Cassette Music 4 (1994) C60

This is the fourth in the series from Personal Soundtracks, hence the numerical component of the title, and one which initially seemed underwhelming compared to previous volumes; but it gets its hooks into you with just a couple of plays, and it should be noted that nobody could ever have accused Personal Soundtracks of being predictable.

 

Typically, my knowledge is patchy where these folks are concerned, but for what it's worth: fairly sure Dave, the man behind the Personal Soundtracks label, was drummer for the Pranksters, and if I'm getting my wires crossed I'll just have to edit this later, but never mind; I'm not sure what Costes is, but he's been at it for a while and some regard him as a genius. He once sent me a letter which included a photocopy of a nude picture of himself with an erection as apparent illustration to some lyrics which, as I recall, went see the sad boy with the hard cock, don't be sad, boy - you can come in my bum. I didn't write back because I was scared, quite frankly; apparently there's a Vietnamese TV repair guy living in Ho Chi Minh who hasn't heard of factor X, but word on the street is that he's the last one. I'll believe it when and if I ever meet him; and NKVD is of course Glenn of Konstruktivists heard here in his lesser known role of beloved early evening entertainer; Vinci and the Conspiracy appeared on previous volumes of this series but I'm still none the wiser.

Download the sixteen tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Vinci - Philosophie Papale
2 - In Sensorium - Pandemonium
3 - The Pranksters - Celery Lettuce Cucumber
4 - Ampzilla's Delight - My Japanese Drummer is HOT
5 - Costes - Rock 'n' Roll Rip Off
6 - Costes - Aging Punks
7 - The Conspiracy - The Fears of Janet Frame
8 - Teknohedfuk - So Good
9 - factor X - 15 Souls of Flowers
10 - factor X - Settee Boy
11 - The Pranksters - Radio Active TV Repair Man
12 - NKVD - A Riddle
13 - Tone Deaf - Armed
14 - The Conspiracy - Brain Surfing
15 - Terropin - Destruction of Fashion
16 - Vinci - Je T'Aimerais Toujours
 

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Cassette Music 1 (1993) C60

My perception of the tape scene as was is that it pretty much went tits up in the mid-nineties. A few people struggled on, but we all knew it was over, supplanted by stuff recorded direct onto hard drives and distributed on CDR - a medium conducive to superior quality but which was never anything like so durable and had none of the charm. Of course more recently we have certain berks going back to tapes as some kind of artisanal statement for the same reason you'll occasionally get steampunk wankers issuing their most indubitably delightful examples of musical charivari on wax fucking cylinder, but let's be honest - it's over, upsetting though that certainly is, and you can never go home.

Dave Hopwood's Personal Soundtracks label has therefore come to represent - at least in my mind - one of the last great flourishes of the cassette, someone finally getting it right just before the lights went out, so to speak. There may have been others more deserving of such accolades, but I never heard them, so that's why I'm writing about this tape rather than them. Personal Soundtracks released five of these Cassette Music compilations (at least I'm not aware of there having been a volume six), and the music was always good, or worth hearing at the very least; the covers, as designed by Shaun of factor X, were decent; and it really felt as though some care and attention to detail went into these things - an entertaining sixty minutes worth as Scott McCrae wrote in his review in Music from the Empty Quarter #9. There was a similarly positive write up in Impulse #5, and I was going to reproduce both reviews here, but I've just had a quick look and aside from the thumbs up, they just tell you what's on the tape, so I can't be arsed.

If you've been following this blog, you should be familiar with a few of these names - Operation Mind Control, factor X, Chemical Plant, and Symboliks at least; Patternclear was Phil from Stress, the Stick Insects and others; Antonym was Mr. Burnham who edited Soft Watch - and I have a couple of his tapes to digitise at some point; Venus Fly Trap were, so I believe, Alex Novak, later of Attrition, and others - a familiar name, usually as the token rock band on tapes full of people reading poems over the sound of refrigerator hum, but it was always a pleasure to see their name on whatever had just fallen through the letter box; I believe Mr. Hopwood himself played the skins for Pranksters at some stage, and I'm not sure about any of the others - except the Chemical Plant track makes me wish I'd picked up more of their werks at the time.

Download the seventeen tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Patternclear - Dreamscape
2 - Operation Mind Control - Spark Intro
3 - Westland - Pterodaktyl
4 - Symboliks - Andeluvia
5 - Pranksters - Brut Force
6 - factor X - determinants
7 - Antonym - Tranquil Skies
8 - Chemical Plant - Dark Water (second mix)
9 - Ozone Bandits - Black Rain Edit
10 - Ozone Bandits - Slank
11 - Er - Who
12 - Symboliks - Getting Back
13 - Architects Office - A0809.7
14 - Pranksters - Govt. Agents
15 - Antonym - Song for Karen
16 - Venus Fly Trap - 19th Incident
17 - Patternclear - Flamenco
 
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