Slow Blink: Tape Loop Weather Patterns
Proud DIY artist Amanda Haswell creates nostalgic analog compositions designed for physical objects
Tape loops were the hot thing in post-war academic art music.
Musique concrète inventor Pierre Schaeffer reportedly came up with the idea of splicing up magnetic tape to create loops of recorded sound. Éliane Radigue, Steve Reich and Karlheinz Stockhausen made heavy use of that technique, as did King Tubby, Brian Eno and John Lennon. Yes, that’s right. Ever heard The Beatles’ “Revolution 9”? All tape loops. With the advent of MIDI as a new recording standard in the 1980s though, analog looping went out of fashion.
The work of Chattanooga-based sound artist Amanda Haswell is reviving this laborious and error-prone technique even if loops can be rendered perfectly with just a few digital clicks these days. Under the name Slow Blink, she’s been creating grainy, nostalgic lo-fi tape loop pieces for a number of years, releasing them in small DIY runs of CD-Rs or tapes. Her deeply enchanting album Letters Home received wider distribution through Indianapolis-based ambient powerhouse Past Inside The Present.
Below you’ll find the transcript of our recent Zoom conversation; as you’ll notice, she’s not a woman of many words, but more of an introverted character who uses music and painting as her main vehicles of emotional expression.
What are some of your earliest memories of sound, Amanda?
I’m the youngest of four girls. When you’re the youngest, you easily get pushed out of the city limits, so to speak. You’re raised by a sibling, and you’re just not as much of a priority, because there’s so many other things to do. I remember being given busy stuff to do, so my earliest memory of creating sound is just banging on pots and pans.
Where did you grow up?
My family ping-pong’ed between North Carolina and Florida, but we’re actually from the Pennsylvania and Ohio area.
What role did music play in the household?
It was a very religious household, so it was all gospel type stuff, a lot of church music. I would say that chord structure influenced my ear training. It was a Pentecostal denomination, and they do a lot of drone elements before people start speaking in tongues, so there’s that element as well.
Did anyone play instruments around you?
My mother played piano, so we grew up with a piano in the house. I would come home and play things I heard in church. One of my sisters played clarinet, so I took that up when I was in middle school. I started playing guitar when I was in fifth grade.
At one point, every teenager wants to discover their own music. What kind of music did you get into?
Yeah, I definitely broke away from those vicious ties. (laughs) I was really into Tori Amos for a long time. One of my sisters got me into her. That was my foundation. It wasn’t until the years of Napster that I got into instrumental stuff, like Sigur Rós, Mogwai, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Explosions In The Sky, all those post-rock bands.
Did you start making music at the time too?
I did have a little stint in high school where I would make stuff in this program NoteWorthy Composer. I remember using a tracker program as well. There was one track that I took a recording from the church with the choir singing, and I made it really creepy. So I was doing little subversive things, but I didn’t have a name for it.
What’s your relationship to classical music?
Growing up, I was really into the Romantics, as in romantic classical music. I was into Rachmaninoff, you know, really dramatic stuff. I actually really liked and still like [Smetana’s] The Moldau – these symphonic poems that just take you on a journey. In some ways that might have influenced the longform composition approach I’ve been taking.
Were you playing in bands at all, or always a solo artist?
I’ve been solo for the most part. Haven’t technically been in a band outside of class, like being in a wind ensemble. I’ve done collaborations with people, but it’s usually just like, “Hey, I’ve kept this track. Do you want to add something to it?” I have another project that’s more singer-songwriter, Last Frost, used to be Hospital Call. It’s put on pause a little bit, because Slow Blink is my focus right now.
Was Hospital Call the first project when you started releasing music?
Yeah, I think that’s the first. Before I came up with that name, I was living in Portland, Oregon, in this large artist community. It was a great opportunity to share stuff I was working on with other people. We had a group where we would just share songs or poems. Before that, it was mostly just melodies and fragments floating around. This was the first time that I felt like I could really focus on finishing things I was working on musically. That was probably in 2010/11. From there, it became Hospital Call, and I started releasing stuff under that name around 2013/14.
What kind of artistic community was that?
It was just this live and work space in a former nursing home. It’s a really Portland story. (laughs) As a former nursing home is, it was kind of unwieldy. But I met some good folks there.
What inspired you to start working with tape loops?
Even before Portland, I lived outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for a little bit, where I started seeing different experimental, noise and outsider musicians at [bar/club] Nightlight. Then I moved to Whitby Island, Washington, an island not far from Seattle, and there was this natural grocery store that had shows in some back room occasionally. I saw people doing things I hadn’t seen before, and some of them were using cassette recorders. And then in Portland, I got to see Liz Harris [Grouper] perform. I was looking over her shoulder, and she had a bunch of tape decks with sticky notes on them. I guess that was her system of how to cue the tapes. She was playing along with a film that was projected in front of us. That’s when I was like: “Oh, tape loops. Those are really cool.”
Were William Basinski’s decaying tape loops an inspiration at all?
I’ve gotten that question a few times, but it wasn’t really until probably the last few years that I explored him. I’d say Grouper is more of an influence of mine than he is, for sure.
You’re calling your Slow Blink compositions “tape loop weather patterns”.
Yeah, maybe it’s the connection with the symphonic poems, that passage of time aspect. Weather patterns, you know, they change and move. It’s also a play on “weathering”, because tape loops, they do kind of weather away, with humidity for example. It might be in tune one day, and then the next day, when you go to perform live, it might be just slightly out of tune. There’s always something a little off.
What does your actual process look like?
I don’t use a lot of live instrumentation, at least at this point. It’s mostly tape loops, so I’ll record various parts onto tape and splice them and then make individual loops. I’ll have a four-track player, and that gives me the freedom to have more layers, more complexity, because I can lay down recorded loops and cue them based on the counter.
Do you use mostly self-recorded sounds, or found sounds too?
Actually the first loops that I made were from sermons. I found a big catalog, a set of sermons, which helped me learn how to make tape loops, because a lot of pastors are very melodic in their delivery, and it can be nice to figure out how long of this phrase can fit on a two-second tape loop, you know? So originally it was found sounds, but now I’ll play something with the instruments, and then I’ll record it so it’s all original loops.
Are you making all the artwork for your records?
I am. Sometimes it’s just quick photos on my phone that I edit. Sometimes it’ll be a drawing or a combination of photos and drawings. My college degree is in painting and drawing, so that’s my background.
Is there any type of spiritual practice that inspires your music or your art practice in general?
No, not necessarily. I’m not religious or spiritual myself. Maybe the residual effect, perhaps, of growing up in that. The closest I could say to a spiritual practice is just being out in nature. A lot of times that creeps into my music process. I’ve noticed that in other ambient musicians too, themes of earth elements and stuff like that.
You often release your pieces on analog formats, like cassette tapes and CD-Rs, accompanied by zines and drawings. One was literally a message in a bottle. What do you like about these artefacts?
In some ways, it feels like it fits the process best. Just having something physical, because a lot of times the sound itself – for some people, including myself – feels nostalgic. Some people will comment on it reminding them of memories, maybe not even their own memories, just this feeling of something distant or something past, which goes hand in hand with the feeling of impermanence. While everything is impermanent, the solidity of having a physical object makes me feel like it’s mine to treasure a little longer.
You’ve mentioned living in a couple of different places across the United States. You’re in Tennessee now, right?
Yeah, I’ve lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee for about six and a half years.
Is there a local experimental music scene?
There is. It’s smaller than, say, Nashville, because it’s a much smaller city, but we have a monthly program called Chattanooga Noise Night. Most of the people who come to perform are regional, and we might have one or two of us from Chattanooga play, but a lot of people who are on tour will come by, and it’s on its fourth year, so it’s been going for a while and seems pretty strong. People now see Chattanooga as a place to stop on their tour to perform.
How did you hook up with Past Inside The Present?
I did this collaborative release with Zach [Frizzell aka zakè, founder of PITP], Caelum, on his Zakè Drone Recordings label earlier in the year. One of the discs is all me remixing stuff and adding parts to his tracks. Zach is awesome.
Since Letters Home, which was only released in September, there’ve been two or three more projects popping up on your Bandcamp.
Yes, I just came out recently with another collaborative thing, Sun Path, with a friend here who goes by Oob and does excellent visuals. Actually this most recent Noise Night, we performed it live with visuals. He wrote the code for these three different systems that he fed my music into, and he had video footage from different walks that we went on, so it changed with all of those things. That was also the release day for the recorded version on VHS. It was beautiful, and it’s been received really well.
Is there any recent release from your local scene that was really inspiring to you?
There are a few actually, but we have a performer here who goes by Spife, and he does dungeon synth, I guess that’s what you’d call it. I feel each release is more cohesive, and it seems like he’s more comfortable in his approach and in delivering it in a solid way. He surprises me every time, so I find him very inspiring.
Slow Blink’s Letters Home is out now on Past Inside The Present. You can find the rest of her catalog on her Bandcamp page.