Tapemania #6

This edition of Tapemania features Laura Hajek, David Lackner (of GALTTA), Adventures of the Silver Spaceman with Zachary Ellis, Party Lab recordings with Joe Ahearn, and Birch Cooper from MSHR.

Laura Hajek is a Bushwick, Brooklyn based multi-discipline artist/musician (Edith Pop, A Place Both Wonderful and Strange). Her latest release is BIG HAUS, a split tape with noise musician Max Alper. BIG HAUS is a low-fi recording drawing from the influences of Gil Scott Heron, Arthur Russell, and Liz Phair, paired with a long experimental composition on the B-side.

David Lackner is a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist specializing in jazz, minimalism, and pop music. In 2008, he formed GALLTA, a record label which he has continued as a vehicle for composing, recording, and releasing music of various like-minded artists. David currently performs with Blue Jazz TV, studies North Indian vocal music with Lamont Young and Marian Zazeela and maintains a busy schedule of session work.

The Adventures of the Silver Spaceman is the brain child of Zachary James Ellis (former drummer/singer-songwriter for Haybaby). The Adventures of the Silver Spaceman takes the listener on an album by album narrative, having recently released their fifth album to date, Bare Bones Part II: Electric Earth. Evolving against the grain of a trending reverb wash, the TAOTSS project grew into something raw and biting. In its present form, the four piece psych-rock, post punk outfit interweaves sparkling space guitars, bittersweet bass melodies and a heart heavy back-beat to frame poetry-driven songs.

Joe Ahearn,in addition to being Clocktower's program director, has been an organizer at both incarnations of The Silent Barn, a legendary and seemingly invincible stalwart of the New York DIY community. The Party Lab, which started at Silent Barn's original Ridgewood address, hosted straight-to-cassette mixes of not only the particular musical performance of the evening, but also all the surrounding ambience one would experience at a DIY show. Joe memorialized many important moments in New York's underground musical history which will be presented in part here.

MSHR is a collaborative project by Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy based in Portland, Oregon. The duo produces sculptural synthesizers, ritualistic performances and installations that place the human body into a dynamic relationship with sound and light, generating expanded sensory experiences. MSHR emerged from the five person art collective Oregon Painting Society in 2011.