You probably know Brett Netson from his work with Built To Spill and Caustic Resin. Now he’s back with the excellent Scavenger Cult EP, credited to Brett Netson & Snakes. Netson will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.
Netson: These are not the best machines for the kind of music I like to do, but it’s what I’ve got. And I am in love. Tape machines have gone the way of lathes and upright pianos. People end up with them in their garage and may need to get rid of them or just want to see them go to good use. But they are big and heavy, and who the fuck wants to move shit like that? You could sell it, but then you gotta ship it. I drove to the foothills of the Sierras outside of Sacramento from Boise, Idaho, to get mine from a kooky music fanatic named Justin, who just wanted it put to good use. It’s been nothing but a pain in the ass since I started using it, and I’ve loved every minute of it. I don’t ever want to get my brain roasted looking up some fucking computer error code or looking through some goddamned thread with a million similar but not the right issue, for literally hours. However, having to read the book, call some awesomely crazy old crank in Nashville to get any tidbit of info over the phone? I love it! I love buying used tape from someone’s stash. Researching which ones are bad news and figuring out the one to get. You see, the thing I know is, once I’ve learned all this, I will know it, and it won’t change. That whole software scene is a constantly changing, planned obsolescence mindfuck. Again, my tendency is to smell a conspiracy, one to manufacture helplessness by keeping us on these computer boxes and not in the physical world.
Video after the jump.
