In December of 1989, the Taped Rugs studio became equipped with a fancy new four track cassette recorder. This new piece of equipment was used to record and/or mix all of the Herd Of The Ether Space cassettes that were released after its acquisition. The next few recordings that will be presented in this podcast series contain materials which were originally recorded in the 1980’s, but which were mixed and later released to the public in 1990.

The cassette entitled “Beyond The Confessions Of Hiss” contains recordings from three sessions featuring Goff and Silverman. One of those sessions predates all other Ether recordings, having been made during the days when –ING was still in its infancy. On June 7th, 1981, Goff joined Silverman for an electronic guitar tape loop jam at Silverman’s home overlooking Tilden Park in the Berkeley hills. In 1990, Goff blended portions of the recordings made that day with recordings that he and Silverman had made on November 2nd, 1989, to create the first side of the “Beyond The Confessions Of Hiss” cassette. The second side of the cassette contains recordings that Goff and Silverman created on September 30th, 1989.

Both 1989 sessions were recorded with a standard stereo cassette deck and did not employ any Frippertronic-style tape loops. However, a number of prerecorded materials were mixed “live” into both 1989 sessions. At a few points, a tape of prerecorded Goff vocals was mixed in through a cassette deck that Goff had redesigned to play tapes backwards. A tape of strange recordings made by George Gibson, entitled “Short Stream Long Dream,” colored the sonic landscapes in places as well. Guitars, voices, keyboards, toys, and several oddly-played record albums made up most of the rest of the source materials for the 1989 recordings. When Goff created the final mixes for the cassette, the controls of the four track recorder came into full play, as materials panned around, entered, exited, and even reversed themselves.

An odd bit of coincidence also came into play during the November, 1989, session. Silverman had brought a record of Edward R. Murrow news reports to incorporate into the session. As he and Goff grooved to Murrow’s historic reports about the Cold War and the building of the Berlin Wall, people in Germany were actually beginning to chip away at the Berlin Wall, which was finally breached a week later on November 9th, 1989. The “Hiss” in “Beyond The Confessions Of Hiss” refers to Murrow’s reports about accused Communist Alger Hiss, as well to the hiss of the old 1981 tape loop recording used in the mix. The finished “Beyond The Confessions Of Hiss” cassette was co-released in Norway on the Yecch Music Mania label of Anders Moe.

Here Taped Rugs presents from Side A: “Confessions Of Hiss” and from Side B: “Desperately Waltzing With Spock.”

THE AUDIO COMPONENT OF THIS PODCAST HAS BEEN REMOVED TO ALLOW MORE EPISODES IN THIS SERIES TO BE POSTED. IT IS NOW AVAILABLE AT THE LINK BELOW:
http://www.archive.org/details/BeyondTheConfessionsOfHiss