"Collapsing Drums tells the stories that matter in a post-pandemic world" - The Wire Collapsing Tape is a sprawling 23 track compilation which celebrates 5 years of the Collapsing Drums label via a diverse pool of artists working across experimental music. It’s really hard to condense the amount of sounds going on in the 90 minutes — but here’s a brief attempt: there’s abstract vocal play (Elaine Mitchener), warm squishy electronics (Luke Sanger), frenetic turntablism (Mariam Rezaei and Dali de Saint Paul), Bristol freejazz-adjacent art-rock (Ex Agent), non-linear hiphop (Mr AKA Amazing), and a track in which you can hear the washing up pile collapsing (The Collapsing Beat Mix of The Jonny Halifax’ Invocation). There’s irreverent, dubby house music from DJ Marcelle, haunting post-Tropicalia vocals from São Paulo (Fantasma do Cerrado) and two angles on pure percussion — Valentina Magaletti and Fanny Chiarello’s urgent ‘Migraine’ and Dan Johnson’s bottle-based ‘Pictures of the Actual Objects’ What this isn’t is a random compilation without shape. While it’s dense and multi-genre, the audio journey is carefully constructed — a textured, intentional movement through rupture, mess, humour and repair.
