Klinke, Alexandre: Subtropical Tape Sessions LP

Alexandre Klinke’s 'Subtropical Tape Sessions' is a fictional archive of found recordings, an imagined compilation of music ostensibly unearthed from deteriorating cassette tapes buried somewhere in the South American jungle. Inspired by the aesthetics of ethnographic field recordings and folk music documentation, the album presents a series of seductively organic electronic compositions buried in layers of tape warble, saturation, and environmental sound.

Birds, insects, ocean waves, and other field recordings—mostly captured in Brazil—form a humid backdrop for Klinke’s drum machines, synthesizers, guitar and bass. His sparse, rhythmic compositions, improvised and recorded on the fly, then fed through a mulch of different tape decks, effortlessly evoke the texture of aged recordings and imagined musical traditions.

Since migrating from Brazil to Canada in 2008, Klinke has been involved in a dizzying array of recording projects, sound art installations, and live performances; most of them under the moniker 'Playback Head' (See HS024 & HS038). 'Subtropical Tape Sessions' marks the first release under his own name in several years, and while texturally similar to the laid back oceanic atmospheres of PH, there is an invigorating bounce and wobble to this new music that clearly sets it apart. Drawing on his Brazilian musical heritage and the Anthropophagic Movement ethos of absorbing and transforming diverse cultural influences, Klinke blends rhythmic and melodic references from Brazilian and Afro-diasporic traditions with modern electronic production wizardry to wild effect. The result is a kind of speculative folklore; music that feels simultaneously archival and invented.