This came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
The Elephant 6 imprint is the tipoff here: Like every CD from this label / music collective featuring Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel and Apples In Stereo, Music Tapes offer indie-pop from way out in left field.
Tapes players Julian Koster and Jeremy Barnes are from NMH, but this disjointed, crazy-quilt opus more readily recalls OTC’s odder moments. Using everything from ancient radio and TV samples to bouncing basketballs, the duo jumble ’60s Beatles-pop, DIY chamber-folk and post-psychedelia into a hallucinatory concept piece about (listen up, now) a frustrated inventor who creates TV to turn everyone into trivial failures like himself, and then traps his son Superman in the set, unaware that TVs are really alien beings who travel the cosmos observing other races, and want to free the trapped hero. It’s part fairy tale, part fever dream — and wholly unforgettable.
