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Join The UnCola tonight at 8 PM est on 103.3 Asheville FM for our final show of 2023 – it’s Volume 5 of Forgotten Soul from the 70s & 80s.

From full albums to EPs and mixtapes, 2023 was a banner year for cassette releases. As author and music journalist Marc Masters notes in his fantastic book, “High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape,” (paraphrasing,) cassette culture never really went away. Though its viability as a mass-consumer medium dipped since the advent of the compact disc, it’s remained one of the most affordable and immediate ways for artists to circulate their ideas and establish individuality.

Tapes are warm, analog, and portable. Not easy to find something to play them on these days outside of thrift store pile-ups, vintage gear displays in vinyl shops or, for a fortunate few, (yours truly included,) folks who drive cars manufactured before 2007. Charmingly faulty at times, it’s much easier to fix an unwound tape than salvage the skip on a record or CD. All you need is patience and a #2 pencil. (A pen can work but the hexagonal grip of a pencil turns the teeth on those reels far more efficiently. Pro tip.)

For back-in-the-day nostalgists, finding that long lost treasure or a wayback fave feels like time-travel. Slam it in the deck and relive the rush of discovery. Modern tape hounds sniff around small labels online knowing some new, bespoke limited-edition drip can drop at any time; usually on Bandcamp Fridays. But come Monday, they might be gone.

I am all of those people. The guy who values his car more for its tape deck than its transportation. The fool with the pencil swearing at the spool. The thirsty troll sated by esoteric scarcity. I couldn’t grip all of the magical tape releases this year, but these beauties will stay some of my favorite commute or errand soundtracks for a long, long time.

Pilgrim Party Girl – WPPG  (hand-made, self-released, local pop abstraction)

Laurel Halo – Awe (AWE, mixtape of outtakes and influences from Atlas)

Pö – Cogiage  (Hakuna Kulala, French-Ugandan avant-grime)

The HIRS Collective – We’re Still Here (Get Better Records, the sweetest powerviolence imaginable)

Aaron Dilloway – Bhoot Ghar (Hanson, “sounds of the Kathmandu Horror House”)

B. Cool-Aid – Leather Blvd.  (Lex, a guided tour of the dopest fictional ave, anytown)

Agriculture – Agriculture  // Ragana – Desolation’s Flower  (The Flenser, ecstatic black metal // doom screamo torch songs)

Saint Abdullah & Jason Nazary – Looking Through Us  (Disciples, Arabic/Anteloper soundsystem destroyer)

DJ 0.000001 – Recombinant Shangaan Mixtape  (Nyege Nyege Tapes, high velocity Sub-Saharan rave-up)

perila – on the corner of the day  (Shelter Press, ambient curiosities explore imagined settings)

Japan Blues – Meets the Dengie Hundred  (DDS, resonant gongs and field recordings folded into hypnagogic folk impressions)

New Psycho-Actives – Bug Mall, Vol. 3  (DOSed, soundtrack to Swannatopian shenanigans)

Ann Margaret-Hogan & Regis  – Νοσοκομείο Των Κτηνών (Hospital For Beasts)  (Downwards, evocative nocturnes somewhere between shoegaze bliss and melancholy romance)

Yellow Swans – Left Behind  (Yellow Swans Archive, dispatches from a long-lost noise pond)

Cave Grave – Unfurling Putridity  (Hand of Death, local grindcore to the max)

Andy Votel – Etudes Du Métal Ortolan  (DDS, madcap mixtape of 20th.c classical and concréte dervishes)

Jeremiah Chiu – In Electric Time  (International Anthem, vintage synth improvisations)

Michael J Blood – SAMIZDAT Disenfranchised Refuseniks  (BLOOD, based R&B syrup, DIY/anarcho quiet storm)

Marc Masters – High Bias: Music from the Book  (self-released, survey of contemporary cassette labels)

Nina – Aether  (Trilogy Tapes, martian transmissions from beneath the Berlin club underground)

Merzbow – Rainbow Electronics  (Uroshima, bc sometimes you, and everyone in earshot, needs a harsh noise bath)

Donovan Quixote, December 2023

It’s the 2023 Christmas-ish show on Radio Active Kids! We have TONS of new Christmas-ish songs by the likes of Sonia De Los Santos, Music with Michal, Alphabet Rockers/JuliAnne Wright/The Smithereens on a comp by Cure 4 The Kids Foundation, CLARALUNA (ft. Tu Rockcito & Katamaran!), POCO DROM, Suzi Shelton (ft. Strawbitty Yops & Mil’s Trills!), Simone Ludwig, Jessa Campbell & the Saplings, Itty Bitty Beats, Levity Beet, Susan Salidor, DJ Willy Wow, Yam On, Sukey Molloy, Suzanne Jamieson, Happy Singing Kids, & The Funtones!!! 8-10am ET Saturday at ashevillefm.org/show/radio-active-kids or the Asheville FM app & podcasting at https://anchor.fm/radio-active-kids