I recently did something I swore I would never do, and that’s buy a cassette tape deck.

I am not a fan of cassettes. I hate the hiss. I hate how they get worn down and you can start to hear the track on the other side in reverse. But more than anything else, I hate the shitty artwork. I guess size matters for me when it comes to a physical release, I want to see the artwork and linear notes in all their glory, I practically need a magnifying glass to read cassette linear notes.

Anyways, I got one because I promised a friend I’d record some mixtapes out of her own collection. So now it’s hooked up to my soundsystem, junking up the joint. I figured I’d make the most of it though and ask you all, are there any cassette-only releases/remixes/B-sides from 80s/90s artists that you know of? Or any special cassette mixes of albums that are worth listening to? I know there’s a Polyrock album that was released on cassette only, but that thing is near-impossible to find.

Well, enough about a horrible antiquated format that sounds like shit. Here are some tracks taken from CDs.

Yes, that was an intentional little joke on my part.

Pop Will Eat Itself
Get The Girl! Kill The Baddies!
Can U Dig It?
Urban Futuristic
Wise Up! Sucker
Like many American teens at the time, I discovered PWEI in 1996, when their songs were featured on the PS1 game Loaded. That game was an orgy of violence and death, so PWEI’s tracks “RSVP” and “Kick To Kill” fit perfectly on it. I remember being so impressed with their tracks on the soundtrack that I sought out a copy of their only album that I could find in American stores, Dos Dedos Mis Amigos.

I didn’t discover their earlier stuff until I started buying vinyl, and I still can’t believe all these releases are by the same band. Their early Box Frenzy-era stuff is kind of hideous white-boy rap that’s barely listenable today. But This Is The Day…This Is The Hour…This Is This! is actually more than little bit brilliant. It holds up better than anything the band did before or after, with amazing tracks like “Can U Dig It?” still sounding fresh some 20 years later.

PWEI (kinda) got back together recently, and most of their albums are getting the 2CD deluxe treatment to celebrate the event. Even though I have most of the non-album rarities on vinyl, I’ll definitely be picking up the deluxe version of This Is The Day… when it comes out, and I suggest you do the same.

Oddly enough, none of the re-issues feature these live tracks, which are from the Get The Girl! Kill The Baddies! EP that came out in 1992. I think that speaks less of the deluxe editions, however, and more to the fact that there were so many B-sides and live tracks from this era that something had to get cut.

The re-issue of Now For a Feast will have their cover of “Love Missle F1-11” though, which is good enough a reason to buy it.

The Prodigy
Out Of Space (Underworld’s Millennium Mix)
Out Of Space (Celestial Bodies Mix)
Jericho (Live Version)
There are two variations of the CD single for “Out Of Space.” One is a four-track version with the single edit and “Techno Underworld Remix” versions of the title track, as well as “Ruff In The Jungle Bizness (Uplifting Vibes Remix)” and a live version of “Music Reach (1,2,3,4).”

The other is a six-track version, which includes the previously mentioned remixes and a live version of “Jericho.” The live version of “Music Reach (1,2,3,4)” is not included. The four-track version is on Amazon’s MP3 store, but the tracks exclusive to the six-track version are not. So that’s why I only included those tracks, which are out of print, and not the others, which are easily available.

Goddamn import singles make everyone’s life more difficult.