Push Play: The Cassettes
Steampunk. No, it’s not the latest musical collaboration from Thomas the Tank Engine and Johnny Rotten, but rather a nifty new genre that is set to get a kick in the pants on our shores with the Oz release of Washington steampunkers, The Cassettes – otherwise known as The Cassettes’ Musical Explorer Society – third album ‘Neath The Pale Moon.
A broad definition of the genre, which is also being championed by such bands as Abney Park and Vernian Process, could be one that is very much in the contemporary, yet it is also revisionist – looking back to things past (be it music, instruments, clothing etc) and making it relevant for now. Just one look at the assortment of instruments the band uses – guitars, tabla, bicycle horns, squeezebox, moogs, mouth-harps, and theremin – and you know that the Cassettes are not your average, run-of-the-mill rock band.
Lead singer Serban “Shelby” Cinca said Australian listeners could definitely look forward to something different on ‘Neath the Pale Moon. “It’s a musical journey that’s kind of focussed on looking back through the past of like roots music but also putting a twist on it with analogue synthesisers and theremins but with kind of a punk soul, but also with a love of like the Beatles and singer-songwriters.”
A heady brew indeed.
For Cinca, coming from such a musically diverse scene as Washington, provided the perfect launching pad for the bands musical direction. “D.C is really good,” he says. “It is traditionally known for having a really big punk and post-punk scene because of Fugazi. So there are lots of post punk and more experimental bands and then there’s a crop of newer younger bands that are all over the map musically.” And any cartographer worth his salt would have a hard time tracing the route of Cinca around this diverse musical map.
The son of Romanian refugees who went to the United States in search of jazz, Cinca says he was heavily influenced by his piano playing father (who played in clubs along the Black Sea in the 1960’s) , and his author/film critic mother. He cut his teeth in DC post-hardcore outfit Frodus and it was during this period that Cinca started making four track recordings that would eventually form the basis of The Cassettes material. And after tweaking the line up (the band added theremin player Arthur Harrison after seeing him perform at a planetarium…where else?), the band were ready to hit the studio.
Fast forward to 2008 with a new album in the works, The Cassettes finally hit Australian shores with their third long player, thanks to Aussie label Inertia who approached the band after a rather shambolic set at the South by Southwest music conference.“We ended up on Inertia because of South by Southwest and at the time we were on a really small label called Buddyhead…and we ended up playing South by Southwest as part of their showcase,” Cinca explains.
“We showed up late, and then we couldn’t find parking, and so we start the set without our drummer, but this guy still came up to us saying ‘Hey I’m from this label Inertia, you guys are really great.“It was really kinda funny because we had kind of zero expectations, y’know.” Cinca said he hoped the album would have a certain cultural resonance for Australian audiences.
“A lot of people I’ve spoken to in Australia seem to be pretty in tune with what we do,” says Cinca.
“Someone was saying recently that the whole pioneering imagery of the album artwork kind of fits with the Australian spirit of exploration.”
‘Neath The Pale Moon is out now.
