Hold me to it. Hold me to making a post on every Bandcamp Friday with picks from bands or labels that have cassettes to buy. Here are some interesting ones I found this time:
True Gloom: Demo
The Mountain Goats: The Coroner’s Gambit
DBR: s/t
Jordan Hopkins: The Maritime Line
I was pleasantly surprised to receive new music from People Places Records in the mail the other day. They gave me the tape of Shawn Mativelsky’s new album, Temporal Waves.
Shawn is known for playing the tabla and is at the forefront of bringing the tabla into the electronic music world. Read more about it here.
I can attest it is nice (and sometimes intense) to have on while writing and having a good beer. It’s a great addition to any ambient cassette fan’s collection.
You can add the People Places cassette (like mine above) to your collection by going here and finding the Limited Edition Cassette tab and ordering. You heard it right?: Limited. So put the tabla down and go order it!
Well, yes, there is a rare cassette of Dolly’s new rock album. But it’s weird and I need to sort it out.
First off, I did not know that Dolly Parton made a rock covers/originals album until reading a recent issue of Stream N’ Destroy.
The album is called Rockstar and is a sort of response to her being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.
What struck me funny is the description of Dolly’s cassette sales of this album:
(As reported by Ryan J Downey):
“The album did 118,500 in pure album sales and 128,000 in total activity. That breaks down to 78,000 CDs, 18,000 vinyl LPs, 22,000 paid digital downloads, 9500 in streaming-equivalent albums, and a negligible amount of cassettes.”
A negligible amount? Ha!
The funny thing is that I am happy cassette sales got a mention. I will take a ‘negligible tape sales’ shout-out, any day.
Even the small amount of tape sales at least means there is at least a tape released. Cool (even if I don’t think I will be buying it.
Except there is not (at least one that I can find) a regular version of Rockstar on cassette tape. But there is a version.
I guess it’s sort of a version of this 4 LP Pink Rockstar on Amazon. (This is as good a time as any to give you a heads-up that I am an affiliate of Amazon)
So there is no normal cassette version of Rockstar, but there is a limited edition version floating around out there.
I found one on eBay. One. And it’s probably gone now but take a look to see if it’s still there. Going for $45 (at the time of me writing this).
You would think it would be on here website and it is nowhere to be found.
Sort of bizarre. I am tempted to ask the eBay seller where they got theirs but I am too lazy.
My working theory on this seemingly rare Dolly Parton tape, is that was sent to radio stations as a promo package of some sort, but there isn’t a regular cassette of Rockstar out there to buy.
Guess I will preview some of the music and call it a day for now as I get weirded out listening to Dolly Parton singing Purple Rain:
Okay, good looking out for some Dolly. BTW, one of Dolly’s friends (Willie Nelson) has a lot of cassettes that you might want to check out too.
English post-punk badasses, Idles, has a new album TANGK (February), and a new song that features somebody using a Walkman… at least I think it is. Actually I don’t think it is. Well it’s rad either way, yes?
Check it for yourself, you’ll see:
It just says “detachable cassette player” on her tape player. Not sure if that what the actual player says of if that is a prop. It might be a Jensen, but I couldn’t find a match.
But do they have a cassette tape version of their new album?
No. It does not appear they do. A quick check of their website reveals no cassette tape being released for TANGK.
Are there tapes of any previous Idles stuff?
Yes. Well, actually, their website has a tape available in December called “Crawler” (a previous album) and it looks pretty nice and I want it.
There is also a tape that exists for Ultra Mono but it’s currently not available on Amazon.
And I looked for it on eBay but it isn’t there at the moment. Gotta add it to the list of tapes to look out for (which is kinda fun anyway).
*Related reading: A new Doly Parton cassette that is hard to find.
I like Metallica. Not a huge fan but they can get me excited about their music every once in a while.
Not sure about this new album yet (even with the stellar reviews) but I am definitely excited about the tape.
I love that yellow. I want to buy it on the look of the tape alone. Feel it in my hand.
The music itself is getting a lot of good reviews too
I dunno, I might agree with the positive metal buzz as the new song is pretty strong:
*Other Tape Pulls: Mudhoney “Plastic Eternity” on tape.