The cassette culture (also known as the tape/cassette scene or cassette underground[1]) refers to the practices associated with amateur production and distribution of music and sound art on compact cassette that emerged in the mid-1970s. The cassette was used by fine artists and poets for the independent distribution of new work. This article focuses on the independent music scene associated with the cassette that burgeoned internationally in the second half of the 1970s.
It is necessary at the outset to make clear what “cassette culture” refers to in regard to this article. It is not a general article on the cultural history of the compact audio cassette and its technology. The article does not cover the use of the compact audio cassette as a music medium per se, or, in general, the use of the cassette tape as a means for the cheap reproduction and direct distribution of music by artists or other individuals. The subject of this article does not refer to the use of the cassette for making illegal copies of commercially released music, or for recording broadcast music, and it does not refer to so-called "mix tapes", the creation of compilations of music by individuals on cassette tape. It does not refer to the distribution of bootleg recordings on cassette, to the use of the cassette for making demo recordings, to the distribution on cassette of music banned by the authorities or otherwise hard to source, or to tape trading.
“Cassette culture”, as regards this article, refers to an international music scene that developed in the wake of punk in the second half of the 1970s and continued through into the first half of the '80s (the "postpunk" period), and in some territories into the 1990s, in which a large number of amateur musicians outside the established music industry, usually recording in their homes and usually recording to cassette-tape devices, produced music, very often of a non-mainstream or alternative character, that was then duplicated on cassette in very limited quantities and distributed free or sold at low cost to others involved in the scene and those who followed it. Often, these cassette-only albums of original music were completely self-produced by the artists, but small companies or labels also flourished during the period, producing cassette-only releases in small runs, both single-artist albums and compilations by various artists (in a few cases these labels also released vinyl). Numerous artists who first emerged at this time remain active today, some of them now releasing through commercial companies, others continuing with the DIY ethic of self-releasing on CD and the Internet. Since 2000 there has been a revival of the use of the cassette tape for the release of independent music (very often in conjunction with digital release) and a new “cassette scene” has sprung up, however this article concentrates on the original “cassette culture” as it first emerged in the late 1970s at the historical moment at which it was first enabled by developments in consumer electronics.
Initiating factors, historical background and periodization
Technological factors enabled the rise of cassette culture. Improvement in the recording quality of cassettes and the availability of sophisticated cassette decks, as well as stereo "boomboxes", in the late 1970s allowed "recordists" to record and duplicate high-quality copies of their music inexpensively.[2] Bands did not need to go into expensive recording studios any longer. In addition, multi-track recording equipment was becoming affordable, portable and of fairly high quality in the early 1980s. Four-track cassette recorders developed by Tascam and Fostex allowed artists to record and get a reasonable sound at home.[3] Electronic instruments, such as drum machines and synthesizers, became more compact and inexpensive.[3] Therefore, it became increasingly feasible to construct home-recording studios, giving rise to the phenomenon of the "home tapers". The recording and production qualities of much cassette-culture music means that it can often be described as lo-fi.
Particularly in North America, college radio played an important role, with stations broadcasting regular cassette-only radio shows that showcased and promoted the work of home-recording artists.[4]
The cassette culture can be traced back to the early 1970s, when mail-artists and other artists and poets began making use of the cassette. Audio-art labels/publishers active in the early '70s included Edition S-Press, Edition Amadulo and Black Box/Watershed. Balsam Flex was a London-based independent poetry-on-cassette label founded in 1972 by artist E.E. Vonna-Michell. It published work by experimental UK poets associated with the London-based Writers Forum and the so-called British Poetry Revival of the 1960s and '70s, writers such as: Allen Fisher, Bob Cobbing, Peter Finch, Lawrence Upton, cris cheek and Ulli McCarthy/Freer. The British sculptor William Furlong's Audio Arts, founded in 1973, was an arts magazine published on cassette and including sound art in addition to interviews with artists. The musical cassette scene was in part an offshoot of this earlier activity.[5] Participants engaged in extensive tape trading in addition to selling their products. Advertising was done through fanzines and the circulation of photocopied catalogues, etc. The scene was also strongly stimulated by the DIY ethic of punk, and, free of commercial considerations, encouraged musical eclecticism, diversity and experimentation.[6] Whilst distribution was mostly by mail, there were a few retail outlets that stocked independently produced cassette releases, such as (in the UK) Rough Trade and Falling A.[7]
The "cassette culture" is a historical phenomenon, primarily of the late '70s and the '80s. Following the anti-establishment shock of punk a very creative period followed in popular music, the postpunk period (as documented in Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984, by Simon Reynolds). In the United Kingdom synth-pop was in the ascendant and industrial and postindustrial music was the vanguard of musical experimentation. Many (though by no means all) cassette artists, in Europe and elsewhere, drew on this new avant-garde for their inspiration. Popular-music papers such as Sounds and NME in the UK were marked by a new type of journalism, which discussed music (perhaps sometimes over-earnestly) as a serious art-form. In terms of broader developments, the Cold War and the nuclear arms-race were still a reality. In both the UK and the USA the political Right assumed power in the form of the governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. In the UK this was accompanied by a widespread culture of opposition and dissent, often informed by radical Left ideology. The cassette-culture scene emerged in, was embedded in, this broader cultural landscape, enabled by new developments in electronic technology, and many of the artists shared a countercultural ethos in relation to the mainstream music of the time and towards contemporary society more broadly. The scene could not have existed before and the period of its flourishing gradually came to an end in the 1990s with the arrival of inexpensive digital technology for the production of both music and graphics and, of course, the arrival of the World Wide Web. Successor underground and DIY scenes have naturally arisen to take its place, but they are no more to be identified with the cassette culture that arose in the late '70s than the postpunk revival is to be identified with the original postpunk period.
As with any other music scene, artists involved in the scene and others who followed it amassed, sometimes very substantial, collections of independent cassette music. The sense of cassette culture in all its diversity as, nevertheless, a coherent international musical subculture has been reinforced since 2000 by a major revival of interest in the cassette artists of the 1970s and '80s and the reissue of much music on LP and CD for a small but enthusiastic market (see below).
"Cassette culture" is a coinage that post-dates the scene itself. "Cassette scene" was a contemporary term.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom cassette culture was at its peak in what is known as the post-punk period, 1978–1984. UK cassette culture was championed by marginal musicians and performers such as Tronics,[8] the Instant Automatons,[9]Storm Bugs,[10]Sean T. Wright,[11]the insane picnic, the Cleaners from Venus, Nocturnal Emissions and Final Program, anarcho-punk groups such as the APF Brigade, The Crouches, The Apostles and Chumbawamba, and many of the purveyors of Industrial music, e.g. Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and Clock DVA. Artists self-releasing would often copy their music in exchange for "a blank tape plus self-addressed envelope". But there also existed many small tape labels, such as Falling A Records, Sterile Records, Third Mind Records and Snatch Tapes, driven by enthusiasm rather than business principles, and in some cases consciously informed by anti-capitalist principles. There was great diversity amongst such labels, some were entirely "bedroom based", utilizing domestic tape-copying technology, whilst others were more organized, functioning in a similar way to conventional record labels. Some also did vinyl releases, or later developed into vinyl labels. Many compilation albums were released, presenting samples of work from various artists. Two particularly ambitious compilation projects were the 5-volume Rising from the Red Sand (see below) and the 15-volume International Sound Communication series. It was not uncommon for artists who had a vinyl contract to release on cassette compilations, or to continue to do cassette-only album releases (of live recordings, work-in-progress material, etc.) after they had started releasing records. The cassette scene was, in other words, an integrated part of the alternative or underground music scene during the postpunk period.
Cassette culture received something of a mainstream boost when acknowledged by the major music press. The New Musical Express (NME), Melody Maker and Sounds, the three main weekly music papers of the time in the UK, launched "cassette culture" columns, in which new releases would be briefly reviewed and ordering information given. In September 1982 the NME acknowledged the band Tronics for releasing in 1980 the first independent cassette album, entitled Tronics, to be nationally distributed.[8] In the UK fanzines covering cassette culture included John Balance's Stabmental.
Tim Naylor of Record Collector magazine has published articles in the 2000s on the cassette culture of the '70s/'80s, including "C30, C60, C90, C21!" (Record Collector, 393, September 2011) and "Home Taping is Thrilling Music" (Record Collector, 462, January 2017). Memoirs written by people involved in the UK cassette scene include Permanent Transience (2015), by Bendle of the band The Door and the Window, and The Luxury of Dreams: An Autobiography (2017), by Mark Automaton of the band The Instant Automatons.
Two of the more important cassette labels in Europe were Germany's Datenverarbeitung, run by Andreas Müller, and Belgium's Insane Music, run by Alain Neffe. Along with material recorded by himself in various configurations, Neffe curated and released numerous compilations featuring tracks sent to him from artists all over the world.
United States
R. Stevie Moore (pictured 2011) is one of the better-known artists associated with cassette culture.
In the US, cassette culture activity extended through the late 1980s and into the 1990s. Although larger operators made use of commercial copying services, anybody who had access to copying equipment (such as the portable tape-to-tape cassette players that became common in the early 1980s) could release a tape, and publicize it in the network of fanzines and newsletters that served the scene, such as OP Magazine, Factsheet Five and Unsound. The cassette culture became an inexpensive and democratic way for artists to make available music that was never likely to have mainstream appeal, and many found in the scene music that was more imaginative, challenging, beautiful, and groundbreaking than much of what was being released by the established music industry.
In the United States, cassette culture was associated with DIYsound collage, riot grrrl, and punk music and blossomed across the country on cassette labels such as: Psyclones, Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine, Randy Greif's Swinging Axe Productions, Pass the Buck, E.F. Tapes, Mindkill, Happiest Tapes on Earth, Apraxia Music Research, and Sound of Pig (which released over 300 titles), From the Wheelchair to the Pulpit, Walls of Genius (which released over 30 titles, including their own, Architects Office and The Miracle),[13]K Records, brown interior music. Artists such as PBK, Big City Orchestra, Alien Planetscapes, Don Campau, Ken Clinger, Dino DiMuro, Tom Furgas, The Haters, Zan Hoffman, If, Bwana, Hal McGee, Minóy, Dave Prescott, Dan Fioretti (who now identifies as female and goes by the name Dreamgirl Stephanie Ashlyn), Jim Shelley, Suburban Campers, The Silly Pillows, Linda Smith, Saboteur, and hundreds of others, recorded albums available only on cassette throughout the late '80s and well into the '90s.[14]
The American cassette-culture scene has been quite well-served by documentary-makers, in contrast with the scenes in the UK and Europe. In 2009 Andrew Szava-Kovats, who was involved in the US scene under the name Data-Bank-A, released a 60-minute documentary Grindstone Redux: A Documentary About 1980's Cassette Culture on the American cassette network, with contributions from many of those involved. In 2015 the independent filmmaker William Davenport released The Great American Cassette Masters, a 90-minute documentary interviewing many key US artists of the 1980s scene. Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape (2016), directed by Zack Taylor, George Petzold and Seth Smoot, is a 90-minute documentary which, as the title indicates, takes a broader view of the cassette format and its history and features the inventor of the cassette tape Lou Ottens. It examines nostalgia for the format and its return as a medium for contemporary independent musicians. In 2020 American author Jerry Kranitz published the highly illustrated book Cassette Culture: Homemade Music & The Creative Spirit In The Pre-Internet Age (Vinyl On Demand).
Other territories
There were many cassette artists outside the United Kingdom, the US and Europe. There was a very active scene in Japan, as can be seen from the list of contributors to the International Sound Communication series of compilations.
Creative packaging
The packaging of cassette releases, whilst sometimes amateurish, was also an aspect of the format in which a high degree of creativity and originality were displayed. For the most part packaging relied on standard plastic cases with a photocopied "J-card" insert, but some made more of an effort. Anusol by the A Band, released on the Chocolate Monk label, came packaged with a "suppository" unique to each copy – one of which was a used condom wrapped in tissue.[citation needed] The BWCD label released a cassette by Japanese noise artist Aube that came attached to a blue plastic ashtray in the shape of a fish. EEtapes of Belgium's 1995 release of This Window's Extraction 2 was packaged with an X-ray of a broken limb. The Barry Douglas Lamb album Ludi Funebres presented the cassette case in a tin, the tin filled with earth and the earth covered with leaves. Walls Of Genius went to great lengths, spray-painting abstract art on the cassette labels, affixing hand-made "authentic" stickers, painting cassette boxes (the "white" cassette, 1984), creating one-of-a-kind pinup covers (The Mysterious Case of Pussy Lust, 1985) and issuing "Certificates of Genius" to anybody discriminating enough to purchase one of their titles. The interested reader is referred to Tape-Mag.com (see below).
Decline, revival of interest and the new cassette scene
In the United Kingdom the cassette culture seemed to wane in the second half of the 1980s, and by the mid-1990s the scene in the United States was also in decline, with the appearance of new technologies and methods of distribution: CD-Rs and the widespread arrival of the Internet, MP3s and file sharing. However, the early 2000s saw a major revival of interest in the cassette culture of the late 1970s and '80s,[15] with many obscure tapes being made available on music blogs and the emergence of specialist labels, of which Vinyl On Demand is the best known, dedicated to reissuing on LP and CD material originally released on cassette.[16] In October 2005 "cassette_culture [c_c]", an international electronic mailing list, was established on Yahoo! Groups for discussion "of all aspects of the DIY music scene, or cassette culture, of the late 1970s, 1980s, and into the 90s". Cassette releases have now been added to the Discogs database, and other databases, in great numbers. Cassette-culture releases can now fetch high prices (See Tim Naylor's articles for Record Collector, mentioned above).
On 1 January 2018 Frank Bull of Vinyl On Demand Records launched Tape-Mag.com, a vast online database of cassette-culture and related material. Material, audio and visual, relating to the cassette culture of the '70s and '80s has become widely available on the Internet on platforms such as Bandcamp and Archive.org, and on social media.
Since the Millennium there has also been a revival in the use of the cassette by independent artists, with the rise of partly or wholly tape-based labels such as Burger Records, POST/POP, Memorials of Distinction, Tuff Enuff Records, Truant Recordings,[17] First Base Tapes[18] and Gnar Tapes.[19] In 2007 (12–26 May) an exhibition was held at Printed Matter in New York City devoted to current American cassette culture entitled "Leaderless: Underground Cassette Culture Now."
Notable compilations since 2000
A number of compilations devoted to or including significant representation of cassette-culture music of the 1970s and '80s have been released since the revival of interest in the scene. The most ambitious collection of material is a trilogy from Cherry Red Records, each release comprising four CDs of material: Close to the Noise Floor: Formative UK Electronica 1975-1984 (2016), Noise Reduction System: Formative European Electronica 1974-1984 (2017), and Third Noise Principle: Formative North American Electronica 1975-1984 (2019). In 2008 the Hyped To Death label released the CD Messthetics Greatest Hiss: Classics of the UK Cassette Culture DIY, 1979-1982. Perhaps the most significant British compilation of cassette-culture music released at the time was the 5-cassette Rising from the Red Sand (1983), on Third Mind Records (one of the more notable cassette labels), which contained 45 pieces of music. For many years this landmark collection was kept available (on cassette) by RRRecords, and in 2013 it was released on vinyl by Vinyl On Demand Records. Although not reissued since 1989, mention should also be made of 1983's pioneering double-LP release The Elephant Table Album: a compilation of difficult music, a 21-track selection of work by British cassette-culture artists. The record was compiled by Dave Henderson, the cassette-culture reviewer for Sounds at the start of the 1980s. Henderson followed this with a sequel, Three Minute Symphony, another double LP, which threw the net wider to include European and US artists.
The interested reader is referred to the extensive output of vinyl editions for collectors released since 2004 on the German company Vinyl On Demand Records and the many CD releases of US and UK DIY music of the late '70s to early '80s released by the US label Hyped To Death.
↑ Pareles, Jon (11 May 1987). Cassette Underground, The New York Times
↑ Tim Naylor, "C30, C60, C90, C21!", Record Collector, no. 393, 4 September 2011. Retrieved 29 October 2020. The sequel to the article is: Tim Naylor, "Home Taping is Thrilling Music", Record Collector, no. 462, 4 January 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2020.
↑ VOD Records, Discogs. Retrieved 25 October 2020. See also: Interview with Frank Bull, The Wire, 18 April 2018. The founder of VOD Records talks about the label and about his cassette-culture online archive, Tape-Mag. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
Walls of Genius 1998. In Richie Unterberger's "Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll: Psychedelic Unknowns, Mad Geniuses, Punk Pioneers, Lo-Fi Mavericks & More". Backbeat Books, San Francisco, also in Robin James (Ed.) Cassette Mythos. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia
The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips and released in August 1963, Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either containing content as a prerecorded cassette (Musicassette), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed—for example the Microcassette—the generic term cassette tape is normally used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity.
K Records is an independent record label in Olympia, Washington founded in 1982. Artists on the label included early releases by Beck, Modest Mouse and Built to Spill. The record label has been called "key to the development of independent music" since the 1980s.
Cultural Amnesia (CA) are an English post-punk music group, first active between 1979 and 1983 as participants in the so-called cassette culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s in the UK. During this first period the band released three cassette albums: Video Rideo (1981), The Uncle of the Boot (1983) and Sinclair's Luck (1983) on English and German record labels, and contributed to a number of compilation albums. Early on in his career, CA worked with the late Geff Rushton of Coil, who wrote a handful of songs for them and who was an important supporter and enabler due to his contacts as editor of Stabmental magazine, arranging most of their releases and providing constant encouragement. The band has become more widely known since 2000 following release of a number of compilations of their early '80s music in which the members of the group have been fully involved. Since the late '90s the band has also been occasionally active in the recording of new music and there have been a number of releases of new material since the early 2000s.
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photo album; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl long-playing (LP) records played at 33+1⁄3 rpm.
Record collecting is the hobby of collecting sound recordings, usually of music, but sometimes poetry, reading, historical speeches, and ambient noises. Although the typical focus is on vinyl records, all formats of recorded music can be collected.
Robert Steven Moore is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter who pioneered lo-fi music. Often called the "godfather of home recording", he is one of the most recognized artists of the cassette underground, and his influence is particularly felt in the bedroom and hypnagogic pop artists of the post-millennium. Since 1968, he has self-released approximately 400 albums, while about three dozen "official" albums have been issued on various labels.
C81 was a cassette compiled for the British music paper NME in 1981 and released in conjunction with the record label Rough Trade. Featuring a number of contemporary musical acts and performers, it was intended to mark the first five years of the independent label movement in the UK record industry and Rough Trade itself. It was the first in a series of many cassette releases from the paper, including the C86 compilation of 1986.
Lo-fi is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. The standards of sound quality (fidelity) and music production have evolved throughout the decades, meaning that some older examples of lo-fi may not have been originally recognized as such. Lo-fi began to be recognized as a style of popular music in the 1990s, when it became alternately referred to as DIY music.
This Is Boston, Not L.A. is a hardcore punk compilation released in 1982. It is considered the definitive album from the Boston hardcore scene, as several of its most prominent bands appear on the record, namely, Jerry's Kids, the Proletariat, the Groinoids, the F.U.'s, Gang Green, Decadence, and the Freeze. For them, with the exception of the later, This Is Boston, Not L.A. was also their debut release. Al Barile's band, SSD, were asked to contribute, but they refused to participate.
Neil Campbell is a British musician, notable for his vast catalogue and his many collaborations. In 2005, The Wire declared that he, Richard Youngs and Matthew Bower had "provided the map co-ordinates for much of what passed for a post-punk UK underground during most of the 80s and 90s". Pitchfork media have referred to him as "one of the most important experimental musicians of the last 20 years".
Cold wave is a loosely defined music genre that emerged in Europe in the late 1970s, characterized by its detached lyrical tone, use of early electronic music instruments and a minimalist approach and style. It emerged from punk rock bands who, influenced by early electronic groups such as Kraftwerk, made use of affordable portable synthesizers such as the Korg MS-20.
Spiral Scratch is an EP and the first release by the English punk rock band Buzzcocks. It was released on 29 January 1977. It is one of the earliest releases by a British punk band. The EP is the only Buzzcocks studio release with original singer Howard Devoto, who left shortly after its release to form one of the first post-punk bands, Magazine.
Storm Bugs are an English post punk band formed in 1978 in Deptford, London, England, by Philip Sanderson and Steven Ball who had met in the Medway Towns, England. The band have been linked to a number of genres including: cassette culture, industrial music and DIY. Storm Bugs were initially active between 1978 and 1982 and reformed in 2001.
Punk rock and hardcore punk in Brazil originated in the late 1970s, influenced by bands such as Sex Pistols, The Clash, Stiff Little Fingers and The Ramones. The first known Brazilian punk rock band was Restos de Nada, which appeared in mid-1978 and set the stage for the emergence of many other bands that formed the Brazilian punk scene.
Launched from the Lower East Side, Manhattan in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine utilized the audio cassette medium to distribute no wave downtown music and audio art and was in activity for the ten years of 1983–1993.
Post-punk is a broad genre of rock music that emerged in the late 1970s in the wake of punk rock. Post-punk musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a broader, more experimental approach that encompassed a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-rock influences. Inspired by punk's energy and do it yourself ethic but determined to break from rock cliches, artists experimented with styles like funk, electronic music, jazz, and dance music; the production techniques of dub and disco; and ideas from art and politics, including critical theory, modernist art, cinema and literature. These communities produced independent record labels, visual art, multimedia performances and fanzines.
Stanley Keith Bowsza, better known by the pseudonym Minóy, was an American electronic musician and sound artist. He was a major figure in the DIY noise music and homemade independent cassette culture scene of the 1980s. He released over 100 compositions.
Electronic Cottage was a printed magazine that championed and examined DIY cassette culture phenomenon, including reviewers of sound collage, noise music, electronic music and other forms of experimental music. There were six issue produced between the years 1989 to 1991. The first issue was published in April 1989. Hal McGee was the magazine's editor and publisher. The magazine was based in Apollo Beach, Florida. It has since been revived as an online community, emphasizing experimental music and its creators.
C86 is a cassette compilation released by the British music magazine NME in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from British independent record labels of the time. As a term, C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-based music genre characterized by jangling guitars and melodic power pop song structures, although other musical styles were represented on the tape. In its time, it became a pejorative term for its associations with so-called "shambling" and underachievement. The C86 scene is now recognized as a pivotal moment for independent music in the UK, as was recognized in the subtitle of the compilation's 2006 CD issue: CD86: 48 Tracks from the Birth of Indie Pop. 2014 saw the original compilation reissued in a 3CD expanded edition from Cherry Red Records; the 2014 box-set came with an 11,500-word book of sleevenotes by one of the tape's original curators, former NME journalist Neil Taylor.
Walls of Genius is an American avant-garde music ensemble from Colorado. They participated in the 1980s Cassette Culture and experimented with psychedelic improvisations, free-jazz, punk-rock, uninhibited and manic deconstructions of pop, jazz and country-western standards to musique concrète, industrial noise and sound collages. Walls Of Genius was both reviled and loved by the Cassette Culture. Walls Of Genius was active from 1982-1985 and revived in 2014.
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