Kraftwerk cassettes

ELECTRIC CAFE (USA, 1986) Warner Brothers 9 25525-4 (4-25525) It struck me today that we've had USA editions of Electric Cafe on a couple of occasions, but never the standard stock copy, so that's what I'm doing today! Previously, we've had a Club edition , and a "title sleeve" promo , and we've also seen a v/a promotional item with a brief excerpt from the album with a voice-over. As mentioned before, by 1986, the cover design was mostly standardised, you got more or less the same J-cards the world over, and the US one is not much different from many others (click on the "Electric Cafe" tag  below to see others!). Not that I blame them for re-using the original design, either - it was a fairly decent package with three panels plus another full-panel backflap, with the 3-d design from New York Institute of Technology (which was pretty stunning for a pop record of that time!) in three different images. The cassette is clear with white on-body pr...

RADIO-ACTIVITY (France, 1983) EMI/ Fame 1820874  Another post, another addition I was glad to get. I think this is fairly obscure, if not necessarily valuable in terms of Euros? Anyway, here's a French reissue of Radio-Activity!   Sometimes, with these cassettes, it can be hard to find any actual information... I don't often know much about the item at hand, unless the info is printed on the actual item itself it has generally gone down the rivers of time. Especially when it comes to the release year of a particular re-issue, in most cases you rely on guesswork and hearsay. France is an exception to the rule, however, their reissues would generally print the year on the J-card. So this copy of Radio-Activity, on the Fame imprint, came out in 1983!  The release year was a little surprising to me, as I have a Fame reissue from France of Trans-Europe Express, which is dated 1985. It would make sense if they put out reissues of all the Capitol albums in 1985 - the same year a...

ELECTRIC CAFE (UK, 1986) EMI (no cat.no) It feels rather strange to say this, but - here is another Abbey Road Studios cassette.  "Another", as in, I posted a different Abbey Road cassette earlier; the Telephone Call one. As I said then, I expect these must be listening copies for studio use, although I don't really know for sure.    The two are very similar, this Electric Cafe cassette is also a TDK AD C-46, without labels or any info - so take care that you put them right back in their cases or you'll have no way of knowing where it belongs. The J-card is printed or colour copied on standard white paper, as per that other one. The front is the same too, a giant Abbey Road logo. The track list panel has different tracks of course, this one having the correct one for this release - it has a couple of printers' errors; the first one is spelt "Boing Boom Tschack", the first single is listed as Musique Non-Stop - other releases has it without the hyphen ...

COMPUTER WORLD (Italy, 198?) Unofficial release Stereo Teen 355321 I haven't posted any Computer World cassettes in over one year, so it's about time! A recent purchase, this is an unofficial Italian edition of Computer World! This one may be from around the same time as the official edition , it has a strangely home-made appearance - labels glued "in the vicinity" of where they should be, and on the J-card a lot of fine lines, where you can clearly make out that they've assembled the cover from many little cut-and-pasted pieces... The front cover image is kind of a close-up, compared to the LP design, with the colours "inverted" - ie the background is black, while the computer (ok, the "terminal", then!) is dyed a greyish yellow. Although it's dark, you can still clearly make out the four silhouettes on the screen. The surroundings seem to be standard for this unofficial and beautifully named label, with the band name and album title in la...

TRANS-EUROPA EXPRESS (Australia, 1980s) Capitol TC-MID-166109 Back to Australia again! From a Kraftwerk cassette collector's perspective they put out quite a lot of interesting releases - certainly more than I knew when I started collecting! Most cassettes from Australia - whether first-issue or re-release - come with nicely un-imaginative design; sometimes based on the UK cassette counterparts, sometimes just the LP front against a white background. This one, which I think is from 1987, falls into the latter category, and looks like you'd expect it to if you've seen the LP version with colour front (as released in Australia, and also UK, US, Japan, Sweden and others, I talked at some length about it in an earlier post ). There's no mistaking it for the first edition though, as the LP design is moved towards the middle of the front, with the band name above. It looks like this cassette is the counterpart to a 1987 mid-price reissue on LP, with the same catalogue nu...

AUTOBAHN (1985, France) EMI/ Pathé Marconi 2400704 Another recent acquisition today, a French reissue of Autobahn. I had no idea this existed until I stumbled upon it - although that says more about me than about the item I suppose. As we've seen across this blog, most countries would put out different versions of an album, changing the label or J-card as the old ones sold out. The 1985 reissue of Autobahn was more like a full-scale reissue, sanctioned and remixed by the band, and with an updated version of Emil Schult's landscape painting on the front (without the VW dashboard from the 1975 original). While some cassette editions would crop the image, this one has the full LP image, facsimile-style on the front. Below, the band name in large red letters is more in keeping with other designs from the record label than with how Autobahn was presented everywhere else... , The lower inch or so of the sleeve is made up of logos, three record labels and two indicating loads of soun...

THE TELEPHONE CALL (UK, 1987) EMI (no cat.no) So. Yeah. It's been a while. What I have here today though, is something quite special: An Abbey Road Studios cassette from 1987, featuring their single The Telephone Call. The single was released on 7" and 12" in the UK (and in many territories), but not on cassette - neither in the UK, nor, as far as I know, anywhere else. And this cassette isn't actually  a "release" in the standard definition, either - certainly not available in shops, or even sent out as a promotional item...     As often happens in this blog, actual fact is hard to come by, and I can't say I know exactly what this cassette is or does. At a guess, it is a listening copy for studio use, to check the mastering prior to pressing up acetates or white label promos. At least, this is not a factory print of a cassette. In fact, the cassette is a TDK AD C-46, probably the sort you could buy in shops in 1987, and the cover is printed or colour co...

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...

ELECTRIC CAFE (Romania, 19?) Unofficial Poker 443 Another pirate edition today, but this time it's a country that hasn't featured here before: Romania! Here's a Romanian cassette of Electric Cafe. Admittedly it looks a lot like a similar release from Poland; I'm not sure whether Poker Sound was an actual label, with a Romanian office or - if this is a "bootleg of a bootleg"... Apart from the country of origin, today's cassette is fairly straightforward - the J-card has the LP design centre front, against a blue background, and band name and album title in coloured boxes over and under the image. There is a Polish edition of this, and the J-card for that looks exactly the same as this. The J-card is on glossy, thin paper, printed on one side, but with a stamp on the white inside (the significance of which is sadly lost on me). The track list both on the back-flap and the second panel is amended to make the sides of similar length.   The cassette has a ...

TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (Canada, 198?) Capitol 4N-16301 Sometimes, writing about these cassettes makes me revisit previous posts. This time, here's the Canadian re-edition of Trans-Europe Express, which made me check a few others... Most Canadian cassettes come in a simple 1-panel J-card, printed on one side only, and this one is no exception. The backflap has the legal info, and a note that says "Previously released as 4XW-11603", setting it apart from the first edition. The cassette is black with grey print.   As an aside, the reason I checked previous posts was that I noticed the Dolby logo has "HX PRO" printed on it, and I have forgotten when that was introduced. One source on the www claims that Dolby HX Pro - sometimes only known as Dolby HX, an acronym for Headroom eXtension - was introduced in the early 1980s, so if that is correct, this cassette is not from the '70s. It shares label design with the mid-80s re-issue of Radio-Activity , too, so it sta...

COMPUTER WORLD (Italy, 1981) EMI 3C 264 64370 Haven't had an Italian one in a while, so let me present this early Italian edition of Computer World! We've seen the reissue of course, in a previous post. That had a different take on the design, while here we see a more conventional approach - the whole front in yellow, with the grey terminal showing the four silhouettes of Kraftwerk, and the band name and album title above. Note that Italy went for hi-viz here, the album title is printed in larger letters than most other territories, similar in size to the German original. The cassette comes packed in a 2-panel J-card, printed on one side, and stamped on the spine as I think was the rule in Italy at the time. Speaking of spines, this one is blue, as on most Italian cassettes - whether it's an EMI standard, or an Italian standard or what, I can not say, but have a look round the blog for other Italian examples. The cassette is off-white with black on-body print. Very nice! ...

AUTOBAHN (1985, Canada) Elektra 92 53264 Back to the Canadian "Super Cassettes", and today it's Autobahn. Fascinatingly, this post will not exhaust the supply of Canadian Super Cassette releases of Autobahn! So. The "Super Cassette" or ("Super C Cassette"?) was an idea for better sound reproduction, which I've already dismissed elsewhere on the blog. OK, I'm sure it isn't as bad as it could have been, but by 1985 we already had the CD, so cassettes were cheap and convenient, but probably not the audiophile's format of choice. Anyway, this came in a 1-panel J-card with print on both sides, and a full-panel backflap (so, a 2-panel U-card, then?). The re-touched Emil Schult painting was used on the front here, as with most other places; in Canada, the cover is reproduced at the top of the front panel, in full, with band name and album title below. The slightly cropped backflap has the tracklist and a little bit of credits. The inside is w...