Tapage
About
Tapage is the solo project of Tijs Ham, a prolific Dutch electronic musician who weaves complex, distorted electronic rhythms with dark, drifting, ethereal melodies. For well over a decade now, Tapage has been writing a wide variety of experimental electronic music. In his work he uses anything to persue his own sound. Inspired by IDM, noise, ambient, as well as Post-Rock and Avant-Garde composers, Tapage continues with his vision to merge complicated, harsh rhythms with dream-like atmospheres to create a unique dynamic that is virtually impossible to ignore
Inspired by the harder, more glitch-heavy end of IDM (Autechre, Somatic Responses), Ham began producing music in 2002, contributing to tracks by Dutch hardcore techno artist Ophidian. Tapage began appearing on compilation 12"s on Ophidian's Meta4 label, and the two artists released a collaborative EP on Bionic Recordings. Tapage collaborated with Meander on the Hydromedusa EP released by Meta0 (a sublabel of Meta4) in 2006.
Tapage then signed to American label Tympanik Audio, who released his debut full-length, The Institute of Random Events, in 2008. Differing from the hardcore techno styles of his 12" releases, the album explored more downtempo and industrial textures. His second full-length, Fallen Clouds, followed in 2009, and Madhouse Recordings released The Financial Times, another hardcore 12" EP with Ophidian, during the same year. In 2010, Tapage collaborated with Meander for Etched in Salt, a full-length album released by Tympanik Audio. The album was brighter and more melodic as well as more rhythmically complex than either artists' prior work. Tapage began 2011 by releasing Seven, a more downtempo album, on digital label Raumklang Music. Also that year, he returned to Meta0 for the release of a digital EP titled Irukandji, and he began releasing an enormous amount of music on his SoundCloud page, often including his more ambient material and abstract sound design.
He also released his fourth solo album, Overgrown, on Tympanik Audio. In 2012, Ham created a digital label called Tapeface, which released a new single or EP once every new moon. Tapage returned to the realm of physical media in 2014 with Eight, a guitar-heavy downtempo-leaning full-length, issued by German label Ad Noiseam. In 2015, Tapage collaborated with Espoir on an experimental ambient cassette titled Poetic Infomercial Experimentalism, issued by Dutch label Moving Furniture Records. Also in 2015, Tapage returned to Tympanik Audio for another numerically themed album, Five & Six. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi
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