Pandemonium: installation by White Sphinx

At left, a normal-sized judy, At right, a normal sized doorway. In the middle, a giant cassette in progress.

Pandemonium Books & Discs presents a tribute to the cassette tape.

Design collective White Sphinx will install a giant cassette tape in Pandemonium in memory of all the mixtapes eaten by cassette machines over the years. Are you old enough to remember when, instead of illegally downloading MP3s, you had to tape things from the radio? That took took careful timing and a fast finger on the record button.

Many people think that vinyl records sound better than CDs and MP3s. Nobody thinks cassette tapes sound better. Record sleeves were big and had space for fantastic artwork. Cassettes? Well, no. They're even smaller than CD cases and the rectangular format often meant that the album cover would end up being a tiny square with a track listing underneath. And you always knew that eventually your tape would jam. Or stretch. Or be chewed up by your tape player. But for some of us, cassettes and the music we put onto them evoke a certain period in our lives and remain a potent symbol of those times.


Pandemonium Books and Discs is at 2920 Dundas St West. Exclaim magazine just named it one of Toronto's "must visit" record stores!

White Sphinx are a design collective consisting of Finn O'Donnell and Carol Gleason-Rechner (because it's cooler to be a design collective than just using your names). You probably know us from Finn's super cool tshirts, available only at Pandemonium. Clanky, Carol's car, still plays cassettes (but only on road trips).