Basement Tapes
An Audio-Visual Time Capsule
Basement Tapes is a platform for showcasing and preserving the work of Queer, BIPOC, and underrepresented DJ’s within electronic music. Each livestream becomes part performance, part visual experiment, and part cultural archive—documenting the often ephemeral brilliance of underground scenes.
Born during the isolation of the pandemic, Basement Tapes is a hybrid media project that bridges live performance, digital archiving, and experimental visual art. It was sparked by the global shift to home-studio DJ sets and livestreams, where a new wave of online creativity began to unfold. Inspired by this shift, Basement Tapes explores VJ’ing, video feedback, analog-style video synthesis, and custom-built Raspberry Pi systems to craft immersive visual environments in real time.
Visual teasers were created as part of the rollout leading up to episodes.
These promos function not just as previews, but as immersive fragments of the larger narrative.
Every element—from sound design to pacing to visual distortion—was designed to feel unearthed rather than produced.
Together, these promos serve not only as teasers, but as extensions of the world the project inhabits.
Building on the analog energy of Basement Tapes, this section dives deeper into the tools and techniques used to create the project's visual language—rooted in real-time manipulation, signal degradation, and handcrafted image processing.
The aesthetic leans heavily on visual feedback loops, CRT distortion, waveform bending, and analog-style synthesis—drawing inspiration from early VJ culture, experimental broadcast art, and hacked video gear. A mix of custom-built Raspberry Pi systems and modified analog devices are used to route, disrupt, and remix live video signals, often passing through gear like the Edirol V-4 video mixer, vintage camcorders,
Unlike digital presets or rendered effects, these visuals are shaped by real voltage and light—fragile and imperfect, created in the moment. The Edirol V-4 plays a central role as a live video performance hub, enabling on-the-fly switching, BPM-synced effects, and feedback layering. When paired with Raspberry Pi-based video synths (often running custom Python scripts or tools like Hydra or r_e_c_u_r), the result is a responsive, hands-on system for generating glitchy textures, color warping, and recursive environments.
This approach is grounded in a DIY ethos: building tools from scratch, modifying outdated tech, and embracing the unpredictable nature of analog error. It’s less about perfection and more about process as performance—where the act of patching, looping, and reacting becomes part of the artwork itself.
Basement Tapes Vol. 1 Book - SOLD OUT
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Basement Tapes Vol. 1 Book - SOLD OUT *
Over 125+ pages featuring 35 mm analog photographs of our guests and fun facts about them. Visual stills from the episodes are also included. Made to order.
