Before his upcoming Red Rocks double (sold out!) headline next week, Tape B unveiled his long-awaited debut album, Ghosts in the Static. The 12-track project is his biggest release to date, digging into the UKF-era dubstep that first inspired him to start producing while putting his own modern spin on the sounds that shaped him. And with two sold-out nights at Red Rocks just around the corner, the album arrives at a pretty fitting moment for an artist who has spent the last few years building one of the most passionate communities in bass music.
Get your tickets for Tape B: HALLOW ROCKS at Red Rocks
There’s definitely a kind of nostalgia that hits when you hear an old-school dubstep trap. The memories, the iconic drops, and overall discovering a genre that seemed way ahead of its game at the time. For Tape B, that feeling became the starting point for Ghosts in the Static. The 12-track album is built around the era of dubstep that first made Tape B want to produce music in the first place, but it isn’t a “throwback” album. He isn’t trying to recreate 2012 here. Instead he takes that inspo from the sounds of that time, turning them into the production style he’s developed over the last several years.
Tape B has openly talked about the fact that younger fans are showing up to his shows with different reference points than he had growing up. In an interview with EDM.com, he joked about feeling like an “unc” listening to 2015 SoundCloud rap while trying to keep up with the newer artists his audience listens to.
On his upcoming show in Colorado next week, Tape B shared that it’s “been hard to be in the moment for this because of all the prep, but [he has] really been trying to take it all in and remember how far [he has] come since [he] first started Tape B 11 years ago.”
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And what’s even crazier, just last year was Tape B’s first ever headline event at Red Rocks, which has now evolved into the branded multi-night “Hallow Rocks” takeover this year. The timing of the album and the Red Rocks shows feels especially fitting. Ghosts in the Static is essentially a look back at the music that made Tape B want to become a producer in the first place, while these shows represent just how far that influence has taken him.
There’s a full-circle quality to bringing those early dubstep influences to one of the best venues in electronic music (if we do say so ourselves…), especially with an audience that spans longtime bass heads and a newer generation discovering those sounds through Tape B. Don’t miss it.
