New ‘My 80s Cassette Massacre’ Release:
Heartbeat Stops (Trip Mixes 1 & 2)
I never expected to revisit this tape. 'Heartbeat Stops (Trip Mixes 1 & 2)' were recorded decades ago, on a 4 track cassette deck, my Emax 12 bit sampler, TR909 drum machine, and the voice of Loka, a vocalist I worked with for a brief period.
The tape sat in a box for years, degraded and forgotten..
Here is atmosphere and the raw hiss of magnetic tape, cold drum pulses, and a voice pushing against the limits of its own body — “the spirit is willing, but the body cannot hold on,” at the onset of the burgeoning techno music era.
'Heartbeat Stops' is a song I wrote in the day and brought back to life as 'The Spirit is Willing' in 2008 on my debut Alien Skin album, 'Don't Open Till Doomsday'.
'Trip Mix 1' is ghostly, almost funereal. It’s a farewell letter to a self that never lived fully, and now wishes it could. 'Trip Mix 2' is skeletal, stripped of vocal weight but still haunted by the same heartbeat — both literal and symbolic.
I didn’t clean them up. These tracks are being released for what they are: a document of time, fear, and longing. This isn’t about nostalgia for the 80s — this is the 80s. The texture, the emptiness, the push to make something while the clock still ticks.
STREAMED ON SPOTIFY AND ELSWEHERE
Thanks for listening to this fragment from the archive. There’s more to come from 'My 80s Cassette Massacre'.
George
See also recent past ‘My 80s Cassette Massacre’ posts-
Dead Format Romance
My 80s Cassette Massacre