Watershed Work Established Tape-beatles’ Signature Sound

‘Music with Sound’ Re-issue CD with New Tracks

Hear some
sample tracks
from our recordings

DISCOGRAPHY FILMOGRAPHY
Audio • Minneapolis Summit (MiniCD) • Numbers (9-inch EP) • Good Times • Matter • The Grand Delusion • Music with Sound • A subtle buoyancy of pulse
Video • Minneapolis Summit (Mini VideoCD) • Matter (video) • The Grand Delusion (video)

Music with Sound, the magnum opus by the Tape-beatles, and more recently re-mastered by Public Works, can be seen as an exercise in archaeology. In its first release in 1990, Music with Sound took the audio art world by storm, it’s honesty and straightforward production values quelling any thirst for a labored and perfunctory “newness.”

Writing in Factsheet Five, August 1991, Phil Zampino clearly states:

…If [the Tape-beatles’ plagiarism] immediately offends you, one can only point out that the deft assemblages, amazing sense of timing, and the wit and wonder of the work justifies their methods and makes it a [recording] that one can only marvel at. And listen to over and over, discovering where your reference of sound and theirs collide.

Mark Frauenfelder, writing for bOING-bOING no. 7, says:

By grabbing infonoise from everyday living and presenting it in a new format, sounds take on new meaning. Listen to this one time and you will become a Tape-beatle whether you want to be one or not.

As a completely Plagiarized® work, Music with Sound has been in turn itself plagiarized on numerous occasions. (The Orb have become ‘Tape-beatles’, too, by Frauenfelder’s definition.) In plagiarizing ‘their own’ work, Public Works has one-upped the ante by replacing one track with its longer sibling and adding two other never released ones taken from their live performance.

Someday soon, you’ll say to yourself, “I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first heard The Tape-beatles’ Music with Sound.’