Mixing it up

Despite many assassination attempts, the cassette tape lives on to make new mixtape connections, writes VICKI ANDERSON.

Its death by flakiness was predicted as far back as the 90s but the cassette tape is still hanging on and, some might say, making a comeback as a pop cultural phenomenon.

If you've ever held your breath and your fingers poised over a record button waiting for the precise instant a song stopped and a DJ started braying, hoping to get your timing completely accurate, you'll appreciate the art of a good mixtape.

Back in the day cassettes were sold blank and you could dub your friends' records, music from the radio or make a back-up copy of a favourite album. This met with fierce condemnation from the music industry who invented such slogans as Home Taping is Killing Music, complete with skull and crossbones on the back of some 80s releases.

Sound familiar?

Internet search engine Yahoo recently reported a 210 per cent increase in searches for "blank cassette tapes" and a 110 per cent rise in users looking for "music cassette tapes". Even MySpace's new logo for its playlist function features a cassette.

Analog formats are making something of a comeback, and while vinyl is experiencing the biggest rise in popularity, the humble cassette and 8-track are holding on, thanks largely to the resurgence of the 80s. After all cassettes embody the 80s' underground do-it-yourself ethos.

Digital music can be cheaply distributed with such ease that CDs are likely on their way out. With music in the digital age so easy to attain, perhaps some of the appeal of the cassette is the work that goes into creating it?

I still have the first cassette of songs I recorded from the radio, do you? Twenty-five years later the entire Sunday afternoon I spent as a child listening to a radio station's Top 40 and hovering over the pause button to capture Cars by Gary Numan still sounds as good as it did back then. If it doesn't I can just wind it back with a pencil.

Next to it in the box in the garage is the C90 Joy Division bootleg cassette I sent away to London for when I was 11; beside that the mixtape someone made me in the early 90s with the track Everything Starts With An E by E Zee Posse. Alongside that is the Lou Reed mixtape a staff member from Echo Records made me once when I was a penniless student unable to afford the vinyl I coveted.

Keen to continue my nostalgia trip, I wandered into Real Groovy on a Tuesday morning and was surprised at how many decent cassettes I found, even 8-tracks. Graded from A-F ($6 for an A, 50c for an F), I find a few must-haves for the car stereo - after all, the cassette player is still a staple in many Kiwi cars - including the Sex Pistols, the Flaming Lips, Salt & Peppa (who, curiously, have recently reunited) and an oddity called Meet Me In Queenstown featuring various artists from the region. Inside the cover of this curio is the fun missive: "Unauthorised reproduction of this recording is highly recommended and will not result in any criminal prosecution."

As I pay for my purchases I am told that lots of people still buy cassettes. Generally, however, they're tourists who have rented a van and are looking for some cheap road music. Although I was told the mind-boggling (to me, anyway) information that there are a handful of customers who have yet to move beyond buying cassettes and branch out to the CD format! Exclamation mark warranted. Galaxy, too, has an excellent selection of cassettes on offer, well worth browsing.

The cassette, synonymous with hip-hop culture, has always been an invaluable and cheap way to spread the word about an underground act. Fast forward to now and this has come full circle with numerous indie acts once again embracing the medium.

Artists of recent times to have released on cassette include Dirty Projectors, Deerhunter and Animal Collective, to name a few. London label the Tapeworm sold out a limited run of cassettes by Philip Jeck, Sub Pop has Jaill, Matador has Harlem. Portland-based label Hometapes ended 2009 by mailing out a label sampler to journalists on cassette.

Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth's uber hip guitarist, is the main face behind the growing resurgence, quoted by CBC Radio late last year as saying: "I only listen to cassettes" and "there's already a cassette industry but it's pretty subterranean."

He has even gone so far as to buy a cassette duplicating machine so he can manufacture limited edition cassettes for his label Ecstatic Peace.

For Moore this isn't a new thing, he has loved the cassette medium for decades. So much so that some years ago he published Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture, a love letter to what he calls the most personal of all formats. In it he says that he believes the cassette offers one of the great listening experiences. "You find a mixtape that someone has made for you, and there is no mistaking the amount of care and affection that has gone into it."

For an upcoming Sonic Youth box set, Beck is recording a cassette-only cover of the group's classic EVOL album.

Moore has also said that sometimes he goes to garage sales and buys cassettes of mixtapes compiled by complete strangers. "You see something that has Marty's Mix scrawled on it in ballpoint pen. You take it home and you don't know if its going to be US post-punk hardcore or Kenny Rogers. Whatever it is, though, I know I'm getting a slice of someone's life. Cassettes are the only format that can give you that."

Artists choose to put out their music on tapes for reasons both aesthetic and practical. From a practical standpoint, cassettes are arguably the least expensive physical recording format available, once you get into the process of buying large-scale duplicators.

Closer to home, Dunedin group Left Or Right released their album Nuggety on cassette in September last year and the D.I.C.K. (Dunedin Indie Kids Collective) helped organise a mixtape swap at the Campus A Low Hum festival earlier this year. You had to make a mixtape and thoughtfully decorate your piece of art. Prizes were awarded and cassettes were swapped.

On a larger scale is The International Mixtape Project, a community of music lovers who exchange homemade compilation tapes and CDs with like- minded souls worldwide. For a joining fee, once a month a member is given the name and address of another member somewhere else in the world. The idea is "you make an awesome mix, you get an awesome mix".

Month by month, members build a library of mixtapes and CD-Rs from some of the 1200 IMPers in 30 countries on six continents.

Benet Hitchcock whose stage name is Dr Hitchcock, DJ at RDU, has run the Mixtape Connection night on and off for five years and is holding one this Saturday at Goodbye Blue Monday. "Initially we started it because there wasn't much of this sort of thing happening," Hitchcock said. "Now there's so much happening this will probably be the last one for us for a while. The Mixtape Connection is just DJs playing their mixes. We used to give away mixtapes at the door to the first 50 people and I've always wanted to do it on cassette. It's a lot of fun to swap ideas and the chance to find new songs or relive others."

If you're looking to relive your youth or embrace a new (old) trend, blank cassette tapes are increasingly to find but some branches of the Warehouse have packs of four for $5 and there are always a mixed bunch available on Trade Me. And, if you're worried about the longevity of your magnetic tapes, software such as Audacity means you can always go the other way and back-up your cassettes by converting them to MP3s. Get in the mix.

Joining Hitchcock at Mixtape Connection at Goodbye Blue Monday tomorrow night from 10pm is his wife, aka DJ Apex Beat, as well as Indie Slut and Tobiaz with "all your indie, rock, techno, electro, and house faves from the last decade and the latest from the blogosphere". Entry is free.

- © Fairfax NZ News