full info // https://wp.me/p5WMjC-132

email // [email protected]

tweet // @SplsOut

Spool’s Out is back from a summer of semi-lockdown awkwardness and lonesome walkman listens with a beautiful show featuring a live session from vocal looping master and dancer Lauren Doss. The London-based artist’s debut tape Voices dropped earlier this year, embellishing simple layers of voice with a rare sense of physicality and emotional decadence. This live session recorded during the lockdown period is an incredible example of Lauren’s potent practice.

Also featured this week – Poland’s WIDT stretch out into new projects, plus some prime cuts of 2020 hip-hop and ambience.

full info // https://wp.me/p5WMjC-12w

email // [email protected]

tweet // @SplsOut

Recorded direct to tape at home an mixed using two Tascam Porta02, one Technics RS-4 and one Technics RS-B505, this week’s music comprises a big fat overlapping mix of sounds from deep in the cassette-o-sphere. What better time to deploy four tape players in your mixing setup than during a global pandemic? Behind the controls is none other than Fe203, a Format Junkie, Analogue Enthusiast, and Spool’s Out Radio Alumnus.

full info // https://wp.me/p5WMjC-12l

email // [email protected]

tweet // @SplsOut

This week's episode was planned as a socialist celebration with London-based oddballs, I Know I'm An Alien. Now though, we find ourselves in lockdown and quarantine, relying on the workers who risk not socially distancing themselves, and are manning the decks at supermarkets the world over. This episode of music released on tape is dedicated solely to them.

Featuring an exclusive 'TAPE MANIFESTO' by I Know I'm An Alien

full info // https://wp.me/p5WMjC-12e

email // [email protected]

tweet // @SplsOut

London duo Padang Food Tigers, aka Spencer Grady and Stephen Lewis, released Wake Up, Mr Pancake on tape last year, a drifting album of wispy Americana instrumentals. This week, they've put together a delicate mix of influences and sounds to capture the vibe of their beautiful world. Sit back on the porch rockin' chair and feel good.

full info // https://wp.me/p5WMjC-128

email // [email protected]

tweet // @SplsOut

Welcome to a scrapbook of found tape sounds documented on a blog from back in the 2010s called Tape Findings: Found Home Recordings, And Other Cassette Deck Oddities. Here comes a mish mash of American tape junk from the late-20th century, including shopping mall karaoke booth recordings, kids playing with their tape decks, rambling raps, salesmen, voicemail recordings – it’s all there. What a strange time. Just like today. There's real beauty in this kind of warped analogue self-documentation; the ancestor to today's crystalline selfies. Both times seem to scream a hope and a desire simply to be seen, heard, and acknowledged.

full info // https://wp.me/p5WMjC-120

email // [email protected]

tweet // @SplsOut

For a year when the mainstream failed to be defined by any major new musical voices, the importance of the global underground of oddballs mailing tapes to each other felt particularly important. This month's show is a look back on the year, with a few choice cuts from tape I found myself replaying and replaying, from I Jahbar's fiery mixtape of wild dancehall, to Byron Westbrook's epic synth wig outs, to Rojin Sharafi and YATTA's unique indefinable compositions, and much else. Original sounds continue to emerge from the tape-released music scene – like primordial live first crawling from the oceans.

full info // https://wp.me/p5WMjC-11Q

email // [email protected]

tweet // @SplsOut

Nice summer? Yeah ours was great. Lots of tapes coming in the post, dangerously hot weather beating down on my sweaty face while lying around the city with my walkman blaring worn copies into cheap headphones. But the first day of Autumn is here – and thus something of another annual tradition is too in the form of an anonymous and strange mix of gear from GeAR (aka, mysterious Californian outfit, German Army). Half the unreleased/new/unusable stuff is by the mothership itself, the other half is solo stuff by one of its pilots, Mr. Peter Kris (not that one). No further explanation necessary.

full info // https://wp.me/p5WMjC-11N

email // [email protected]

tweet // @SplsOut

RXM Reality – the Chicago-based purveyor or wild synths and percussion stabs on Hausu Mountain's latest killer tape – takes the reigns for over half of today's show. The guest mix is as erratic and brainmelting as you'd hope.  I pick the cassette-tapey entrée and dessert this week too, including math-jazz from Carey, and a first listen to experimental sound artist/composer Cyanching's stirring piece about the formation of her Taiwanese homeland.

full info // https://wp.me/p5WMjC-11J

email // [email protected]

tweet // @SplsOut

After a brief break, we're back at new monthly intervals. While this is going to mean future Spool's Outs become more detailed, focused, and documentarian in style... that doesn't apply this time. Here we've got our usual mix of recent tape releases from across the board, providing us and our walkmans with plenty of rest from the bleak outside world...

full info // https://wp.me/p5WMjC-11l

email // [email protected]

tweet // @SplsOut

This week, London-based artist Beachers (aka Daryl Worthington) presents a collage built from a day trip to the Kent coastal town of Whitstable earlier this month. It is called Asimov in Whitstable. It is entirely built from "either second hand tapes bought on that day, or field recordings taken on a cassette Dictaphone."

Beachers recently released a tape of arpeggios and synth drone titled Language Shapes the View. Full explanation of this show on spools-out.com