Master Tape, by Mute Swimmer

Master Tape

by Mute Swimmer

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Ben Osborn We might sometimes forget that Mute Swimmer is not just a songwriter but also a conceptual artist with a wicked sense of humour. This dreamy, ambient, lo fi avant-garde collection gives us a gentle reminder.

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Full Digital Discography

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releases

Get all 12 Mute Swimmer releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Master Tape, Matador, Old Love, Live at Altes Spital, Air Itself, Present Perfect, SECOND, Old Tricks, and 4 more. , and , .

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1.	Time Violation 03:06	buy track
2.	Three Mothers 02:43	buy track
3.	The Ballad of Andy Murray #1 01:45	buy track
4.	Late Birds 03:41	buy track
5.	Lullaby for Stefanos Tsitsipas 03:26	buy track
6.	Weather Front 02:55	buy track
7.	Infinite Waltz 05:04	buy track
8.	The Ballad of Andy Murray #2 02:24	buy track

about

Master Tape is comprised of eight guitar pieces recorded largely on an iPhone 5 Voice Memo App during televised tennis matches through autumn 2020 (namely the Cincinnati and Rome Masters, the US Open and Roland Garros). I wanted to do something on the fly, or as my friend Laurence says, to press record and see what happens.

A thrift shop nylon strung guitar, a laptop speaker and the ambient sounds in and around my apartment were the only sound sources used. In some instances I cut and manipulated sounds into new shapes; in others - what you hear is what you get - a piece for guitar and part of a game of tennis recorded in a room in Berlin with the absolute minimum technological fuss. Or, more fancily, if you like, a concurrent, geographically displaced moment in time.
........

To be a tennis fan is something of a curse. All sports, given any rational thought at all, become completely absurd to me. Unlike most sports however, with tennis you never know when the absurdity will end. It can go on for fucking hours.

It never ceases to amaze me how the spectacle of two (or four) people beating a small yellow ball back and forth over a piece of stringy fabric within an arbitrary declination of lines, can be so compelling and psychologically rich.

So, Master Tape is basically the product of a fan’s compulsion - and also a testament to the fatigue of that compulsion - which frequently drove me to pick up the guitar and ‘do something’ to remedy the ennui of passive spectatorship.

(I never really got into it, but I remember reading somewhere that the real purpose of fishing was to purposefully ‘do nothing’ - perhaps there is an argument that a protestant/consumer oriented society in particular needs this subterfuge to justify any state of ‘non-productivity’?. Anyway, for me, there is something to be said for being sufficiently distracted by one activity to indirectly pursue another. Often if I pretend (to myself) that I am doing something else, something (else) comes).

Occasionally I'm able to enter a kind of productive split attention where musical ideas drop in or are at least pursued beyond the attention I might otherwise give them. Often tentative or mistaken guitar fingerings (whilst watching the screen) became motifs, which in turn become little compositions. (Needless to say the 'master' in the title is the player of the tennis, not the guitar).

A number of existing songs in the Mute Swimmer catalogue have their origins here - not in a state of deep or even direct musical rumination, but just at the edge of attention - riding a bike, walking, shopping, washing up or watching a tennis match unfold. On this record I tried to get a little closer to that entry point and, for better or worse, make it explicit. Some pieces seem to me like little personalised haikus for a player or a match situation.

There was also something else about these tennis matches in autumn 2020 - played out during an international pandemic in hollow, empty arenas to virtually no-one - that to me at least seemed to heighten the existential absurdity and poignancy of more than just the sport of tennis.

In any case Master Tape is directly and indirectly inspired by the players and matches I watched during this time and I dedicate this album to them/those, to the absurd sport of tennis that I love, as well as the pleasures of home, solitude and wild indeterminism.

I hope you'll embrace the accident of them with your ears and enjoy.

MS005 / DDR078 Dendron Records 2020

credits

released November 6, 2020

Guy Dale - Acoustic Guitar

with percussion and backing vocals by:

Serena Williams, Denis Shapovalov, Maria Sakkari, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Johanna Konta, Coco Gauff, Jeremy Chardy, Andy Murray, Taylor Fritz, Naomi Osaka, Yoshihito Nishioka, Camilla Giorgi, Alexander Zverev, Viktoria Azarenka, Jurij Rodionov, Dieogo Schwartzman and Rafael Nadal.

.........

Mastered by Antonio Passacantilli - www.wolvesinsound.net

Cover image by Michelle Ettlin - echolot.ch
Design by Guy

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Mute Swimmer Berlin, Germany

Mute Swimmer is the music project of interdisciplinary artist Guy Dale. Through numerous releases and a changing cast of collaborators he has been shooting his fascination with the lyrical song through ambient folk, conceptual art, performance, post rock, drone and spoken word. ... more

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