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)....

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...

NON STOP (Poland, 1991?) Basston B-149 Back to my recent mass of Polish pirate cassettes, and today we're back to the more puzzling end of the scale: "Non Stop".  The cassette shares it's title with a live bootleg, and if I'm honest I was hoping this might be a pirate cassette of a bootleg CD... But listening, it's actually half the tracks of The Mix, an album we've seen in lots of variants here before . But even though these Polish cassettes often disregard the original design, at least they will usually keep the title! On the other hand, of course it's a practical way to make your product stand out; loads of different Polish labels put out The Mix, so if there's just one "Non Stop", maybe that will help sales? Again, like many Polish The Mix cassettes, they leave out a lot of tracks from the official, 65-minute double LP. More surprising, the sides of this cassette is of uneven length; Side A clocks in at 17 minutes, while the b-side ...

THIS IS THE WORLD OF SYNTHESIZER (Germany, 1989) Vivo, imt 700.072/ 8006 Sometimes, the value of an item goes beyond its selling price! I have a perfect example of this phenomenon here today, a cassette that looks like something mildly ridiculous, which has its worth after all... The cassette "This is The World of Synthesizer" looks like one of those archetypical 80s gas station releases: A compilation of cover versions by "unoriginal artists", one of those things that sort of had their heyday in the 70s and 80s, a quick buck for the producers, going for an impulse buy from someone who just wants something new to listen to in the car... Those cover version compilations would generally have country and western music, or chart pop like ABBA, but the novelty of the synthesizer invited lots of unknown musicians to record tapes like this, typically featuring film music, Vangelis, Jarre and the like... But in fact, this particular item is a re-issue of an album originally...

THE MIX (USA, 1991) Promo Elektra 60869-4 Here's a US edition of The Mix, which is a bit different. It's The Mix, in a promotional edition known as a "title sleeve" version. The "title sleeve" promo is normally a grey or white simple design with track list on the front, instead of the standard picture design used on the corresponding commercial releases. It looks like it's been fairly common for record companies to send out these sort of promos before the normal versions were ready, or maybe they are sent out to recepients who need not concern themselves with the picture covers? Ie. if these were sent out to enigineers to check if they sounded right, or radio stations where they might appreciate an edition in neutral sleeve to give the impression that the music speaks for itself... So as I say, you can find similar promo items from the late 80s and up through the nineties, and I suppose they are related to the more recent CD-R promos, which typically c...

THE MAN·MACHINE (India, 1995?) HMV/ Capitol STCS 890103/ SW 11728 This just in: Here is another Indian re-edition of The Man·Machine, the first cassette I've shown here which comes in an outsize "snap pack".  These snap packs seem to have been fairly commonplace in India in the mid-90s, and it's easy to see the attraction: The plastic used here is not as brittle as normal jewel cases, and less prone to crack and get broken; furthermore, the box is slightly bigger, so the design is more prominent in shops I suppose? Nicer. The card has a spine twice the normal breadth, and instead of the back flap we get a full-size back cover with tracklist and credits. The card is only printed on one side. Labels are clear with white print. As said earlier , India is home to a large amount of different variants of each Kraftwerk cassette, both because they are dated - as mentioned in this previous post on Indian releases - and the price would also normally be stated on the release....

V/A - Banana Jack - 32 Frisch Geschälte Chartbreaker (Germany, 1991) EMI Electrola 1C 2 MC 286-797004 4 I'm broadening the scope of this blog today. So far I've featured nearly a hundred Kraftwerk-related cassettes, from the very rare to some that are still fairly easy to find, some beautifully designed ones and some strange or even hilarious - but this various artists compilation must be the least dignified item yet! 1991 was a tumultous time in the record industry. Record buyer loyalty was waning in the wake of the dance music revolution and its anonymous artists, and compilations seemed to be the answer - even more than before, the market was flooded with compilations of recent hits. Soon, record companies had to get creative to find a "concept" for their various artists compilations, in the hope that those who liked volume 1, would follow on to volume 2 in a few months. I feel the Banana Jack series took this principle to its logical conclusion. A sort of cartoon ...

  THE MAN·MACHINE/ TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS (New Zealand, 1987?) Capitol TCTP5 A fascinating item today - two cassettes in an outsize box. These were released in New Zealand. Apparently EMI Australasia issued a whole series of these, entitled "EMI TWIN PACK CASSETTES", in 1986 and 1987. Generally featuring major artists' double greatest hits sets, the series included people like The Hollies, Cliff Richard, Queen, Frank Zappa, The Stranglers, and Whitesnake; but with Kraftwerk, there were no "The 40 Greatest Hits" or similar collection, so they simply put out two of their best-loved albums side by side. The box is large and flat, housing the two cassettes next to each other. Therefore, the J-card is roughly double the size of a normal one, although that may be hard to spot on my crappy jpegs... Anyway,  the front has an image from the inner sleeve to The Man Machine, and the J-card is 2-panel, printed only on one side. Not much in the way of liner notes or legal info...

  THE MIX (Poland, 1991?) Tomzo Music News 0454   Time for a light-hearted release, methinks! Here's a funny one, another unofficial Polish edition, where they obviously knew better than to stick a grumpy robot on the front cover!   Poland is fascinating as cassettes go (and of course, in many other aspects that this blog does not mention). Apparently, anyone with a double cassette deck could print up a run of cassettes and carry them down to the local market to sell, and the amount of different editions is simply staggering. Odd compilations, split tapes with Kraftwerk on one side and another artist on the other, and the official albums, even the German-sung editions, and if I'm not mistaken, none of them "legal" in any West-European, major label definition of the term.   For Polish editions of The Mix, cassettes were often standard 60 minutes of length, and of course, the album runs for some 65 minutes. This is solved in different ways, in this case by simply cutt...

  The November 1986 Guide (USA, Promotional sampler, 1986) Warner Bros. (no cat. no.) Generally speaking, I don't go in for the various artists compilations much. There is of course a score of these, featuring one song by Kraftwerk crammed in between other artists, but although I suppose these can be said to be part of the legacy of Kraftwerk, they haven't appealed to me that much. I suppose if there were a lot of exclusive content out there I would grab it eagerly, many other artists will issue alternative versions of tracks on such compilations, live material or demos or exclusive remixes... But with Kraftwerk, less was always more, and the music on the albums is nearly all you get. And having The Model crammed in between other hits of 1982 on some "Super Hits" style compilation just hasn't been as fascinating as getting the original albums from different countries.   This cassette doesn't have exclusive music, strictly speaking, but I found it interesting n...