THE MIX (Poland, 1991?)
Takt 1430


Here's another unofficial Polish edition, Actually the third Polish The Mix pirate cassette on this blog! What can I say, they continue to fascinate me, with their combination of attention to details, misunderstandings, and DIY design.


As mentioned before, Polish editions of The Mix would routinely cut the original 65-minute album down a little to make it fit a standard cassette. Sometimes, they'd splash out on a c60, but here, you get only 50 minutes of The Mix, 8 of the 11 tracks. They've taken out Pocket Calculator/ Dentaku and Homecomputer, which means they keep songs from all the albums. What astounds me though, is that they have spread the 3-track Trans-Europe Express "suite" across the cassette! "Abzug" is the middle section on the official release, here it's put at the end of Side A, while the first part is track B1, and "Metal On Metal" is jammed in between Autobahn and Music Non Stop! I wonder how it would be to someone who didn't know the original sequence...


Oh well, anyway. The J-card is on thin glossy paper, just the one panel but printed on both sides. For once in Poland, the design is fairly straight-forward, presenting the original LP sleeve against an orange background, with the title and band name repeated underneath. Although I'm willing to bet this cassette was not authorised by Kraftwerk, EMI or anyone with authority, BOTH sides of the card states that "Unauthorized copying (...) is a violation of applicable laws". Yeah, we can't have illegal actions taking place, when a simple written message could stop it, I suppose. The spine on my copy is faded, and the cassette is clear with no info, not even a "side A" on one side. The Takt label would often have their own logo and A and B on their cassettes, so who knows, maybe I own a bootleg of a bootleg? I kind of hope that is the case.







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