i recently produced a session for an artist where the basics were cut on four track cassette. man, that stuff sounds really good to me. here is a link to one of the tracks.
i bet somewhere on the space/time continuum there is a high dollar producer scrolling through the menu of the latest pro tools set up looking for a plug-in that sounds like that! this warbly, filterey, kinda weird messy thing.
as a little experiment, if you ever listen to an afternoon of satellite radio or something, and listen to lots of music horizontally {with the different channels on there the way they are arranged in columns rather than if it is good or not}, you may notice a kind of weird model most of the entities of power have agreed on... this kinda shiny, clean, perfect, boring sound. analgous to going into a fast food place. bright and with the faint illusion of something good, but really not much going on once you get into it.
i think it would be pretty interesting if more artists would use lo-fi techniques to make music. it focuses the energy in a different way. we've gotten really adept at perfecting the things that can be quantified. we can grid it out, and have a low noise floor and the vocal can be in perfect tune and in your face, and we can do all this stuff that makes it sound like all the other stuff out there. lots of times though, the song/concept is weak underneath the dressing.
the funny thing about working on a four track cassette, if you do even one track, you've already painted thyself into a corner! haha. limitations are good because that way you don't have to deal with option infinity. you have to combine things and bounce things. it takes some work. pre-mix as you go and all that. but i think that sound is super hep.
heck check out this video: joey pizza slice
that's more interesting and better than just about anything i've ever seen.
