Cassette playa: in praise of tapes

It’s no secret that the cassette is enjoying a renaissance in underground music culture; an enduring staple of the global noise and industrial scenes, the cassette has since become the favoured medium for a whole new generation of artists, from “hypnagogic” psychedelicists to bedroom pop eccentrics – nostalgia and an inherent fondness for the esoteric play a part in this, certainly, but the nub of it all remains the cheapness and ease with which tapes can be recorded and copies made. Here are five tapes from recent times that prompted us to dust down our Walkmen.

1. Dolphins Into The Future – …On Sea-Faring Isolation (Cetacean Nation Cassettes, 2009)
A new-age influenced, hypnagogic odyssey like no other, this positively amniotic set makes the most of tape’s naturally rich, enveloping sound.

2. Position Normal – Position Normal (Rum Records, 2009)
Their very name is a reference to cassettes; it was only right, therefore, that Position Normal – widely regarded as a key influence on artists like The Focus Group and Moon Wiring Club – should release their latest album on tape before making it available on other formats.

3. James Pants  - Seven Seals (Stones Throw, 2009)
Seven Seals was issued through every obvious medium – CD, download, vinyl – but somehow the dinky cassette edition seemed the most appropriate vessel for James Pants marvellously scuzzy avant-pop miniatures.

4. Various Artists – Synth Night (Protracted View, 2009)
Something of a modern classic, this double-cassette compilation brought together tracks from acclaimed synth wizards Oneohtrix Point Never, No Fun Acid (Carlos Giffoni) and Keith Fullerton Whitman among others.

5. Cold Cave – New Morale Relationship (Hospital Productions, 2010)
Cold Cave are best known for their Matador-licensed Love Comes Close LP, but their most interesting releases are invariably the short-run cassettes which they knock out on the sly. This is their most recent effort, released via Prurient’s cassette-obsessed Hospital Productions.

Hungry for tapes? Find a terrific selection on sale at Second Layer or Volcanic Tongue in the UK, and Mimaroglu or Hospital Productions in the States.

Pages: 1 2 3

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

  • manshortage

    Give me a .wav any day. Does anyone remember being mortified while you're pulling jammed tape from your walkman. And how they deteriorate play by play? My uncompressed wavs will sound as good they did on the day of rip/purchase when I'm in my 70s.

  • PaulMD
  • Michael

    you're kidding me right? Quality of tape was *terrible*, nobody real had any of those high end tape players, must of us struggled with low quality walkmen… no, IPod quality is infinitely better. Just make sure you sample high enough, that's all…

    … and nothing wrong with maintaining the old tape discipline: get the whole album (not just the 'hit' song/track), listen to albums in sequence, listen to the whole album, build strong/considered playlists…

  • D'Artagnan Pluck

    Agreed on all counts. Sound quality is not just the clarity and noiselessness of the sound, it has many factors. mp3 encoding is based upon the perceptual experience, and makes assumptions on what the listener would hear if it was actually hearing it live. Analog recordings are far superior, and it should be noted, is not subject to bit rot like the digital formats. If I put a record on the shelf, I can still play it in 50 years. A file can quite easily get lost just by buying a new mp3 device, and tossing the old.

  • Sanitymuffin

    great feature! if your looking for fantastic music and artisticly packaged jewels to stuff into your decks try Oaklands Sanity Muffin tape label!
    http://www.sanitymuffins.blogspot.com

  • Markboulton_london

    Hear Hear!! Analogue formats retain subtle harmonics which the bias frequencies of the various tape types were carefully selected to complement. Conversely, the sampling rates and compression ratios of physical digital and non-physical digital formats 'gate out' those very same subtle harmonics that make music *music* rather than sound. At its best, a well-encoded mp3 is simply a very complex synthesizer's “cover version” of the sound, whereas an analogue format is the only one that can give you the real sound. Analogue is the “Original Artist”… every time! BTW You would like my own site, soundhog.moonfruit.com!

  • alexander m.

    I think it's more about nostalgia for the physical object, than any possible case for the sound quality (which was derrrr-eadful in most scenarios). We're now surrounded by music, can hear tracks before the labels that have “paid” for them have even given them the nod, and music has become a kind of knowledge-sport rather than a slow burning of excitement surprise and enjoyment. How many bands are sort of all buzzed out in the 10 months between first Yuksek remix appearance on a blog and actual “album out” status is achieved. Maybe we need a slow-music movement – which cassettes would be perfect for – batteries on a walkman amounted to about 4-5 album repeats before going back down the shops. Plus you can only carry about 10 before it gets to a luggage issue…

    But the sound quality was pants, particularly once they'd been through your parents' car cassette player – or 96kbps stereo as we know it now – all swooshy hi-hats and gargling vocals…

  • alexander m.

    “Giving up my iPod for a week” (BBC)
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8117619.stm

  • CEDUPZ

    Crank up Victrola is also making a comeback! this is all absolute BS, nonsense.

  • Brian

    That’s absolutely ridiculous. Digital audio has much higher resolution then analog audio including cassettes. It has nothing to do with Bias and gated out? Do you even know what you’re talking about? Actually those subtle harmonics are lost on tape because the signal to noise ratio is atrocious, looking at 60 db dynamic range as the best of the best whereas the noise floor is so low on a compact disc that the air sound in a studio is actually louder. The average cassette player will has poor frequency response too, 15hz-15khz. If you spend a tonne of money you can get it up to cd standards but you’ve still got to worry about wow and the afforementioned dynamic range issues. I’ve heard a lot of people make the case for tapes because they’re cheaper (incorrect), have a nice tactile feel (nothing to do with music), force you to listen to the whole album (ADD, not anything to do with music) but to try and make a case that an audio format even worse sounding then vinyl beats digital audio is just silly.

  • Brian

    Also, forgot to rebut your statement about digital audio being a synthesizer and analogue being real sound. First of all, by definition it is an 'analog' of the original sound. It's not the original sound. Digital audio information is quantized but it still constructs an analogue signal coming out of your speakers because obviously our ears are analog. You can use simplified, shallow analogies but if it is just the synthesizers interpretation, it's an interpretation far more detailed then the analog formats interpretation (note, still an interpretation).

  • Pingback: An Example | Das Kleine Field Recordings Festival

  • Pingback: Tales for Tapes in Berlin (again) | Rinus van Alebeek

  • Tapetronic

    and now this is TAPETRONIC !!!

    http://www.alexismalbert.com/

  • Alexskinnertosh123456

    Check out :http://soundcloud.com/pussy-foot
    this guy uses all tapes to make throw back dance music. pretty great and strangly nostalgic

  • Patrik

    Analogue is a lot of work to make sound good. But it easily beats CD, not to mention mp3 which sounds awful in comparison (it sounds unoffensive but not not in a realistic and engaging way). I’m recording an LP by Pretenders onto tape as I type this (onto a Tandberg 3014). Portable playback is with a Sony WM-DC6 which kicks ass and drives real headphones properly. To make the digital revolution even worse producers/mixers have compressed all life out of the music in the “loudness war”.. Awful! (Note: I have done it all: CD, mp3, FLAC, Squeezebox, SACD, DVD Audio.)

Featured Events

End of Year Lists

Advertisement