Inspired by the early German electronic vanguard of Tangerine Dream and Conrad Schnitzler, and by the radical provocations of Throbbing Gristle, "I.A.V.C. Tapes" gathers the 4 foundational documents of Maurizio Bianchi's solo career, in chronological order: "Industrial Tape", "Atomique Tape", "Voyeur Tape", and "Cold Tape".

Working alone from his hometown Mantuan in 1980, equipped with little more than an analogue synthesiser, a tape machine, and a small bank of effects, 24 year old M.B. closed the chapter of his Sacher-Pelz project and inaugurated the body of work that would place him at the heart of European industrial music. Across roughly 12 months he produced an extraordinary run of self-issued and small-label cassettes that, in their density and consistency, remains among the most singular outpourings of any artist in the post-war avant-garde.

The four tapes gathered here are the documents of MB's arrival, fully formed, into that conversation. Industrial Tape, recorded in May 1980 and self-released as catalogue 01, is the founding gesture, four synthesiser-based pieces that move from proto-soundtrack territory into rhythmic loops, noise barrages, and slow corrosive drones. Atomique Tape, recorded in June, opens out into two long pieces in which low-end mass and corroded high frequencies are pulled across the tape in slow, irregular gestures. Voyeur Tape, recorded in July and issued shortly thereafter on Andrew Cox's YHR Tapes in the United Kingdom (YHR 005) as the first MB cassette to cross the Channel, leans hard into a sense of intrusion, the title declaring its own listening position. Cold Tape, recorded in the autumn and issued by YHR as the companion volume (YHR 006), emphasises out-of-phase loops and decaying tape, prefiguring by more than two decades the disintegration aesthetics later developed by William Basinski. Together, these four tapes constitute the inner architecture of MB's 1980, the year in which Bianchi essentially codified an entire vocabulary that the wider industrial and harsh noise traditions are still drawing on, more than four decades on. 

Ltd x 66 copies in a black cotton bag, with each of the four albums in its own gatefold digisleeve. The bag itself features a piece of banner canvas secured with metal staples (printed with the M.B. logo and the words I.A.V.C. Tapes). 33 copies have a white banner / black print and 33 copies have a black banner / white print. Each set also includes folded poster and an additional canvas insert of the opposing coloured banner featured on the front.

[ Listen to MP3 ] / [ Listen to MP3 ]