Daryl Worthington
, April 14th, 2021 09:02
Solo trumpet doom, flamenco free jazz, and new ways of playing the room. Daryl Worthington finds thrilling experiments going down in the tape world this month
Neo Geodesia by Emmanuel Ojomo
This month starts on the sad news that the man who made this all possible, Lou Ottens, has died. The Dutch engineer is credited with inventing the cassette tape, presenting the first version at a Berlin electronics fair in 1963. He passed away 6 March at his home in the Netherlands.
Marketed with the tagline “smaller than a pack of cigarettes,” portability and convenience were Ottens’ goal from the start. But it’s curious to think if he ever imagined just how far his invention would go as a cultural object. We’ve all heard stories from those who grew up listening to John Peel about how they’d tape the show, while for others relatively cheap recorders turned the cassette into a personal archive. Most of those practices have started to dwi