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UNOFFICIAL RELEASE: Self Released and Handmade Audio in Post-Industrial Society
The culture of self-released music and sound art is one of the most vital, yet most overlooked, phenomena resulting from the 20th century revolution in communications technology. In this volume, Thomas Bailey surveys a fascinating realm of creative activity and identifies the key individuals and developments responsible for its continued relevance in the present age. From the networked “mail art” of the 1970s, to the home-taping boom, to the establishment of music labels dealing solely in digital sound files, this culture provides valuable insight into the evolution of the “official” art market and the artists who bypass it. Along the way, we are introduced to a world where networks are artworks in themselves, where blank tapes and recordable CDs are fashioned into elaborate art objects, and where relative freedom from creative supervision leads to both colorful innovations and violent aesthetic extremes. 'Unofficial Release' features material on mail art, cassette culture, industrial music, handmade packaging, releasing addiction, anti-promotion, net-labels, digital file sharing, circumventing censorship, extremist metal, sound poetry, imaginary music, ‘outsider’ art, tape nostalgia...and much more!
398 pages, Paperback
First published March 2, 2012
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July 15, 2012
Unofficial Release by Thomas Bey Willam Bailey is an extraordinary work of research into an area of music and sound art that until now has not been well documented.
The primary subject of this book is the 'cassette network' or 'cassette culture' which sprang up in the early 80s, seemingly out of nowhere. Bailey correctly notes that 'mail art' and other similar activities in the visual art world did presage, as well as later intermingle with, the cassette network.
Mail art had its roots in earlier forms of modernism, like dada and surrealism, which questioned the assumption that a piece of art was a unique work of genius, and often worked in ways that made art evanescent, temporary or auto-destructive. There was always a degree of transgressive humour meant to discredit pompous institutional stances in mail art. (the title, Unofficial Release, captures this.) It was a cottage industry, rarely with much concern about commerce.
Cassette culture was, for a time, a substantial alternative form of music/art distribution. Cassettes were often just traded. In combination with some key magazines like Op, FactSheet Five, Option and Sound Choice, the international postal service was acting as a primitive internet. As General Idea referred to it, the mail art network and later the cassette culture were "The Eternal Network." General Idea's File Magazine was in the early 70s the Eternal Network’s Google, it devoted many of its pages to addresses of those wishing to receive and send mail art. Sound artists like Rod Summers (interviewed in the book) were involved in mail art primarily by sending cassettes. This was also true of Vittore Baroni and Masimi Akita (aka Merzbow).
In the cassette network of the 80s there was more often than not some visual element which bore a resemblance to works on paper in mail art. Xeroxed collages and primitive drawings were quite common cover art which reflected the fact that sound collage was a prominent feature of the sound of many of the cassette artists.
Bailey looks at the decades following the heyday of the cassette network (i.e. the 80s) and finds that the ideas continue to find new forms of expression, and still do today.
Although cassettes are still used they are in decline. At various times minidiscs, CDs, 3 inch CDs and vinyl were tried and are still used to varying extent, but the predominant forms for this kind of networking are now the internet streaming and mp3's. The Unofficial Release continues into the future.
The book features several interviews. As well as those mentioned above, there are interviews with and reflections by Bailey on, Andrej Tisma, Frans De Waard, Al Margolis and G.X. Jupiter Larsen. All along Bailey contextualizes the sounds and forms of distribution with an informed grasp of cultural theory. It is never ponderous in this effort and the text flows gracefully from theory to practice, the former illuminating the latter, never obfuscating or misdirecting the reader from the topic at hand. This is an excellent book.
The primary subject of this book is the 'cassette network' or 'cassette culture' which sprang up in the early 80s, seemingly out of nowhere. Bailey correctly notes that 'mail art' and other similar activities in the visual art world did presage, as well as later intermingle with, the cassette network.
Mail art had its roots in earlier forms of modernism, like dada and surrealism, which questioned the assumption that a piece of art was a unique work of genius, and often worked in ways that made art evanescent, temporary or auto-destructive. There was always a degree of transgressive humour meant to discredit pompous institutional stances in mail art. (the title, Unofficial Release, captures this.) It was a cottage industry, rarely with much concern about commerce.
Cassette culture was, for a time, a substantial alternative form of music/art distribution. Cassettes were often just traded. In combination with some key magazines like Op, FactSheet Five, Option and Sound Choice, the international postal service was acting as a primitive internet. As General Idea referred to it, the mail art network and later the cassette culture were "The Eternal Network." General Idea's File Magazine was in the early 70s the Eternal Network’s Google, it devoted many of its pages to addresses of those wishing to receive and send mail art. Sound artists like Rod Summers (interviewed in the book) were involved in mail art primarily by sending cassettes. This was also true of Vittore Baroni and Masimi Akita (aka Merzbow).
In the cassette network of the 80s there was more often than not some visual element which bore a resemblance to works on paper in mail art. Xeroxed collages and primitive drawings were quite common cover art which reflected the fact that sound collage was a prominent feature of the sound of many of the cassette artists.
Bailey looks at the decades following the heyday of the cassette network (i.e. the 80s) and finds that the ideas continue to find new forms of expression, and still do today.
Although cassettes are still used they are in decline. At various times minidiscs, CDs, 3 inch CDs and vinyl were tried and are still used to varying extent, but the predominant forms for this kind of networking are now the internet streaming and mp3's. The Unofficial Release continues into the future.
The book features several interviews. As well as those mentioned above, there are interviews with and reflections by Bailey on, Andrej Tisma, Frans De Waard, Al Margolis and G.X. Jupiter Larsen. All along Bailey contextualizes the sounds and forms of distribution with an informed grasp of cultural theory. It is never ponderous in this effort and the text flows gracefully from theory to practice, the former illuminating the latter, never obfuscating or misdirecting the reader from the topic at hand. This is an excellent book.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review