If you’ve ever been intrigued by the mystery of a dusty cassette you found in a thrift shop—or if you’re just looking for a new time-sink—you have to check out Intertapes, a website that digitizes “found cassettes” sent in by users all over the world, then posts them in full for anyone to listen to.
The catalog is small at the moment—only 14 cassettes—but already really interesting. There’s a bootleg cassette of music played at a Spanish nightclub in the late 1990s (lots of squelchy noises and relentless bass) and a 90-minute recording of New York hip hop station WBLS captured in ’94 (Warren G.’s “Regulate” represent), amid more mysterious choices, like this haunting recording from a “destroyed cassette tape found on the side of the coast highway near Heraklion” in Greece; this tape full of ominous noises found in a parking lot in Tbilisi, Georgia; tape of binary code from Barcelona; and a cassette recorded in the USSR featurng 1970s pop hits.
I love how each cassette is treated like an important archeological object, because in a way, they are—discreet time capsules made more poignant by the hiss and warp that speaks to the time that’s passed since this audio was captured and the ephemeral nature of analogue recording. From musical snapshots to accidental field recordings, these tapes are fascinating for there mere existence in the modern day, where the question of who recorded them and why adds a layer of mystery to each one.
The ongoing cassette tape revival
Intertapes could be viewed as a reflection of the growing cassette tape revival, a movement that celebrates the outdated format. Since they hit the market in 1963, audiophiles have generally considered cassette tapes an inferior format to vinyl—tapes are more rugged than records, but the sound quality is markedly worse. The spread of CDs and streaming music pretty much killed off commercial cassette releases by the early 2000s, and it’s easy to see why: Digital music doesn’t hiss or degrade. Cassettes have a more narrow dynamic range. You can instantly select tracks on a CD or MP3 player, and it will never play at a slightly wrong speed, unspool, or melt on your car dashboard. Bonus: You never have to rewind them to hear a song again.
What do you think so far?
Most people didn’t see it at the time, but when tapes slipped into obsolescence, we lost something real and tangible. Dropouts, distortion, and warp are evidence of life. Cassette tape compression is a unique sonic aesthetic that conveys warmth and nostalgia. And then there’s the way they impart meaning into the act of “listening to music.” Starting a Spotify stream is frictionless, optimized, and weightless, while cassettes are physical objects with histories that defy the disconnection of the digital space. You own the music on tapes in a way you never own information being served to you by a tech company. A friend handing you a cassette of their favorite songs is meaningful in a way a link to playlist will never be, and your Spotify playlist will never be found by the side of the road near Heraklion, to be pondered over by future people.
Yes, by digitizing them, Intertapes is removing some of the qualities that make these recording special—but it’s also preserving them, at least for now (if you’ve ever tried following a decades-old weblink, you know the internet is ephemeral too).
How to submit your own tapes to Intertape
If you’re of a certain age, you probably have a dusty cassette or two hanging around somewhere. Don’t let it molder in a desk drawer. Describe the origin of your recording and a background story, scan a picture of your tape, and email [email protected] to arrange you submission to the site. This collection really deserves to grow.