Art gags: don’t you just hate them? Especially when they’re made by artists. If it’s going to work at all, you’ve got to commit to it – ideally by just keeping on pushing the idea past all decency until it becomes funny out of spite. Maya Verlaak and Andy Ingamells’ Tape Piece is an uncommon creature, being a composition made in 2012 which has since been performed on repeated occasions. It’s a duet in which each performer wraps themselves in a roll of adhesive tape and then, having accomplished this, break free of their self-imposed bonds. A cute pun, an amusing gimmick and it makes an entertaining little piece. I think I’ve seen a performance myself, but while trying to confirm this started to doubt that I really had. This hazy and possibly false memory speaks both to the work’s conceptual simplicity and its lack of substance.
Now, Verlaak and Ingamells have released a recording of the piece and have done it a great service by pushing the idea further. This is an entirely analogue production, recorded direct to tape and then dubbed onto a limited edition of cassettes. (Digital download is available for the less fashion-conscious.) More than an obligatory act of documentation, the recordings take on a new life as music, without the distraction of the theatrical gag. It also helps that the sound here is loud and detailed, which was mostly lost in my (fanciful?) experience of the live performance. You can truly enjoy it as a piece of old-school electronic noise – a genuine tape piece. The recordings are direct and unpolished, with each sound brutally impersonal, even the vocalisations during some of the more diffult ‘escape’ sections. Tape Piece is evidently one of those odd ideas that persists in the creators’ minds, that takes on greater significance and necessity as wider implications become clear. The composition is in three movements (each using a different type of tape), summoning up various associations and comparisons both within the piece and to other compositions; it is specifically a duet, which opens up greater sonorous and structural complexity while also inviting unspecified cultural allusions.
It’s a brief piece: four realisations have been collected here for the listener’s discernment. The brand names of tape are identified in the notes, but unfortunately not the recording dates or venuesyou have to look at the inlay card and read the recording dates and venues, it’s printed right there you dope.
[…] of Verlaak’s pieces have tended towards the stunty (cf her Tape Piece collaboration with Andy Ingamells or Females premiered at Music We’d Like To Hear in 2018) […]
[…] described one piece by Andy Ingamells before (in collaboration with Maya Verlaak). In Petting Zoo, his method is […]