Water U Dune?

Water U Dune is an early Tape Lab release (2019) that starts to reveal one of the project’s stranger signature moves: taking Western music, desert mythology, sci-fi atmosphere, and DIY electronic weirdness, then bending it into something loose, funny, and oddly cinematic. Anchored by the song “Underwater Bass,” the release hints at a sound Tape Lab would keep returning to—part frontier soundtrack, part basement jam, part experimental cassette transmission from somewhere slightly off-course.

Thematically, Water U Dune drifts through the mythology of T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, pulling in that sense of desert scale, legend, and questionable heroism while filtering it through the Tape Lab lens. “J Fade” is admittedly a bit of a clunker, complete with strange editing choices, but that roughness is also part of the charm. As an early Tape Lab release, Water U Dune is less polished artifact than creative breadcrumb: a glimpse of the band figuring out how to turn odd references, live-recorded experiments, outsider electronic music, and Western-leaning soundscapes into something unmistakably their own.