Cassette culture
The cassette culture is the 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. An independent music scene based on the cassette burgeoned internationally in the second half of the 1970s.
Background
“Cassette culture” is 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 1980s, 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. 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 and a new “cassette scene” has sprung up.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. 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. Electronic instruments, such as drum machines and synthesizers, became more compact and inexpensive. 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.
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 1970s 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 1970s, 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. 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. Whilst distribution was mostly by mail, there were a few retail outlets that stocked independently produced cassette releases, such as Rough Trade and Falling A.
The "cassette culture" is a historical phenomenon, primarily in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Following the anti-establishment shock of punk a very creative period followed in popular music, the postpunk period. In the United Kingdom synth-pop was in the ascendant and industrial and postindustrial music was the vanguard of musical experimentation. Many 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 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 1970s 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 1980s and the reissue of much music on LP and CD for a small but enthusiastic market.
"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, the Instant Automatons, Storm Bugs, Sean T. Wright, 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 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 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, 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. 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!" and "Home Taping is Thrilling Music". Memoirs written by people involved in the UK cassette scene include Permanent Transience, by Bendle of the band The Door and the Window, and The Luxury of Dreams: An Autobiography, by Mark Automaton of the band The Instant Automatons.
Continental Europe
European artists involved in the cassette scene include: Esplendor Geométrico, Die Tödliche Doris, Maurizio Bianchi/M.B., Ptôse, Absolute Body Control, Clair Obscur, Non Toxique Lost, Giancarlo Toniutti.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.