「Cassette Restock」
Virtual Self, Serial Experiments Lain, and Manhunt make a return.
Three of my oldest tapes are getting a restock Friday September 29th at noon CST!
I first made my Virtual Self EP cassettes in March of 2021. At the time I was mostly just making tapes for myself, and wanted my favorite music in my collection. This is around when I did my Childish Gambino - Because The Internet cassette. At the time I’d never expected to have so many people interested in what I’m doing (seriously, thank you guys so much osdnvosnjdovbo).
A little background on Virtual Self though - Virtual Self is the neo-y2k/hypertrance inspired side project from Porter Robinson. While a lot of people are probably familiar with Porter’s newer project, Nurture, Virtual Self seemed to be more of a response to his 2014 album, Worlds. During the Worlds era, Porter was notorious for tweeting things like “my shows are not raves.”
Worlds started Porter on a trajectory of becoming one of the most honest, and authentic musicians in electronic music. Songs like "Fellow Feeling” felt like a critique of EDM culture, and Porter’s attitude at the time; that I as a listener resonated with. By that time mainstream EDM had started to feel stale, and rave culture had evolved into a caricature of its original form that sprouted up in Europe and the United States in the 80’s and 90’s. With Worlds Porter took a more artistic approach to electronic music, but Virtual Self was like him poking fun at how serious he took the project, and got back to his truest roots in 90’s rave music, that he was introduced to with games like Dance Dance Revolution. This shift couldn’t be summed up any better than his quote of his own tweet, with the response “jk”.
The Virtual Self EP rollout started on October 25th, 2017 with the release of “Eon Break” with the rest of the EP releasing November 29th of the same year, and the first live performance a little over a week later. Almost a year later the track “Angel Voices” a remix of the previously released “Ghost Voices” would come out, deepening the lore of the project.
The visual aesthetic of Virtual Self is just as important to the project as the music itself. The art design for and around the entire project is unabashedly my biggest influence with my own worj with mmry.crd. According to the unofficial/maybe official(?) lore, Virtual Self is composed of two avatars, Pathselector (as seek above in white) and Technic_Angel (as seen above in black). Both avatars have genres they specialize in, and each Virtual Self song is credited to one of the two. The visual design language of Virtual Self though, especially the live tour visuals are HEAVILY inspired by the 1998 anime, Serial Experiments Lain.
Lain has blown up in recent years, but I still think it’s an under-rated masterpiece of an anime. The story follows the main character, Lain, as she becomes familiar with the anime’s version of the internet, dubbed “the Wired.” It can’t be overstated how prophetic this series was in predicting internet culture, and the influence the internet would have over the world, and society. I don’t want to say anything more about the series, because it’s truly an experience that’s best met blind, but it’s in the same vein as other 90’s psychological anime/films like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost In The Shell, Perfect Blue, and Ergo Proxy.
Serial Experiments Lain had multiple soundtracks release over it’s lifespan, alongside plenty of various other media (like the Japanese exclusive PS1 game, that thing is my fucking holy grail - i will own it one day). In addition to the standard origial soundtrack, Lain also had the Club Cyberia Mix OST, my tape of which is also restocking on Friday, and the BOOTLEG album, of mostly ambient works.
The Club Cyberia Mix CD is a compilation of electronica inspired by the series, meant to be set dressing to the Cafe & Club in the Lain anime, Club Cyberia.
Given the influence Lain had over Porter with Virtual Self, it was naturally one of the first things I wanted to make a tape of. This iteration of the cassette is kind of special. I’ve done multiple runs so far - white shell with clear printed labels, black shell with paper labels, and white shell with paper labels - but this run is on half black, half white shells, with opposing paper labels. I honestly think this is my favorite version of the cassettes, and I’m really excited to share them.
The last item of this restock is Manhunt. This was a tape that I originally made around the same time as the others I’ve mentioned. I’d never actually intended on doing Manhunt, but it was a commission I was asked to do. Without actually intending to sell any, I designed the Manhunt J-card to feel like a standalone piece of merchandise, and not fit in a set, like my PS1 soundtrack tapes. Only after I’d gotten a few requests did I make more than just a handful of them. I never really played anything on Xbox, and Manhunt was a game I’d never have got away with having growing up, so it was a title I 100% missed. Theres absolutely a cult following for this title though, and I plan to eventually do Manhunt 2 to match.
I might have a handful of Silent Hill and MediEvil tapes available with these! I have some of both left over from past drops, so nows the time to load up if you’ve missed out on some recent drops!
Aside from all these tapes, I’m finishing up MaskOfTruth’s PT cassettes, and Shard’s Majora’s Mask tapes. Next up for me will be restocking Parasite Eve 2, and getting Parasite Eve 1’s tapes ordered. After that I’m hoping to get Mizzurna Falls OST tapes going, another Virtual Self tape, and maybe a super secret mmry.crd selects mix tape.
Got any suggestions for a cassette? Let me know! and as always, thank you so much for taking the time to check this newsletter out. I’m still getting into the habit of planning this kind of thing, but I plan to do these more frequently!
and as always -
COUPON CODE: VIRTUALCRD