Category Archives: Music

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

Posted on by
Reply

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 by
Reply

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 #1 – Telstar!

Posted on by
Reply

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

 

 

A Post-Punk Playlist

Posted on by
Reply

My recent trawl though a selection of old mixtapes brings me to a playlist of my favourite post-punk records. The years immediately following punk (in particular 1979-81) revealed a very fertile period for independent music. Moving on quickly from the faux-nihilism of “classic” punk, many of these bands revealed a greater depth than the “1,2,3,4…” head banging, pogoing, gobbing, safety pins and three chord thrash launched by the class of ’76-77. Not that the initial shock of punk was unwelcome or without merit, in its bid to shove aside the indulgences of prog rock and shallowness of glam. But the initial spark caused too many pale imitators, and besides, many of the early pioneers of UK punk weren’t afraid to reveal their love of Kraftwerk, Can, Faust, Pere Ubu, dub reggae and Bowie.

In addition to heralding new soundscapes, post-punk was a beneficiary of the nascent fanzine cottage industry and the plethora of independent record labels launched to cater for this new music.

The following selection (in no particular order) is my attempt to distill this influential and diverse “movement” into a handy playlist for the streaming age. It comprises mainly 7″ singles (including some B-sides or EP tracks), and in many cases these were the first releases by these bands.

  • Clock DVA – “4 Hours”
  • Blue Orchids – “The Flood”
  • The Nightingales – “Idiot Strength”
  • The Pop Group – “She Is Beyond Good and Evil”
  • The Slits – “Typical Girls”
  • Wire – “Outdoor Miner”
  • Joy Division – “Transmission”
  • Scritti Politti – “Skank Bloc Bologna”
  • Monochrome Set – “Eine Symphonie Des Grauens”
  • Wah! Heat – “Better Scream”
  • A Certain Ratio – “Flight”
  • Durutti Column – “Sketch For Summer”
  • Young Marble Giants – “Final Day”
  • Gang of Four – “At Home He’s A Tourist”
  • Delta 5 – “Anticipation”
  • Au Pairs – “It’s Obvious”
  • Josef K – “Chance Meeting” (Postcard version)
  • The Raincoats – “Shouting Out Loud”
  • Cabaret Voltaire – “Seconds Too Late”
  • 23 Skidoo – “Last Words”
  • I’m So Hollow – “Dreams To Fill The Vacuum”
  • Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – “Electricity”
  • The Human League – “Empire State Human”
  • Orange Juice – “Simply Thrilled Honey”
  • The Teardrop Explodes – “Sleeping Gas”
  • Echo & The Bunnymen – “The Pictures On My Wall”
  • The Fall – “Leave The Capitol”
  • Essential Logic – “Fanfare In The Garden”
  • Ludus – “Patient”
  • Throbbing Gristle – “United”
  • Fad Gadget – “Back To Nature”
  • The Normal – “T.V.O.D.” / “Warm Leatherette”
  • Magazine – “A Song From Under The Floorboards”
  • Swell Maps – “Read About Seymour”
  • The Mekons – “Where Were You”
  • Nightmares In Wax – “Shangri-La”
  • Modern Eon – “Choreography”
  • Music For Pleasure – “The Human Factor”
  • Thomas Leer – “Private Plane” / “International”
  • Dance Chapter – “Anonymity”
  • Eyeless In Gaza – “Kodak Ghosts Run Amok”
  • Bron Area – “Dancing”
  • Ciaran Harte – “Love Is Strange”
  • René Halkett, David Jay* – “Nothing” / “Armour”
  • Bauhaus – “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”

I recommend you dig deep into the individual discographies, and for further listening, check out these influential compilation albums of the era:

Next week: The Tech in My Life #1: Telstar!