The Son Of Revenge

"This is the sixth or seventh incarnation, I suppose, of the original idea of The Mysterious Tape Man,” the guitarist explains. “I started in 2003, so this would be the tenth year I've been doing it. I did Tape Man, Ghost of Tape Man, House on Haunted Hill, I did Two-Headed Tape Man and I had Planet of the Tapes and now I'm doing Tape Wolf. It's still esoteric surf-thrash, but now I'm half-man, half-tape, half-wolf.”

Lightning Tape Wolf is a kind of project that has flourished in the technological age. The latest in a series of aliases from New Zealand underground luminary Dylan Herkes, Lightning Tape Wolf delivers scuzzed-out, lo-fi surf-thrash via cult independent cassette label Stink Magnetic. In an earlier world, his following would be provincial at best. As it is, Herkes has sustained his project for ten years with a fanbase that spans continents.

“This is like my fourth or fifth tour I've done to Australia in the past ten years. I've done other international tours too. A lot of national tours of New Zealand as well, of course,” Herkes says. “It's my main focus as a musician, at the moment. It's just kind of evolved from home tape recordings to having to play it live and so on and so forth. It originally was just an outlet. That sort of thing.”

“You know, you're in a band and you have songs that don't really fit with what the band are doing so you just record them yourself and kind of keep them to yourself. That's all it was when it started out and it's just evolved into what it is today, really,” the guitarist elaborates.  “I'm totally surprised that people are interested. I'm just glad people enjoy it. I'd just be doing it anyway.”

The irony being that Lightning Tape Wolf is, in many ways, a project about technology's shortcomings, or lack thereof. Across his many projects, Herkes has repeatedly asserted that it's neither technique nor technology that makes for good art but ideas and inspiration. Lightning Tape Wolf (and its various predecessors) is the ultimate embodiment of those philosophies – Herkes actually performing swathed in reams of tape.

“I'm not really a very good guitarist or musician, but I know the song. You know, you might get off the phone one day or wake up one morning and you might have a really good picture of a movie in your head,” Herkes explains. “You don't know how to make a film or whatever, but you've got a very good picture in your mind and you just try your best to describe it. That's how I feel about it.”

“I think a lot of people get a lot of anxiety about being good musicians or making a good recording and I think people can get hung up on that stuff unnecessarily,” he elaborates. “Particularly these days. You know, you theoretically have every ability to make it perfect. To re-edit, re-tune, everything. But, that's so uninteresting. All the magic of actually engaging in the world. The mistakes, the things that naturally just happen.”

“You know, all of that gets taken away when you get too hung up on that idea of things being perfect. You miss it all,” Herkes concludes with a laugh. “Like, my songs may never really turn out the way I want them to or expect them to, but I almost prefer it that way. It's more interesting. I like the surprises. For me, it's not about being perfect. It's about the energy and the realness of it. Being honest and real and enjoying that.”