In 2005 I started a label with my then house mate Joe Breitenbach called No Horse Shit. It was named after a line from the Carpenter movie Big Trouble In Little China, which we we're both, and I guess still are, heavily obsessed over. It's a total inconsequential line to the film, but since we both constantly quoted pretty much the entire movie it made sense to us. I'm not sure who's idea it was to go with that name, but we did, and for about 3 years or so put out a handful of cassettes, CD-Rs, and one split 7-inch.
After Joe moved out NHS slowed down to an eventual dead stop. I decided to start from scratch and began doing 905 Tapes after my then girlfriend/now wife (let's be honest though, same thing, right?) bought a house in Wilmington, DE. The address being 905. No Horse Shit gave me some ideas as to what I wanted and didn't want to do with 905. I knew I wanted to release only cassettes, since CD-Rs always bored me. There are some digital NHS jams I didn't even keep for myself.
I also knew I wanted to have a consistent aesthetic to the releases, inspired mainly by Aaron Dilloway's Hanson imprint. I came up with the design for a JCard by quickly scanning a piece of bubble wrap that was on my desk and then decided to have the covers be on separate pieces of paper. The logo was also a quick, single-take scan of some linotype that I gripped from work. Everything sorta came together fluidly. Since the first releases everything has had the same JCard template, white shell tapes with the release number and artist on sticker paper, and clear Norelco shells.
I'm sure no one really gives a shit, but I overly dig seeing 905.1 and 905.101 with the same look. So far everything has been either cassettes or multiple cassette releases. The only thing that differs at all is 905.100, which is the “Deaf In The Valley” box set. It's two cassettes but comes with an art zine, all packaged in a brown kraft jewelry box thing with a clear plastic lid. It's still probably the release I'm most proud. Each artist on it submitted a track and a page of art, and I got to work with some amazing fucking people like Thurston Moore, John Olson, Joe Denardo, Britt Brown, Chris Pottinger… It's really some next level shit, at least in my mind.
There may be some plans in the future for vinyl releases, but I'm gonna keep that under wraps until I know it's definitely happening. Until then it's TAPES TAPES TAPES.
905 tapes sampler
Download it here.
01 Grasshopper, “Destroyed in Seconds” from Classical Music C20
02 GX Jupitter-Larsen from Brains On Backwash III C100 comp
03 Opponents from Scopes Sarcophagus C44
04 Quicksails, “Edgewater” from Vermillion C21
05 Shingles, “Night Beach” from White Out C30
06 Sound Out Light, “Mantra UFO” from split C41 w/ Chapels
07 Derek Rogers, “Flanked by Uncertainty” from From The World We Hid C30
08 Daniel J Moore, “Jacuse”
09 Fun & Head Molt, “2nd Perspective Mix 2” from Halftone Mud
10 Plasmic Formations, “The History of Why I Chose This”
