cassette culture
art by Brian Lightbody in Mixtape: the Art of Cassette Culture
The past few years have seen a resurgence of that antiquated and beloved media format, the cassette tape. This return to cassette is in part due to the zeitgeist of nostalgia that runs rampant in our culture and recycles hip about every 20 years or so. Many folks have been picking up on this return: designboom has a nice article about the art and culture of the cassette, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth edited Mix Tape: the Art of Cassette Culture in 2005. The November 08 Wire magazine contained a few articles about cassettes, notably about the mystique of Les Rallizes Dénudés cassettes and another on Black Metal’s cassette rituals. While preparing this post Portable Shrines synchronously stumbled into Flying Squirrel Pizza in Seattle, a pizza joint that loves mix tapes. So much in fact that they have created “The Flying Squirrel Pizza Mix Tape Challenge”…plus their pizza rocks.
The time is again now for those lovely little objects.
Also, in this resurgence something more is brewing, bands such as Wooden Shjips, Eternal Tapestry, and Du Hexen Hase are utilizing the cassette as a means of putting out new music. Labels are doing the same…Amateur Depression out of Florida is putting out some great stuff (Menthols and Nerve City among others). Anaheim based Burger Records is releasing kick ass albums on vinyl, cd and cassette tape and Best Kept Secret is an all tape label based out of Italy. I personally love having new releases in the format, there is something to the nostalgia…being able to pop a tape of something you have never heard before in your car stereo and just go…
So, having noticed this trend for a while I presented a couple of questions to some of these folks, asking what their reason were for using this format versus compact discs and if they thought this format will stick around as long as vinyl will… Read more…
