Another find from an old box at the back of a drawer...

When I was many miles from home in the 90's my wee brother would send over these mix tapes put together with his two turntables, mixer and crates of vinyl. They had great titles like Bionic Hookers from Mars, Jazz Potato, Invasion of the Octopus People and were packed with abstract beats, funky loops, surreal samples and ninja tunes. I loved them and they were often blasting from the studio when they weren't being borrowed by everyone else.

Today I use itunes, playlists, spotify, mp3 blogs, and youtube without a second thought so when I look at these cassette tapes it's clear just how differently we interacted with music back then. Without getting too nostalgic (i.e. getting very nostalgic) the cassette was as brilliant as it was frustrating. Music became portable with massive beatboxes and oversize walkmans, songs from the radio became recordable, vinyl copyable and live gigs repeatable and shareable. A generation's romances were soundtracked or started with homespun mixtapes, painstakingly selected to impress or woo whoever was fancied.

Yet they were rubbish too. They got tangled up, unwound, snapped, skipped, stuck or occasionally melted and it could take ages to find that track you were sure was somewhere near the middle of side A but was usually just before the end of side B.

I still like them though and am off to remove the iPod cassette adapter from the car's stereo and stick a real tape in it.