The Tascam 424 Portastudio

I thought I’d do something a bit different today and take a concise look at an archetypal piece of tape recording equipment. This is a Tascam 424 Portastudio – a multitracking device which gave home recording enthusiasts (often musicians, but sometimes amateur producers) their own small recording studio, in the days before hard disk digital multitracking became available to the masses.

Siouxsie & the Banshees – Hyaena cassette (1984)

As promised, here’s Siouxsie & The Banshees’ 1984 audio cassette album: Hyaena. I’ve taken the unusual step of photographing both sides of the tape and the inlay, such is the visual appeal of this product – rapidly approaching three decades of age. I don’t want to appear biased towards Siouxsie and the Banshees on what’s primarily an audio cassette photo blog (great as the band were), but their audio tapes were so photogenic that the decision to add multiple examples has pretty much made itself.

Siouxsie & the Banshees – Tinderbox Cassette 1986

The only thing wrong with this album as far as I’m concerned is that it’s not long enough. There aren’t really too many albums you can say that about. Of course, whether four tracks per side really is long enough for an album depends on the length of the songs and whether or not you like them, but I’d say this is definitely a bit light on quantity given that it was released and sold as a full LP.