The Tapes
Time Out Of Joint
*2025 stock. 60 copies limited edition* The Tapes, a cult-favorite act in the underground cassette scene, unveil their captivating album Time Out Of Joint. This rare tape captures the band's signature blend of experimental soundscapes and lo-fi grooves, drawing from psychedelic and ambient influences prominent in 1980s-90s indie releases.
Tracks on Time Out Of Joint showcase The Tapes' innovative use of tape loops, field recordings, and minimalist compositions. Standout moments include disorient…
Nastri Dimenticati
*93 copies limited edition* Giancarlo Drago's The Tapes project unearths Nastri Dimenticati ("Forgotten Tapes"), a collection that bridges the project's original 1982-1992 incarnation with its 2016 revival. These rediscovered recordings showcase the raw experimentalism that defined Drago's teenage years, when toy instruments and primitive recording techniques created accidental masterpieces.
The cassette format returns these sounds to their original medium, emphasizing the materiality of magneti…
News From Nowhere
*2025 stock. 80 copies limited edition* First album in 26 years from Italian brothers Giancarlo and Roberto Drago, the Genoese duo behind one of the most significant minimal-industrial projects to emerge from Italy's "Anni di Piombo" (Years of Lead). Active from 1982 to 1993, The Tapes released over twenty cassettes on their own Industrial Tapes label before moving to legendary imprints like Minus Habens and Amen.
Their inclusion in the Strut compilation Mutazione: Italian Electronic & New Wave …
Teletyp
*2025 stock. 240 copies limited edition* Giancarlo Drago's The Tapes project continues its archaeology of forgotten technologies with Teletyp, named after the obsolete communication devices that preceded modern digital networks. The album transforms the mechanical rhythms and electronic interference of teletype machines into compositional elements, creating a sonic bridge between analog past and digital present.
Drago's approach treats obsolescence as opportunity, finding new music in abandoned …
The Tapes / Intolerance + Chant d'amour (2 tapes + Amen - This Is Religgion N° 6 fanzine)
Very rare complete 6th issue of Amen magazine including the experimental / synth-wave split tape by The Tapes and Intolerance plus the all-French electronic/industrial/zeuhl cassette compilation including Pacific 231, Vox Populi!, Phaeton Dernière Danse, Le Syndicat, Prima Linea, Shub Niggurath and Clystere.
A Touch Of Despair
*200 copies limited edition* The project "The Tapes" by Giancarlo Drago developed over a span of 10 years, between 1982 and 1992, before being revived in 2016 in Genoa, Italy. In 1982, Drago was 16 years old and recorded his first tape using toy instruments and creating loops with cassettes, influenced by industrial and new wave music. During that time, a friend gave him a self-built analogue echo unit that produced an incredible background noise, which would become a hallmark of many compositio…
Selected Works 1982-1992
A fascinating, often dizzying insight to the primitive industrial minimalism of Italian siblings Giancarlo and Roberto Drago aka The Tapes, sourced from original tapes and pressed to vinyl for the first time ever. This set surveys a blind spot in most people's knowledge of early-'80s Italian underground music, framed against a backdrop of the Anni di piombo or Years of Lead -- a period of domestic political turmoil between the late '60s and early '80s -- and the mushroom shadow of nuclear war. L…