Cassette Cult: Sampler on Cassette: The Cassette Years

Everyone should be able to do everything. For a short time in the early 1980s, cassettes became the first medium to bring music to the world, whose audience would be expected to be limited. Mini labels sold tapes with what would later be called, in the broadest sense, postpunk. In the case of the tape labels in this country, it was primarily, but not only, noise music and herbaceous electronics, manufactured using synths and tape loops.

The Bureau B label has been doing archival work on various construction sites since 2005, bringing forgotten and out-of-stock items back to the surface, primarily Krautrock and early electronic music from Germany. On the sampler »Klar 80! A cassette label from Düsseldorf« is a short episode of tape music documented that contains the essence of what makes up the dilettante avant-garde of this time.

That clear! 80« label only released cassettes, apart from a vinyl box. They’re all collector’s items now, and even label owner Rainer Rabowski no longer has all of the tapes lying around with him. The Düsseldorf musician and photographer Stefan Schneider (formerly with the bands Kreidler and To Rococo Rot) has collected thirteen pieces of tapes from private collections that represent the spectrum of the label. »Klar 80!« begins with a loop of punishment for rebellion, which basically shows the possibilities of the medium. Red Star Belgrade, a project by label operator Rabowski, is the only one represented with several tracks, namely three. They range from twisted electro (“Ta Ku Sey”) to indifferent droning (“alpha waves”) to very pretty lo-fi proto-gabber (“Blow in your knee”), which, if it were produced in a big way, It could sound martial, but it comes across as very cute.

The piece “Ralph & Ernie” from the project of the same name by Ernie Müller and Ralf Eikenroth, who have not appeared musically beyond “Klar 80!”, represents the connection to industrial and noise music. The two best-known musicians who work here today are Xaõ Seffcheque and Alexander Von Borsig, who still plays as Alexander Hacke with the Einstreichen Neuhäusern. The piece “I’m missing the words” by Xaõ Seffcheque & The Rest takes the repetitive minimalism of Neu! and puts noises, reverberation and a pretty well played saxophone solo over it. “Tactless Rattlesnakes” by Hacke’s project Blässe is a nice basement jam. Everyone bangs on something and something happens.

That is, so to speak, the aesthetic principle that the music on the “Klar 80!” sampler follows. Production and sales are as low-threshold as possible, everyone can take part. Pop, avant-garde, post-punk, open to everyone (at least to everyone who was part of the relevant scene and perhaps not easily accessible in other ways). On the one hand, the music today is of course interesting in terms of pop history. On the other hand, the free access and the associated desire to experiment can still be heard, not only abstractly reconstructable, but directly.

Clear! 80 – A cassette label from Düsseldorf (Bureau B/Indigo)