Laura Leif and Amber Phelps Bondaroff - Objects of Our Desire (2010)

Now this tape is NOT a hardcore tape. Yet it still came in the same collection that David Tighe passed our way. We just mention that for the sake of clarity.

Technically, this is a Montreal tape, recorded during winter in that city as a project in which Leif and collaborator Amber Phelps Bondaroff "wrote, recorded and performed eight original "serenades" for household items that needed cheering up." But since Leif is so strongly tied to Calgary, we're going to claim this as ours as well. 

It's hard not to call this tape charming or twee because... well, it kind of is. The two songwriters softly sing and strum their way through these ten songs with a wonderful economy of arrangement. 

You can read more about the project and download the tape from Laura Leif's bandcamp.

Rape Revenge - Live 2011 (2011)

We're continuing with the hardcore tapes, with this one from local riot girls Rape Revenge. This is a live tape (the band did have proper releases), so the sound is a bit, well, uneven and so it's a bit tricky to pick out the "aggressively political" messages in Samantha Trees' lyrics.

Someone was good enough to grab some video of this dear, departed band from the dear, departed New Black:

Get revenge here.

Lab Rat - Dollhouse Demos (2009)

Forward again in the CCPS time machine! Despite the presence of a bandcamp site and a video (below), we don't know much about Lab Rat, other than, well, they're another band in our city's fine hardcore tradition. Thankfully, we found some youtube footage to prove their existence:



Get vivisected here.

Ummm - Ummm (2004)

We're shooting forward a few years with this tape, and it's being presented as one single mp3 file since, uh, we don't know how else to present this. Ummm play their songs fast, short, and, well, in such a way that we can't really tell where one ends and the next begins. The j-card indicates that there are 21 tracks on here - but we'll be darned if we can tell exactly where these slices of hardcore start and end.

Maybe you can?

Plastick - Plastick (2015)

One of the big questions around the CCPS offices recently was, "when will Shake! release another batch of Calgary tapes?" The question was NOT, "when will Kamil Krulis start a new band?" However, both questions asked and unasked have their answer in this new (and very limited) release from our favourite Victoria-based tape-makers.

Plastick is indeed a new Kamil band, with the legendary (?) frontman (!) backed up by a band of three gals, including the drummer from Hag Face. Where Kamil's other current thang The Slabs grooves and parties, this endeavor broods and sits sulking in the corner. There's a bit of a goth/new wave vibe with this, as is the current fashion with the kids apparently - we assume chorus and delay pedals are selling like hotcakes these days.

You should be able to pick up a copy of this at Sloth, or as part of Shake!'s Splatter Series 1.