THE MIX (Poland, 1991?)
Mercurton MT 307


Poland is a fascinating country when it comes to cassettes! There are a multitude of different releases, and unless I'm much mistaken, they are all unofficial - meaning that they have no connection to the rights holders and I suppose paid no royalty to the artists involved. Judging by the multitude of unofficial releases, this was a big industry in Poland at the time!

Kraftwerk's 1991 album of re-recordings, The Mix, was issued in loads of different variants, and while they generally sound fine, they often pay little attention to detail; many releases would change the track running order, to save tape on having the cassette sides as equal of length as possible, sometimes, tracks from different releases would be added or substituted, and in the particular instance I present today, the credits list appears to have been misunderstood as the track list!

1991 is well into the CD age, which I suppose is one reason why The Mix had many more variants released in Poland than the earlier albums; anyone could get a CD, copy it onto a pile of cassettes, print up a variation on the album cover with any info they found, and distribute to shops, market stalls or what do I know. (Many Polish cassettes use the German-language versions of the albums, I suppose it was easy to get the music directly from Germany?)

On some releases, there would be printed labels, sometimes with catalog numbers and "record company" logos. This one, from Mercurton, has simple "A" and "B" stickers - I'm not sure they were even there originally, could be the previous owner added them? At least, they look exactly like the ones found in TDK "D" blank cassettes. 





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