Cassettes

Elijah

Elijah

Butterz
Can someone help me understand the sense of doing these please. Im seeing them pop up everywhere, normally limited to 100 copies... Does anyone still have a tape deck?
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Partly nostalgia for a time when music couldn't be digitised or downloaded.

Partly novelty value?

I like the idea that someone young would be so obsessed with noise or whatever music that they would go and buy a tape deck to hear it.

Most of this stuff is wilfully obscure isn't it? Black metal, noise, hypnagogic pop?

I also like the fact that cassettes aren't even being manufactured any more!

On a practical level you can duplicate your own and DIY release (which you can't do with vinyl) and they aren't CDRs, a medium it is hard to love.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Personally I hate cassettes. Too many memories of them chewing up or warping.

A lot of music nerds are quite nostalgic, aren't they? In general I mean.
 
Elijah

Elijah

Butterz
For me being a 90s kid I only ever used cassettes to tape things off the radio, never really paid for product on them so yea its just weird for me, seeing house and dubstep mixes being sold on tape. Got a couple of friends in bands as well who have been selling tapes of their work. Weird!
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
What's really mad is seeing old noise tapes from the eighties on eBay for a hundred quid (Broken Flag stuff)
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
tapes are big.

and they sound better than mp3s.

i like my hip hop mix tapes from the 90s from stretch and bobbito and dj premier.

and listening to a tape of an old slimzee set is better than an mp3 of it. always nice to have a thick, needlessly space-wasting tape.
 
A

alex

Do not read this.
have loads of old sidewinder, garage nation and recorded from radio ones, got an old morefire crew feat neeko, ozzie, lethal commander and seanie and there was one more DJ but cant remember his name??

also got a dizzee rascall/roll deep/payg one from way back when they were warring with heartless and dizze is dropping bars like 'now they wanna try test us... dat dat dat dat dont make sense, superglue mighty moe's ears to a fence'
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
obv the popularity of them now is a novelty thing, prob from ppl that barely play tapes, same as 7" singles really, but hey, its cool to see.

woebot did a good piece on tapes for fact.
 
M

martin

----
Still have a tape deck though rarely use it, and a few old ragga clashes and South London jungle pirate shows on cassette (rapidly oxidising). Soundclashes work best on tape, don't ask me why, they mostly sound dreadful on MP3. Also, I used to like those beeps at the start of commercially-produced cassettes (what was the point of them? some sort of anti-piracy measure? if so, how did it work?)

Another thing you could do with tapes is buy a load of cheap ones from Oxfam - Wham, Electric Youth, Level 42, all that - take them home, put sellotape over the tape heads, record you and your mates screaming obscenities and blowing kazoos, then take them back to a charity shop for the benefit of future unwary punters.

Our school had a load of old '70s language tapes in a cupboard, and me and a friend took them home to use as C90s. I had a whole tape full of punk songs and in between each track there'd be a snatch of some woman explaining how to say you were from Biarritz or listing off French names for vegetables.

But the most killer tape application - capturing weird shit on the radio.
 
nomos

nomos

Administrator
john eden said:
I also like the fact that cassettes aren't even being manufactured any more!
Click to expand...
this, for some reason, came as a big surprise to me when i went looking for some recently ("you know i really should dig out that 4-track..."). i used to buy those maxell ones in the gold wrapper by the case. now old stock goes for silly prices on ebay. chrome tapes in general are almost extinct - you can only buy type 1s unless you find a duplicating service that'll sell you a few generic blanks.

maxell_xl_2_s_90_a1.jpg
 
D

Dunninger

-
Is it really true that cassettes aren't manufactured anymore? There are still places offering duplication and empty cassettes, there are even major labels releasing cassettes for children, and there are enough places on the world where cassettes are still a very common format. I can't imagine that that this is all old stock. I guess cassettes are still manufactured, they're just not sold on the (west european/north american) consumer market.

There's a cassette release of my music planned for next year, the reason for choosing the format are mainly that there's not much choice if you want to do a really small run DIY style (<100) for a reasonable price and don't want to do a digital/cdr release. Plus the haptic and sonic characteristics of a cassette go well with the themes and sound of the music.
 
C

Client Eastwood

Well-known member
I was in Richer Sounds a couple of months ago and they were still selling cassettes. My car only plays cassettes so I'm still with them. Not sure if I could sit down and do a mix tape nowadays they simply take to much time. But listening to some of those old tapes is great I can still remember putting them together.

But as for releasing new music on tapes, would many people go out and buy a deck if they don't have one and there not cheap unless you can pick up a second hand one. I've thought about it but there's nothing new I can find that is less than £150.
 
C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
I know a couple of metal/hardcore labels who do cassette releases; it makes a lot more sense than vinyl in that culture.

That said, if I could, I'd be that dude on E-Bay paying ridiculous amounts for Essentials recordings or something.
 
nomos

nomos

Administrator
Dunninger said:
Is it really true that cassettes aren't manufactured anymore? There are still places offering duplication and empty cassettes, there are even major labels releasing cassettes for children, and there are enough places on the world where cassettes are still a very common format. I can't imagine that that this is all old stock. I guess cassettes are still manufactured, they're just not sold on the (west european/north american) consumer market.
Click to expand...
Seems to be the case that only Type Is are being sold for consumer use now (Maxell, Fuji). But the duplicators still have Type IIs (chrome).

Though I found these wholesale Akais after a lot of looking.
http://www.globalbatteries.us/product.php?productid=22558&cat=326&page=1

They have generic ones for a really good price but they don't indicate the bias
http://www.globalbatteries.us/product.php?productid=23205&cat=326&page=3
 
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