Remember the days when listening to your favourite music at home meant keeping your fingers crossed that the cassette tape didn't decide to act up? Days long forgotten, in an age when digital MP3s rule the air waves. Yet, two Maltese bands will tomorrow be taking punters on a retro journey back to when Dr Martens and baby-doll dresses were the look thanks to a joint EP that will be released on - you guessed it - the good, old cassette tape.
The EP, called Summer Camp For Pale Young Boys, is a joint collaboration between three-man band Clandestines and duo Hey Sus!. The release coincides with Record Store Day and this is not just happy coincidence, as Clandestines frontman Daniel Abdilla tells me.
"We are big fans of Record Store Day releases. The tradition was created precisely to bring together fans, artistes and record stores and a number of musicians release vinyl records to mark the day. Neil (Stafrace, our bassist) came up with the idea of doing something similar in Malta."
Vinyl, of course, turned out to be too expensive so the band decided on the next best thing – cassette tapes.
"We also realised that we're a little too lazy to record a whole EP ourselves, so we decided to halve the work by getting help from another band," Daniel adds with a smile. "We needed to think of a cool band that would be dumb enough to agree to a cassette release, so... who better than Hey Sus!? They seemed enthusiastic about it, so much so that within half an hour they had the launch gig booked!"
The question kind of begs itself: given their tender age, how many of them have actually used cassette tapes before coming up with this EP? Sheepish laughter ensues.
"Hey, the first music I bought was Guns'n'Roses and it was on cassette tape that I proceeded to 'melt'," Andrew confesses, much to the merriment of the others.
Daniel, however, adds that he does in fact possess a cassette player bought over six years ago and that he still uses it for recording purposes sometimes; this player is what the bands are using in order to make the cassettes for the EP.
The bands started working on the tracks soon after coming up with the idea in early March. How difficult was it to secure the amount of cassette tapes needed? Not too difficult it turns out, as Hey Sus!'s Andrew Vassallo tells me.
"We tried our luck on eBay but it didn't work. Then we had a stroke of luck as Michael Stivala, the other half of Hey Sus!, happened to know the owner of a hi-fi equipment store. We made him very happy for a day..."
Clandestines and Hey Sus! will be launching Summer Camp For Pale Young Boys with a live performance tomorrow evening at Coach & Horses in Valley Road B'Kara.