Originally released in 2009, Hissing Theatricals was Jackson Bailey‘s début release as Tapes and now receives this vinyl re-issue treatment commemorating its tenth anniversary.
A decade on, and Tapes’ resolutely 8-bit sounds have both never seemed more contemporary nor somehow as timeless as they do now. This is perhaps in large part due to Jahtari, who have doggedly kept to the true spirit of lo-fi DIY releases, with label head Disrupt keeping the Gameboy edge prominent, those characteristic chirruping tones gracing the soundscape of heavyweight releases such as his collaborations with King Midas Sound‘s Roger Robinson.
Hissing Theatricals stutters and bleeps, swings and stirs up the flickering thrums of low-res digitalia, evoking a cyberpunk sound world, a Hackney meets Chiba City vibe that summons the hauntological detritus and dimension-shifting multiversal slippage of William Gibson‘s short story “The Gernsback Continuum”. There, reality coruscated in a surreal and disorienting fade between an apparently grimy reality and the imagery and architecture of 1950s SF stories; here, Tapes takes the listener to dub-soaked places where the mashed-up audio culture of east London is rendered in deprecated handheld consoles twittering out the heady fusion of lo-fi chiptune electronica and dubwise stepping. Drenched in echo and reverb, the tracks waver and quiver from almost pure blitting battery (“C20 Riddim”) to the more traditional reggae-based sounds of “Lowry Dub” and the concluding lope of the bass-weighted “Ticker Tape”. Throughout the EP, those snickering, heavily aliased fundamentals leave shimmering transients almost audibly dripping with bit-crushed detritus, evoking a raster-scanned cityscape of low-res dread.Hissing Theatricals remains an excellent first release, and Tapes has gone on to produce a decent number of records in the following decade, including one album so far. Here’s hoping that this retrospective will bring fresh releases to come.
-Linus Tossio-
