2015 Year of the Cassette What do The Breeders, The Sugarcubes, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Art of Noise, Depeche Mode, Vilain Pingouin, Chaka Demus & Pliers, Eric B. & Rakim, Ophra Haza, Metalllica and Sonic Youth all have in common? Their music sounds best on cassette. With the loudness on. In the quasi-digital era of the late eighties and early nineties, production was digital, consumption analogue. Music was made from the get go, from the jam session all the way to final mastering so as to sound best when played back on cassette. It was standard practice in the studio to dump a working mix to cassette and reference it through a basic all-in-one home system or on a Walkman, to bring it in the car for a test drive or home to play on the hi-fi. . With the mp3, this is an inbuilt option, but fine tuning the process at every step of the way had never been possible in the vinyl era without an expensive dubplate cutter Such an intimate relationship with the end consumer experience transformed music production. The uncompressed midrange available on the cassette, coupled with universal use of headphones, encouraged elaborate stereo positioning, playing with filters and loads of empty space. Take Timbuk3’s “Sample The Dog” ( youtu.be/P-t9rvC6oZQ ). The decay on the drum sounds, the pan-shifting of the dog howls, the wild penetrating effect of the slide guitars, such psychedelic standards were now available even to home studio types such as this duo who could ensure on the spot whether or not these techniques would come across to their fans. Bringing this song into public on a Walkman is to encourage an out of body experience. Even at low volume levels, the saturation of the audio field is complete. Little outside noises disappear and loud ones become just part of the music. The mind is walking in a field of sound and cannot convince the eyes to stop seeing the city lights. No one needed Beats or noise cancelling headphones in the days of the Walkman. Compared side-by-side to other formats, tapes of this era are smoother, deeper, wider and more relaxed, very unlike the brash, punchy, brittle and overall uptight sound which is found even on the LP. And this only makes sense. Cassette mastering was at its peak but the techniques and equipment needed for good quality digital mastering weren’t in place and vinyl was an afterthought. So couple the following elements together and you might join the next wave of new values: 1) Buy in is cheap The Sony Sports Walkmans ($10-$20 used) sold extensively, have generally survived intact and were built to specs that would not be possible today. Even a professional or studio quality tape deck can be picked up for well under $100 second hand. 2) Tapes are everywhere While some record stores do carry limited stock these days, cheap cassettes can always be found at garage sales, marche aux puces and charity shops. Since the trend is still in its early stages, there is little public competition for tapes in these environments (especially in the suburbs and small towns). The already low price is often negotiable as most sellers just want to be rid of them. While relatively few records were ever thrown in the trash in the same way as you would cassettes, they sold in sufficient quantities to be around for quite some time. Hint: even home copies of music are worth checking out, especially if the tape is chrome. 3) Tapes survive almost anything One of the vile myths spread by the recording industry during the introduction of the compact disc was that cassettes will oxidize and deteriorate over time. This is not true. I have been listening to the same 25 books-on-tape while falling asleep every night for as many years and they sound the same as they did when I copied them. Unless your original tape deck sucked and ate tapes or stretched them, or you managed to leave them in the car under the front seat for five years, the tapes you once listened to are just fine and will have survived to sing again. Ask around; there are more tapes in people’s closets than (insert joke here). And those old mix tapes made one song (pause-cue-rec-pause) at a time? They still sound amazing on that TEAC Studio deck you now have hooked up alongside your turntable 4) iPods suck at playing music Another big lie of the digital era is that Saint Jobs created an excellent portable device made exclusively to play music. Whatever. Current portable digital devices are made to perform an exhaustive list of tricks one of which is the ability to send an analogue signal along an almost invisible wire to a tiny headphone jack. Given that the Sony Walkman was built exclusively to play music, all of the investment was in the sound. Which do you think is better quailty, a free-with-our- plan cell phone or a $125-in-1987 Walkman? 5) The 80s are back. The 90s are coming on. What disco, hard rock and power pop are to vinyl lovers, the return of boom bap, grunge and shoegaze are to the cassette fiend. Given the choice between a $50 180 gram repress and the original cassette at $2, there is little financial reason to choose the vinyl in order to rediscover your favorite album. And if you really want to relive the music the way it was, you need the cassette anyway. Hint: harder to find tapes are plentiful on line and cheap to ship. On balance, I would just add that carrying around the extra two or three cassettes you are interested in hearing that day isn’t as hard as it sounds. After all, there is only so much time to listen to music and an awful lot to be said about listening to an album all the way through. Ask any new vinyl enthusiast.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 18:51:08 +0000
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