Картаскважин audio cassette label

Картаскважин – cassette quasi-label

[картаскважин] – ex-[ниша] – Kartaskvazhin is a audio cassette quasi-label started in St. Petersburg in 2018 and acts like a radar detecting abnormal seals in the subcultural folds of Russia.

Intro

From their SoundCloud profile, it is evident that Картаскважин is a music label that specializes in producing and promoting electronic music. The label has an impressive catalog of tracks that span a wide range of sub-genres within the experimental electronic music genre.

Картаскважин features a well-curated selection of tracks, which showcase the label’s commitment to quality and artistic integrity. The tracks are diverse, ranging from ambient, techno, experimental, and house, among others. Each track is produced with exceptional sound design and has a unique character that sets it apart from others in the same genre.

Moreover, the label seems to have a strong focus on collaborating with emerging artists, as evidenced by the number of tracks they feature from up-and-coming artists. This approach suggests that Картаскважин is not only committed to promoting quality music. But also nurturing the next generation of electronic music producers.

Overall, Картаскважин appears to be a reputable and reliable music label that offers a diverse range of high-quality electronic music. For fans of electronic music, Картаскважин is a music label worth following.

By the way their YouTube channel features an extensive collection of high-quality music videos. Showcasing the label’s commitment to producing visually stunning content to complement their music. Each track is produced with exceptional sound design. And has a unique character that sets it apart from others in the same genre.

Moreover, their label’s YouTube channel features interviews and behind-the-scenes content with emerging and established artists. Providing fans with an intimate glimpse into the creative process behind the music.

Latest release: “MM” by Reather Weport

The 24th release of the Kartaskvazhin label is an updated and expanded reissue of the MM (Морские Механизмы – in Russian: Marine Mechanisms). This album, self-released by the Reather Weport project in 2018.

Through his releases, RW addresses various physical aspects of the planet Earth. And the Universe as a whole, being especially interested in their anomalies, extreme and borderline manifestations. As well as illusions of human consciousness associated with the perception of reality. Turning to unexpected sources of sound and using non-obvious methods of manipulating it. RW creates his own unique worlds, so far from our usual, but at the same time very convincing.

The MM album is a very tightly coiled ball of meanings, references, associations and interpretations. On the one hand, this is the utopia of the underwater world. And the surprise of meeting with the amazing inhabitants of the deep sea and longing for a lost paradise together with the inability to either go back or build a new one. On the other hand, it is the actualization of personal memories and experience of each individual listener. Here, for example, are Tim Six’s words about MM: <<Waves, loops, beams, reflections… A warm noise, appearing on that thin line where the music falls like a waterfall into silence. Be it the noise of a tape or the ocean is not so important, because it already has everything. Scenes from Cousteau’s half-forgotten documentaries, the tropical haze of adventure books, the coolness of thickets in the far corner of your childhood yard, where a treasure with precious shells was buried. Footprints on the sand of memory left by the surf of childhood. The music of a relaxed drift towards the islands of blessed calm.>>

Quality

The main quality of MM is the presence of life both in the sound form of the album and in its content. And now, having the first finished copy of the cassette as a result of all the preparatory work that we carried out together with the author. I understand that the physical embodiment of the release is a way to endow MM with some more properties of a living being. And more broadly – to give it a material dimension, to give be born into our world. After all, this is not just a finished set of cassettes. Firstly, there is no circulation as such: according to the plan, the cassettes will be recorded as needed as long as the label exists. Secondly, each subsequent cassette will be copied from the previous one. The copy will be made from the copy and not from the master tape.

Moreover, only recycled cassettes with varying degrees of tape wear are used for this release. This way each subsequent copying will sum up the artifacts of all previous copying steps. And the noise fraction will gradually increase. The booklet (which content is a separate dimension for immersion) for each cassette will be copied in the same way as a tape and will be a copy from a copy. So this creature will develop (or degrade from the usual point of view of a person), already without our direct intervention.

By ordering a cassette you are participating in the continuation of the MM’s lifecycle.

Outro

The digital release contains a digitization of the first copy of the cassette. For which the original 2018 recording has undergone little remastering. If you want to refer to the original version of MM, it lives on the Reather Weport project page: 2noia.bandcamp.com/album/mm

Your support means a lot!

Guillermo Wafula