What is Tape Mountain all about?
Tape Mountain was created in the year 2000 by Jacob Anderson. It is
an imaginary label. You will wake up tomorrow and it will all seem
like a fever dream. Our great dream is to have all our CD-R's sprout
wings and start singing bird songs and our living room will be like a shining
aviary. Tape Mountain follows in the esteemed tradition of great Tualatin
labels like Virgin Sleaze, Banal Wastrel, Industrial Chaos, and the Shitfuck
Distributing Company. There is no documented evidence of Tape Mountain
ever having existed. In five years it will be forgotten. In five
hundred years the whole idea of recorded music will be considered ridiculous--why
would you want to clutter up your mind with useless melodies? People
will sing like birds: they will learn one song at birth and sing it over
and over again. Tape Mountain is a nostalgia label. We release
the music you remember from your youth, when your knees were strong and the
hairs in your inner ear stood upright and proud. If you ask nicely,
we will enclose free trinkets with every order. But only if you ask
nicely. In five hundred years birds will fly into landfills (which
will occupy whole continents) and wind up Victrolas and tilt their heads
jauntily before the Victrolas' dented horns and learn operas. In the
springtime, the birds will fly to the five acres of nature left and whistle
Verdi. We will look at them like they are crazy: simplify, bird, simplify!
Tape Mountain is like the color of the sidewalk on a cloudy day. Tape
Mountain looks at ants and smells roses. This music is only for pedestrians.
Tape Mountain is the time when you proudly tried to walk across a slippery
log over a swift and cold stream and you fell into the clear shallow water
and you had to spend the whole ride home shivering in your wet-smelling sweatshirt
because you did not bring a towel. There were fish jumping in that
river and they were singing songs by Charlie McAlister. Oh, how sweet
the sounds of your youth! We have those sounds and they are imprisoned
at 7200 rpm on our hard drive. They are dizzy and they stagger out
through the speakers like someone with a weak stomach who just got off one
of those amusement park rides where you stick to the nubby-rubber-covered
walls as you spin around and around. In Adventureland USA, Des Moines,
Iowa they called it the "Silly Silo". I can still hear the hokey jingle
they played on the Adventureland commercial back in the early 80's.
500 years from now, commercials will only play bird songs as their jingles.
Pleasant bird songs--doves, bob-whites, robins--will be as overused then
as "I Feel Good" is now. The low tones of the spruce grouse will indicate
laxative commercials, although by then laxatives will be taken for purely
recreational purposes, since tomorrow's doctors will use subsonic tones to
stimulate the bowels. Tape Mountain lives to do your will. Tape
Mountain turns its head excitedly when it hears your voice and hopes you
will give it a treat. Tape Mountain is a thousand reams of paper printed
with an outdated area code. Tape Mountain is more igneous than sedimentary.
Tape Mountain is as pure as a waterfall, but without giardia. Tape
Mountain is an indentured servant whose job is to carry a photocopier on
his back from Jamestown to Providence Plantations, upon which he will assemble
a CD burner using only clothespins and a bag of powdered sugar. Tape
Mountain: Your vision is our vision. Tape Mountain is more about
magnetic tape than Scotch tape or tapeworms or "Bubble Tape" or tapirs or
tapestries or tablas or tableaux, although each of these things has its place.
In the bright austere future, robots' awkward lobster-claw hands will gently
grasp the soft wings of orioles, and they will hum and twitter together.
back to the FAQ's page
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Tape Mountain HQ