Since 2008, The Tapeworm imprint has been busy celebrating that most anachronistic of formats, the audio cassette, disseminating a series of highly-limited spools, featuring all manner of specifically commissioned sonic art, from feral noise infections to spoken word pieces and conversations with Derek Jarman.
The distinctive monochrome sleeves adorning these editions – the first 25 of which are collected here – reflect their esoteric content. Most display a spook of jagged cartoonish scrawl that’s instantly recognisable as the work of artist Savage Pencil, a fitting guide to the harshness inside. But other images, such as Dave Knapik’s The Lampshade Is Not A Past Tense or Oscar Henriquez’s Analog Apparitions, outline an amoebic-like galaxy of alien germ life, hinting at the parasitic infection described in Ken Hollings’ absorbing introductory essay. Alongside tales of country-listening cosmonauts, he celebrates an indefatigable mode of documentation and dispersal. In this context, The Tapeworm’s artefacts become totemic forms of defiance, affronts to contemporary high-tech culture’s easy-come, easy-go consumption strategies.
Between main street stockists sounding their death knell and the underground’s attempts at a format resurrection, The Art Of Worms presents a modest manifesto for the continuing existence of the humble audio cassette.
