ELEKTRIC MUSIC: ESPERANTO (1994, Sweden/ Scandinavia)
Promo, no cat.no (EastWest/ no label?)


A surprising oddity here: A "title sleeve" promo cassette of Esperanto. 

 

Not much information to go by here, I had never even heard that this should exist before stumbling upon it in an online auction. It came, supposedly, from the collection of a record company executive in Norway... Well, I remember seeing promo CDs in the second hand shops there at the time, so I know Esperanto was promoted there, and Elektric Music were touring in Sweden and Denmark in 1994, so I guess it's possible that cassettes like this one were sent out to whip up some interest for an Oslo gig?

 

The item consists of a 1-panel inlay, on red paper, and a cassette labeled with glossy stickers on both sides. In fact, the same sticker on either side - it doesn't say which side is A or B! The J-card is printed on 80g/m2 paper, I think - standard copy paper, but red in colour. Whether the red paper was a design feature, or some form of rudimentary copy-protection is anyone's guess, I suppose. It also looks like it was hand cut, there are black lines at the edges to cut along.

 

The cassette is 70 minutes long, so the first 35 minutes are on Side A, then the title track cuts off in the middle, and starts over again on side B! Then of course, the B-side has two songs, followed by a lenghty pause. Easily one of my most WTF items, a rare case of "must be official because no bootlegger would be able to respect himself after this"...







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