Bleep

Originally anthologised on Type, Lapsus reissue a remastered edition of the entire Black Mill Tapes collection upon its 10th anniversary, packaged with a 12-page booklet of original photographs and a host of unreleased material.

The history of the Black Mill Tapes series begins in 2010, in the English village of Coldred (population 110). An auction is happening, and an employee of Pye Corner Audio Transcription named Martin Jenkins — known to some as the Head Technician — happens across a curio in the auction catalogue: three boxes, described as containing “archived magnetic recordings.” The Head Technician makes the only bid, and walks away with numerous decaying cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes bearing no descriptors, save for the phrase “Black Mill Sessions” scrawled on each box.

What he found beneath dense tape hiss were countless remarkable electronic compositions from an indeterminate time (or indeed planet), bearing some hints of BBC Radiophonic Orchestra’s ambient, space-aged innovations, met with the eerie arpeggiated modulations of John Carpenter, rendered woozy and doubly psychedelic from the preceding years of tape degradation. Had this been the work of a group or a singular artist? The original creators, as well as the exact nature of Black Mill, remains a mystery. As if caught under the spell of the enigma, this compelling pseudo-anthropological study, the Head Technician worked some auditory skullduggery with razors and eyedroppers and spliced together Black Mill Tapes Volume I: Avant Shards. The sole developer of this on-going project, he later came up with three further volumes of fascinating retro-futurist hybridity.