Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Whatevs Analog Is Dead, Long Live Analog [Awesome Art]
Posted by Steve Haruch on Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 10:03 AM
Not long ago, I unearthed a couple boxes of old cassettes in the back room of my house, and started listening to them one by one. The best part of that kind of afternoon is putting in an unmarked tape and re-discovering some long lost mix. Sometimes that's also the worst part of that kind of afternoon. (In this case, finding a very old demo tape from a couple someones who are now very famous was like a little heap of gold. More on this later, I hope.)
Needless to say, many of these tapes are just too old and fucked-up to play anymore. A copy of The Smiths' Hatful of Hollow sounded fine for about half of side A, then deteriorated into something that sounded kind of like a boat full of mice being devoured by rabid pelicans as Morrissey bombarded them all with bongos full of water and broken toy guitars. Albums by The Go-Gos and R.E.M. were similarly out of commish.
Our landfills are certainly not wanting for trash, so what to do with these old broken tapes and their cracked, scraped-up cases? You could go the Infinity Cat route and spray paint those suckers, record some Reid and Wright over them and sell them at shows for a couple bucks. You could make a little necklace. Or a spider catcher. (Just don't get any funny ideas.)
Whatever your recycling idea, artist Brian Dettmer wins. He makes incredible skeletons out of old tapes and, well, a skull with Shout at the Devil as the jawbone is just too awesome for words.
(HT: Kottke.)
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