Yeah they still do it even as of their most recent album, Tomorrow's Harvest:
"[the strings in Semena Mertvykh were] performed into a dissected VHS deck with the motor running super slowly, so you can hear all the pockmarks, the dropouts on the tape. It’s mono, too, which gives it something special. More people should record in mono these days." original article[0] and archive[1]
If you went to primary school in Scotland in the late 1970s, early 1980s then you watched a lot of National Film Board of Canada movies.
We had a guy, can't remember his name, might have been Mr Morrison? went round all the schools in his car with a 16mm projector, a screen, and a big box of shiny steel cans of film.
Draw all the curtains, pull all the desks back and line up the seats, sit and watch the movie. I can smell the film and the heat of the bulb on the sewing machine oiled projector parts, clicking escapement pulling film through, and the wibbly-wobbly wow and flutter soundtrack with crazy 70s synth soundtracks.
It's why I listen to such bloody awful music now, I guess.
They're what got me hooked on getting into playing with cassette sounds. Every time I listen to them I'm transported and get stuck in an uncomfortable wooden chair in elementary school watching National Film Board documentaries and I love it. It pushed me to this sound https://pl-10.x.burns.fm/?t=15fb486da703a7ae565d2dcd0113908e
There's a duplication company in Canada (they're easy to find...) that sells NOS, custom housed tapes, and all kinds of related production materials. There aren't many new options out there for working with cassette tapes, but if you can find a used deck in good shape (or there are new Tascam/TEAC machines) then you can have some real fun still. They also deal in some VHS.
Nice! Thanks for sharing. The digital experiments mentioned also sound interesting, but there is something about the imminence of physical media that captivates me.
"[the strings in Semena Mertvykh were] performed into a dissected VHS deck with the motor running super slowly, so you can hear all the pockmarks, the dropouts on the tape. It’s mono, too, which gives it something special. More people should record in mono these days." original article[0] and archive[1]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/arts/music/tomorrows-harv...
[1] https://archive.is/H3ny1