The Tech in My Life #4: Reel-to-Reel Tape Deck

Posted on September 29, 2026 by Content in Context

When I was a kid, my family had a late 1950s/early 1960s Grundig reel-to-reel portable tape deck. I don’t really know why my father bought it, because the only home recordings I can recall were of my siblings and I playing the recorder (badly), and an attempt to tape an episode of Top of The Pops on BBC TV.

Although simple in design, it was actually quite cumbersome to use. The motor and the electronics generated significant machine hum which leaked on to the audio. It was mono, but offered 4 tracks – 2 in each direction – and in theory, it could record overdubs and play both signals back together, if only you could sync the play and record heads. Years later, I used it as a guitar amp, but I could only hear this auxiliary signal if the deck was in “play” or “record” mode – so I would have it on “pause” all the time, which tended to stretch and tear any tape.

Nevertheless, it sparked my life-long interest in tape, which took off when I eventually acquired my own tape deck in the early 1970s. The humble “compact cassette tape”, when combined with a portable record and playback machine, was the way many young people got into making their own music. Not only did these machines often include a built-in radio (vital for recording John Peel sessions on BBC radio 1), they also enabled live overdubbing (and cassette duplicating with twin-deck tape-to-tape functionality). I had a portable cassette player in the early 1980s that had a built-in stereo microphone as well as proper audio inputs for external sources such as guitars, keyboards, microphones and record players. So it was possible to not just make mixtapes but also make your own home recordings, which could sound pretty decent. I even played around with tape loops, and splicing cassettes, but in a pretty amateurish way. A friend had a Tascam 4-track Cassette Portastudio, in the mid-80s, on which I made some demos of my own music.

Cassettes were a way to produce and circulate music cheaply, and there was a cottage industry of bands and labels distributing albums on cassette, via mail order, using small ads in the weekly music papers. (I own an original copy of one such self-released cassette from 1981, which last sold on-line for over US$180.) Less scrupulously, you could go to somewhere like Camden Market on the weekend and buy a tape of a gig you’d been to just a few nights before.

But, with the arrival of read/write CDs, Digital Audio Tape, MiniDiscs and Digital Compact Cassette, the analogue compact cassette fell out of favour in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And then the music industry decided to discontinue most of these newer formats, because of the increased risk of piracy and bootleg recordings.

Yet, the compact cassette still survives today, alongside a renewed interest in tape loops, and the early pioneers of electronic music and musique concrète. New albums and reissues are being released on cassette, and for a number of years there was Cassette Store Day as a sort of adjunct to its bigger vinyl sibling. Stock of new blank cassettes can still be found for sale on-line, and the format has outlived some of those digital successors that suffer from a lack of suitable playback equipment, or software/hardware compatibilities in the digital age.

Even today, in my current music recording setup of MIDI controllers, computers and software like Ableton Live, I use digital plugins based on tape decks, to emulate tape itself, or to replicate early looping effects, or simply to apply some “analogue” limitations to my work.

Next week #5: Home Electronics Kits

The Tech in My Life #3: Crystal Radio

Posted on September 22, 2026 by Content in Context

The first radio I owned was a cat’s whisker or crystal receiver, housed in a chic red plastic box. The outward appearance suggested space age technology; the inward reality was a primitive but robust design, and represented my first hands-on experience of electronics.

The advantages of this gadget were portability, ease of use (just a single tuning dial), and no need for a battery or external power source.

The downsides were: limited amplification (no built-in speaker, and the audio was via a single ear-piece – no WiFi or bluetooth in those days!); the need to be connected to an external aerial (a long length of copper wire dangling out of my bedroom window); and it only received medium wave radio signals.

But the worlds it opened up were endless. This was the days before BBC Radio One, and the height of pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline and “wonderful” Radio London. Listening to the sounds of the psychedelic sixties aged 6 or 7 were formative years in the development of my musical tastes. And thanks to certain atmospheric conditions I could sometimes hear European stations, which sounded very exotic to my young ears.

Next week #4: Reel-to-Reel Tape Deck

The Tech in My Life #2: Goonhilly

Posted on September 15, 2026 by Content in Context

After the previous tech-related blog on Telstar, it makes sense to mention Goonhilly, a UK-based satellite dish that has been playing a key role in communications and space exploration for more than 60 years.

Goonhilly received the first trans-Atlantic TV signals transmitted via Telstar, and broadcast them into British homes, in 1962. I was too young at the time to recall seeing those early signs of global communications; but I do remember getting up early in the morning to watch the live broadcasts of the Mexico Olympic Games in 1968, and the Apollo 11 moon landing the following year.

During a family holiday in Cornwall in the mid-1960s, my parents took us on a visit to Goonhilly Downs, including a tour of the satellite tracking station. Of course, it was not really possible to see what the dish was actually doing, but I came away with a small souvenir of this new age of technology.

I was given a short strip of computer punched tape. I had no idea what the holes on this piece of paper meant, or what information they represented. But it felt significant to have hold of this data artefact, which I kept for several years.

After I left high school, one of my first jobs was as an outdoor clerk for a firm of solicitors. This involved spending many hours in the communications room, where among other things, the telex machine was located. The secretaries who sent out telexes from the firm typed the text using a keyboard, and the message came out as a series of holes punched into similar paper tape. The tape was fed back into the machine to play it at a higher speed than could be humanly typed, to transmit the recorded message. Even though faxes were becoming more popular, the legal profession still used telex, not only for speed and for long distance communications, but where the record of a telex transmission was required as proof of delivery.

Goonhilly itself is an icon of both technology and culture, and retains a special place for people of my generation – growing up, its name was synonymous with space and communications. And it has been the inspiration for a number of musical tributes, including a concert to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing.

Next week #3: Crystal Radio

The Tech in My Life #1 – Telstar!

Posted on September 8, 2026 by Content in Context

This week’s blog is the first in a series on key technology that has helped to shape my life. It will be a very personal perspective, and obviously it can’t capture every tech development, interface or environment that I have engaged with. But as I hope to establish, my selections do reveal three recurring themes: information, communication, and music. These threads should become apparent in the coming weeks.

First up is a record, “Telstar”, released by The Tornados in 1962.

I have blogged about this record before, mainly from a musical perspective. But as a tech artefact it also provides other context.

It is probably the first 7″ vinyl record that I can recall hearing – and certainly one of the only pieces of music from my early childhood that remains both familiar and intriguing to this day. Maybe it was also the first record I got to play on the family Dansette myself, so there is a reinforced tactile connection with the record as a “data object” and the gramophone player as a “playback device”. And while the tune itself is relatively simple, the arrangement and recording techniques reveal a lot more depth than a normal pop record. For a start, the choice of electronic keyboards, and the treatment of the electric guitar give it a suitably unworldly atmosphere.

More specifically, and without my realising it at the time, it is probably my earliest experience of musique concrète. I distinctly remember putting my ear as close to the speaker as possible to absorb the opening passage of Joe Meek’s sound effects, tape manipulation and general studio wizardry. What were these strange noises? Why did they fascinate me? Was it really music, or was I hearing something else entirely, like signals from outer space?

Which is exactly the point, as “Telstar” is named after the communications satellite of the same name. Leaving aside Joe Meek’s fascination/obsession with spiritualism and the occult, he was something of an autodidact in the studio – if he needed a particular effect (“what would a satellite signal sound like?”), he would create or improvise from whatever technology was to hand (primitive or otherwise).

In coming weeks, the significance of “Telstar” (the satellite) on my childhood will emerge. But if I was ever invited to appear on “Desert Island Discs”, I’m certain that “Telstar” would be included in my playlist of 8 records.

Next week #2: Goonhilly