Old mix found on audio cassette

Tags: audio, mix, audio cassette, 808-state, public enemy, 4-track, musix mix, dj, mp3, audio archaeology,

Added: 2025-12-03T00:00

Old mix found on audio cassette

I have been carting around some old audio cassettes with me for decades now, and I recently thought I should try and listen to them before they totally degrade.

I couldn't find anyone who had a working cassette player, so I paid for someone to convert them to MP3 and got the results.

One of the things I enjoyed finding the most was a mix I made when I was probably 16 or so.
The school I went to had a 4-track tape recorder that used standard cassette tapes - 2 stereo channels each on 2 sides gave 4 usable mono tracks.
I think it might have been a Yamaha MT 100 II Multitrack 4 Track Tape Recorder - I recall it as a Tascam or Fosdex, but the Yamaha looks like what I remember.

The mix wasn't made in one take - it would have been made piece by piece, adjusting the pitch, and then recording the (usually) 20-30 second track segment, and repeating over and over. It would have probably taken me days or weeks to complete in total

The result?

It's actually surprisingly good.
Not the audio quality of course - it was recorded back in 1992 (at a guess?), and has been lying around in probably not the best environment since then (it's kind of impressive that I've kept it and it's even survived all these years actually)
But the number of tracks and samples I get in there, and the way it flows isn't too bad at all.
I guess the fact I could redo anything that wasn't right helped.
Part of me is tempted to recreate it in something like Ableton to get round the bad quality, but I probably won't round to it.

I have tried to identify most of the tracks and samples on there.
A lot of the tracks are 7-inch and 12-inch vinyl I had at the time. The source of other stuff probably is other taped stuff. I'm not sure why it's broken into 3 or 4 chapters.
I definitely was into my 808 State and Public Enemy back then.

Here is the Muffled 4-track mix itself (58MB, 25 minutes, 320 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo). If you're easily offended, there are quite a few 2 Live Crew tracks starting around 17:30, who were known for their crude, rude, sexual lyrics, so be warned. I guess it was pretty cool at the time for a pimply-faced teenager.
The tracklist (as far as I have got)
There's also some Volmet and RTTY in it around the 10:29 mark, which is interesting to hear. I should try and decode the RTTY and find out what it was saying.

No idea what the track at the end is - it isn't part of the mix. I guess it was just on the tape that I wrote over.

If you can help me with any of the samples or other tracks, I'd be appreciative. Shazam has been very helpful, but it doesn't like music that's been pitched up or down in speed, and some of the tracks and samples are too short for it.

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