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.
Art of Noise were a British 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.
Dirk Wears White Sox is the debut studio album by English new wave band Adam and the Ants. It was released on 30 November 1979 by record label Do It. It was the first number one album on the UK Independent Albums Chart when the chart debuted in Record Week in 1980.
Flipper is an American punk 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 are a UK band formed in 1977 in Leeds, England by Welsh singer-songwriter Green Gartside, who is the sole remaining member of the original band. The group's most successful album, 1985's Cupid & Psyche 85, produced three UK Top 20 hits. The band returned in the late 1990's after a seven-year break,
Sundazed Music is an American independent record label founded in Coxsackie, New York and currently based in Hillsborough, North Carolina. It was initially known as a '60s-centric surf, garage, and psych label. Over time with the additions of imprints such as Modern Harmonic, Americana Anthropology, Beat Rocket, Dot Matrix Recordings, and Liberty Spike Recordings, their reach spans most genres and many decades while still firmly rooted as an archival label.
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-inch singles and one 12-inch EP.
Les Disques du Crépuscule is an independent record label founded in Belgium 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.
Toy World is the second demo album by the English rock band Cardiacs. The cassette is a mixture of older songs by the earlier Cardiac Arrest lineup and newer songs by the then-current Cardiacs lineup. This was the last album to feature keyboard player/backing singer Colvin Mayers, and the first to feature saxophonist/backing singer/occasional keyboard player Sarah Cutts.
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.
Ronald Eugene Dove is an American pop and country music singer-songwriter who had a string of hit pop records in the mid to late 1960s and several country chart records in the 1970s and 1980s.
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 1970s and 80s 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.
