The cassette culture 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.
The Offspring is the debut studio album by American rock band the Offspring, released on June 15, 1989, by Nemesis Records. After being out of print for years, the album was re-released by Nitro and Epitaph Records in 1995 with a different album cover. Both the re-releases on the two respective labels are nearly identical. The Offspring has rarely played any songs from this album live since the Ignition tour finished in 1994.
Art of Noise were an English avant-garde synth-pop group formed in early 1983 by engineer/producer Gary Langan and programmer J. J. Jeczalik, along with keyboardist/arranger Anne Dudley, producer Trevor Horn, and music journalist Paul Morley. The group had international Top 20 hits with its interpretations of "Kiss", featuring Tom Jones, and the instrumental "Peter Gunn", which won a 1986 Grammy Award.
Sebadoh is an American indie rock band formed in 1986 in Northampton, Massachusetts, by Eric Gaffney and Lou Barlow, with multi-instrumentalist Jason Loewenstein completing the line-up in 1989. Barlow co-created Sebadoh as an outlet for his songwriting when J. Mascis gradually took over creative control of Dinosaur Jr., in which Barlow plays bass guitar.
Flipper is an American rock band formed in San Francisco, California in 1979, continuing in often erratic fashion until the mid-1990s, then reuniting in 2005. The band influenced a number of grunge, punk rock and noise rock bands. Their slowed-down, bass-driven and heavily distorted style of punk is considered to have inspired bands such as the Melvins and Nirvana, whose bass player Krist Novoselic played with the band in the 2000s.
Scritti Politti is a British band, originally formed in 1977 in Leeds, England, by Welsh singer-songwriter Green Gartside. He is the only member of the band to have remained throughout the group's history.
Neu! 2 is the second studio album by the krautrock band Neu!. It was recorded in January 1973 and mixed in February 1973, both at Windrose-Dumont-Time Studios in Hamburg, Germany, and released in 1973 by Brain Records. It was officially reissued by Astralwerks in the US and by Grönland in the UK and Europe on 29 May 2001. Illegal bootleg CDs from the Germanofon label were widely available in the late 1990s.
Sundazed Music is an American independent record label based in Coxsackie, New York. It specializes in obscure and rare recordings from the 1950s to the 1970s. In 2000, Sundazed had a staff of 15 and two mixing studios, including a vintage audio equipment collection.
Sonic Youth is the debut EP by American rock band Sonic Youth. It was recorded between December 1981 and January 1982 and released in March 1982 by Glenn Branca's Neutral label. It is the only recording featuring the early Sonic Youth lineup with Richard Edson on drums. Sonic Youth differs stylistically from the band's later work in its greater incorporation of clean guitars, standard tuning, crisp production and a post-punk style.
Michael Morley is an experimental musician and visual artist from New Zealand.
A maxi single or maxi-single is a music single release with more than the usual two tracks of an A-side song and a B-side song.
Xpressway was a record label founded by New Zealand musician Bruce Russell in Dunedin in 1988. Until it ceased in 1993, Xpressway released a variety of New Zealand musicians, primarily on cassette, but its catalogue included several 7" singles and one 12" EP.
Les Disques du Crépuscule is an independent record label founded in Belgium. The label was founded in 1980 by Michel Duval and Annik Honoré. It also had a prominent associated sublabel, Factory Benelux. Both are now run by former employee James Nice.
Live in London 1980 is a live album by the Fall, released in 1982 on cassette on the Chaos Tapes label. Initially a limited edition of 4,000 copies, the album has since been reissued several times as The Legendary Chaos Tape.
"Lady Samantha" is a song by English musician Elton John with lyrics by Bernie Taupin. It was released on 17 January 1969 as his second single, six months before his first album, Empty Sky came out. It appeared on its 1995 reissue as a bonus track.
Fame and Fashion is a compilation album by English musician David Bowie, issued in 1984 by RCA Records featuring songs recorded from 1969's David Bowie through 1980's Scary Monsters. It was released on LP, cassette, and CD formats. The subtitle "David Bowie's All-Time Greatest Hits" appears along with the title on LP and cassette labels, as well as on the CD face and inserts.
Blubberknife is the third studio album released by the Australian experimental group Severed Heads, originally as a C90 cassette tape. The first approximately 200 copies were packaged inside cassette cases that were spray-painted silver, stuffed with loose cassette tape and had parts from the insides of television sets glued to the front of the case. Five copies were specially packaged inside fully operational calculators. It's the first album by the group to feature contributions by Stephen Jones, and it is also the first recording by the group to catch the attention of UK label Ink Records, who helped release Since the Accident a year later and reissued Blubberknife in a standard cassette case with new artwork in 1984. As with most of their discography, Blubberknife has been reissued several times.
They Think It's All Acoustic... It Is Now is the fifth live album by English hard rock band Thunder. Recorded on 4 May 2000 at Dingwalls in London, the last date of the band's UK Farewell Tour, it was produced by the band's guitarists Luke Morley and Ben Matthews, both of whom also mixed it. The album was released on 14 May 2001 as the band's second release on Papillon Records. It was later reissued in the UK by STC Recordings on 28 September 2005.
Free Form is an album by American trumpeter Donald Byrd featuring Byrd with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Butch Warren, and Billy Higgins recorded in 1961 and released on the Blue Note label later in 1966. It was remastered in 2003 and reissued on CD. On the CD reissue, the original stereo release is erroneously given as "BST 84106" instead of BST 84118.
Vinyl On Demand is a record label that targets vinyl collectors of 1970's and 80's minimal synth, industrial, and avant-garde music. Along with sales to distributors, Vinyl On Demand provides a subscription service. Most releases are limited to 500 copies and between subscribers and distributors they often sell out.
