Tag Archives: cassettes

Ghost In The Machine Cassette Tape Art

Blogs, Media, , , , ,

Anybody with a bit of artistic talent and some skills creating stencils can make an old scratched-up vinyl record into a work of art. But it takes a far steadier hand and considerable imagination to make a portrait out of CASSETTE TAPES.

Ghost In The Machine has a whole collection of portraits including this awesome reproduction of The Clash album artwork for London Calling. There are also some very well done portraits created using what appears to be Super-8 film. Nice work indeed. Have a look at the gallery of images at the Ghost In The Machine Flickr page.

Cassettes on the Way Back In?

editorial, WTF?, , , , , , ,

by Joe Wallace

Is this really happening? According to the Dallas Observer, yes. Cassettes are apparently getting their own little renaissance. I personally have spotted cassettes–new ones–for sale in my neighborhood home of all things vinyl and groovy, Laurie’s Planet of Sound, which I highly recommend.

Tapes have been on the pop culture radar for ages–you can buy cassette tape themed tees at Old Navy, Threadless and elsewhere, and I myself just purchased a mix tape button from one of my fellow Etsy sellers, Buttonhead.

Butthonhead seems to be a fellow retro junkie, and if her work–and all those tape tees–can be used as a barometer of the rise of tape culture, we might just be in for an interesting new collector frenzy.

Suits me just fine–I drive a vehicle still equipped with a tape deck in spite of having been made in 2003. But it’s strange, isn’t it? In the age of CD Baby, iTunes, and digital distro that the physicality of cassettes–not just vinyl or even 8-track tapes–is still in demand. A cultural meme. A fetish?

The mix tape was definitely a major part of 80s and 90s culture and nothing has come along to quite replace it–it was a unique animal to be sure, and no matter how hard you try, “mix disc” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

What’s YOUR take on this trend? I’d welcome a return of the mix tape, myself…

One-inch Mix Tape buttons by Buttonhead. I own the blue one.

Tape Record Madness

Blogs, Featured, , , ,

turntable-tape-record

What happens when you replace the cartridge of a standard turntable and replace it with a tape recorder head? What happens when you create a giant sticky pile of shredded cassette tape on a record platter and spin it on your newly mutated record player? You get this kind of insanity courtesy of F7 Sound and Vision. I have to say, tape manipulation was never THIS bizarre…I love this for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom. You can even hear the results of this mad experiment, though I found myself wishing you could hear snippets of what was actually recorded on the tape as this “played” on the record player. John Oswald, beware! This site also gives you instructions for creating a similar experiment using FLOPPY DISKS.

[ad#Google Adsense]

(Right after I wrote this I found a second Mp3 sample where you CAN hear mutilated bits of what was on the original tapes before they were shredded and mashed like this. Bravo!)