u/Basedbanana1

I love experimental music, noise music, and basically most related genres. Recently, I was sent this album (links below before the album synopsis) and asked for my thoughts about it. Technically, it's less of an album and more of a compilation but most sources list it as an album.

The album is Tape Play: 10 Works for Electronic Tapes by Kenneth Gaburo, released in 2000 and clocking at just over an hour of runtime. Genre-wise it's a but experimental, and mainly utilizes tapes as the title would suggest.

If I were to describe the album in a word, it would be "offputting". No two tracks sound alike, and everything after track two has this weird and ominous vibe to it all. It's a bit of an auditory psychological horror. The tracks are a bit hard to describe, but here's my best synopsis of the ten tracks. The album, in my opinion, is best listened to the first time blind in one sitting however.
Links: Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp

Note: This synopsis is less what the song contains, but more what they feel like to listen to, at least to me.

1. Fat Millie's Lament: sounds like coins dropping before fading into an orchestra, and then the coins return.
2. The Wasting of Lucrecetzia: Sounds like wild celebration, horseplay, and general overstimulation.
3. For Harry: Warped and broken instruments and what sounds like a music box, this track sounds like something ripped from a horror movie about a demonic entity attacking a child or something.
4. Lemon Drops: Sounds like your brain trying to recreate a song you forgot in a dream and failing miserably.
5. Dante's Joynte: Back to more overstimulation rather than being more minimal, this track sounds like a descent into madness or perhaps hell
6. Re-run: Mind-numbingly repetitive, and mainly consisting of one sound for the six minute runtime
7. Mouthpiece II: A fascinating track completely different from almost all the others. It reminds me heavily of "A Childish Confession" by Skin Area (Spotify, YouTube) with the whole "calmly describing a completely off putting situation with little in the background" schtick.
8. Hiss: A very apt title to describe the track, it genuinely just sounds like metal scraping together, like a train squealing to a halt or trying to saw rebar with a hacksaw.
9. Few: Sounds like being stalked in a horror movie by something much larger than you, idk what else to say about it
10. Kyrie: Orbis Fact/ Or; A Very Odd Do: A strange way to close out the track, consisting of repeated repetition of a children's nursery rhyme in a calm, controlled, yet changing manner combined with hymn-like humming in the background

I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts on it and discuss it further! Overall this album is just very strange and unique to me. What's more is that it was released posthumously as far as I've found.