I've been listening to a clutch of battered old cassettes which were unearthed during the last domestic reshuffle. They're all TDK SA90s, which were the blank tapes of choice for the cassette compilation connoisseur. The age of compact cassettes is pretty much over now, and gone with it is the rich culture of personal compilations. The biggest disadvantage of tape media compared to CDs, MP3s and vinyl - its lack of support for random access - was also its most attractive quality for the obsessive compiler, for whom the technological advances of skip and shuffle were anathema to his subtle segues, threaded motifs and surprising adjuncts.
In my twenties, the receipt of a cassette from Adam or Sofia, Mihai or Jacob - often creatively packaged, always wittily titled - was a significant cultural event, presaging hours of headphone analysis. But making tapes was even better; like DJing in slow motion, with one person on the dancefloor. One of the SA90s I've been playing this week was the last tape I even made; an unfinished eight-year-old masterpiece, intended for Mihai and starting with a track of organic electronica with an interesting varispeed effect that has the strings drifting in and out of tune. I can't remember what this was, and I'll never know because the record it would have been copied from was stolen along with everything else in 2000. Following this, a lovely Zimbabwean mbira song with grunted basso profundo vocals, a Charles Mingus tune, something that sounds like Luke Vibert, Andras Schiff playing the F minor prelude from Bach's first 48, 'Wind Chimes' by the Beach Boys, and this: ninety seconds of late night introspection from my parents' house circa 1997; two quivering voices dubbed over something like the riff from A Love Supreme, played on their big old German upright piano and recorded on my cassette four track - you can hear the rich tape distortion on the loud bits of the piano solo.
The track listing sounds self-conciously eclectic (I remember this concern), but there's something consistent in the complilation; a sort of detachment. I'll send it to you, Mihai.
