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lots of new Harsh Reality Music reissues

8/8/2019

Hello EC amigos! It has been a long time since I have posted here at the EC website, and I want to tell you about six Harsh Reality Music label archival reissues from recent weeks. Jerry Kranitz, Hal McGee and I have been busy creating pages on the HalTapes website for HRM 13 through 18. All of these albums were originally issued on cassette in 1985 and they are offered up here for the first time in legit, authorized versions, which include transcriptions of the original cassette masters, reviews of each album by Jerry, and discussions between Jerry and me in which we talk about the tapes and bands.

Below I am going to paste the original cassette covers. Click on each tape cover to go to its special page, where you can stream the tape, view the cover and read our texts.

There's an Anguish solo, three compilations (Bwana, Konstruktivits, Attrition, Algebra Suicide, F/i, lots more), a collab with Mystery Hearsay and R. Martin, and an early collab with my Cancerous Growth partner, Mike Jackson.

3 Comments

Chris Phinney

I used to run Harsh Reality Music, started the label in 1982 releasing my own music in various groups. They were Mental Anguish, Pungent Odor who became The Skoptzies, Misfeasance, Macroglossia, RSVP which became Cancerous Growth, Viktimized Karcass, Planet Zero.

Anyway I started releasing tapes by artists that I liked. Over 350 tapes, some vinyl, CDs, CD-Rs, and videos on VHS. Also did distribution of some LPs. Did some writing for mags, some mail art, I did a lot of compilations as well.

Helped run Tapegerm with Bryan Baker, Scott Carr & J Mundok, for 10 years or more, a collaborative site too intense to explain here.

Had my own domain for HRM, shut down the label due to several reasons around 2006 if memory serves.

You can see some of the releases on Hal’s site, the HRM section. Quit Tapegerm around 2010.

Took a 5 year hiatus due to personal reasons but came out of it & did Mental Anguish - Frozen Lake & a few Phinney/McGee microcassette releases.

I have collaborated extensively with Hal McGee, Carl Howard - Nomuzic, Mike Jackson, plus others Prescott, Jeff Central, Charlie Goff, John Hudak, Minóy, Alien Planetscapes, Lord Litter, Don Campau, Angwana which was with Al Margolis hence the name, Pat Grafik, Isaac Ersoff, & a CD-R with a PDF comic book by Matt Howarth released on his label!

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