Кассетная культура: Подпольная музыкальная сцена 1970-х – 1990-х годов.

The cassette culture (also known as the tape/cassette scene or cassette underground) refers to the practices associated with 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. This article focuses on the independent music scene associated with the cassette that burgeoned internationally in the second half of the 1970s.

It is necessary at the outset to make clear what “cassette culture” refers to in regard to this article. It is not a general article on the cultural history of the compact audio cassette and its technology. The article does not cover the use of the compact audio cassette as a music medium per se, or, in general, the use of the cassette tape as a means for the cheap reproduction and direct distribution of music by artists or other individuals. The subject of this article does not refer to the use of the cassette for making illegal copies of commercially released music, or for recording broadcast music, and it does not refer to so called "mix tapes", the creation of compilations of music by individuals on cassette tape. It does not refer to the distribution of bootleg recordings on cassette, to the use of the cassette for making demo recordings, to the distribution on cassette of music banned by the authorities or otherwise hard to source, or to tape trading. “Cassette culture”, as regards this article, refers to 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 (the "postpunk" period), 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 (in a few cases these labels also released vinyl). 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 (very often in conjunction with digital release) and a new “cassette scene” has sprung up, however this article concentrates on the original “cassette culture” as it first emerged in the late 1970s at the historical moment at which it was first enabled by developments in consumer electronics.

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 (see below) 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 (of live recordings, work in progress material, etc.) 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 (NME), 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 US, cassette culture activity extended through the late 1980s and into the 1990s. Although larger operators made use of commercial copying services, anybody who had access to copying equipment (such as the portable tape to tape cassette players that became common in the early 1980s) could release a tape, and publicize it in the network of fanzines and newsletters that served the scene, such as OP Magazine, Factsheet Five and Unsound. The cassette culture became an inexpensive and democratic way for artists to make available music that was never likely to have mainstream appeal, and many found in the scene music that was more imaginative, challenging, beautiful, and groundbreaking than much of what was being released by the established music industry. In the United States, cassette culture was associated with DIY sound collage, riot grrrl, and punk music and blossomed across the country on cassette labels such as: Psyclones, Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine, Randy Greif's Swinging Axe Productions, Pass the Buck, E. F. Tapes, Mindkill, Happiest Tapes on Earth, Apraxia Music Research, and Sound of Pig (which released over 300 titles), From the Wheelchair to the Pulpit, Walls of Genius (which released over 30 titles, including their own, Architects Office and The Miracle), K Records, brown interior music. Artists such as PBK, Big City Orchestra, Alien Planetscapes, Don Campau, Ken Clinger, Dino DiMuro, Tom Furgas, The Haters, Zan Hoffman, If, Bwana, Hal McGee, Minóy, Dave Prescott, Dan Fioretti (who now identifies as female and goes by the name Dreamgirl Stephanie Ashlyn), Jim Shelley, Suburban Campers, The Silly Pillows, Linda Smith, Saboteur, and hundreds of others, recorded albums available only on cassette throughout the late 1980s and well into the 1990s. The American cassette culture scene has been quite well served by documentary makers, in contrast with the scenes in the UK and Europe. In 2009 Andrew Szava Kovats, who was involved in the US scene under the name Data Bank A, released a 60 minute documentary Grindstone Redux: A Documentary About 1980's Cassette Culture on the American cassette network, with contributions from many of those involved. In 2015 the independent filmmaker William Davenport released The Great American Cassette Masters, a 90 minute documentary interviewing many key US artists of the 1980s scene. Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape (2016), directed by Zack Taylor, George Petzold and Seth Smoot, is a 90 minute documentary which, as the title indicates, takes a broader view of the cassette format and its history and features the inventor of the cassette tape Lou Ottens. It examines nostalgia for the format and its return as a medium for contemporary independent musicians. In 2020 American author Jerry Kranitz published the highly illustrated book Cassette Culture: Homemade Music & The Creative Spirit In The Pre Internet Age (Vinyl On Demand).

There were many cassette artists outside the United Kingdom, the US and Europe. There was a very active scene in Japan, as can be seen from the list of contributors to the International Sound Communication series of compilations.

The packaging of cassette releases, whilst sometimes amateurish, was also an aspect of the format in which a high degree of creativity and originality were displayed. For the most part packaging relied on standard plastic cases with a photocopied "J card" insert, but some made more of an effort. Anusol by the A Band, released on the Chocolate Monk label, came packaged with a "suppository" unique to each copy – one of which was a used condom wrapped in tissue. The BWCD label released a cassette by Japanese noise artist Aube that came attached to a blue plastic ashtray in the shape of a fish. EEtapes of Belgium's 1995 release of This Window's Extraction 2 was packaged with an X ray of a broken limb. The Barry Douglas Lamb album Ludi Funebres presented the cassette case in a tin, the tin filled with earth and the earth covered with leaves. Walls Of Genius went to great lengths, spray painting abstract art on the cassette labels, affixing hand made "authentic" stickers, painting cassette boxes (the "white" cassette, 1984), creating one of a kind pinup covers (The Mysterious Case of Pussy Lust, 1985) and issuing "Certificates of Genius" to anybody discriminating enough to purchase one of their titles. The interested reader is referred to Tape Mag. com (see below).

In the United Kingdom the cassette culture seemed to wane in the second half of the 1980s, and by the mid 1990s the scene in the United States was also in decline, with the appearance of new technologies and methods of distribution: CD Rs and the widespread arrival of the Internet, MP3s and file sharing. However, the early 2000s saw a major revival of interest in the cassette culture of the late 1970s and 1980s, with many obscure tapes being made available on music blogs and the emergence of specialist labels, of which Vinyl On Demand is the best known, dedicated to reissuing on LP and CD material originally released on cassette. In October 2005 "cassette culture [c c]", an international electronic mailing list, was established on Yahoo! Groups for discussion "of all aspects of the DIY music scene, or cassette culture, of the late 1970s, 1980s, and into the 90s". Cassette releases have now been added to the Discogs database, and other databases, in great numbers. Cassette culture releases can now fetch high prices (See Tim Naylor's articles for Record Collector, mentioned above). On 1 January 2018 Frank Bull of Vinyl On Demand Records launched Tape Mag. com, a vast online database of cassette culture and related material. Material, audio and visual, relating to the cassette culture of the 1970s and 1980s has become widely available on the Internet on platforms such as Bandcamp and Archive. org, and on social media. Since the Millennium there has also been a revival in the use of the cassette by independent artists, with the rise of partly or wholly tape based labels such as Burger Records, POST/POP, Memorials of Distinction, Tuff Enuff Records, Truant Recordings, First Base Tapes and Gnar Tapes. In 2007 (12–26 May) an exhibition was held at Printed Matter in New York City devoted to current American cassette culture entitled "Leaderless: Underground Cassette Culture Now."

A number of compilations devoted to or including significant representation of cassette culture music of the 1970s and 1980s have been released since the revival of interest in the scene. The most ambitious collection of material is a trilogy from Cherry Red Records, each release comprising four CDs of material: Close to the Noise Floor: Formative UK Electronica 1975 1984 (2016), Noise Reduction System: Formative European Electronica 1974 1984 (2017), and Third Noise Principle: Formative North American Electronica 1975 1984 (2019). In 2008 the Hyped To Death label released the CD Messthetics Greatest Hiss: Classics of the UK Cassette Culture DIY, 1979 1982. Perhaps the most significant British compilation of cassette culture music released at the time was the 5 cassette Rising from the Red Sand (1983), on Third Mind Records (one of the more notable cassette labels), which contained 45 pieces of music. For many years this landmark collection was kept available (on cassette) by RRRecords, and in 2013 it was released on vinyl by Vinyl On Demand Records. Although not reissued since 1989, mention should also be made of 1983's pioneering double LP release The Elephant Table Album: a compilation of difficult music, a 21 track selection of work by British cassette culture artists. The record was compiled by Dave Henderson, the cassette culture reviewer for Sounds at the start of the 1980s. Henderson followed this with a sequel, Three Minute Symphony, another double LP, which threw the net wider to include European and US artists. The interested reader is referred to the extensive output of vinyl editions for collectors released since 2004 on the German company Vinyl On Demand Records and the many CD releases of US and UK DIY music of the late '70s to early '80s released by the US label Hyped To Death.

James, Robin, 1992. Introduction. In Robin James (Ed.) Cassette mythos. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia. Jones, Steve, 1992. The Cassette Underground. In Robin James (Ed.) Cassette mythos. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia. McGee 1992. Cause and Effect. In Robin James (Ed.) Cassette mythos. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia. Minoy 1992. Mail Art and Mail Music. In Robin James (Ed.) Cassette mythos. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia. Pareles, Jon, Record it yourself Music On Cassette, New York Times, 11 May 1987. Produce, A., A short History of the Cassette. In Robin James (Ed.) Cassette mythos. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia. Staub, Ian Matthew, Redubbing the Underground: Cassette Culture in Transition (2010). Honors Theses All. Paper 418. http://wesscholar. wesleyan. edu/etd hon theses/418