Episode #217 | 5.31.26

The hosts of Tabs Out Cassette Podcast dive into a chaotic, genre-defying episode that turns a simple tape review into a sprawling exploration of underground music, obscure labels, and the absurdity of creative ownership. What begins as a casual conversation about a ferric oxide shortage spirals into a deep dive on experimental artists like Graham Dunning and Dial Alaska, culminating in a revelation: every tape they play shares a hidden theme—each is a reissue, bootleg, or rare release from a label that’s either dead, obscure, or reinventing itself. The episode’s true revelation comes when they realize that the entire block of tapes—Mortise, Imaginary Softwoods, Funeral Moon, Zathra, and Corvid One Cassette—were all released by labels that either reissue forgotten music, operate on limited runs, or are tied to underground collectives. The hosts, especially Jamie, revel in the mystery of these 'forgotten' tapes, with one tape even requiring triple permission from Tolkien Enterprises and Metal Blade. The episode ends not with closure, but with a celebration of the unknown—because, as they conclude, 'the mysteries are what keep life going.' The episode is less about music than it is about the ritual of discovery: the thrill of a shrink-wrapped tape with no label, the joy of a doodled cassette shell, and the absurdity of a label named 'Black Pylon' that might be a project or a label, or both.