Welcome to The Tape Label Report, where we introduce you to five cassette-focused labels you should know about, and highlight key releases from each.
Gertrude Tapes
Cassette
“Cassettes are an especially effective medium for field recordings because of the way they affect the sound,” says Lonnie Methe who has used his label, Gertrude Tapes, to distribute field recordings as well as voice-and-instrument based genres on cassette since 2004. “Over time you start to get little defects in the sound. You slowly detect little changes in pitch or speed and no matter how well a cassette is dubbed, and especially for field recordings, it really is beautiful.”
Methe originally began Gertrude to provide an outlet for spoken word and field recordings, initially releasing very small runs of 10 to 20 cassettes. He took a long hiatus from his label and moved from Austin, Texas to Omaha. In 2015, he restarted Gertrude Tapes, primarily to reissue recordings by his friend Charles LeReau’s band, Das Torpedoes. The label continued offering music centered on field recordings, but also released more traditional song-based music by artists including Linda Smith and Nancy Andrews, Dan Melchior, and Simon Joyner.
The artful use of real-world sounds still holds a fascination for Methe. “Often you’ll have a mixture of urban and natural sounds and then sometimes the artist will mix in actual musical elements or do a bit of effects processing,” he says, explaining the appeal of this type of music. “I particularly appreciate a little bit of editing to transform and process the sound so that there’s a little bit of narrative to it. That makes it completely different from just recording the rain outside,” he adds.
Release to Start With
Bardo Todol / Disposicion Asoleada
Bardo Todol / Disposicion Asoleada SPLIT
Cassette
Sounds of the ordinary world filter through long meditative drones on this evocative split cassette, which features Argentinian sound manipulators Bardo Todol and Disposición Asoleada, a solo project from Ecuadorian electronics/field recording artist David Jarrín.
Bardo Todol’s sidelong, “Aqui Se Veneraba Un Dragon” (“A Dragon Was Worshipped Here”), layers the sound of rattling motors and urban life atop a temple’s quiet instruments—gongs, strings, flutes and a circling keyboard riff—so that the ordinary becomes mystical and vice versa. A woman’s voice drifts in over amid rattles and pulses and buzzes, like a glimpse of alternate reality, then a chaos of honking instruments gathers into a crazy marching band.
Flip the tape for Disposición Asoleada’s “Orage des Roses” (“storm of roses”), an equally transportive mix of off-tuned string instruments, eerie synthetic tones and a growling dog. There’s music in these cuts, but they feel more like immersive worlds than compositions. You could get lost in these places, but happily so.
– Jennifer Kelly
Okla Records
Cassette
Starting a tape label often only requires an idea and like-minded people. This is the case for young Polish label Okla Records, which was founded in early 2024 by three friends. “We founded our label because there is so much interesting music around being passed on and we want to help artists to get heard,” says label co-founder Bartosz Szturgiewicz. The others are Michał Wiśniowski, who releases field recordings and ambient under the name stryczek, and Michał Kęskiewicz, label’s graphic designer. “I don’t what we’d do without Michał, he creates real works of art as our tapes covers,” says Szturgiewicz, who’s also an active musician and is responsible for the label’s promotion.
Okla release “left-field music, sometimes ambient-ish, sometimes droney,” but state that they don’t want to limit themselves to any genre. The first batch of tapes consists of the wobbly, socially and ecologically engaged Plasticene by wound (an alias of Szturgiewicz’s), dreamy and sweet ambient Music for Nothing by Milan’s Giacomo Vanelli, and the wonky, post-apocalyptic and cryptic Submarine by Adam Howse. “We release our albums in batches to create the effect of a network,” says Bartek. “Maybe someone interested in one tape listens to others and they will resonate. That’s the dream, we don’t do it for money, nor for fame. We want our music to resonate with people’s imagination. Every album is like a journey.”
Okla invites anyone to join them on the journey. “We are always open for demo submissions. That’s how we got almost all of our tapes, and we want to hear new music,” says Bartek.
Release to Start With
Giacomo Vanelli
Music for Nothing
Cassette
With only five tapes (two are coming out in June) in Okla’s catalog so far, you would think it would be easy choosing one tape that stands out. For Bartek, it’s far from the truth: “It’s a very hard question because each one is different. That’s what the Okla is to us: diversity. We want to stimulate broad interest, not just in one genre or style.” However, there is one release that struck a chord. “I fell in love with Giacomo’s tape instantly,” he says. Understandably so, as Music for Nothing is sweet and soothing, like a warm blanket. It’s also Okla’s most popular tape, the first that sold out. “We had to do a second press,” Bartek says. It’s a perfect way to start a label, isn’t it?
– Michal Wieczorek
Tough Gum
Cassette, Button/Pin/Patch
Tough Gum is a tape label, but it’s a few other things, too. First launched by Raegan Labat (photographer and previous live member of Spllit, Steele Tracks, and Fake Last Name) as an extension of the DIY projects she was involved with in her hometown of Baton Rouge, Tough Gum became a cassette imprint during the early waves of pandemic lockdowns.
Stuck inside and bored like everyone else, Labat started following labels, ordering tapes, and home-dubbing her own. Using a name she came up with during a family vacation in Pensacola after misreading a “Tough Guy” keychain at a gift shop, Tough Gum became a hub for friends’ music along with a few online discoveries from far beyond the Big Easy.
Though her titles have been warmly received, notably a split cassette and LP release with Feel It, Labat maintains realistic expectations, emphasizing personal satisfaction over unnecessary growth. “I try not to put any pressure on myself, even though I love to do that, and so does capitalism,” she laughs. “I’m really just trying to breathe through the project, and do what feels right. I’m not trying to be the next whatever.”
Labat shrugs off questions about a “Tough Gum sound,” but she remains keen to receive demo submissions from around the world, and has even released a few of them. These include Polish queercore artists Hugayz, and French Canadian eggpunk act Coins Parallèles—the solo project of Yan Skene, founder of Montreal band Bleu Nuit.
From her current home base of Chicago, Labat plans to unite the seemingly disparate yet densely interconnected DIY music communities in Illinois and her home state of Louisiana. “I think I’m in a second phase now,” she says. “I’m planting roots here in Chicago, and I’m done hibernating over the winter. My hopes are to combine my two worlds and make them into one big world to get more people connected.”
Release to Start With
Timeout Room
Tight Ass Goku Pictures
Cassette
In February 2023, Labat released the debut solo project from S.T. McCrary, a longtime member of beloved Baton Rouge band Melters. Captured à la Cleaners from Venus on a four-track in his bedroom, this collection of warped, gritty spins on timeless power-pop tropes combines the influence of horror writing with intimate, lo-fi home recording.
“S.T. McCrary is a New Orleans-based artist who grew up in Baton Rouge, and this is a collection of his solo work,” says Labat. “It’s DIY, glistening, Flying Nun-inspired music, and it just hit my heart.”
– Jesse Locke
WereGnome Records
Cassette
WereGnome Records was conceived in 2020, in the throes of pandemic shutdowns, but scroll through the label’s Bandcamp page and it might seem as if it’s been around for much longer. The Rochester, New York imprint has released dozens of albums, ranging from chiptune to black metal, all lovably nerdy oddities.
WereGnome is run by Nicholas Pahman and Selena Caprice, who playfully refer to themselves as “the gnomes.” Before launching the label, Pahman had found community through dungeon synth-adjacent online forums, which inspired him to found a tape label out of the blue one afternoon. The name WereGnome came to mind randomly. “I never give the same explanation twice for what a WereGnome actually is. Honestly, it’s whatever your heart wants it to be. Is it a gnome who turns into a werewolf? A human that was bit by a ravenous gnome? Choose your own adventure,” Pahman cryptically explains.
WereGnome is proudly genre-agnostic—anything left-of-center, albeit toe-tapping, is fair game for its catalog. On average, the label puts out four to seven records a month, many of which end up on cassette. While Pahman is quick to acknowledge that it can be challenging to keep up with the responsibilities attached to running a small business between day jobs and adult commitments, it’s clearly worth it. “We do this for the real love of the music we produce, the artists and fans. Nothing is more special than that. It’s our driving force,” he says. Pahman admits that Rochester doesn’t have a huge dungeon synth scene, but WereGnome is working hard to bring fantastical ambient metal to the Finger Lakes region. At such a steady clip, it’s only a matter of time until the city catches on.
Release to Start With
Acid Crypt
Hall of the dead king
Cassette
With a name like Acid Crypt, the music had better sound ominous and heady. This project from the musician vaguely known as Lord Of Time pulls from cobwebbed imagery, such as plagues, darkness, and dead kingdoms. These themes beam especially bright on the album Hall of the dead king, which is centered around chiming bells and digitized baroque chords. It evokes a video game journey through some labyrinthine cavern; pinging leads activate anxiety and murky drones aid the sense of mystery. The whole thing is sinister and dusty—like being struck head on by a gust of air laced with hallucinogens.
– Ted Davis
Yard Sale For World Peace
Cassette
Olympia, Washington collective Yard Sale For World Peace has no leader, founder, or self-identified membership, and although they duplicate and distribute audio content, they are less a label than an ethos. Early brainstorming sessions about the project imagined it as an archive, a file-sharing network, or a catalog comprising “ecology research, poetry, earth-aliveness philosophy, and artwork.” Unofficial spokesperson Anton Seder describes YSFWB even more nebulously: “It’s a process, and anytime anyone joins that process they’re part of it.”
Yard Sale For World Peace debuted in November of 2019 with the release of a self-titled tape by Seder’s deconstructed synth duo, Earthgasm. Since then, it has issued 23 cassettes by a constellation of overlapping projects, friends, and associates, mostly from the Pacific Northwest, including Pine Electronics, Angels 4 Carrots, Chain Lynxx, DEFACEMAN, May Meldings, and the label’s fluctuating house band, Shelter Music. Sonically, the catalog spans homemade electronics, environmental free improv, alchemical new age, junk concrète, “biowarrior” lectures, and even a conceptual R&B mixtape (Downtown Clownin, pitched as “a Rosetta Stone for smoking shitty weed in front of Pizza Time at 1 AM”).
To date, YSFWP have exclusively released on cassette, a format Seder praises both for its potential as “expressive sound propaganda” and the nuances of its physicality: “They are made of plastic, which is ancient bones melted through chemical processes, and there is something really interesting about a physical object that hangs around the car, kitchen, studio, etc., and is a very limited site of interaction – it’s not like a web link to a track awash in the digital mist.” As a whole, the label’s music and message are refreshingly analog and grounded in real world connectivity (what Seder calls “community sizzle”), donating the majority of their proceeds to activist causes and nonprofits, such as Earthrights International, Lovewater Aid, or EGYHOP (The Emma Goldman Youth & Homeless Outreach Project).
True to its name, Yard Sale For World Peace traffics a homespun and hyper-local hodgepodge of colorful crafts and poetic bric-a-brac, arranged for enjoyment on an overgrown lawn, in service to a higher cause.
Release to Start With
Free Sound Shelter System
Live On The Oregon Coast
Cassette
Yard Sale For World Peace’s house band is as amorphous and spontaneous as the label itself. Gathering in parks, fields, empty theaters, and forest bunkers around Olympia, with porous membership and eclectic instrumentation, they credit their sessions to various iterations of “Shelter”: Shelter Recordings, Free Sound Shelter System, Local Shelter Communications, Inherent Sound Shelter Map, Shelter Music, and even just Shelter. Resident member Anton Seder describes the group’s process as liquid and listening intensive: “Sometimes the environment provides the prompt in a very explicit way. What wants to happen? What wants to heal?”
Live On The Oregon Coast, from 2021, documents a pair of beautifully loose seaside suites full of plucked strings, echoing bells, amp warble, celestial drones, mumbled voices, and Pacific breeze. Reminiscent in places of the crouched nature improvisations of early aughts Bay Area collective Jewelled Antler, these sides are murky, mystical soups of deep listening and hijacked power, mirroring the strange landscapes in which they were created.
