Contemporary Casuals Page

Best of Contemporary Casuals: 1985 - 2000
Self-indulgent personal project records

Download here.

Liner Notes:
From my tape vaults (via mard drive) comes this compilation of nearly 15 years of audio experimentation. Some of it makes me cringe with embarassment, and some of it i listen to with admiration, considering how culturally isolated I was as a teenager. I had never heard of industrial music until I got much older, but used many techniques common to that genre out of expediance.

These recordings reflect what technology I had at hand at the time; Iran Contra Blues was recorded directly into an 8-track cartridge recorder - Reagan’s testimony before the Iran/contra committee was running live on television and into one channel and my cheap guitar (with only three strings) wailing away ineptly in the other. The oscillating feedback tape-loop was made by laying the guitar against a TV and running all the interference and hum through multiple distortion boxes and delay. Amber is the joy of channel surfing 80’s satellite TV through a digital delay system. Lonesome contains the sole recording of my long-lost Moog Liberation, burbling away with Nancy and Lee. Melting Flower is the result of a Casio SK-1 having a nervous breakdown. Ready for Takeoff is my two then toddler sons playing with one of my hollowbody electrics and learning that they can hold electronic toys up to the pickups and hear funny sounds.
Later in the nineties, I acquired a real live, sequence-able digital sampler, resulting in such dubious creations as Gods of Hellfire, How 2 CB and Kum N’ Get Me.
Most of the radio tape manipulations were done while bored at an old job, mainly to confuse and irritate my coworkers.

Tracks:

01. Special Intro
02. This Is All Wrong
03. Ready for Take-off
04. Amber
05. Radio Thermador.mp3
06. If Anyone Comes On My Property…
07. Radio 5 Rocks
08. How2CB.
09. Gods Of Hellfire (Fluffy Remix)
10. Attention Prayer Warriors
11. Iran Contra Blues Raga in D#
12. Spend Half As Much
13. Radio
14. Get Half As Much
15. Melting Flower
16. I left my heart in….
17. Boring Guitar Contest
18. Kum N’ Get Me
19. Lonesome
20. Listen To a Man With No Voice
21. Take Off Your Shoes and Sit in a Comfortable Chair

Where possible, I have either optimized or fixed the audio, but many of these were recorded under primitive conditions and many tapes (some real-to-real) stored in less than ideal situations.