For the past few months, Dax Edword has been curating and DJing a cassette-centric meeting of the rewind-minded. Dubbed Hisssssss (see what I did there?), the monthly event makes its home at Capitol Hill’s Vermillion, where legions of local cassette labels set up shop and hawk their analog wares for 2015’s anachronistic tape enthusiasts. Edword gave me the skinny on the event’s big changes this month, and talked turkey about local cassette culture and tape lore from yesteryear.
SW:
Explain to me, like I’m a millennial who has never seen a tape in his whole life, what is Hisssssss?Edword: Tapes dropped off the face of the Earth once 2000 hit. So it’s really our thing, as 20-, 30-, 40-somethings. I don’t care about millennials. [Hisssssss is] a tape night. I have two cassette decks that have variable-speed controls on them, and a mixing board that they both plug in to. People can show up with mixes that they made at home, or they can go to Value Village and grab a random stack and we’ll just put ’em in and see what happens. There’s no themes, there’s no rules.
What are some of the local tape labels that show up to Hisssssss?Eiderdown, Hanged Man, and Concuss Creations come and sell their tapes and T-shirts. Sharlese from KEXP and her friend [Rachel Kramer] make handmade house and electronica dubs on cassette [under the name “Technodad”], and sell them there as well.
What’s special about tape sound quality?It’s shit. That’s what it adds, the shit sound, the fuzz and the warmth. I had this old Jimi Hendrix one where the bass and the drums are just gone, and you’re listening to it and it kinda starts warbling really bad, and then you hear this fucked-up Jimi Hendrix guitar solo. It’s rad. I love that kinda weird shit.
Is there a cassette that you most often come across in thrift stores?Usually Christmas music. I see the Miami Vice soundtrack a lot. It’s not as good as it sounds.
How about rare tapes? Is there a white whale you’re looking for?Well, the white whale of hip-hop cassettes is the “Purple Tape” [Only Built 4 Cuban Linx . . . ]. Ghostface Killer and Raekwon put it out in ’91 or ’93. [1995. —Ed.] It’s a Wu Tang album, but it’s just Ghostface and Raekwon. They made a super-limited run and a lot of them deteriorated, and it’s one of the first—well, I don’t actually know the history of it, I would assume it’s one of the first cassettes that’s actually made of clear purple plastic.
How about locally—is there a rare 206 cassette?I dunno . . . my own? Don’t Call It a Beat Tape. I only made 24 of them. It’s half instrumental hip-hop, half weird looped samples.
When cassette culture started taking off again, I noticed it was a lot of experimental and doomy metal.Oh yeah, and noise. Actually a lot a surf rock, weirdly.
Yeah—what about cassettes lends itself to those genres?It’s affordable. As far as having an awesome item to purchase at a merch table, it’s either a record or a tape. And records, to do a pressing of 100, it’s like $1,700 to front. Whereas tapes, 250 bucks, you can get a hundred tapes pressed up, and you can sell ’em for five, six bucks.
Where are people making them?There’s a spot in Portland that you can ship your .wav files and artwork to, and he does the whole pressing for you. Lots of dudes in Seattle have tape duplicators. I just picked up a tape duplicator . . .
Does that get tedious after a while?No! It goes one to three, and you can get them to go one to 10. And it high-speed dubs them, so you just press a button and five minutes later you have four to 20 copies.
That’s amazing. I wish I’d had that when I was 14. What is the most prized tape you own? What would you grab if your house was on fire?Shit, based on worth, I’d probably have to grab my Nas Illmatic tape. But based on how much I love the tape: ZZ Top’s Drummer’s Drum Machine’s Manager’s Band, in which [local hip-hop artists] Dick Furrari and Specwizard made an hour-and-a-half beat tape, and they only made so many copies of it, and they only sold it at their release show, and were never heard of again. There you go—that’s the local super-rare tape!
Have you thought about expanding to other relic mediums?Mini-discs were a thought. They’re hilarious . . . mainly ’cause I found a mini-disc player/recorder with, like, eight discs at Value Village. I was like, “This could be interesting.” But there’s really no reasonable reason to use that shit.
So how far do you want to take this? Is this something you’d like to see expand to a bigger venue?I don’t see that at all. People are hardly coming out right now as it is. But it’s incredibly fun. So far it has gotten a lot of people to start working together on different weird projects. . . . That was the hope from the very beginning. People just come, hang out, talk about music, buy and sell or trade shit. Musicians talk shop, hang out, have a drink. People play cassettes while Cold Brew Collective does weird awesome visuals. They have two VCRs and they run it through a bunch of analog signal machines. It does crazy, awesome visual stuff—it’s all glitchy, wavy.
Is there anything about this next one that’s exciting?Yeah! Magnetic, the tape night from Portland that inspired me to do this, two of those guys [Bonerock and NorthernDraw] are coming up to DJ. Sharlese Metcalf from KEXP is going to be DJing as well. Christian Petersen is going to be doing visuals this time.
If someone wanted to vend, should they just find you through Facebook?Oh yeah! Strictly tape stuff. Not necessarily music, but if you’re selling, make it about tapes.
music@seattleweekly.com
HISSSSSSS: A TAPE NIGHT Vermillion Art Gallery and Bar, 1508 11th Ave., 709-9797, vermillionseattle.com. Free. 8–11:45 p.m. Wed., May 20.
