it has been a while since i posted about a tape on this blog. i collected quite a lot of cassettes as of late but didn't feel like writing about them. vinyl always seemed more urgent and as i didn't buy any new releases on tape, they just fell flat. at the end of december i began to listen to more tapes again and i think now it is time to get some gems off the backlog list. first one is this integrity tape.
straight and alert records is/was a small d.i.y. label from france which also ran a distro. at some point in last year i got an e-mail from them with the info that they were about to close down and thus had all items of their webshop on clearance. there wasn't much on the vinyl part but a few tapes caught my interest. first one i spotted was this live tape of an integrity show in rome from 1992.
originally it was as an bootleg release, i believe. but i am not really sure. what i am sure of is, that contraband records from the states gave this recording a proper tape release. the sound quality of the cassette is good and it is real fun to listen to the band and those old songs in such an early and raw stage. contraband made 150 tapes and this is the most common version in a purple shell out of 100 copies. 2018
