ELECTRIC CAFE (US Promo, 1986)
Warner Bros. Records WB-25525


Today's edition of Electric Cafe is interesting; a promotional copy without artwork - the black-on-white cover has just the song titles and a bit of additional information.


I've seen this one included in a promotional "press pack", distributed to press contacts, important record stores and record company executives to promote the new Kraftwerk release. This would include an info sheet, promotional photograph and the famous "mobile"; a card cut-out of the four robot heads to hang from the ceiling. Anyway, in addition to these press packs, I suppose the cassette must also have been circulated on its own, as it appears for sale more frequently than the other promotional stuff.


It's of particular interest to me that the album title is not printed on the J-card nor on the labels. Famously, the album started its life in 1983, as "Techno Pop", the title they changed back to since the 2009 remasters. I don't know exactly when they changed the title, but according to Karl Bartos' autobiography, the song "Electric Cafe" came later than the other album tracks. They were years overdue with the album, finishing the mix while deadline after deadline came and went, and I'm wondering if this promotional cassette simply was duplicated before the album's title was decided? On the other hand, the album had a title years before, so it's possible that it was never the "untitled" new album.

Whatever the reason, the cassette comes in a thick, white J-card, just the one panel, printed on the outside, and the clear-shelled cassette has silver-coloured stickers - "Tape duplication by: WEA Manufacturing Inc." - maybe they should have a special thanks in this case for using Dolby HX Pro, where the standard US edition uses Dolby B. (Hm, I haven't posted the standard US cassette yet? Well, it's coming!)

 






Comments

Popular posts from this blog