Record Store Day is usually 'the one day each year when over 200 independent record shops all across the UK come together to celebrate their unique culture. Special vinyl releases are made exclusively for the day, in what’s become one of the biggest annual events on the music calendar.' This year, due to COVID-19, Record Store Day is being split across 3 dates: 29th August, 26th September and 24th October.
This Record Store Day, Saturday 29th August 2020, is particularly exciting for Greatbear as it sees the release on Vinyl Revival, Manchester of The High - Martin Hannett Sessions, a restoration and digitisation project we worked on earlier this year.
One of the Martin Hannett session DAT tapes digitised at Greatbear
Martin Hannett - Manchester music producer, known for his era-defining creative work with Buzzcocks, Joy Division, New Order, John Cooper Clarke, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and many others - died aged 42 in April 1991.
The tapes we received were DAT (Digital Audio Tape) masters, produced by Hannett at recording sessions with The High in 1989 (at Strawberry Studios) and 1991 (at Great Linford Manor), and included Hannett's last production work before his untimely death.
The High - Martin Hannett session at Strawberry Studios 1989: producer Martin Hannett / Hannett inspecting DAT manual. Stills from footage by Nigel Couzens.
The High - Martin Hannett session at Strawberry Studios 1989: mixing desk / Andy Couzens. Stills from footage by Nigel Couzens.
The High were formed in 1989 by former Turning Blue singer John Matthews and former Buzzcocks F.O.C. members Andy Couzens (guitar, also formerly of The Stone Roses and pre-Roses bands The Patrol and Waterfront), Simon Davies (bass), and drummer Chris Goodwin (also formerly of the Waterfront as well as the Inspiral Carpets). They were signed by London Records and had three UK Singles Chart hits in 1990 before breaking into the top 30 in 1991 with a revamped version of their debut single, the Martin Hannett-produced "Box Set Go".
The High DAT cassette insert card tracks 1-4
The High DAT cassette insert card tracks 5-9
analogue to digital
From the Nigel Couzens footage (see video clip below), it looks like the Strawberry Studios sessions were recorded to 2 inch analogue tape, on a 24 track Studer A80. This was quite an old machine at that time as there would have been the A800 and possibly the A820 available too - but maybe they just loved the sound on the A80.
DAT, introduced by Sony in 1987, became popular in the audio and recording industry for mastering during the 1990s. The initial recordings would be made to 2" (or other width) analogue tape, but the mixed and produced final versions would be recorded to DAT - allowing the benefits of lossless encoding and avoiding the addition of further analogue tape hiss at the mastering stage. This process could be seen as a stepping stone towards an emerging all-digital production chain, and the development of hard disk recording.
fragile tape
At 3.81mm wide and 0.013mm thick, DAT is more fragile than other cassette-based digital tape formats such as DTRS/DA-88, ADAT and PCM digital audio, or any of the reel-to-reel formats (analogue or digital).
This makes it vulnerable to ripping. The High - Martin Hannett Sessions DAT masters arrived at Greatbear with visible signs of mould growth along the edges of the tape. (See the fuzzy white threads along the surface of the tape pack in the pictures above and below.) When this happens, the mould sticks the layers of the tape together - particularly along the edges - which inevitably leads to the tape ripping under the high tension of playback.
A ripped tape is especially problematic because DAT uses a helical scan recording system, based on a miniature video transport, and so cannot be spliced for clean edits. (Splices also risk irreparable damage to heads on the drum of the playback machine.) A ripped DAT tape - the helically-imprinted signal being bisected - results in irreversible signal loss.
Red arrow showing point where a speck of mould caused this DAT to rip. (Not one of The High - Martin Hannett tapes, but one previously brought to Greatbear in this state!)
Disassembly: unscrewing The High DAT cassette shell to access tape inside
restoration
We've found the safest way to restore mould-stricken DAT cassettes to a playable state and avoid ripping is to:
Acclimatise the tape to the controlled temperature and humidity of the Greatbear studio, driving the mould spores to dormancy
Disassemble the cassette shell
Very slowly and carefully unwind and rewind the tape by hand, dislodging the 'sticky' mould
Re-house the spools in a new, clean shell
Digitise via multiple passes, cleaning the DAT machine between plays. For these tapes we used our Sony PCM 7040
Sony ceased production of new DAT machines in 2005, and working, professional machines are becoming rare. We spend a considerable (and usually enjoyable) amount of time and resources keeping our machines in good condition. The Sony PCM 7040 is one of the better DAT machines in terms of the robustness of the tape transport and machine parts availability, as the same transport system was used in many Sony DDS DAT drives used in computer backup.
The High - Martin Hannett Sessions DAT master shell open with white mould visible on surface of tape pack
DAT during manual unwinding, showing mould-induced tendency for tape to stick to itself
The problem of mould growth on DATs is not unique to these precious Hannett / The High recordings.
Most DATs are now between 20 - 30 years old, and it only takes one period of storage at high temperature and/or relative humidity (RH) for mould to set in. To avoid damage, magnetic tape must be stored consistently at levels of 18 - 21 °C, and at 45 - 50% RH - something which no garage, attic or back room can guarantee...
We regularly receive mouldy DATs at the Greatbear studio. So much important material was mastered to DAT in the 1990s, and its vulnerabilities make it a priority for digitisation.
Support your local independent record shop on Record Store Day and every day!
The effects of mould growth on both the integrity of the tape and the recorded sound or image can be significant.
Mould growth often sticks the tape layers in a tightly packed reel together often at one edge. If an affected tape is wound or played this can rip the tape.
DAT audio cassette shell opened to reveal visible mould on edge of tape pack
DVCPRO video cassette lid lifted to show tape split longitudinally
If the mould has damaged the record side of the tape then the magnetic tracks are usually damaged and signal loss will result. This will create audible and visual artefacts that cannot be resolved.
Mould develops on tapes that have been stored in less-than-optimum conditions. Institutional collections can exhibit mould growth if they have not have been stored in a suitable, temperature controlled environment. For magnetic tape collections this is recommended at 15 +/- 3° C and 40% maximum relative humidity, although the British Library's Preservation Advisory Centre suggest 'the necessary conditions for [mould] germination are generally: temperatures of 10-35ºC with optima of 20ºC and above [and] relative humidities greater than 70%.'
For domestic and personal collections the mouldy tapes we receive are often the ones that have been stored in the shed, loft or basement, so be sure to check the condition of anything you think may be at risk.
We do come across cases where mould is not easily visble to the naked eye without dismantling a cassette shell - so unless you can be sure your tape has been kept in optimum storage conditions for its entire 'life', it's better to err on the side of caution. Playing a mould-affected tape in a domestic machine can very easily damage the tape.
It is important to remember that a mouldy tape is a hazard not just for the individual tape. If not handled carefully it can potentially spread to other parts of your collection, so must be treated immediately.
filaments of mould on Hi8 video tape edge
Hi8 tape showing longitudinal tear caused by sticking
There are several stages to our treatment of your mouldy tape.
Firstly, if the mould is still active it has to be driven into dormancy. You will be able to tell if there is active mould on your tape because it will be moist, smudging slightly if it is touched. If the tape is in this condition there is a high risk it will infect other parts of your collection. We strongly advise you to quarantine the tape (and of course wash your hands because active mould is nasty stuff).
When we receive mouldy tape we place it in a sealed bag filled with desiccating silica gel. The silica gel helps to absorb the tape's moisture and de-fertilises the mould's 'living environment'.
When the mould becomes dormant it will appear white and dusty, and is relatively easy to treat at this stage. We use brushes, vacuums with HEPA filters and cleaning solutions such as hydrogen peroxide to clean the tape.
Treatment should be conducted in a controlled environment using the appropriate health protections such as masks and gloves because mould can be very damaging for health.
All machines used to playback mouldy tape are cleaned thoroughly after use - even tapes with dormant mould still carry the risk of infection.
Most tapes-infested with mould are treatable and can be effectively played back following the appropriate treatment procedures. Occasionally mould growth is so extensive however that it damages the binder irreparably. Mould can also exacerbate other problems associated with impaired tape, such as binder hydrolysis.
gently dislodging mould from U-matic video tape
Edge and upper-surface mould causing U-matic video tape to stick
When it comes to tape mould the message is simple: it is a serious problem which poses a significant risk to the integrity of your collection.
If you do find mould on your tapes all is not lost. With careful, specialised treatment the material can be recovered. Action does need to be taken promptly however in order to salvage the tape and prevent the spread of further infection.
Feel free to contact us if you want to talk about your audio or video tapes that may need treatment or assessment.
In one of our most popular posts, we discussed how Videokunstarkivet has created a state of the video art archive using open source software to preserve, manage and disseminate Norway’s video art histories for contemporary audiences and beyond.
In Lives and Videotapes, the beautiful collection of artist’s oral histories collected as part of the Videokunstarkivet project, the history of Norwegian video art is framed as ‘inconsistent’.
This is because, Mike Sperlinger eloquently writes, ‘in such a history, you have navigate by the gaps and contradictions and make these silences themselves eloquent. Videotapes themselves are like lives in that regard, the product of gaps and dropout—the shedding not only of their material substance, but of the cultural categories which originally sustained them’ (8).
The question of shedding, and how best to preserve the integrity of audiovisual archive object is of course a vexed one that we have discussed at length on this blog.
It is certainly an issue for the last collection of tapes that we received from Videokunstarkivet—a number of very mouldyU-matic tapes.
According to the Preservation Self-Assessment Program website, ‘due to media and hardware obsolescence’ U-matic ‘should be considered at high preservation risk.’
At Greatbear we have stockpiled quite a few different U-matic machines which reacted differently to the Videokunstarkivet tapes.
As you can see from the photo, they were in a pretty bad way.
Note the white, dusty-flaky quality of the mould in the images. This is what tape mould looks like after it has been rendered inactive, or ‘driven into dormancy.’ If mould is active it will be wet, smudging if it is touched. In this state it poses the greatest risk of infection, and items need to be immediately isolated from other items in the collection.
Once the mould has become dormant it is fairly easy to get the mould off the tape using brushes, vacuums with HEPA filters and cleaning solutions. We also used a machine specifically for the cleaning process, which was cleaned thoroughly afterwards to kill off any lingering mould.
This extract demonstrates how the VO9800 replayed the whole tape yet the quality wasn’t perfect. The tell-tale signs of mould infestation are present in the transferred signal.
Visual imperfections, which begin as tracking lines and escalate into a fuzzy black out of the image, is evidence of how mould has extended across the surface of the tape, preventing a clear reading of the recorded information.
Despite this range of problems, the V09800 replayed the whole tape in one go with no head clogs.
In its day, the BVU950 was a much higher specced U-matic machine than the VO9800. As the video extract demonstrates, it replayed some of the tape without the artefacts produced by the V09800 transfer, probably due to the deeper head tip penetration.
Yet this deeper head penetration also meant extreme tape head clogs on the sections that were affected badly by mould—even after extensive cleaning.
This, in turn, took a significant amount of time to remove the shedded material from the machine before the transfer could continue.
Mould problems
The play back of the tapes certainly underscores how deeply damaging damp conditions are for magnetic tape collections, particularly when they lead to endemic mould growth.
As Mike Sperlinger writes above, the shedding and drop outs are important artefacts in themselves. They mark the life-history of magnetic tapes, objects which so-often exist at the apex of neglect and recovery.
The question we may ask is: which transfer is better and more authentic? Yet this question is maddeningly difficult to answer in an analogue world defined by the continuous variation of the played back signal. And this variation is certainly amplified within the context of archival transfers when damage to tape has become accelerated, if not beyond repair.
At Greatbear we are in the good position of having a number of machines which enables us to test and experiment different approaches.
One thing is clear: for challenging collections, such as these items from the Videokunstarkivet, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to achieve the optimal transfer.
While this is by no means a final figure (and does not include the holdings of record companies and DATheads), it does suggest there is a significant amount of audio recorded on this obsolete format which, under certain conditions, is subject to catastrophic signal loss.
The conditions we are referring to is that old foe of magnetic tape: mould.
In contrast with existing research about threats to DAT, which emphasise how the format is threatened by ‘known playback problems that are typically related to mechanical alignment’, the biggest challenges we consistently face with DATs is connected to mould.
It is certainly acknowledged that ‘environmental conditions, especially heat, dust, and humidity, may also affect cassettes.’
Nevertheless, the specific ways mould growth compromise the very possibility of successfully playing back a DAT tape have not yet been fully explored. This in turn shapes the kinds of preservation advice offered about the format.
What follows is an attempt to outline the problem of mould growth on DATs which, even in minimal form, can pretty much guarantee the loss of several seconds of recording.
Tape width issues
The first problem with DATs is that they are 4mm wide, and very thin in comparison to other forms of magnetic tape.
The size of the tape is compounded by the helical method used in the format, which records the signal as a diagonal stripe across the tape. Because tracks are written onto the tape at an angle, if the tape splits it is not a neat split that can be easily spliced together.
The only way to deal with splits is to wind the tape back on to the tape transport or use leader tape to stick the tape back together at the breaking point.
Either way, you are guaranteed to lose a section of the tape because the helical scan has imprinted the recorded signal at a sharp, diagonal angle. If a DAT tape splits, in other words, it cuts through the diagonal signal, and because it is digital rather than analogue audio, this results in irreversible signal loss.
And why does the tape split? Because of the mould!
If you play back a DAT displaying signs of dormant mould-growth it is pretty much guaranteed to split in a horrible way. The tape therefore needs to be disassembled and wound by hand. This means you can spend a lot of time restoring DATs to a playable condition.
Rewinding by hand is however not 100% fool-proof, and this really highlights the challenges of working with mouldy DAT tape.
Often mould on DATs is visible on the edge of the tape pack because the tape has been so tightly wound it doesn’t spread to the full tape surface.
In most cases with magnetic tape, mould on the edge is good news because it means it has not spread and infected the whole of the tape. Not so with DAT.
Even with tiny bits of mould on the edge of the tape there is enough to stick it to the next bit of tape as it is rewound.
When greater tension is applied in an attempt to release the mould, due to stickiness, the tape rips.
A possible and plausible explanation for DAT tape ripping is that due to the width and thinness of the tape the mould is structurally stronger than the tape itself, making it easier for the mould growth to stick together.
When tape is thicker, for example with a 1/4 ” open reel tape, it is easier to brush off the dormant mould which is why we don’t see the ripping problem with all kinds of tape.
Our experience confirms that brushing off dormant mould is not always possible with DATs which, despite best efforts, can literally peel apart because of sticky mould.
What, then, is to be done to ensure that the 3353 (and counting) DAT tapes in existence remain in a playable condition?
One tangible form of action is to check that your DATs are stored at the appropriate temperature (40–54°F [4.5–12°C]) so that no mould growth develops on the tape pack.
The other thing to do is simple: get your DAT recordings reformatted as soon as possible.
While we want to highlight the often overlooked issue of mould growth on DATs, the problems with machine obsolescence, a lack of tape head hours and mechanical alignment problems remain very real threats to successful transfer of this format.
Our aim at the Greatbear is to continue our research in the area of DAT mould growth and publish it as we learn more.
As ever, we’d love to hear about your experiences of transferring mouldy DATs, so please leave a comment below if you have a story to share.
At Greatbear, we carefully restore and transfer to digital file all types of content recorded to Digital Audio Tape (DAT), and can support all sample rate and bit depth variations.
This post focuses on some of the problems that can arise with the transfer of DATs.
Indeed, at a meeting of audio archivists held in 1995, there was a consensus even then that DAT was not, and would never be, a reliable archival medium. One participant stated: ‘we have tapes from 1949 that sound wonderful,’ and ‘we have tapes from 1989 that are shot to hell.’ And that was nearly twenty years ago! What chances do the tapes have now?
A little DAT history
Before we explore that, let’s have a little DAT history.
SONY introduced Digital Audio Tapes (DATs) in 1987. At roughly half the size of an analogue cassette tape, DAT has the ability to record at higher, equal or lower sampling rates than a CD (48, 44.1 or 32 kHz sampling rate respectively) at 16 bit quantization.
Although popular in Japan, DATs were never widely adopted by the majority of consumer market because they were more expensive than their analogue counterparts. They were however embraced in professional recording contexts, and in particular for recording live sound.
It was recording industry paranoia, particularly in the US, that really sealed the fate of the format. With its threatening promise of perfect replication, DAT tapes were subject to an unsuccessful lobbying campaign by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). RIAA saw DATs as the ultimate attack on copyright law and pressed to introduce the Digital Audio Recorder Copycode Act of 1987.
This law recommended that each DAT machine had a ‘copycode’ chip installed that could detect whether prerecorded copyrighted music was being replicated. The method employed a notch filter that would subtly distort the quality of the copied recording, thus sabotaging acts of piracy tacitly enabled by the DAT medium. The law was however not passed, and compromises were made, although the US Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 imposed taxes on DAT machines and blank media.
How did they do ‘dat?
Like video tape recorders, DAT tapes use a rotating head and helical scan method to record data. The helical scan can, however, pose real problems for the preservation transfers of DAT tapes because it makes it difficult to splice the tape together if it becomes sticky and snaps during the tape wind. With analogue audiotape, which records information longitudinally, it is far more possible to splice the tape together and continue the transfer without risking irrevocable information loss.
Another problem posed by the helical scan method is that such tapes are more vulnerable to tape pack and backing deformation, as the CLIR guide explain:
‘Tracks are recorded diagonally on a helical scan tape at small scan angles. When the dimensions of the backing change disproportionately, the track angle will change for a helical scan recording. The scan angle for the record/playback head is fixed. If the angle that the recorded tracks make to the edge of the tape do not correspond with the scan angle of the head, mistracking and information loss can occur.’
When error correction can’t correct anymore
Most people will be familiar with the sound of digital audio dropouts even if they don’t know the science behind them. You will know them most probably as those horrible clicking noises produced when the error correction technology on CDs stops working. The clicks indicate that the ‘threshold of intelligibility’ for digital data has been breached and, as theorist Jonathan Sterne reminds us, ‘once their decay becomes palpable, the file is rendered entirely unreadable.’
Our SONY PCM 7030 professional DAT machine, pictured opposite, has a ‘playback condition’ light that flashes if an error is present. On sections of the tape where quality is really bad the ‘mute’ light can flash to indicate that the error correction technology can’t fix the problem. In such cases drop outs are very audible. Most DAT machines did not have such a facility however, and you only knew there was a problem when you heard the glitchy-clickety-crackle during playback when, of course, it was too late do anything about it.
The bad news for people with large, yet to be migrated DAT archives is that the format is ‘particularly susceptible to dropout. Digital audio dropout is caused by a non-uniform magnetic surface, or a malfunctioning tape deck. However, because the magnetically recorded information is in binary code, it results in a momentary loss of data and can produce a loud transient click or worse, muted audio, if the error correction scheme in the playback equipment cannot correct the error,’ the wonderfully informative A/V Artifact Atlas explains.
Given the high density nature of digital recordings on narrow magnetic tape, even the smallest speck of dust can cause digital audio dropouts. Such errors can be very difficult to eliminate. Cleaning playback heads and re-transferring is an option, but if the dropout was recorded at the source or the surface of tape is damaged, then the only way to treat irregularities is through applying audio restoration technologies, which may present a problem if you are concerned with maintaining the authenticity of the original recording.
Listen to this example of what a faulty DAT sounds like
Play back problems and mouldy DATs
Mould growth on the surface of DAT tape
A big problem with DAT transfers is actually being able to play back the tapes, or what is known in the business as ‘DAT compatibility.’ In an ideal world, to get the most perfect transfer you would play back a tape on the same machine that it was originally recorded on. The chances of doing this are of course pretty slim. While you can play your average audio cassette tape on pretty much any tape machine, the same cannot be said for DAT tapes. Often recordings were made on misaligned machines. The only solution for playback is, Richard Hess suggests, to mis-adjust a working machine to match the alignment of the recording on the tape.
As with any archival collection, if it is not stored in appropriate conditions then mould growth can develop. As mentioned above, DAT tapes are roughly half the size of the common audiocassette and the tape is thin and narrow. This makes them difficult to clean because they are mechanically fragile. Adapting a machine specifically for the purposes of cleaning, as we have done with our Studer machine, would be the most ideal solution. There is, however, not a massive amount of research and information about restoring mouldy DATs available online even though we are seeing more and more DAT tapes exhibiting this problem.
As with much of the work we do, the recommendation is to migrate your collections to digital files as soon as possible. But often it is a matter of priorities and budgets. From a technical point of view, DATs are a particularly vulnerable format. Machine obsolescence means that compared to their analogue counterparts, professional DAT machines will be increasingly hard to service in the long term. As detailed above, glitchy dropouts are almost inevitable given the sensitivity and all or nothing quality of digital data recorded on magnetic tape.
It seems fair to say that despite being meant to supersede analogue formats, DATs are far more likely to drop out of recorded sound history in a clinical and abrupt manner.
They therefore should be a high priority when decisions are made about which formats in your collection should be migrated to digital files immediately, over and above those that can wait just a little bit longer.
The summer of 2008 saw a spate of articles in the media focusing on a new threat to magnetic tapes.
The reason: the warm, wet weather was reported as a watershed moment in magnetic tape degradation, with climate change responsible for the march of mould consuming archival memories, from personal to institutional collections.
The connection between climate change and tape mould is not one made frequently by commentators, even in the digital preservation world, so what are the links? It is certainly true that increased heat and moisture are prime conditions for the germination of the mould spores that populate the air we breathe. These spores, the British Library tell us
‘can stay dormant for long periods of time, but when the conditions are right they will germinate. The necessary conditions for germination are generally:
• temperatures of 10-35ºC with optima of 20ºC and above
• relative humidities greater than 70%’
The biggest threat to the integrity of magnetic tape is fluctuations in environmental temperatures. This means that tape collections that are not stored in controlled settings, such as a loft, cupboard, shed or basement, are probably most at risk.
While climate change has not always been taking as seriously as it should be by governments and media commentators, the release today of the UN’s report, which stated in no uncertain terms that climate change is ‘severe, pervasive and irreversible’, should be a wake up call to all the disbelievers.
To explore the links between climate change and tape degradation further we asked Peter Specs from US-based disaster recovery specialists the Specs Brothers if he had noticed any increase in the number of mouldy tapes they had received for restoration. In his very generous reply he told us:
‘The volume of mouldy tapes treated seems about the same as before from areas that have not experienced disasters but has significantly increased from disaster areas. The reason for the increase in mould infected tapes from disaster areas seems to be three-fold. First, many areas have recently been experiencing severe weather that is not usual for the area and are not prepared to deal with the consequences. Second, a number of recent disasters have affected large areas and this delays remedial action. Third, after a number of disasters, monies for recovery seem to have been significantly delayed. We do a large amount of disaster recovery work and, when we get the tapes in for processing fairly quickly, are generally able to restore tapes from floods before mould can develop. In recent times, however, we are getting more and more mouldy tapes in because individuals delayed having them treated before mould could develop. Some were unaware that lower levels of their buildings had suffered water damage. In other areas the damage was so severe that the necessities of life totally eclipsed any consideration of trying to recover “non-essential” items such as tape recordings. Finally, in many instances, money for recovery was unavailable and individuals/companies were unwilling to commit to recovery costs without knowing if or when the government or insurance money would arrive.’
Nigel Bewley, soon to be retired senior sound engineer at the British Library, also told us there had been no significant increase in the number of mouldy tapes they had received for treatment. Yet reading between the lines here, and thinking about what Pete Specs told us, in an age of austerity and increased natural disasters, restoring tape collections may slip down the priority list of what needs to be saved for many people and institutions.
Mould: Prevention Trumps the Cure
Climate change aside, what can be done to prevent your tape collections from becoming mouldy? Keeping the tapes stored in a temperature controlled environment is very important – ’15 + 3° C and 40% maximum relative humidity (RH) are safe practical storage conditions,’ recommend the National Technology Alliance. It is also crucial that storage environments retain a stable temperature, because significant changes in the storage climate risk heating or cooling the tape pack, making the tension in the tape pack increase or decrease which is not good for the tape.
Because mould spores settle in very still air, it is vital to ensure a constant flow of air and prevent moist conditions. If all this is too late and your tape collections are already mouldy, all is not lost – even the most infected tape can be treated carefully and salvaged and we can help you do this.
If you are wondering how mould attacks magnetic tape, it is attracted to the binder or adhesive that attaches the layers of the tape together. If you can see the mould on the tape edges it usually means the mould has infected the whole tape.
Optical media can also be affected by mould. Miriam B. Kahn writes in Disaster Response and Planning for Libraries
‘Optical discs are susceptible to water, mould and mildew. If the polycarbonate surface is damaged or not sealed appropriately, moisture can become trapped and begin to corrode the metal encoding surface. If moisture or mould is invasive enough, it will make the disc unreadable’ (85).
Prevention, it seems, is better than having to find the cure. So turn on the lights, keep the air flowing and make the RH level stable.
Whole subcultures have emerged in this memory boom, as digital technologies enable people to come together via a shared passion for saving obscurities presumed to be lost forever. One such organisation is Kaleidoscope, whose aim is to keep the memory of ‘vintage’ British television alive. Their activities capture an urgent desire bubbling underneath the surface of culture to save everything, even if the quality of that everything is questionable.
Of course, as the saying goes, one person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure. As with most cultural heritage practices, the question of value is at the centre of people’s motivations, even if that value is expressed through a love for Pan’s People, Upstairs, Downstairs, Dick Emery and the Black and White Minstrel Show.
We were recently contacted by a customer hunting for lost TV episodes. His request: to lay hands on any old tapes that may unwittingly be laden with lost jewels of TV history. His enquiry is not so strange since a 70s Top of the Pops programme, a large proportion of which were deleted from the official BBC archive, trailed the end of ½ EIAJ video tape we recently migrated. And how many other video tapes stored in attics, sheds or barns potentially contain similar material? Or, as stated on the Kaleidoscope website:
‘Who’d have ever imagined that a modest, sometimes mould-infested collection of VHS tapes in a cramped back bedroom in Pill would lead to the current Kaleidoscope archive, which hosts the collections of many industry bodies as well as such legendary figures as Bob Monkhouse or Frankie Howard?’
Selection and appraisal in the archive
Mysterious tapes?
Living in an age of seemingly infinite information, it is easy to forget that any archival project involves keeping some things and throwing away others. Careful considerations about the value of an item needs to be made, both in relation to contemporary culture and the projected needs of subsequent generations.
These decisions are not easy and carry great responsibility. After all, how is it possible to know what society will want to remember in 10, 20 or even 30 years from now, let alone 200? The need to remember is not static either, and may change radically over time. What is kept now also strongly shapes future societies because our identities, lives and knowledge are woven from the memory resources we have access to. Who then would be an archivist?
When faced with a such a conundrum the impulse to save everything is fairly seductive, but this is simply not possible. Perhaps things were easier in the analogue era when physical storage constraints conditioned the arrangement of the archive. Things had to be thrown away because the clutter was overwhelming. With the digital archive, always storing more seems possible because data appears to take up less space. Yet as we have written about before on the blog, just because you can’t touch or even see digital information, doesn’t mean it is not there. Energy consumption is costly in a different way, and still needs to be accounted for when appraising how resource intensive digital archives are.
For those who want their media memories to remain intact, whole and accessible, learning about the clinical nature of archival decisions may raise concern. The line does however need to be drawn somewhere. In an interview in 2004 posted on the Digital Curation Centre’s website, Richard Wright, who worked in the BBC’s Information and Archives section, explained the long term preservation strategy for the institution at the time.
‘For the BBC, national programmes that have entered the main archive and been fully catalogued have not, in general, been deleted. The deletions within the retention policy mainly apply to “contribution material” i.e. components (rushes) of a final programme, or untransmitted material. Hence, “long-term” for “national programmes that have entered the main archive and been fully catalogued” means in perpetuity. We have already kept some material for more than 75 years, including multiple format migrations.’
Value – whose responsibility?
For all those episodes, missing believed wiped, the treasure hunters who track them down tread a fine line between a personal obsession and offering an invaluable service to society. You decide.
What is inspiring about amateur preservationists is that they take the question of archival value into their own hands. In the 21st century, appraising and selecting the value of cultural artifacts is therefore no longer the exclusive domain of the archivist, even if expertise about how to manage, describe and preserve collections certainly is.
Does the popularity of such activities change the constitution of archives? Are they now more egalitarian spaces that different kinds of people contribute to? It certainly suggests that now, more than ever, archives always need to be thought of in plural terms, as do the different elaborations of value they represent.
Bristol Archive Records is more than a record label. It releases music, books and through its website, documents the history of Bristol’s punk and reggae scenes from 1977 onwards. You can get lost for hours trawling through the scans of rare zines and photographs, profiles of record labels, bands, discographies and gig lists. Its a huge amount of work that keeps on expanding as more tapes are found, lurking in basements or at that unforeseen place at the back of the wardrobe.
Greatbear has the privilege of being the go-to digitisation service for Bristol Archive Records, and many of the albums that grace the record store shelves of Bristol and beyond found their second digital life in the Greatbear Studio.
The tapes that Mike Darby has given us to digitise include ¼ inch studio master tapes, ½ inch 8 track multi-track tapes, audio cassettes, DAT recordings and Betamax digital audio recordings. The recordings were mostly made at home or in small commercial studios, often they were not stored in the best conditions. Some are demos, or other material which has never been released before. Many were recorded on Ampex tape, and therefore needed to be baked before they were played back, and we also had to deal with other physical problems with the tape, such as mould, but they have all, thankfully, been fixable.
After transfers we supply high quality WAV files as individual tracks or ‘stems’ to label manager Mike Darby, which are then re-mastered before they are released on CD, vinyl or downloads.
Bristol Archive Records have done an amazing job ensuring the cultural history of Bristol’s music scenes are not forgotten. As Mike explains in an interview on Stamp the Wax:
‘I’m trying to give a bit of respect to any individual that played in any band that we can find any music from. However famous or successful they were is irrelevant. For me it’s about acknowledging their existence. It’s not saying they were brilliant, some of it was not very good at all, but it’s about them having their two seconds of “I was in that scene”.’
While Darby admits in the interview that Bristol Archive Records is not exactly a money spinner, the cultural value of these recordings are immeasurable. We are delighted to be part of the wider project and hope that these rare tapes continue to be found so that contemporary audiences can enjoy the musical legacies of Bristol.
Like much late 1970s and ’80s studio recordings, this was recorded on Ampex branded tape that suffers badly from binder hydrolysis or ‘sticky shed syndrome’ that must be addressed before the tape can be successfully played and digitised. This was in addition to the mould growth that was evident on the tape pack edges, and cardboard box. Storage in damp conditions and high humidity causes this type of mould and increases the breakdown of magnetic tape generally, sometimes to the point where de-lamination occurs, that is, the binder breaks away from the polyester structure of the tape. When this happens, which is luckily quite rarely, the magnetic information is damaged and mostly lost beyond repair.
Thankfully this tape, whilst it looked in poor condition was relatively straightforward to restore but time consuming. Careful hand winding, and mould cleaning is necessary as is awareness of the potential health effects of some mould spores so good ventilation and protective masks are necessary.
We were very excited recently when Chris Bradfield from Soundscommercial uncovered a previously unseen batch of EIAJ half inch reel to reel video tapes. In the process of looking for 1976 footage for their event, Spirit of 76, we uncovered many other gems. One of these goals was the famous hat-trick scored by Kevin Mabbutt against Manchester United at Old Trafford in 1978. Mabbutt is one of only two players in Football League history even to have done this and this footage was never recorded anywhere else!
Unfortunately this large batch of valuable recordings had been stored in damp, unheated conditions and had suffered. The tape had deteriorated in several ways.
Mould growth was evident on some tapes
The oldest tapes from the early 1970s were shedding oxide severely and had little lubrication left in the binder.
Binder hydrolysis, often called sticky shed was evident on other tapes.
Each issue needed a different process to treat the tape. The common assumption that ‘tape baking‘ will restore all unplayable tape is not true. It is just one solution to one of these issues and can cause more problems if used incorrectly. Deteriorated video tape is much less forgiving than audio tape when attempting transfer and must always be handled and processed with extreme care. Crinkled, curled, edge damaged tapes are next to impossible to restore back to their original condition and it’s common that more damage can occur when owners are desperate to transfer footage.
We were able to restore all the tapes to a playable condition and make uncompressed quicktime files of these.
Below is a clip from a later recording. We are not able, unfortunately, to show the Kevin Mabbutt clip yet.
