Tape-Beatles: Classic or Dud?

Any good?

Yes! The Grand Delusion is brilliant, hilarious and thought-provoking.

These guys are friggin great. AND they are from Iowa City.

could you describe them?

plagiarist / cut-up band from the mid-80's / early 90's (though they're still going), a lot more formallly 'collage' than say Negativland but still kind of making things that are almost sort of like songs, on the continuum of pop music to academic (or Negativland to John Oswald) they float around the middle

'Music With Sound' and 'The Grand Delusion' are the two key ones, the first one being kitchen-sink everything that sounds good to them collage, second one being a very heady mix-up of WWII propaganda with the occasional dose of 1992 Iraq War propaganda, the former illuminating the latter. There's a film version of 'The Grand Delusion' which is a flat out masterpiece made out of WWII footage & war newsreels. Actual film -- the master was edited directly from found stock, and in performance they project the center reel flanked with beautifully jumbled visual rhythm film loops to form a tryptich. Because of the aspect ratio, very difficult to document but if you're into visual collage like Bruce Conner / Arthur Lipsett / MTV / Christian Marclay's 'Video Quartet' then it's a major work

Later core members also recorded as 'Public Works' and introduced more synths / drum machines into their sound, worth tracking down. Worth mentioning that their album packaging was always beyond belief, you're missing a major part of what they do if you don't have the booklets or at least scans of them

& the visual sense was carried on by Lloyd Dunn on his incredible web pages, including pages for the band, and looks like they've got recent things I have to hear

http://pwp.detritus.net/

& 'Grand Delusion' is now on youtube, though they had to inset the flanked film loops to fit them, so it's not quite so epic as the full on tryptich form

waves
waves of
waves
waves of
waves
waves of
waves
waves of
waves
waves of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgKajW79uXU