Kraftwerk cassettes

THE MIX (Brazil, 1991) EMI 796671 4 Back to Brazil, and another edition of The Mix. As mentioned, there were not that many editions of this worldwide, and they were not that different from each other, but there are a couple of interesting features here! When Brazil issued this, they did not go for the international standard 4-panel design with images and graphics; we get a simple 1-panel J-card, printed on both sides, on thin glossy paper. The front cover has the standard design, but the rest is black on white. The tracklist on the inside gets back to the "serial numbers" for each song - at the risk of repeating myself I don't know what they are, but seeing as the 1981 recording and the 1991 re-recording both share the same numbers, it looks like they correspond to the song, not the recording... So, publishing numbers? Best I can do at present. The cassette is pale grey, with the standard blue labels where Side 1 is specific to the release, while the Side 2 label is a s

Computerwelt (Germany RE, 198?) EMI Electrola 1C 264-46 311 Back to Germany again for this, a cassette of Computerwelt. It's the last of the "canonised" albums (you know, the "Katalog", the "12345678" - the ones the band themselves care about!) to be featured on this blog in German, and as usual, it's not a first edition... Most of the German albums were released in several variants on cassette - they were maybe not big sellers in the charts, but would sell steadily over the years. Hence, slight variants abound - different colours as regards the cassette shells and cases, different labels, and variants in the J-cards as well. Hard to tell in retrospect what was the genuine "first" issue. In this case, I'm sure it's not a first edition due to one simple fact: It's "made in EEC", not Germany. I think this was a result of some change of rules in the common market in the 80s? In fact, I suppose this must be a late 80'

RADIO-ACTIVITY (UK, 1982) Capitol, TC-EST 11457, 0C 262-82087 Off to the United Kingdom today for a reissue of Radio-Activity, here's one of those occasions where I think the reissue is better than the original. We've seen the first UK issue before, which had a broad brown stripe across the length of the J-card. I felt (and still feel) that this stripe was uncalled for. Apparently, the record label agreed, and for this reissue, they went with a much classier all-black front side, with the tracklist in white on black on both the right panel and backflap. About the dating: This reissue is marked with "8202 DP" on the J-card, which I think means it's the second edition and from 1982 (I mean, the first UK one has "7601 DP" in the same place on the J-card; my interpretation at least matches what I know of the facts!). The cassette came out again another couple of times in the UK, but later editions have the second panel and backflap in white with black text.

ELECTRIC CAFE (United Arab Emirates, 1986?) Thomsun Original, EN-1249 Back to the Emirates again for this, a surprisingly garish unofficial edition of Electric Cafe! As seen before , I don't actually know anything about Thomsun Original, but it appears to be a pirate label, what with the general disregard for details such as the original track listing and design features. For The Mix, they left off "Metal on Metal", and moved Music Non Stop to the end of Side A; design-wise, they used some fonts that I doubt Ralf Hütter would have approved of, and not least, they put the "Thomsun" logo across the original LP design. Thomsun's version of Electric Cafe is also quite different to other editions. Let's talk colour scheme first. Not only do we get a white background, where a black one was generally regarded as the only possibility, but they have re-touched the album logo - it is now purple and green in a red frame, set against the white background. Well it&#

TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (Belgium, 1977) Capitol 4C 258 82306   Rolling out the big guns, here's a very rare European edition that I recently had the luck of adding to my collection! Belgium is of course a small country in between France, Germany and the Netherlands (ok, and Luxemburg, sorry!), and I don't suppose the cassette market was screaming for local output, what with these other countries often being within bicycling distance... At any rate, not many Kraftwerk albums came on cassette in Belgian editions - I know of 2 - and you don't see them up for sale very often. I've mentioned before how the German and US editions (on LP as well as cassette) would use different cover designs; furthermore, some countries had their own ideas... Belgium went for a pretty unique approach, basing their design on the German LP _back_ cover! The J. Stara idol portrait in black and white, with Hütter to the left and Flür far right, and the song titles above the image, in black against a

AUTOBAHN (Malaysia, 1985) EMI/ Parlophone  TC-EJ 2400704 Another oddity from a new country on this blog: Here's the Malaysian cassette of Autobahn. It is notable for several reasons, one being the different background colour, a sort of pale beige, which makes it stand out among a bunch of other Autobahn cassettes... It looks surprisingly fresh, counterparting the blue of Emil Schult's well-known painting. Speaking of which, the LP cover has been very slightly cropped, so you only get half the album title and band name from the top of the picture! Both are printed in orange across the top of the front though, so it's there, but if you know how that picture is supposed to look, it is somewhat startling none the less. The picture is cropped left and right as well, so you lose both the grill of the Mercedes-Benz, but more notably most of the trees on the right, which I suppose loses something of the "industry in harmony with nature" appeal of the picture... Yeah well.