The Tape-beatles approached their music, and the medium of tape, from the direction of collage, the most typifying art form of the 20th century. What better medium existed for portraying the essentially fragmented nature of this period in history? The Tape-beatles could see no other, and immediately applied themselves to the task of taking advantage of this insight before conditions changed.

In some sense, the Tape-beatles' late-eighties commitment to collage as a form was prescient (or just plain lucky). The issues inherent in the simple choice of using collage (which implies 'appropriation', which leads to a conflict with entrenched ideas of 'intellectual property') have become even more salient in the 'digital age,' as anyone who reads about technology in the news is well aware. To the delight of the Tape-beatles, and their sister group Public Works, their half-dozen major works remain timeless beacons of a set of crystalline moral imperatives, to wit, and we quote:

We make music that can be made by anyone. We take devices made for reproduction of music; i.e., for passive listening, and deflect them to the task of actively engaging their pseudo-secret possibilities to the production of new listening experiences that may come from the news, but never sounds like it.

We use Plagiarism(R) to critically expose that we have become what we have. What does it mean to "own" an idea? The Tape-beatles maintain that this is symptomatic of a diseased culture and like to quote Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

The much-touted idea of "originality" is deeply suspect when, for the past fifty years the art world has been hurling insults at the public, and being very "original" in doing so. It isn't sufficient just to be original - that's actually quite easy - the important thing is to be honest and give something useful to society. (Of course, they probably won't accept it.)

Main works
A subtle buoyancy of pulse (Cassette: 1988)
Music with Sound (CD: 1990)
The Grand Delusion (CD: 1993) (Cinema: 1996)
Matter (CD 1996) (Cinema: 1997)
Good Times (1999) (Cinema: 2001)
Numbers (Vinyl: 2000)
Minneapolis Summit with Escape Mechanism, Steev Hise and Wobbly (CD: 2001)
G.N.P. (Cinema: 2005)
"Sombre Gertrude - Piece for Strings" - published on the compilation rAdioCUSTICA Selected 2007