There are currently two tapes available from the Tape Library: the Spanish Amanda's Northern Lines demo retrospective, and Laura Watling's contribution of exclusive and demo songs. Take a look at the tracklisting for Northern Lines. It's 60 minutes, so when you order it it'll take up all the space on one tape. Laura's tape is 30 minutes so the only thing you can get on side B right now is a sampler of stuff that will be out on Sandcastle eventually. Later I hope to offer you other 30-minute selections so that you can pick & choose. As far as the other tapes go, I'm not really certain of anything at this point. I'm in a band now and perhaps we'll offer our first demo through the tape library, but we haven't recorded all of it yet. Anyway, have a look at Laura's tape, the Sandcastle Sampler, and Northern Lines. Do you have no idea what I'm talking about? Then read on...

  The Sandcastle Records Tape Library is an attempt to put some flavor into the mailorder aspect of Sandcastle Records. It occurred to me that no one would want to buy anything directly if they could get Sandcastle releases alongside new releases from other labels they liked. So, the SRTL is an attempt convince you, the music lover, that there is cause to order directly from us. Not only that, but it proliferates and preserves a side of many bands that would otherwise be forgotten, or worse yet, never known at all.

  The specifics creep up on us now. What do they tapes include? How are they to be made available? How much will they cost? What will the packaging be like? Who will perform on these tapes? When will they be made available? Firstly, the tapes will includes, well, just about anything. Tapes could include cover versions of the bands' favorite songs, some 'alternate versions,' demos, side projects, and who knows what else. The tapes are an outlet for a band that it wouldn't normally get. Perhaps not a widely experienced outlet, or a high fidelity outlet, but an outlet nonetheless.

  Availability is at the core of this whole concept. The availability will be made purposefully scant, unfortunately. However, these tapes will never go "out of print." The idea is to encourage fans to purchase their releases directly from Sandcastle, so of course these tapes will be indigenous to the mailorder portion of Sandcastle Records. What separates SRTL from your average, everyday tape label is that these releases aren't being *sold*. They are being copied, from me to you, us to them.

  That is to say that we're not selling these for a profit, we're copying them for you at cost. The SRTL will be a little section on my tape shelf. When someone wants a copy of any of these, I'll pop in a blank cassette, hit high speed dub, and when the smoke clears, the copy is produced. No fuss, no muss, just a copy. So it says 'Maxell' or 'Sony' on the side, so what. It's P!O!P!, bursting at the plastic seams, just itching for you to shove it in a tape deck and dance around your room like a fool. It's pure and it's simple. It's not a product, it's a favor. As such, the price will be only the cost of the tape & the packaging. No profit.

  Ah, now you're wondering about the packaging. Well, it's even simpler: a photocopy of something my printer will whip up. Possibly even hand-written by me. It's crappy-looking, yes, but one doesn't buy music for the image, do they? The point is, it's cheap, so you don't have to pay much.

Sandcastle Communications
160 Russell Street, Apt. 3L
Brooklyn, NY 11222 USA

e-mail: cellophanesky@mac.com