A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion.
Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was What are you really thinking about just now?
I was thinking about various things, both trivial and more important. Musically it took me to The Charlatans. There was an inspired response from the OSS (Oblique Saturdays Squad) which included Otavio August Fernades Cardoso (Ernie), Kurt Vile and The Charlatans (Al G, and a different Charlatans song from mine), The Housemartins, Broken Chanter, Happy Mondays, The Colourfield and Hifi Sean and David McAlmont (all JC), National Trust membership (Mrs G), the England 1970 World Cup squad (Jase), The B52s (Rol), Jake Thackray (The Swede), Jonathan Dee (A Telepathic Fish) and NOZZ (Chris Zen Arcade).
W.F.L. (Think About The Future)
At the start of this series in January I thought I might pull all the songs together into a mix or series of mixes but the sheer volume of them has left me a bit overwhelmed by the prospect. An end of year job maybe.
Anyway, this week's card is this- The tape is now the music.
A few weeks ago a friend who's moving house sent me a message to ask if it was worth trying to sell a box of old cassettes, 'mainly 80s pop' he said, 'Springsteen, Dire Straits, that kind of thing'. I said it was, the cassette revival was very much a thing and 80s pop was probably much sought after. I recommended Fountains records in Stretford. He came back with £50 in his pocket and promised to buy me a pint to say thank you (I've not had that pint yet it occurs to me).
The photo at the top of this post and the one below are the tapes I still own, bought at various points since the late 80s. I sometimes bought cassettes back in the day- cheaper than vinyl, portable, often contained extra tracks, some bought for car listening- many of these pictured here were owned on vinyl as well (and possibly later on on CD too). A couple are magazine freebies, one is a bootleg of Andrew Weatherall DJing at Cream bought in a clothes shop in Wigan (funny the things you remember), a couple are promos from a magazine in Manchester I contributed a few things to in the mid 90s, a handful are very recent (products of the tape revival) and there's a few C90s in there too which for sentimental reasons I've never felt able to part with. I could probably equal my friend's £50 windfall by taking many of these up the road but I think I'd miss them. I do actually still have a cassette player too but am cautious about playing them in case they get tangled and snagged.
Some tracks from a handful of the tapes pictured.
Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards
Possibly Billy Bragg's best song, certainly one of his most loved. I adored it when it came out and it evokes the world it was released into very much- the me as an 18 year old world and the wider world of 1988.
See also The Wedding Present and George Best.
The cassette single (they tried to make the word cassingle a thing and it didn't really take off) was a cheap way of picking up extra tracks and B-sides for Walkman listening, especially if you picked them up from the bargain bin in Woolworths after they'd dropped out of the chart. The 1993 One Dove cassingle of Breakdown cost me less than a quid and has the sublime Squire Black Dove Rides Out version of Breakdown on it, ideal for listening to on the move at a time when I didn't have the facility to tape from my vinyl. Andrew Weatherall and the Sabres boys with a ten minute cinematic dub odyssey, remixing One Dove and sampling Shades Of Rhythm and Tranquility Bass to fine effect.
Breakdown Squire Black Dove Rides Out
Klangkollektor is from Nuremberg and releases records on Jason Boardman's Before I Die label. Thoroughly recommended. The cassette release of The Stockport Tapes captures Klangkollektor playing live in Lower Hillgate, Stockport, two summers ago. Dubby Balearica with Roland Space Echo and tweeting birds.
Evening Post (Live In Stockport)
Rentamax 2000's Straight To Tape came out in September 2025, the sound of the future past, Tomorrow's World, dial up and the 80s tape revolution.
The tape is now the music. Feel free to drop your own responses and recommendations in the comments box.
11 comments:
A bit obvious but I have to go for C30 C60 C90 Go by Bow Wow Wow of course!
Just under 50 years ago, a number of bands began to take punk further by recording music onto tape, cutting it up and reassembling it. In some cases, field recordings were also incorporated into the sound, and magnetic tapes were played back at a slower speed or in reverse. The result was often a dark, menacing sound, which later evolved into post-punk. One example of this is This Heat’s debut album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrfz9pULvm8&list=RDLrfz9pULvm8&start_radio=1
I had exactly the same response as you even before I had read past the instruction. I have dug out my extensive collection of 10 cassettes, photographed here in all their glory:
https://flic.kr/p/2sE6MwU
There are three by Martin Newell/ Cleaners from Venus, four Ethiopian cassettes I acquired on a visit to Addis, two acts that toured with The Clash in 1980 (I think that is just a coincidence) and Richard Hell.
My choice is something by Martin Newell as I used to go to his house to buy them off him personally when we lived near each other in 1983-84 (this was long before he acquired his minor celebrity status). I remember him telling me that the invention of the colour photocopier had been a great boon as it meant he no longer had to colour in every individual cassette cover by hand.
https://youtu.be/1izUhAcTRVU?si=fUEnRA1ySFhhtTTp
And a bit of Ethiopian soul from the Ephrem Tamiru cassette as a bonus:
https://youtu.be/fOngvD1Z4cA?si=WUzBFbxpqJLzWgPe
Or anything from Your Cassette Pet, though my pick would be Sexy Eiffel Tower!
😂😂😂 National Trust membership! It seems that fate and my own distraction conspired to make me submit something even more oblique than intended last week - which was this: https://youtu.be/hnpILIIo9ek?si=5mgAakeD9pjWvKXI
It can do for this week too.
The history of sampledelia is rooted in a fundamental break (!) from musical naturalism, tracing a direct line from the post-war avant-garde to the diy bedroom logic of the UK dance music continuum. Long before the digital sampler democratised audio piracy, a French composer named Pierre Schaeffer initiated a mutiny in 1940s Paris.
By manually chopping, reversing, and looping magnetic tape, he ripped real-world sounds away from their physical origins. Schaeffer proved a radical new point: a recording studio did not just have to function as a clear, transparent window in time capturing a live performance. Instead, it could be a laboratory for building completely artificial, mind-bending soundscapes out of stolen audio!
This development then created a fork in the road, offering artists a choice between a modernist or post modernist approach to music making. The modernist trajectory stayed true to Schaeffer's pure abstraction, treating the sample like a lump of clay to be stretched and distorted until the original sound was completely unrecognisable.
Conversely, the postmodernist path approached sampling as a hyper-literate pop art canvas. Rather than erasing the past, it leaned into it, utilising nostalgia, irony, and a series of highly recognisable audio fragments.
This postmodern style found its ultimate street-level expression in 1983 with New York’s Double Dee & Steinski. Working with nothing but razor blades and physical tape, they pioneered the cut-and-paste collage format with "The Lessons". Their work bypassed expensive digital gear to create a hyper-kinetic tapestry, stitching together film dialogue, instructional records, and stolen funk breaks into a brilliant new form of pop art.
The pair's cut-and-paste sampling method soon went viral, crossing the Atlantic and landing in London where it underwent a distinctly British mutation. Channeling both Schaeffer’s physical tape loops and Steinski's pop-art plunder, Coldcut brilliantly hacked together their 1987 lofi debut "Say Kids (What Time Is It?)".
https://youtu.be/H5ewsV7rkRw?is=oiG8Xq89haeZ5U5j
Because they couldn't afford expensive digital samplers, Matt Black and Jonathan More relied on a beautifully primitive trick... building their rhythm tracks by repeatedly slamming the physical pause button on a basic consumer cassette deck while recording vinyl loops.
Coldcut’s pause-tape breakthrough effectively completed the trajectory of early sampledelia. It took the art of tape manipulation out of the University studio, and turned into the driving, accessible breakbeat smorgasbord that would soon ignite the UK's massive dance music explosion!
Mrs G- I did wonder when the YouTube link played it. I double and triple checked the link and then went with it. Oblique indeed I assumed!
Swiss Adam
Tapes ‘n Tapes were briefly Pitchfork-approved indie rock’s next big thing, back in 2006. Saw them at the Hop ‘n Grape and they were indeed great. Things unspooled for them with lacklustre follow-ups, but their debut still sounds good
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JpjSacflxSg&ra=m
And here’s the Lucksmiths pining for the cassingle revival back in 2002 - maybe they’re in luck at last
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2t6Sn3083Fs&ra=m
First thought is the memory of taping EVERY Essential Mix that the BBC broadcast when it first started. There was a large element of novelty in having a DJ doing a full mix on nationwide radio in (acceptable quality) FM compared to the dodgy rave tapes that you'd got a 5th generation copy of from your mate.
I was living in a student house in 1993 when it started and we would make sure that we always had someone standing by their tape deck ready to start recording whenever it came on. One in particular stands out which is the Felix Da Housecat mix from 1997 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJDP_JxtKpI&list=RDAJDP_JxtKpI&start_radio=1. Sometimes we'd forget to stop the tape when the news came on. Consequently whoever taped it managed to capture this announcement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyKKeAPilQI which is still preserved on tape to this day.
I'm also reminded of Brian Wilson and his recording methods around the time of Pet Sounds and Smile. Especially with the latter, hours upon hours of recorded tape that he had to try and assemble into a coherent whole. https://www.instagram.com/p/CyLswilOvuw/ Famoulsy, he failed to complete the task until many years later, when the tapes did finally become the music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfljDi40av4&list=OLAK5uy_nxIc_jgGLl2oySdkh_ad6J__vTC1AOCa4&index=26
The Pooh Sticks - On Tape!
Like the new header... but I miss the old one.
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