Antape & Kotekan Split

Off-Topic
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[center]Eight months ago, a series of mysterious messages were exchanged in the bowels of the internet, initiating a collaboration which would lead to the creation of a double debut EP, which will be released on the 12th of April in sexy DIY cassette format.
We are proud to present:[/center]

This screen-printed yellow tape comes in a handmade box, with dual-sided artwork, and an insert providing tracklisting and information, all lovingly handcrafted with a DIY approach. On the cassette, you will find 40 minutes of fresh music from Antape and Kotekan, in the form of two 20 minute debut EPs. 14 tracks seeping with synthesizer screams, lush ambient soundscapes, off-kilter beats, cubist compositions, and very square waves, this release spans through a great variety of unconventional and imaginative modern age computer music.

Antape - Junpei’s Sandbugs

Primitive Silly Music, composed and produced by Lucas Magnat (Antape), is the result of almost five years of experiments, which lead the self taught musician to create those jerky beats and caustic melodies, sure to gratify any music lover seeking an engaging and exciting experience. With a pronounced taste for surfing on the edge of control, Antape’s work on this release is a monument to controlled chaos and digital primitivism.

Kotekan - Cloud Giant

Nocturne Pillar is a set of tracks that Seth Weaver (Kotekan) composed and produced from ages 16 to 20, always with a strong visual image in mind, and an aim to create organic, emotional pieces with a feeling of place and atmosphere. Etherial synths and strange samples mix with hard hitting rhythms and tight leads, as Kotekan draws themes from classical, world, and early electronic music, in an attempt to create a compendium of musical short stories.

This release is affiliated with the recording studio Roy de Rats established in Leipzig, Germany. Along with music recording, this studio runs a cassette tape production including mastering, duplication, and possibly printing on tapes with the silk screen method.

Antape & Kotekan Split official page
Both physical and digital options will be available with this release.
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Cassettes will be strictly limited to 100 copies, and will cost €4 within Europe, and $5 in the US (postal charges excluded). They’ll be sold on the official page via Paypal
Digital copies are individual for both EP and will be hosted on Bandcamp (pay-what-you-want). [Upcoming link]
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Release date : 12th of April 2013

If you have any questions, requests, or comments, or if you want to help promote the release, you can reach us at: contact@royderats.com


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[LIST]
Roy de Rats website
Antape @ Soundcloud / Kotekan @ Soundcloud
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On a second note, I’m sorry if that looks like spam, I know this board isn’t made for advertisement, and there’s no explicit place for new releases (though you can sometimes find release related posts in this Off-Topic section). Anyway, I’ve been working on this project since a long time now, and as I’m coming from Renoise (in the first place I learned how to make music with it) and as all the rhythms of my part of the split are made with it I thought it could interest some of you ! enjoy

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It looks like a fun collectors item but i have doubts there is a large interest in this format.
Did you recorded analog synths to DAT or analogue tape? At least i would understand the reasoning here…
But whatever you convert from digital to analogue, will never sound as good as when it would have been analog produced and recorded.

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Hey vV,

you’re the second one to bring that kind of question on the boards I’ve been posting a thread.

We decided to do a limited edition of 100 cassettes for several reason. First, we wanted to release the thing physically, might it be in a very limited amount. We didn’t want to make it on CD because this support basically just carries some files, and from the sound perspective I can’t see any particularity in it. The only thing is that it allows you to have a physical artwork going along with the music, but that’s possible with any other physical format.

I understand your point about having the music being analogue produced and recorded from the beginning to the end. But I’m not sure I get your other argument about the irrelevance of having digital sounds recorded on cassette. We made the choice of the cassette for several reasons, one of them being the outmoded aspect of it, both in how it looks and sounds. From the sound perspective, we thought our somehow oldschool braindance music could suit the format well. And the fact that the source is digital doesn’t prevent it to sound like cassette once it’s on cassette. And we also wanted to make a nice looking object.

A 100 piece edition is not that much a big deal, and for us it was as much important as proposing it digitally (which explains the fact we release on Bandcamp as well).

I know that this kind of choice can bring some debates. I hope I answer the question and that it won’t take to much part in this release. In the end we just want to share our music ^^

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Understood, at least that’s all what it is about.
I was just curious about the reason behind using analog tapes.
There are folks also still using analogue recording gear. You usually get this warm touch in the audio you often don’t have with digital output. (I know a few tricks, but these aren’t applicable to all audio samples)

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The analog tape distribution thing is the hip thing now. I’ve seen a few releases on the op-1 message board that have gone this route and cex (rjyan kidwell) has been doing it for a few years now. My impression is it’s not so much about analog fidelity as it is about 1) the physical artifact and 2) the sonic characteristic of the tape it’s copied onto (regardless of whether the source was analog or not).

It is kindof hipster-ish, but there’s something to it as well. When I was in college, I had a casette tape of chiastic slide dubbed off of a shitty 128 kbit mp3s that was pretty much always playing in my car’s tape deck. After a few years end it sounded like this degraded, saturated mush. For a combination of nostalgic and aesthetic reasons reasons (probably mostly nostalgic), I still love it. It just might be my personal definitive version of the album.

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Yeah it’s true there’s a kind of hype around the thing, I guess you just have to guess what is behind the idea of releasing on cassette for each specific release.

It also depends on the musical genre : for example punk, hardcore and noise scenes have been using the format a lot and since a long time. I don’t think it’s seen as hipster at all to release a cassette when you have a punk band and are well involved into the scene. And I think it totally makes sense that projects like Ceephax’s Ceeland or Photodementia’s Fig.03 use this format as well. As vV says, it makes even more sense if the music is coming exclusively from hardware synths and rhythmboxes (though I’ve no proof with Photodementia). There imo a lot more charm to such releases as if they were released on CD because there’s a real search for a raw and harsh sound somehow.

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So finally this Split album is released today. We sell the cassettes via Paypal on our official page, and the two debut EPs are also available individually on Bandcamp. If you are interested, you might want to check those links :

[center]Antape & Kotekan - Split Album (Official page)
Antape - Primitive Silly Music (bandcamp, name your price)
Kotekan - Nocturne Pillar (bancamp, name your price)
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Additional link :
Article about the screen printing of the cassette