1991–2000
A grant from Intermedia Arts Minnesota enabled The Tape-beatles to finish their second work in 1991, a CD for the Canadian label DOVentertainment, entitled Music with Sound. This was the record that put The Tape-beatles on the map to some extent, garnering favorable reviews in Keyboard,[5] as well as putting them on the Top 10 Imports of the Year list in Pulse,[6] the in-store magazine for the Tower Records chain. It remains the work for which the Tape-beatles are best known.
Music with Sound not only established the group's signature style and technique,[7] it also provided The Tape-beatles with a coherent soundtrack upon which to base a live public performance. Using multiple image projection devices (16 and 8 mm film on reels and loops, film strips and slide projectors), as well as an array of strange and obsolete recording equipment culled from audiovisual surplus outlets (the 'language master', the 'calophone', the 'wollensak', etc.). The presentation was a barrage of discarded educational and motivational material put to a musical score that varied from the bombastic to the delicate and subtly constructed. The climax of the piece found the audience being surrounded by a single room-sized tape loop.
The year 1993 saw the release of The Grand Delusion (Staalplaat), a meditation on the U.S. Persian Gulf War and the historical context that created it.[8] In addition, the group refined their presentation approach, distilling it down to just three 16 mm projectors, used in a configuration the group named 'Polyvision', in honor of Abel Gance's pioneering movie techniques of the 1920s.[9] (Later this technique was renamed 'expanded cinema', and eventually 'performed cinema', by the group.)
In the meantime, Ralph Johnson moved to Oakland, Calif., to study composition at Mills College. Lloyd Dunn suspended all zine production (see PhotoStatic Magazine) and went on a yearlong trip abroad, spending most of the time in France (see The Expatriot), but also dropping in on John Heck, then living in Prague.
Upon Dunn's return to the United States, he and Ralph Johnson regrouped to form the duo Public Works. Using similar principles to the Tape-beatles, Public Works laid the focus on digital audio production, and tightened the emphasis on the making of music, with a reduced emphasis on pure sound collage or 'audio art'. 1997's Matter (Staalplaat) was the group's début recording. An 'expanded cinema' performance of that name was also created, and the group performed that and The Grand Delusion in a dozen cities from San Francisco to Berlin, Germany.
In 2000, Public Works released the EP Numbers on the Elevator Bath label. It explored the sounds of EVP (Electronic voice phenomenon) recordings, purported to document paranormal phenomena, and the so-called "numbers stations" that can occasionally be heard on the shortwave band. Some of the works sampled liberally from Akin Fernandez' "The Conet Project" recordings.
