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A short history of the audio cassette
Curated by Felix Kubin
As a former employee at Dutch electronics conglomerate Philips, Wim Langenhoff was involved in the development of the audio cassette. He was also a member of The New Electric Chamber Music Ensemble, an Eindhoven-based artists’ collective that became notorious in the region for their anarchic performances in the late sixties.
The different sections of this interview are separated by two musical excerpts from the 2008 compilation ‘The Spirit of Eindhoven’. The ensemble’s adventurous arsenal of instruments included kitchen utensils, workmen’s tools, radio and TV sets, motorbikes, EEG equipment, gramophones, discarded super-8 movies and various lighting effects. Philips had no problems with its employee’s double life: the company even financed some of Langenhoff’s performances. When the group eventually disbanded, he continued as a part of the Instituut voor Betaalbare Waanzin (Institute for Affordable Madness).
This feature was produced by Felix Kubin for his
‘Chromdioxidgedächtnis’ (chromium dioxide memory) project released by Gagarin Records. It appears on the MC that forms part of the boxset along with a CD and an extensive booklet. The project revolves around the format of the compact cassette, the last popular analogue recording medium. The cassette tape played a vital role for the pre-digital generation, providing an inexpensive way to record directly from the radio or vinyls and to create mixtapes for friends and lovers. As a side effect, it also triggered the emergence of an underground cassette scene that was particularly vibrant in early-eighties Germany.
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Translated lyrics
A compilation of the lyrics and the English translations of the Deutsche Kassettentäter music selection by Felix Kubin.
Latvia
The small but active experimental music scene in Latvia is starting to turn a page and break free of the stigmas that have plagued their cultural life for almost twenty years.
Deutsche Kassettentäter. The rise of the German home-recording tape scene #2
ZickZack label founder Alfred Hilsberg and author Frank Apunkt Schneider talk about the cultural, social and political conditions in Germany at the end of the seventies that gave rise to a radical new type of music, which Schneider describes as 'the undirected aggression of the freed noises'.
Czech Republic and Slovakia
A decade after the end of the communist regime, Czech and Slovakian underground musicians began channeling the national legacy of progressive dissident rock to virgin soil.
Deutsche Kassettentäter. The rise of the German home-recording tape scene #1
Felix Kubin brings us back the vitality of the Neue Deutsche Welle through lost tracks published on tape between 1981 and 1993.