Human Tape Machine
This tape machine destroys time
Sound release - MAGIA (2018)
Louise Vind Nielsen
Exploration n· 11 November 2018
"Human Tape Machine" is the eleventh release of a 12-part-series of every month of 2018 . Sound artists experimenting with cassette tapes, tape recorders and sampling under the name "This tape machine destroys time" released under the Copenhagen based label MAGIA run by Ignacio Córdoba.
Louise Vind Nielsen - Synthesizer, sampler, tape recorder, voice.
Mastered by Ignacio Córdoba in Copenhagen (DK) November 2018.
For Human Tape Machine Louise Vind Nielsen (b.1984 Denmark, based in Hamburg, Germany) creates what she calls the "Human Tape Metronome" by recording her voice multiple times singing at a pace of aprox. 60 bpm non-stop for around ten minutes. The B-side "Cleaning the tape with synth and samples" contains her synth and sampler-set recorded one-take directly onto tape.
In his review for ATTN:MAGAZINE January 3rd 2019 Jack Cluter’s writes:
“it appears that time as a universal human measure has been obliterated. Clocks and watches have been confiscated. A shield conceals the changing colour of the sky. Everyone is forced to become their own clock, teasing out a vague memory of what those mechanical measures used to feel like.
On “Quadrophonic Human Tape Metronome At 60bpm”, a pulsing voice falls out of parallel with its own tape echo, sometimes forming one slurred vowel that licks from left to right, occasionally slipping back into alignment by chance, then veering out upon its own path again. At one point I realise that the voices are also gradually rising in pitch, albeit too slowly to immediately perceive. Such is the problem with internal reference points; the piece slips into a feedback loop of marginal error, compounding the inaccuracies of pitch and tempo, rising and quickening, until all resemblance to the initial objective – in this case, a 60bpm pulse – is lost altogether.
On “Synth And Samples Cleaning The Tape”, I hear the same principle transposed upon a futuristic tropical thicket: synthesisers and birdsong trapped in bespoke loops, handclaps and bass drums following their own intuitive timing, each instrument working at its own individual tempo. Sounds circulate without interlocking, repelling eachother as if by magnetic force. It’s the direct inverse of a music founded upon a common understanding of time. Each sound is trapped in its own orbit, aware of the others yet unable to connect, doomed to circle the edges at a distance, like shrapnel floating in absent gravity. There are no lines of causation running between the muffled beat and the spiralling synth arpeggiation. Just a cluster of events strewn across the crackle of worn tape."
Human Tape Machine
This tape machine destroys time
Sound release - MAGIA (2018)
Louise Vind Nielsen
Exploration n· 11 November 2018
"Human Tape Machine" is the eleventh release of a 12-part-series of every month of 2018 . Sound artists experimenting with cassette tapes, tape recorders and sampling under the name "This tape machine destroys time" released under the Copenhagen based label MAGIA run by Ignacio Córdoba.
Louise Vind Nielsen - Synthesizer, sampler, tape recorder, voice.
Mastered by Ignacio Córdoba in Copenhagen (DK) November 2018.
For Human Tape Machine Louise Vind Nielsen (b.1984 Denmark, based in Hamburg, Germany) creates what she calls the "Human Tape Metronome" by recording her voice multiple times singing at a pace of aprox. 60 bpm non-stop for around ten minutes. The B-side "Cleaning the tape with synth and samples" contains her synth and sampler-set recorded one-take directly onto tape.