great Mirror Tapes, Consequenz 010B documents a meeting between Conrad Schnitzler – still the greatest exponent of austere Industrial synth and electronics – and long-term collaborator Wolfgang Seidel. Recorded in an abandoned subterranean bunker beneath the Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, the atmosphere is suitably macabre and claustrophobic, with Schnitzler generating some of his most psychedelic creations, ranging from wobbly purple architectures of electronics through ominous blocks of silence torn apart by invasions of odd keyboard melodies and sudden bursts of noise. The feel is highly ritualistic, almost like a séance, and there’s a weight to the music that is lacking in some of Schnitzler’s later work, a seriousness and a weight of execution that makes this one of his best contemporary recordings. 

Jim Haynes - Aquarius Records

So often you might read about an album we carry here at Aquarius that sounds as if it were recorded in a bunker, a tomb, a sewer, a cave, a warehouse, or some other nasty, gritty space whose nastiness and grittiness seeps into the recording itself. As much as we would like for each of those times we make such allusions to be true, it's actually quite rare that musicians would record an album in such a location. Conrad Schnitzler and Wolfgang Seidel have done just that, as they brought a bunch of synthesizers down to an abandoned cellar at the Tempelhof Airport in Berlin to record this excellent set of Kosmische electronic blorp. Schnitzler, of course, is a Krautrock legend having worked with the earliest incarnations of Tangerine Dream and the first sessions in Kluster (before the K became a C), and moving on to producing some of the finest examples of claustrophobic proto-electronica from the Krautrock era (e.g. Con and Ballet Statique). Seidel had worked with Schnitzler in the aforementioned Kluster as well as Eruption way back in the day, with sporadic collaborations throughout the past couple of decades. It's impossible to tell who's doing what on this recording of oblique electronic mashings that are equally psychedelic and claustrophobic. Warbling structures of algorithmically complex patterns get torn apart with thrumming electronic noises, weird semi-melodic clunkery, and mad-scientist erratic behaviors.

MT007 - The New Blockaders 'Live at Morden Tower' C40 cassette

Notes by TNB :

Includes two TNB live shows (2^nd. / 3^rd. respectively) from 1983, originally self-released on cassette (in an edition of 100) that year and re-issued on cassette the following year by Aeon. These recordings were also released (in edited form) as ‘Seinsart,’ bootleg LP (RRR, 1988.) A reworking of the recordings (also in edited form) was released, also as ‘Seinsart,’ on CDR (Siren, 2000), also included on ‘Gesamtnichtswerk’ 4CD (Hypnagogia, 2003.)

This previously unreleased (and final) version includes the original, complete recordings which were re-mastered digitally from the original 1983 private tapes in 2000 by Colin Potter at ICR.

Normal Edition 

Pro-duplicated C40 with offset-printed inlay 

         

Limited Edition : 130 copies

Pro-duplicated C40 with offset-printed inlay 

Plus : a TNB "Sonic Nihilism" retro badge

Limited Edition : 100 Copies 

Special Edition 

Pro-duplicated C40 with offset-printed inlay 

Plus : TNB "Sonic Nihilism" retro badge 

And : a two-sided collage made by Richard Rupenus featuring portraits chosen by him, housed in a protective casing, each collage unique from the other. 

Limited Edition : 20 copies 

Note :

At the TNB 30th Anniversary shows of 2011, another 100 copies of the TNB badges will be available from TNB themselves. 

David Keenan - Volcanic Tongue

Newcastle’s tiny Morden Tower has been a lightning rod for counter-culturalists worldwide ever since Tom and Connie Pickard started curating poetry and art events there in the mid-Sixties, attracting everyone from Basil Bunting through Allen Ginsberg , Ted Berrigan, Robert Creeley and Eric Mottram. It rose to notoriety once again in the early to mid-80s as it became the Northern focus for the new Industrial underground, hosting notorious performances by Whitehouse and The New Blockaders amongst others, a tradition that local legends Jazzfinger continue to this day. This beautifully presented cassette from Mirror Tapes – who are quickly establishing themselves as one of the premier tape labels – bundles two legendary early performances from the UK’s most radical and enigmatic ‘noise’ group recorded at Morden Tower, their second and third shows from 1983. Both performances were originally released on cassette in 1983 in tiny runs and while re-worked versions of them have shown up on the Seinsart bootleg LP/CD-R, this is their first reissue in full and is re-mastered by Colin Potter of Ora/Nurse With Wound et al. The sound matches the furious electro-acoustic form of their classic first LP, with jackhammer rhythms, squealing electronics, unidentifiable tools and appliances and that unrelenting attack combining to re-wire your ears. These days it’s a hell of a lot easier to ‘make’ noise, what with all the pedals and loop stations, entry level electronics blah blah... but this is the real deal, the sound of a bunch of non-musicians single-handedly reconfiguring musical aesthetics with their bare hands. And it sounds fucking great.

Byron Coley - Wire magazine -July 2011

Two slabs of classic archival TNB scree from 1983. One side is by the Rupenus Bros duo format; on the flip they’re joined by Ashleigh Grove. Whatever, the music is amazing. It sounds like porcupines riding rusty bicycles around really fast in a figure of eight, crashing into each other and howling the way only porcupines can. Previously released more than once, this is the definitive, remastered version of both full shows and it’s a stone form classic.

My first listening experience of TNB was the cassette 'Live At Morden Tower' in 1983. I marvelled at the unbelievably relentless and inaccessible intensity of their sound. I became fascinated with them. I became a kind of TNB 'groupie'. Toshiji Mikawa 

TNB continue their work with anti-theories, anti-instruments and anti-music. The mysterious instrumentation of their debut, Changez Les Blockeurs, remains constant with that used in these live performances. However the mood produced differs greatly. The atmosphere, here, is one of an abrasive and unrelenting attack where metal scrapes, slams and drags against hissing noise generators and piercing feedback. The Blockaders seem to take great joy in dealing with the uncertainty and often precarious nature of live confrontations which result in an energetic celebration/barrage of new sounds and ideas. Aeon

Anti-music done by anti-musicians, this tape is full of hissings, bangings, scrapings, grindings and very little of what could be called traditional instrumentation. At times it sound like rush hour in a particularly noisy subway station; at other times like 20 chefs simultaneously banging their pots and pans. Yet somehow it all works and comes together as a coherent whole. The pieces show continuity and purpose. Rhythm emerges from the chaos. How do you define music? Listen to this tape then see if you still agree with your previous definition. Sound Choice

The cyclone hits and sheets of pure metal godlike shrieking rain down and ring out. Unrelenting and visceral, it’s a phoenix in its execution and a peacock in its diversity. Audience dulls around a bit, and then another simoom in the room – a lower kind of grating now. Occasional stalactites of sound jut from the proceedings and there seem to be ‘breakdowns’ in the sound from time to time. Squeaking and rolling, quacking and cajoling, and the sound spikes and speaks and spills from the guts of that time and place. It still holds the same power to incite, inspire and unnerve that it had when it first emerged almost 30 years ago. Freq

The crackle of broken amplifiers precipitates a whole new order of independently morphing soundforms, all given shape via flashes of metallic lightning, smashed glass, trashed microphone feedback and acoustic low-end pellets that scale the walls like slugs. Gradually accruing hypnotic significance, they birth spontaneous form in the shape of textures that recur with such accumulative force, they threaten to collapse the performance under its own weight. In this mode, their music feels like inverted minimalism, a leery psychedelia. The Wire