In 1973, Roland released the Space Echo, a tape delay machine that delivered that delivered a distinct repetitive, rhythmic, and psychedelic sound to the music of Lee Scratch Perry, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Kurt Cobain, Jack White, Radiohead, and so many more. Reel-to-reel tape loops date back to the musique concrète era of the 1940s where musicians would string the long pieces of magnetic tape around their entire studio.
In recent decades, experimental musicians realized that by tweaking the innards of regular compact cassettes, you could create an infinite loop within the cassette shell itself. However, these cassette tape loops were limited by the fact that they were short, as you could only have so much tape before you had to add more rollers, and you could only fit so many more rollers in a cassette shell.
Now though, iturnknobs has ingeniously designed a 3D-printed adapter to create an extra-long free-flowing cassette tape loop that can be several minutes long. Video below. (iturnknobs also released several pre-recorded loop cassettes, but unfortunately they have already sold out.)
"I may have built this cassette tape loop with aesthetics in mind but I'm sure someone has a use for an extra long tape loop," they write. "With no specific length of tape required for this loop, could this be the most versatile cassette tape loop?"
Watch this video about the project and download the 3D print files here:
Previously:
• Tape Wizard, a mini-doc about tape-loops musician Randall Taylor, aka Amulets
• Listen to Enya's 'Watermark' cut up, looped, and transformed into stunning new ambient work
• The Disintegration Loops is a deeply beautiful 4-volume album series by William Basinski
• Spectacular 'Ambient Walkman Symphony' and other tape-loop, circuit bent performances