An Album that altered our Musical direction

[Arpangel]

For me, the album in question was Eating People - Hints For The Housewife by The Instant Automatons which was originally released on cassette in 1979 and available to anyone who sent the band a C90 cassette along with a Stamped Addressed Envelope. I found out about it from a news article in NME and was intrigued enough to send them a cassette to find out what it was all about.

Amazing!
The music is brilliant, just been listening to their other stuff, wonderful.
Very refreshing to listen to, in the context of "now"

[BigRedX]

For me, the album in question was Eating People - Hints For The Housewife by The Instant Automatons which was originally released on cassette in 1979 and available to anyone who sent the band a C90 cassette along with a Stamped Addressed Envelope. I found out about it from a news article in NME and was intrigued enough to send them a cassette to find out what it was all about.

Amazing!
The music is brilliant, just been listening to their other stuff, wonderful.
Very refreshing to listen to, in the context of "now"

I've still got all of their original cassettes in a box somewhere. Apparently if they are still playable they might be worth a bit more than the cost of blank C90!

Also because of the nature of the DIY cassette scene from the late 70s and early 80s quite a few bands/artists would send me a copy of their cassette in exchange for one of ours. The same box should also hold amongst others, a cassette copy of the first Renaldo And The Loaf album (For anyone who likes The Residents they are well worth checking out).

[Arpangel]

I've still got all of their original cassettes in a box somewhere. Apparently if they are still playable they might be worth a bit more than the cost of blank C90!

Also because of the nature of the DIY cassette scene from the late 70s and early 80s quite a few bands/artists would send me a copy of their cassette in exchange for one of ours. The same box should also hold amongst others, a cassette copy of the first Renaldo And The Loaf album (For anyone who likes The Residents they are well worth checking out).

Don’t know about you, but I’m still using cassettes, for recording, and mastering.
The Residents? OMG, great memories of them at the Forum, in Kentish Town.

[BigRedX]

Don’t know about you, but I’m still using cassettes, for recording, and mastering.

I haven't done anything with cassettes since the end of the 1990s apart from the release of Dick Venom & The Terrortones "The Monster Pussy Sessions" mini album, which was done mostly as a gimmick. The original idea had been to have a full analogue signal path from initial recording to delivery medium. Despite doing the recording on an analogue 24 track machine and mixing (only using analogue effects) to 1/4" tape, it turned out that mastering exclusively in the analogue domain was twice as expensive as digital, and also that none of the small volume cassette duplicators would accept an analogue master, and even if they had, it would still have been digitised for the duplication process.

Having spent the first 25 years of my recording life working mainly with cassettes, I was glad to be able to see the back of them when decent quality multitrack digital recording on the computer finally became affordable in the late 90s. Before that the last thing I did using cassettes were the first set of SugarBox recordings using a Tascam 8-track cassette recorder. At least one of the final mixes was compromised because the cassettes holding the multi-track recordings wore out before had completed one that we were 100% happy with.

[Arpangel]

Don’t know about you, but I’m still using cassettes, for recording, and mastering.

I haven't done anything with cassettes since the end of the 1990s apart from the release of Dick Venom & The Terrortones "The Monster Pussy Sessions" mini album, which was done mostly as a gimmick. The original idea had been to have a full analogue signal path from initial recording to delivery medium. Despite doing the recording on an analogue 24 track machine and mixing (only using analogue effects) to 1/4" tape, it turned out that mastering exclusively in the analogue domain was twice as expensive as digital, and also that none of the small volume cassette duplicators would accept an analogue master, and even if they had, it would still have been digitised for the duplication process.

Having spent the first 25 years of my recording life working mainly with cassettes, I was glad to be able to see the back of them when decent quality multitrack digital recording on the computer finally became affordable in the late 90s. Before that the last thing I did using cassettes were the first set of SugarBox recordings using a Tascam 8-track cassette recorder. At least one of the final mixes was compromised because the cassettes holding the multi-track recordings wore out before had completed one that we were 100% happy with.

Yes, my final stage is digital, I don’t sell cassettes, too few people can play them.
I like the quality or lack of, tapes give, and somehow, vari-speed always sounds better on analogue.

[BigRedX]

Yes, my final stage is digital, I don’t sell cassettes, too few people can play them.
I like the quality or lack of, tapes give, and somehow, vari-speed always sounds better on analogue.

The Terrortones cassette mini-album was also initially available on Bandcamp as a free download. Despite this, we still sold a surprising number of physical copies both through bandcamp and at gigs. I only have about 50 left, which for a medium that is sonically inferior to vinyl and becoming increasing difficult to find a playback device for is quite good going!

[Arpangel]

Yes, my final stage is digital, I don’t sell cassettes, too few people can play them.
I like the quality or lack of, tapes give, and somehow, vari-speed always sounds better on analogue.

The Terrortones cassette mini-album was also initially available on Bandcamp as a free download. Despite this, we still sold a surprising number of physical copies both through bandcamp and at gigs. I only have about 50 left, which for a medium that is sonically inferior to vinyl and becoming increasing difficult to find a playback device for is quite good going!

That is good going!
I’m currently going through my old cassette recordings, to compose an album of suitable stuff. I’m surprised, all of it so far has sounded good, technically, no major drop-outs, or other issues.