S'all in the post...

Dear wonderful people,

Those of you who check this blog at all regularly will have just cause for dissatisfaction with our (at best) erratic activity this summer. We all know that frequency is the lifeblood of blogging, and while Carnage has been doing a manful and impressive job to keep things afloat here, it's too much work for one man and I've been horrendously lazy in my own contributions. There are several reasons for this, none of which I'll go into in any depth. Firstly, I headed off to Sonar, came back in a right old pickle, and then delayed posting because I wanted to give a detailed account of my adventures, which obviously never happened, blah. Then I moved to London, had to find a job and sort out my living arrangements (while obviously getting fucked at every available opportunity). Though I'm not completely sorted with permanent work, I am at least settled in my flat and daily routines, and earning money, so I'm breathing normally for the first time in months.

There are several issues which have led me to re-think what we're doing here at TAPE. Before I go on, don't worry if you like what we do already - that's not going to stop. We're still going to post upfront tunes, blatter insouciantly about our good/bad/indifferent social excursions, and occasionally lapse into all-out musical fascism (that's Carnage's line of work more than mine...). So, when I say we're going to rethink, I just mean we're going to do more...

The main reason that I've been infrequent in my posting has been that I've started work. Now, I'm writing this very post at work, so you will gather that writing reams of solipsistic nonsense into the ether is something I have time and resources for, even when chained to my desk with a to-do list the size of Peter North's cock. The problem isn't writing - it's uploading music. I don't keep my music on my work computer and I can't be fucking around with YSI and its brethren when I'm suppose to at least look like I'm doing my job. Because I've always liked to lace my loping narratives with mp3s galore, I've not wanted to post, for fear I might let you down. But then it struck me..

The way that I'm going to keep my contributions to this blog frequent and healthy is this. I'm going to write posts, short, long, whatever, whenever I can, be it at work or at home. Now these will talk at length about music, tracks I'm digging, etc, etc, but they will not necessarily be accompanied by mp3s. To compensate, one or two days a week I will do a post that has minimal wordage but a whole bunch of mp3s to download, ones that I've chatted about in a previous post, available for you to pick up off YSI or whatever as normal. Now, this might not seem like a very significant change as far as you're concerned, but it makes a big difference to me - it means that I can pop up posts whenever I feel like it, with up-to-date news and views, and not have to worry about uploading the tracks. Then come the weekend or what-have-you, I can post a load of mp3s for you, at my leisure. See what I'm saying?

The other significant change is going to be content-wise. Now, we exercise full editorial control here (of course) and it's our opinions/tastes that will always form TAPE's backbone; but with the quiet success of the guest TAPEr's charts and interviews, I've decided to give that side of things a lot more room. Over the last two months, I've built up a solid collection of artists and DJs willing to give interviews, charts and exclusive mixes to us to present to you. So, if you enjoy reading and learning about electronic music, as well as listening to it, we want this to be your natural destination. Christ this all sounds horribly pretentious (even by my standards...). But as I've wasted time fucking around dejectedly on Myspace over the last few weeks, I've found myself thinking: Why isn't there a site that's updated super-regularly which just has loads of writing and regular tunes from the sphere of music that I so dearly love? Eh? And then i was like, duh, you have the blog you fucking fool but you're just not putting any effort into it. So, anyway, you can look forward in the coming weeks to Guest TAPEr's Charts from Philip 'The Sherbunator' Sherburne and Tim Sweeney (DFA/Beats in Space), interviews with My My (Playhouse) and Heidi, whose debut single with Riton 'Vejer' is rightfully tearing up the clubs at the mo, not to mention a host of other shit that ranges from just-about-confirmed to mere twinkle-in-my-eye.

I've taken up a lot of space and words just to say: Don't worry - we haven't given up. And we're going to come back stronger than ever. Just don't hold out for that Sonar diary I promised you so long ago...Fuck. I'm glad to be back

Yours Softly