tac - Next

A comment hit out of the blue but at an opportune time. If you missed this majestic collection first time around, you are forgiven.

Maybe you haven't heard of tac, the name used by Tom A. Cox of Tennessee for his music since 1984. If you haven't, then let's change that. Cox self-released cassettes (and then CDRs) in very small editions, adorned with clearly labor-intensive silkscreen art and sculptural materials. His music was forbiddingly alien in nature and opaque in substance. Some of it is a tactile noise rush of mysterious origin, harsh and difficult and uncompromising. Later on, tac reversed gears and created albums of nearly-inaudible scrapes and bodiless whoosh.


This massive retrospective box of six 100-minute cassettes collects material from the first ten years of tac's work. Some of it is previously released (not that very many people heard it the first time round), and much of it is not. Collaborations with like-minded artists Small Cruel Party and factor X take up one cassette. If you're a fan of Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, G*Park, Hands To, Yeast Culture or John Hudak, these six-hundred minutes of fascinating audio ought to keep you enthralled for a long while.

Released in 1997 by Suitcase with a baroque package as demanding as the sound within: painted tapes, silk-screen mesh box, silk-screened booklet.

merry

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