Tag Archives: house of tapes

Voices have never really been central to the music Nagoya’s House Of Tapes has made. The focus has always been on the heavy, crushing electronics, a wall of sound acting like the trash-compacting walls from Star Wars. Words, however, have drifted into his work at times — but never like they do on the Magnolia EP. They appear on all four songs here and, unlike in previous lyric-featuring efforts, the words here are central to the tracks. Like, he included lyrics sheets with the free download.

It adds a layer of chaos to his music, which is as claustrophobic (in the best way possible) as it has ever been. Yet he carves out jusssssst enough space for his singing, which adds a disorienting extra layer to the proceedings. I’m not sure if it always helps though — a song such as “Maglia” would have been dizzying enough with its woozy electronics and lockstep beat, if anything the vocals soften the song and take a bit away from it. Yet, at their best, they do make for some wonderful wildness. See the piano-guided “Last Melody?,” wherein a layer of static added to his singing makes for an even more disorienting experience. Get it here.

Nagoya’s House Of Tapes is usually responsible for pounding, crushing electronic music, but on “I Die In A Beautiful World,” he’s stepped back from the destructive sounds in favor of something more reflective. Chaos hides in the corners, as it tends to always do, via a few warped electronic and rougher elements, but the bulk of “I Die In A Beautiful World” is a slower, swooning composition content to take its time in moving forward. Listen above.

What, exactly, is the end game for an indie producer? Looking at the landscape in Japan in 2014, the answer would be “get the chance to produce for someone else, maybe on a bigger label,” with the ultimate prize being the chance to be turned into a project worth pushing all your own. Nagoya’s House Of Tapes has, for the last few years, been one of the few track makers out there whose music doesn’t seem possible to be mapped on to anyone else – dude made pounding, aggressive dance music aimed at filling every available space on the track with pistoning noise. It did not seem like something anyone could sing over without coming out the other end like grinded-up meat.

Naturally, House Of Tapes’ biggest sonic departure to date somehow finds terrain even less inviting than what he did before…but is great for House Of Tapes himself. Hidden Memory hints at drawing inspiration from the ’90s video game Earthbound (full disclosure: the author’s favorite video game ever, beaten at least 12 times in his lifetime), specifically the final battle against the…bodyless thing Giygas. Hidden Memory, appropriately, is a vaporous collection, the bulk of the EP lacking any driving beat and rather swirling about, the closest House Of Tapes has (might ever?) come to shoegaze. The final two tracks get a bit more pounding, but even then are his most cloud-like to date. It’s a nice switch up, and shows dude’s versatility. Get it here for free.