Kraftwerk cassettes

THE MIX (India, 1994) EMI STSC 890217/ EM 1408 Finally, I got an Indian edition of The Mix. I've been searching for one for years, and finally I decided to splash out on one! As I've said before, there are not as many different editions of The Mix as of the albums from Autobahn to Electric Cafe. It's sort of logical; by the late 90s, cassettes were a niche product in Western Europe, and there was little point in reissues and Nice Price editions. Most countries would just put this out once, then refer customers to the CD shelf if they wanted to make a purchase. India has a different policy with reissues than most places. I have few Indian editions, of several albums, and they are often dated on the spine, and have the recommended retail price printed there too. For instance, I know of copies of The Man-Machine dated both 10/88 and 11/88, so there could be quite a lot of very slightly different variants out there yet to be documented. Today's cassette is marked with ...

THE MIX (Canada, 1991) Elektra 96 8694 Today, I bring you the Canadian edition of The Mix. It's not what you'd call a major collectable, I suppose, but I haven't had an official The Mix for ages, so - here it is! There are not as many different editions of The Mix as there are of the albums before it. Cassette releases sort of had a window in Western Europe, where from the mid-70s to the early '90s, popular albums would see reissues and variants across the territories. I think you can find three times as many official versions of The Man-Machine or Autobahn as of this one! In fact, this is the last one I own that I haven't posted, so I must rush out and find the remaining few... They're quite rare though so who knows. Anyway. Again, the packaging is more or less based on the German/ EU release, via USA;  4-panel J-card, including full-size backflap, printed on both sides. The songwriting/publishing credits and larger print for the other liner notes are pretty...

AUTOBAHN (1985, South Korea) Unoffical Shilla Records – SCM-1023 Yay, a new country added today: I haven't had anything from South Korea before. I have more questions than answers about this one, but it's a nice item anyway so let's get to it! South Korea has had both an "official" record industry and an unofficial one. Both have been putting out Kraftwerk cassettes to their markets (not sure how different the markets have been? I mean, if they were sold in the same shops, or if the shops concentrated on official product and the pirate material was only sold at market stalls or what have you). This was released by a label called Shilla, which Discogs informs me is a pirate label. Interestingly though, the statement "Approved by the Government" is printed on the card - whether this indicates that Shilla pay their taxes, or what else it could mean, is again anyone's guess, but an unofficial release would obviously not be "approved" by, say, a...

AFRIKA BAMBAATAA & THE SOULSONIC FORCE: DON'T STOP... PLANET ROCK (THE REMIX EP) (1992, Canada) Tommy Boy, TBC 1052 It gets more difficult to know where to draw the line. I started out getting some of Kraftwerk's albums on cassette, then I thought, I'd like to get the German versions of each album , then I noticed some of the European ones had different covers to both UK and Germany, all of a sudden I collect worldwide releases ... And I find promotional compilations with more advert -type content , I find their single edits in film soundtracks, I get a couple versions of Elektric Music's album , and, well , here we are. To old school hip hop afficionados, the artist and the song need no introduction. Planet Rock, originally released in 1982, is one of the cornerstones of rap. It also featured enough Kraftwerk samples for Kraftwerk to take legal action - or possibly it was settled out of court; at least, Kraftwerk got paid. The music features large portion...

TRANS-EUROPA EXPRESS (Poland, 1991?) Unofficial Mateos  91159 So, another Polish pirate cassette today, but it's not The Mix this time! Poland, as indicated on this blog before, is the one country that has produced the highest number of different Kraftwerk cassettes. Polish copyright law, or possibly lack of law enforcement, made it easy to make a limited run of cassettes without contacting the legal owners, and there are dozens of different labels that have put out one or more Kraftwerk cassettes. Sometimes, it's just a version of one of the albums, other times it's something more elaborate, including "greatest hits" type compilations. Most releases will have some special design feature setting them apart from their competitors.  Another feature I have began to regard as typically Polish, is that they will often have tampered with the tracklist in one way ot another, mostly to bring the playing time down to standard length. Rather than present the buyer with one ...

Release 6 - the atlantic group 1994 (USA, Promotional sampler, 1994) Atlantic, no cat.no. It's my 200th post on this blog, so I should perhaps have dug out something awesome... But I don't know, I sort of think this blog is about the joy of collecting, in general, and not just about the most fascinating items. So that said, I want to post this, another promo compilation. I find them interesting, this one is in the same vein as a couple I have posted earlier. Like those previous ones, this cassette contains short snippets of tracks from 13 new releases, with a voice-over telling us how great each release is. This time, we are being treated to nearly two minutes of Elektric Music's TV, and the surprisingly thick American accent of the record company man who has this to say about it:  "Elektric Music: Esperanto. A sonic break-through from techno pioneers Karl Bartos of Kraftwerk and Lothar Manteuffel of Rheingold. An exciting and accessible new body of work, enigineer...

THE MIX (Poland, 1991?) SuperTape ST 632 Oh, come on. It's been ages since I had any Polish pirate cassettes up, surely one more can't hurt! Poland has had such a _mass_ of different cassettes, especially of The Mix, which I've shown in loads of different editions here before . Most of them will have tampered with the tracklist somehow - again I'm at the risk of repeating myself - as the original album is 65 minutes long and the normal cassette length is either 46 or 60 minutes. Simpler and cheaper to use a shorter cassette and skip one track on the CD. The track they left out, however, is slightly surprising: The last track of the album, and the highlight of the 1991 tour (and of many tours since) - Music Non Stop. They haven't left the rest of the tracks in their correct place, either - Pocket Calculator and Dentaku are on different sides of the cassette, bringing a medley to a confusing end, and worse still - Abzug is on its own in the middle of side B, while ...

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...

THE MAN·MACHINE (The Netherlands, RE 199?) EMI/ Capitol 1A 238 15 7597 4 Another follow-up of earlier posts, today it's a Netherlands/ Europe reissue of The Man·Machine! This one does not have the FAME logo anywhere; there's no XDR logo on the front, either, but they're printed on the cassette. Otherwise, it's fairly similar to this one which I featured earlier: It comes with a simple one panel J-card in thin glossy paper, printed on both sides. The J-card front still follows the standard FAME design palate, placing the LP design in the lower part of the front of the J-card, against a white background. The band name and album title above this, and further north, the Capitol logo, "Dolby System" and cat.no. The spine of the J-card has an EMI logo, no Capitol there, and the cassette has both (again like the FAME edition posted earlier). Although the XDR logo is on the cassette, the inside of the J-card does not replicate the info about the "XDR syste...

THE MIX (Greece, 1991) EMI 14C-264 7966721/31 Official product again today! And it's the Greek release of The Mix. This Greek edition is a bit surprising, really: As we've seen here before, most countries had a full, 4-panel J-card, with pictures and graphics and credits and bells and whistles. This one, on the other hand, is a one-panel effort, with the track list printed in black on white on the inside. Not only that, but the cover is pretty badly reproduced; the white marks on the front, above the band name, are all printed, not flaws on my copy. I actually was worried that my copy might have a reproduced cover, but Discogs has a picture of a still sealed copy with these blemishes clearly visible! The cassette is grey, with on-body print in two colours. Oh, and the front of the cassette case has that strip of Greek info that I think was on all cassettes in this country (cfr this post for another example).

Elektra Entertainment June 1991 New Releases (USA, Promotional sampler, 1991) Elektra (PR-8381) It's time for another compilation today, and it's a promo! This one has much in common with the November 1986 Guide from a previous post, a style of promotional item I find it interesting on many levels. This cassette runs more or less like a promotional radio show, with short snippets of tracks from 19 releases, plus voice-over. There are entries from Natalie Cole, Queen and Barry Adamson here, among others (jazz saxofonist David Sanborn, famous producer Desmond Child etc). The tracks are often mixed without pauses, so you go from a bit of Gipsy Kings to the familiar intro to The Robots... The voice over sounds kinda robotic, too, and the stuff he says is the kind of thing you'd expect from modern AI today:  "Kraftwerk returns with their new release, The Mix. The band has gone through its entire catalog, selecting songs that would best benefit from and demonstrate their ne...