Cassette Obsessions

Having used cassettes for years I went through a period of getting rid of them, or at least a fairly large volume of them. That was a mistake to be honest. But listening to what I have left has thrown up a lot of interesting issues for me. I’ve referred to it as my own “sonic archeology”, or perhaps less pompously, “musical archeology”. I’ve categorised these issues.

Content:

• Re-listening to my old tapes has made me want to revisit a body of work that I haven’t listened to in a very long time
• It has made me remember how good some of my old material is (in my opinion of course)

Physical:

• I still like the linear nature of tape
• I like the fact that tape is limited in so many ways
• Some tapes / cassettes have a real character and are impossible to replicate with digital recording

It also intrigues me that so many digital recording processes use tape as a user interface analogy. I suppose that it is just a very simple and easy to understand representation of a recording. However, as tape and cassettes become an ever distant memory I think that a new metaphor for recording will be needed. I wonder what that will be?

Having enjoyed tapes so much I decided not to get rid of my remaining tapes in the end and I’ve stuck with what I have now.

So here are some of the ‘tape’ or ‘cassette’ images on the site.

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Cassette related things