Kraftwerk cassettes

EXPO 2000 (Scandinavia, 2025) unofficial - home-made No label, no cat.no In the quiet week before the New Year - just a bit of fun for once! This blog explores the art of collecting through the medium of cassettes. I've touched frequently upon what I collect, and what I do not collect, although this has also changed as the collection develops (or grows, as I don't think I've ever taken stuff out of the collection once I've made room for it!). I started out focusing on official releases, but soon realised that not all countries even could get the cassettes officially, and that the line between official and un-official can be more blurred in some countries than it is in my homeland... And here's the first cassette which I define as "home-made", as in, not duplicated and with a cover not printed professionally, and with no connection to the record industry - _or_ with a view to selling the item. It was given me for Christmas. My brother thought it a shame tha...

KARL BARTOS: Communication (2003, Japan) Sony, no cat.no Ending the year with something different, here's a relatively new one - from 2003. Karl Bartos' solo album "Communication" was of course not released on cassette, because cassettes were not needed in most countries where it was released, but they made a promo cassette for Japan, and - well, this is that! The cassette has a November 2003 release date; of course, this promo could be made a few weeks before, but I think Kraftwerk's Tour De France Soundtracks came in August. Musically, it nods back to the sound of Elektric Music's "Esperanto" album, pretty much in the same vein as the music he wrote for Kraftwerk, and some familiar synth sounds, percussion and computer voices. The promo cassette includes the two remixes that were also bonus tracks on the Japanese CD edition (in fact, European CD-rom editions of the album had a download link to get the remixes, but they were not on the physical CD)....

TOUR DE FRANCE SOUNDTRACKS (Hungary, 2003) EMI/ JJSR, 0724359171043 Huzza! Finally I can present Kraftwerk's final studio album on cassette on this blog. It only ever came in this edition, at least officially, so it's kind of a rare occasion... I find it interesting that the only place that issued this album on cassette, except of course the inevitable pirate editions, was Hungary - were cassettes a huge market there in 2003? I don't know. It is also possible, but as usual speculation on my part, that it was made for export to some extent, but given it's relative rarity I can't say I have much to support this theory. Anyway, I am glad that there is a cassette version, for whatever reason! Just one other Hungarian cassette has surfaced - Electric Cafe came out here in 1986. Where that was a fairly simple design, they pulled all stops on this one - a long, 4-panel J-card, full of much of the same illustrations and graphics as on the CD and LP versions - the Eiffel to...