Video premiere: The Blank Tapes, ‘Electric Spark’

Kevin Bronson on July 13th, 2022

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In case you’re questioning your own commitment or productivity in these frenetic dregs-of-the-pandemic days, here’s where we’re setting the bar: The Blank Tapes. Which are kinda ironically named, because as you’ll see here there are likely very few blank tapes at Blank Tapes Headquarters.

Anyway, the Blank Tapes are the psych-rock outfit guided by musician and visual artist Matt Adams, who’s now ensconced in Joshua Tree. He reports that he’s been really busy lately as an illustrator … and no kidding.

In late 2021, the Blank Tapes pulled off the Stephin Merritt-like feat of releasing an album that spans 62 tracks, “Pop Rocks.” (The first is the 11-second riff “WTF,” but we’re counting it.) It follows the 17-song collection “Power Trio!,” released in the summer of 2020. If you’re a fan of ’60s-inspired guitar nuggets, the Blank Tapes’ Bandcamp page is your rabbit hole.

The songs on both releases were recorded on four-track cassette tape (a boon for the polystyrene biz) and, as Adams explains, are part of a huge cache of songs he has written and are in varying stages of development.

“I recorded the songs back in 2014 and 2015 to be used as demos, but after re-recording 20 of them (some of the songs appeared on my ‘Look into the Light’ and ‘Super Bloom’ albums, as well as an upcoming 40-minute release), I realized the task was too daunting to do the rest,” he says. “So I decided to just clean the demos up, add some back-up vocals and release the songs as a big double-double album.”

For four-track recordings, the songs on “Pop Rocks” have remarkable fidelity. And whether they are blasts of vintage rock, harmony-rich pop, ballads or dips into old soul, they have the warm, loopy feel that makes the Blank Tapes so inviting. If you’re old enough to have gorged on AM radio back in the day, waves of nostalgia might ensue.

Why did Adams decide to release these songs en masse?

“I had been sitting on these recordings for six to eight years at that point and didn’t know whether or not I was going to re-record them all and release them into a bunch of 40-minute albums years from now or just release the demos and move on,” Adams says. “I love huge, sprawling albums and projects like the Magnetic Fields’ ‘69 Love Songs,’ so I figured why not do the same. Also, I’m just trying to move things along because I have another 10 albums of new music that I’m hoping to release sooner than later, as well as another dozen albums to record.”

The video for “Electric Spark” is the work of Sean Olmstead, whose experiments in special effects are feats unto themselves.

||| Watch: The video for “Electric Spark”