REWINDING WITH DJ PLATURN

PHOTO CREDIT:  COURTESY OF DJ PLATURN

Every morning for the past few months, I've been starting my day by getting on the net and googling cassettes.  I do so to keep my antennas up on the Tape game.  Everyday is a new discovery, whether it's a documentary coming out, a new cassette release or something tape related.  Most of the time I'll find stuff like phone cases, books, T-shirts and even toys.

Every once in awhile, I'll find something notable.  I stumbled upon this video from the Wall Street Journal titled "Miss the Hiss."  The video starts with DJ Platurn in his garage popping in a Nas Illmatic tape and playing "Halftime."  This was when I learned that he was still diggin' for tapes.  I've known about the Oakland DJ and even caught a few of his DJ sets in LA.  Platurn is known for rocking crowds all over the globe and has shared the stage with legends like Krs-One, DJ Premier, Slick Rick, Zion-I, M.F. Doom and Pete Rock.  I knew that I had to get in touch with him to chop it up.  Thanks to technology, we were able to connect with one of the busiest DJ's in the game...

PHOTO CREDIT:  COURTESY OF DJ PLATURN

Do you remember your earliest experience with tapes?

Yup. Road trips with the fam and I'd use my allowance money to buy the best of Profile or Def Jam compilations. I remember pops bought me Licensed To Ill and Tougher Than Leather -- moms wasn't too happy about that at the time.

(SC)  When did you decide to come back to listening to tapes?  (if you ever left at all)

They were always there, just didn't always have a tape deck in the whip. Never really stopped collecting, just now you can get 'em for dumb cheap and even the good ones are never more than a buck so I pick them up more regularly. They'll always have a special place.

PHOTO CREDIT:  COURTESY OF DJ PLATURN

(SC)  In what ways do you think the Cassette tape is still relevant to music listeners today?  Is it comparable to vinyl?  

Probably not, but only out of convenience and playability in the general world. Turntables have been and will be around well before and after cassette decks -- doesn't mean tapes won't stay around but the likelihood of tape deck manufacturers coming back into play seems far fetched. I like the idea of it being this underground thing now -- so underground you have a hard time finding anything to play them on.

PHOTO CREDIT:  COURTESY OF DJ PLATURN

(SC)  Many critics label the recent Cassette culture as a Hipster fad.  In the future, do you think Cassettes will experience the same renaissance that vinyl is enjoying today?

Possibly, but again, unlikely that the mechanism to play them will once again be manufactured. However the resurgence might take place, it'll always be something that heads will be into cuz of the era we grew up in -- hipster fads come and go with a quickness. The squares who get into it cuz of nostalgia will replace it with 8 tracks if some high traffic blog tells them that's what they should be into now.

(SC)  Our site pays homage to the Golden era of Hip Hop which spans parallel to the Cassette Era.  (Sony's Walkman was introduced in 1979)  Do you think Hip Hop albums were crafted differently when the medium switched to CD's and MP3's?

Without a doubt. One of the things I've always said was the tape was the first and only format where skipping through the album was something you tended to stay away from (out of inconvenience mostly) so the standard to piece together a solid album from front to back was much more prevalent. You can skip over songs on the turntable, the cd player and the ipod, but the cassette deck you were forced to listen all the way through (even the whole stop automatically between songs when fast forwarding feature that was around for a bit wasn't something that caught on, at least from what I remember -- I never really used it anyway)  It all became more single based when the CD took over, at least overall in my eyes.

PHOTO CREDIT:  COURTESY OF DJ PLATURN

(SC)  Any last shouts or comments?

Analog will always sound better, no matter what the tech nerds will tell you. A compact, portable tape will always sound better on a decent cassette deck than an mp3 player on a modern sound system ever will, mainly due to compression. Tape culture might come and go but the aspect of music culture that thrived in the 80s and 90s will always have an important place in audio history, especially Hip-Hop.

WALL STREET JOURNAL VIDEO FEATURING DJ PLATURN

WWW.DJPLATURN.COM