THE MIX (Poland, 1991?)
Top Music K-337


Plenty of Polish pirate cassettes to present, as I made contact with a Polish dealer recently. The Mix has been featured lots of times before, of course, but there are so many to choose from! In fact, to put a perspective on this, Discogs has documented a total of 52 cassettes of The Mix - of which 30 are Polish (although the number includes variants; still, a record-breaking 22 different editions on as many labels)!


As with the Takt release I presented recently, the 65-minute double LP is cut down to a single album length. Here's 45 minutes of The Mix, again 8 of the 11 tracks. This time though, they've taken out Dentaku, Autobahn and Radioaktivität, making Trans-Europa Express (its three-part suite separated across the sides of the cassette) the "oldest" song here. I'm using the German titles, as they're the ones they've issued here. I suppose it was easier to travel to Germany and get a CD there, most Polish The Mix editions are sung in German.

 
As fairly usual, the J-card is on thin glossy paper, just the one panel but printed on both sides. Design-wise though, Top Music knew what they wanted: They wanted the buying public to notice their product, whether they were at a distance, or the room was dimly lit, or you had shades on; the original LP sleeve is set against a background so intensely hot pink it nearly hurts, with some blue and yellow details to boot. In the lower right corner, the word NEW is accompanied by an arrow, pointing upwards - to the original album design I suppose? Well, it was the first Kraftwerk album in five years, maybe it felt important to point this out. On the lower part of the spine, the bold claim is made that this is recorded in Dolby HX Pro, believe it if you will, and on the backflap the ludicrous copyright notice again, and a barcode, which is the same as other artists' releases on Top Music!


The cassette is clear with no info, except a handwritten tag that I suppose is from a previous owner. Thank you, previous owner! 






 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
RADIO-ACTIVITY (Portugal, 1976) Capitol 11C274 82 087 Every blog should have a certain amount of posts starting with "I haven't been posting in a while", for the benefit I suppose for readers who do not posess a calendar. It's summer, I was busy and I haven't received a lot of items recently to fascinate me. But sure, here's an item, a nice return to Portugal and to Radio-Activity!   I love these Portuguese items , they have their own style! At least during the "Capitol years", ie the albums Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express and The Man-Machine, each cassette came out in several slightly different editions. Each one presents the LP cover quite simply, except where Portugal gives us a coloured stripe across the upper front of the J-card. Bright, clear colours, and whenever one edition sold out, they changed the stripe. Hence I've seen red, yellow and blue editions of The Man-Machine, and at least a red and this blue one of Radio-Activity (if y...
Read more
Image
AUTOBAHN (Poland, 1996?) Unofficial Reggae, 90208 Although there has been a lot of Polish releases on this blog before, I can't remember even one Autobahn? Well, here's the first, then, and it's on the surprisingly titled "Reggae" label. Apparently based on the German 1985 edition , same front illustration at least. The cassette is clear, without any info, not even which side you're looking at. The cover is a simple 1-panel J-card, on fairly cheap-looking thin paper, and printed on one side only. In fact, the only actual connection to the official item is the "motorway sign" design on the front; they haven't even bothered to put the track list on the cover! It just says "Autobahn I-V", which surprises me, as if they had access to the illustration on the front, surely they had the tracklist too? Maybe they were sent a postcard of it. I stated above that this came out in 1996, I base this on a stamp inside the cover. However it's bar...
Read more
Image
The Model (Poland, 199?) Unofficial Euro Star ES 2213 Time for another Polish pirate cassette! This time, though, a compilation, one of the few that weren't "curated", so to speak, in Poland...  "The Model 1975-1978" was a compilation on the US Cleopatra label, released in 1992. It features tracks from Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express and The Man Machine, some of them in their original single edits, and Les Mannequins which had been issued as the b-side to its English-language counterpart Showroom Dummies on a promotional "disco" 12" single. There are several Polish editions of this, this one has all the tracks from the compilation - not in the same order, though, they have been jumbled around, I suppose it was an effort to make two programmes of equal lenght. Apart from starting the cassette with the title track, which is not unjustified for a best-of compilation with a title track, they somewhat surprisingly placed Trans-Europe Express on Si...
Read more