Mixtapes,
like it’s 1988.
Music you already own, made into tapes you keep. Two sides, and something waiting on side B.
COMING TO iPHONE & ANDROID
The craft, and your music.
SIDE A
THE CRAFTSIDE B
YOUR MUSICA wall of one-of-a-kind cassettes.
Every tape you’ve made, lined up as you left them. Pull one down and slide it into the deck.
THE LENGTHS
C46, C60, C90, C120 — the four the shops sold, and the four you pick from. Tape a whole album instead and the length is cut to fit it: a C40, a C54, sizes nobody ever stocked.
TIME ON TAPE
A tape accrues the time its ribbon actually moved over the head — two seconds of playback buys two seconds, and winding buys nothing. A favourite wears its hours where you can see them.
Press play. The machine takes it from there.
Reels spin with the transport, the counter climbs, and every press lands with a clunk you can feel. Hiss and wow & flutter ride the music; flip the tape and the deck turns it over for real. The bar fills as the ribbon crosses the head, and the reels beside it show what’s left the way a window on a shell does.
THE WIND
Hold fast-forward and the music flies past, pitch climbing. Rewind plays it backwards. Blank tape just hisses. You don’t skip to a song — you go looking for it.
THE STOCK
Acetate, ferric, chrome, metal — every stock has its own hiss and shine. What’s wound onto the reels changes what you hear.
Every tape comes out different.
Every one is generated from scratch, down to the last screw, and no two come out the same.
THE WORKSHOP
Everything about a tape is yours to set. The shell and the guts belong to the tape; the label and the handwriting belong to the side, so A and B needn’t match. Pick a colour or mix your own — clear shells too, tinted how you like — then choose the window and the hubs that turn behind it. Print a label, or skip it and write straight on the plastic in whichever hand suits. Have a go:
WELL LOVED
Look closely and plenty of the tapes here have been somewhere — a scuffed corner, grime along the shell, a screw someone’s been at. Wear accrues as a tape gets played: fresh out the box, then well loved, then left on the train and found again. A favourite ends up looking like one.
Liner notes, kept.
Every tape carries its own J-card — a handwritten tracklist, side by side, blank time shown honestly, time on tape accrued. Slide it out whenever you forget what’s waiting on side B.
MATCHED TO THE CASSETTE EDITION
Albums that came out on tape had their sides chosen by someone — not split down the middle. Where a tape’s layout is known, yours comes out the same, with side A ending where it actually ended.
A SIDE IS A SIDE
Forty-five minutes is forty-five minutes, and the last of it belongs to whatever you chose to end on. Side B of road trip ’94 runs out at 29:04 and lets the rest spool quiet — the sound of a side you finished early.