180 G vinyl only, 300 copies, included english text.

Music from a found tape, potentially recorded during the late 1980s and unedited. Unknown artist early sampling puzzle saved from oblivion.

_______________________________________

« How To Create Sounds with ... »

In February 2016, Sylvia Tournerie–the graphic designer behind record label Delodio’s visual identity – purchased a crate of odds and ends at a flea market in Paris. It was a mismatched assort- ment of cassette tapes that she was planning to pull apart and remodel to use as part of a graphic design. Amidst the junk, I spotted a cassette tape bearing the inscription: “How to Create Sounds with Mono/Poly Korg C-10”, the demo tape of the Korg Mono/Poly, an analogue synth made in 1981 and used by the likes of Tangerine Dream, Vince Clark, The Orb and 808 State. But there was also another cassette tape in that crate. What if this other tape also brought the Korg Mono/Poly to life? Purely a supposition on my part, but one that had me xated enough to call François Marché–my partner at the record label–to tell him all about it. We meet at the studio to have a listen together and I crank up the cassette player. It’s beautiful. It’s incredible. The music we discover turns out to be simply phenomenal. Diverse, innocent, playful, mystical, moving... Shaken up at times, without ever following any particular format. These are synthetic compo- sitions marked by tones that closely resemble the early samplers. And yet the object didn’t come with any information whatsoever. No title, no date, and more importantly, no composer. All it read was “Sony HF-S 60”, a model of blank cassette tapes manufac- tured from 1986 onwards by a Japanese company of the same name. The music recorded on this tape therefore dates back to 1986 or later. And that’s all we know. Yet one can never be sure: it could also be a copy of an earlier recording... A musical gem in any case, and very much a mystery. Who on earth would have made this recording?
In an attempt to nd out more, I head off in search of the second-hand dealer who had sold the tape to Sylvia in the rst place. Not exactly generous with his time or his words, he
explains that he had emptied out an apartment and that the cassette tape was amongst the junk that had been removed– everything was then sold in batches. He thinks the apartment belonged to a lm-maker who produced short lms, feature lms, and perhaps a record too, and that he was not very well known. I persist: “But why was his apartment emptied out?”
“I never ask any questions”, he said. “If they ask me to clear a place out, I just do it! Perhaps he moved somewhere else, perhaps he was kicked out, perhaps he simply passed away... In any case, there’s nothing to suggest that this cassette tape was actually recorded by him. It was just there. Perhaps it was a friend, an acquaintance, a cousin or a visitor who gave it to him”.
After months of research and compulsively consulting Google & Co and after asking everybody I knew in the lm industry: nothing. It was impossible to nd out anything about the guy. It was like being in one of Chandler’s detective novels, or in one of Kafka’s books. An imaginary suspect, a awed investigation. One-eyed witnesses and a pitfall at every corner, with Delodio being the protagonist in the hunt for the missing cassette tape. What if the beauty recorded on this Sony HF-S 60 was nothing but a utopian dream? I’ll let you be the judge. Our main aim for this music edition is to pay tribute to its composers and interpreters, whoever and wherever they may be.
With the exception of a few technical adjustments, the music you hear on this record is identical to the music found on that recovered cassette tape.

Fa Fane @ Delodio