VHS Head: filthy musical menagerie of mangled plunderphonics from VHS
May 25, 2016 5:15 PM   Subscribe

Ade Blacow is inspired by b-movies, particularly those captured on VHS. You could probably tell that from his moniker of choice. He also cites early Autecre, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, old prog rock, as well as 70s horror and 80s sci-fi films (YT, interview). To make his music, he samples from his vast collection of old movies on VHS, and thus VHS Head was born. You could call vapor wave IDM, if you're looking for short-hand.

He has only released music on Skam, home to Boards of Canada, Bola, Lego Feet and so forth.

Discography: Here's a bit more on sample selection and music production from Ade Blacow himself, also the source of the post title. And here's VHSHead.com, which has more information, plus auto-playing music.
posted by filthy light thief (5 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nice post! I just happen to be listening to Lego Feet right now. I was missing that Skam crunchy crunch sound.
posted by shortfuse at 5:23 PM on May 25, 2016


Yes! I just discovered VHS Head recently and have been listening to Persistence of Vision a lot. Good stuff. (Everything's coming up Skam these days - they just released an album of old material by Jega. On top of that massive surprise Autechre album this week, it's been a huge year for the lingering IDM faithful, all 50 or so of us. )
posted by Frobenius Twist at 6:32 PM on May 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Bonus link/free DL: VHS Head's mini-mix for MethLab Recordings (both SoundCloud links).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:13 PM on May 25, 2016


Also, as of a year ago, Ade was looking for more old VHS to sample (Twitter). From that interview on the OP, he was commenting on how hard it is to 1) get extended audio samples without dialog, and 2) how hard it is to get new old VHS because everyone seems to just be chucking their old tapes. On that, I was wondering if he might shift to making new old-sounding audio to "sample" fresh. Alternatively, there are plenty of gearheads who collect old gear and make music like they used to, so I think he could team up with such folks and make something weird and new. Like chopping up soundtracks to imaginary films, aka vaporwavedits ;)

Alternatively, he could turn to online communities for digitized copies of old movies, cutting down on the physical space needed for his craft. There's plenty of people who trade in this kind of thing.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:20 PM on May 25, 2016


Trademark ribbons of gold is one of my favorite albums ever. It was the soundtrack to a summer of absolutely fucking debauchery riding the bus for hours and hours to play shows out of town with me and my best friends old electronic group(with all the gear and not dying supplies in backpacks!), around in my friend who showed it to me's sketchy ass beat up SUV with almost no brakes that always felt like it was going to explode with it cranked, and just general silliness and surreality.

Every couple months something reminds me of it again, and i pop it back on and totally smile.

There's also great videos like this that have been made with his music.

2) how hard it is to get new old VHS because everyone seems to just be chucking their old tapes

There's plenty of internet VHS tape trading groups. A lot of them have prevailingly good prices compared to ebay/etc too, especially if you're willing to buy stuff in lots. There's definitely a lot good stuff still out there.

I've had no problem lately finding specific stuff i wanted for under $10(or even under $5, or under $1 sometimes) both online and at thrifts, and i've also run across quite a bit of awesome/hilarious/bad stuff for cheap.
posted by emptythought at 12:39 AM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


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