‘Google is your friend’ they say. Hell I know I’ve written it more then once when it comes to completely unknown acts and when I want to find out a bit about them. Google, Discogs, Bandcamp, stuff like that … All places where you should be able to find out stuff, FFS (the meaning of that acronym can be found on Google BTW). So here I have a project of which I can’t find anything other than: Hot Tag, Massachusetts, https://hottag.bandcamp.com as well as genre: Experimental and tags: noise, jazz and improvised music, plunderphonics, experimental. Very possibly it’s a duo named Josh and Cam. But don’t you dare to sue me if I’m wrong!
With the tags you just read you already have a strong indication where to place this release. In six tracks over 37 minutes you are served with music consisting of cut-up techniques plunder phonics with layers of improvisation with guitars as well as noisemakers (pedals?). No lyrics but plenty of words. No music yet plenty of musical parts. No solos or riffs yet plenty of guitar. This is not really my kind of music but after listening to it a few times I think I am starting to understand why this is a (sub)genre in experimental music. After all, working with ‘samples’ in all their variety is something that has been done for ages. Visually we have – only as example – Herzfeld / Heartfield who made some great statements and the whole hip-hop and electronic scene is built on sampling and resampling stuff; from that one Amen break unto DJ Shadow, Fat Boy Slim and the Prodigy. Y’all know it better than I do.
So from that perspective plunderphonics as performed by Hot Tag is a different approach to creating art from other art. And they’re doing a good thing! Fun to listen to, though not the world changing quality like for example Negativeland or previously mentioned DJ Shadow. But since Hot Tag doesn’t pretend to be it’s all ok in my book. The first three tracks are for me personally to get into it a bit and with track 4 (“Extreme Jazz in America”) being the one to connect those forst track to the final two tracks, those final two, “D.E.N.T.” and “Maury” are really very good. With “Maury” being the highlight of this album. Fun times!
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