High Bias - by Marc Masters (Paperback)

About the Book

"Marc Masters explores the surprising ups and downs of the cassette tape's journey through international music culture, showing us the cultural impact of cassettes on music listening, music portability, and music making itself. Winding through early hip-hop tape trading, the deeply personal act of making a mixtape, and even contemporary composers who use cassettes to create musique concráete compositions, this book chronicles the resilient do-it-yourself spirit of cassettes through conversations with scene-setters coupled with deep explorations into music history. More than just the most comprehensive history of how cassettes have changed music, this is also a vivid tribute to a format that refuses to fade away"--

Book Synopsis

The cassette tape was revolutionary. Cheap, portable, and reusable, this small plastic rectangle changed music history. Make your own tapes! Trade them with friends! Tape over the ones you don't like! The cassette tape upended pop culture, creating movements and uniting communities.

This entertaining book charts the journey of the cassette from its invention in the early 1960s to its Walkman-led domination in the 1980s to decline at the birth of compact discs to resurgence among independent music makers. Scorned by the record industry for "killing music," the cassette tape rippled through scenes corporations couldn't control. For so many, tapes meant freedom--to create, to invent, to connect.

Marc Masters introduces readers to the tape artists who thrive underground; concert tapers who trade bootlegs; mixtape makers who send messages with cassettes; tape hunters who rescue forgotten sounds; and today's labels, which reject streaming and sell music on cassette. Their stories celebrate the cassette tape as dangerous, vital, and radical.

Review Quotes

"High Bias makes a persuasive case that . . . cassette-based activity functions as a sort of understory in the forest of music, a substructure in the shadows that nurtures and fortifies the canopy of successful commercial artists above. . . . An extended, paperbound mixtape of cassette-based music. . . . Revelatory."--New Yorker

"A loving tribute . . . High Bias is a clever taxonomy of cassette culture and its various subcults."--Wall Street Journal

"A passionate love letter written from an unabashed fan of the format. Its thoroughness, detail, and historical accuracy make 'High Bias' an essential resource for pop culture historians and obsessives."--PopMatters

"A thoroughly enjoyable romp . . . With energy, insight, and wit, Masters provides a welcome examination of an often overlooked cultural turning point."--Kirkus Reviews (STARRED review)

"An affectionate ode . . . Masters constructs a lively and detailed case for the cassette as a vital driver of cultural creation. This charming history is sure to please anyone nostalgic for the mixtapes of yesteryear."--Publishers Weekly

"An energetic, expert tome . . . Music's most overlooked format gets the celebration it deserves."--MOJO

"Knowingly written from the perspective of an entangled enthusiast rather than a distanced observer, [High Bias] carries an awareness that an objective history of the impact of a piece of technology isn't possible, all we can do is collect the stories we tell through it. . . . High Bias is a material history, but it's also a folk history."--The Quietus

"Masters brings together a fascinating technical history of the creation, limits, and virtues of the cassette tape."--Dusted

"Not just for the Gen X-ers on your list, but for anyone curious about the history, cultural and otherwise, of the humble cassette tape . . . This charmer of a book goes down fast and easy. . . . He does it all with narrative economy, academic rigor, a personal touch, and genial good humor. A gem."--Esquire

"This accessible primer unravels past and present uses and misuses of cassettes. . . . Masters builds a generous lineage, where it is clear that as much as 'sounds realign magnetic particles on a tape . . . the tape realigns your brain.'"--The Wire

About the Author

Marc Masters is a music journalist whose work has appeared in the Washington Post , Pitchfork , Bandcamp Daily, NPR Music, and Rolling Stone. He is the author of No Wave.