Right. The capacitors have arrived and it, once again, is time to solder my fingers and reflect on the intrinsic stupidity of refurbishing some seventies cassette deck that wasn’t that good in the first place and, in sonic terms, would be exterminated by a cheap mobile phone of today. Soldering is (sort of) fun though and this antique actually had an entirely mechanical cassette mechanism. OK, that probably amused me far more than it should but said cassette player did nicely playback the (very) orange tape below. It is by Låska and it is on the rather interesting, if you like bleak synth pop stuff, Distag label based in France.
Låska – aka Magnetic Poetry's Oksana Ivashinina and Dima Ivashinin - are, unsurprisingly, synth popsters but of the modern darkwave variety so that means no smiles and a musical direction that is enveloped in fog. That said, I have a liking for this type of music and switching the lyrics between the Russian and English languages helps the seven songs on this cassette successfully evoke visions of the kind of lo-fi sequencer nirvana that would appeal to a technological antiquarian like me. The men and women in black might well dance alone to this in Moscow but at least they still have potatoes.
You can still – maybe – get a copy of the cassette from Bandcamp.