Death Is Not The End takes avant-garde LPs originally released by a New York artist-owned label and reissues them as cassettes.... Earth Libraries takes avant-garde cassettes originally released by a New York artist-owned label and reissues them as vinyl LPs....
TELLUS: The Audio Cassette Magazine Anthology Vol. 1 is two metallic silver vinyl discs and 36 tracks of selections from the long-running series of multi-artist tapes compiled and issued by the downtown Manhattan imprint Tellus from 1983 onwards.
It's coming out on November 13.
Release rationale:
"... Tellus transformed the humble audio cassette into a magazine, commissioning and publishing new works by musicians, composers, visual artists, poets, writers, choreographers, and performers who were reshaping the boundaries of contemporary art. Each issue invited listeners into a world where no wave, industrial music, spoken word, Fluxus performance, electroacoustic composition, downtown pop, conceptual art, and avant-garde experimentation could coexist on equal footing.
... The thirty-track collection has been newly mastered from the original Tellus cassette masters, marking the first time these recordings have been officially available on streaming services in their original form. Earth Libraries further celebrates Tellus' enduring legacy with a limited-edition deluxe double LP, created in close collaboration with Tellus founders Joseph Nechvatal, Carol Parkinson, and Claudia Gould.... Housed in deluxe packaging, the release includes a booklet featuring new liner notes by Thurston Moore, original artist biographies, and an 11" × 17" reproduction of an original Tellus promotional poster.
"The story of Tellus begins, fittingly, at the Rum Runner Bar on Canal Street. There, in 1983, visual artist Joseph Nechvatal, curator Claudia Gould, and composer Carol Parkinson conceived an entirely new kind of publication. Portable cassette players were transforming how people experienced music, and the trio saw an opportunity to use the cassette itself as a curatorial medium—one capable of circulating work that traditional record labels, galleries, and magazines simply couldn't accommodate. Early recordings by Sonic Youth and Liquid Liquid sit alongside works by James Tenney, George Brecht, Takehisa Kosugi, Carol Parkinson, Y Pants, Live Skull, Shelley Hirsch, Lenny Pickett, Paul Dresher, Gregory Whitehead, and dozens of other artists whose work helped define one of the most fertile creative communities of the era.
"I would say it came out of and feeds into non-conformity," recalls Nechvatal. "This is music and art that has no place in the popular market."
Rather than viewing that as a limitation, Tellus embraced it as its mission.
"We just wanted an alternative," says Parkinson. "And we knew there were other people out there that wanted an alternative."
Produced through Harvestworks, the pioneering New York nonprofit dedicated to supporting artists working with sound and emerging technologies, Tellus became much more than an experimental music magazine. It functioned as an audio exhibition space, a publishing platform, a historical archive, and an international network connecting artists working across disciplines. At a time when access to recording equipment remained limited and independent distribution was difficult, Harvestworks provided artists with the resources and community necessary to realize ambitious sonic work, while Tellus ensured those works reached audiences willing to venture beyond conventional music.
Tellus emerged from one of the most vibrant cultural moments in New York history. Throughout the early and mid-1980s, Lower Manhattan's affordable lofts, storefront galleries, rehearsal spaces, and artist-run venues fostered unprecedented collaboration between musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, writers, architects, and visual artists. Painters formed bands. Composers built installations. Performance artists experimented with synthesizers. Genre became increasingly irrelevant and Tellus documented this world as it unfolded....
Just as important as the sounds themselves were the publication's visual identities. Each cassette arrived with newly commissioned artwork by some of the most significant contemporary artists of the period. Covers by Cindy Sherman, David Wojnarowicz, Walter Robinson, Jane Dickson, James Nares, and others reinforced Tellus' belief that sound belonged within the broader conversation of contemporary art. Rather than separating music from visual practice, the magazine dissolved those distinction entirely, creating a publication where every issue functioned simultaneously as an exhibition, a listening experience, and an archival document....
Alongside the anthology, Earth Libraries has produced a new short documentary exploring the remarkable story behind Tellus and the community that brought it to life. Featuring new interviews with founders Joseph Nechvatal, Carol Parkinson, and Claudia Gould, alongside artists and collaborators who helped define the magazine's groundbreaking vision, the film traces Tellus from its origins in downtown New York's fertile art scene to its lasting influence on experimental music and contemporary art. Through firsthand reflections and rare archival material, the documentary reveals how a small group of artists transformed the audio cassette into one of the most innovative publishing platforms of the 1980s. The film will screen exclusively at record stores, galleries, museums, and cultural venues across the country in advance of the anthology's November 13 release before becoming available online following the album's release.
It’s a fascinating document of a long-ago moment of cross-town musical traffic.
Among the treats on Vol. 1 is a piece by Sonic Youth titled "Scream".
In the liner notes, Thurston Moore recalls how he and Lee Ranaldo made the piece while Sonic Youth were in the middle of their first tour of Europe:
"We had discovered, one fine June day, a magical tunnel of sound in the modest town of Rolle, Switzerland.... This tunnel reverberated every utterance and ululation into a wondrous echo. Lee and I couldn’t believe our sonic luck – we began to hum, hoot, shout, and howl, with various pitched roars, exploring and challenging the dynamics of the space, giddy to its sonorous scape as they enveloped our vibratory receptors. One of us had fortuitously recorded this impromptu improvisation on our cassette recorder which we then began to introduce into our live performances. In some ways, “Scream”, as we titled the track, was my favorite “song” our band ever created." Upon their return to NYC, they found that they'd been invited to contribute to the first release on the new cassette label: "an audio magazine of sorts" focused on the reciprocal bleed-through "between the strictly experimental practices" at artspaces like The Kitchen and the noisier edges of post-postpunk rock festering in grungier less art-coded venues.
Another track on the Anthology that caught my eye is "Moonlight Ride", a 1985 track originally contributed to Tellus #10: All Guitars! by Bond Bergland.
Saqqara Dogs make a cameo in the book itself, as my kindly hosts, but their music appears in the 50 Lost Treasures fanzine:
Saqqara Dogs – World
Crunch (1986)
Formed
from the ashes of San Francisco industrial group Factrix, Saqqara Dogs could
not have roamed further from their start point: World Crunch is
unabashed cosmic rock, veering up out of the squalor of the Lower East Side to
caress the sky. Bond Bergland’s sustained drones of celestial guitar levitate
over a neo-tribal pulse of percussion and Chapman Stick bass. The nine-minute
“Greenwich Mean Time” is as awe-inspiring as the Aurora Borealis.
Bond also had a fine solo album out around this time - I particularly love the song "Found Wonder"
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