Label : Squealer - SQR 014
Year : 1995
Country : US
Format : 7 inch
An interesting little document of something of a sound of bygone days, described here as "Industrial Folk"--not Industrial folk as in the traditional music of the worker but of the "merger of folk roots with modern technology" sez the liner notes. Further on, these folkish roots "are modified by the alien technologies available to the modern artist; tape loops, feedback, and the static of everyday life". I feel like I'm padding an essay here, but it is a pretty interesting perspective especially in retrospect.
A number of these artists would not seem too unfamiliar to those who have gone through the underwaternow tape archive. In fact, I associate this time and place and sound and aesthetic with this particular website. A different flavor of cassette culture.
If you could gather any meaning from that melange of text, I mean to say it's a pretty cool EP. I was going to make a grandiose point on how appropriate that something christened "Industrial Folk" would emerge from the fallen follies of the rust belt, when I realized only a few of these groups would qualify as being from said wastelands.
That's a cool thought, though. "Industrial Folk" as a genre, not Industrial Worker Folk music, which apparently is something that people have categorized, but a designation for the fin de millénaire incarnation of lofi folk found on some-a tape from labels like Shrimper or Bees Make Honey or, of course, Squealer.
