Shaun Robert — Swan Song For Tape Recorder

Here’s a release that takes us on a textural journey inside a breaking tape recorder. It features eleven tracks in all, and as expected these all fit into the decidedly wrapped ‘n’ noise-bound side of things.

The release comes in three separate editions- a CDR in four-panel digipak, a CDR in slimline packaging, and a tape- with the final of these, I guess being the most authentic way to play the album. For review purposes, we were sent the digipak version, on its outside, it features overlaid and scrawling drawing in red in on a white background. Inside we get a brief write-up about the tape player- it was a double tape machine and the concept behind the release. 

Devon Uk based Shaun Robert has been active since the early 2000’s recording work, with around twenty releases under his belt. Though he also runs the label Institute For Alien Research, which focuses on sound art, musique concrete and similar releases- and has put out just over ninety releases to date.

The eleven tracks featured have runtimes between three and eight minutes- and really they each follow a fairly similar sonic path. They are built around stretched ‘n’ pulled low end, mid-ranged purr ‘n’ drag, and grainy to wearily seared highs. 

We open with the buzzing ‘n’ beaded pull, which meets suddenly high-pitched stretch of the first track. There’s the static pick ‘n’ pop meets baying moan of the fifth track, which some almost low-key textured noise elements in place. The wonky roaming bass bay meets the skittering high-pitched dart of track eight. Or the purring throb, high-pitch wince, meets swirled sci-fi-like oscillations of the final track.

With this release I was expecting one of two things- either slowly rundown & altering noise texturing, similar to that of A Raja's Mesh men’s 2015 release Sleep Of Death. Or fairly textural varied prepared noise akin to some like John Cages Prepared Piano work-as the liner notes mention the use of coins, washers, and similar in the track's creation. The release is neither of these, but instead a not terribly varied noise-based release.

I appreciate the slowly fluctuating warp ‘n’ bay of Swan Song For Tape Recorder- and at points, it’s quite effective. The key issue here is that it all sounds fairly similar, so as a result playing an album's worth of this type of thing does become a little tiresome in places- so certainly an interesting concept for a release, but it’s just not executed in a terribly creative or daring manner.