Vote For Your Favourite Track to Feature in Our New Cassette Series

Learn all about our exciting new cassette series, which will showcase music from some of the talented Catalyst students and alumni. Plus, cast your vote on which tracks will feature on the very first volume. 

It’s official: cassette tapes are back – though if you ask Catalyst’s resident audiophiles, they’ll tell you they never went away. Who couldn’t love the tactility of clunking a cassette into a vintage walkman or stereo? Or the collectibility of the nostalgic medium, in the fleeting age of digital?

That’s why we’re launching our own collectible cassette series – a new volume release each semester, showcasing a curated, multi-genre selection of the very best tracks by the musical talents catalysed at our school. The cassettes will be available to purchase by the public, and we’ll be donating half of the proceeds to charity, with the other half going back into funding the ongoing project.

The inaugural compilation, Volume Zero, will celebrate our transition from dBs Berlin to our school's new identity as Catalyst, including diverse alumni tracks which date all the way back to our creative community’s early days.

Who will feature on Volume Zero? Together with tracks by our secret alumni collaborators – who will be announced at a later date – we’ll be adding two tracks by current students, chosen by you!

You have until midnight on the 7th of June 2020 to choose your favourite from the selection below. Simply cast your vote via the link button below.

The Cassette Contenders

Schwarzbild Condition - Atrahasis

Electronic Music Production & Performance student Aaron Gaier

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‘Atrahasis’ is a fast-loop techno track, full of percussion and heavy bass, which was produced on Ableton during the Corona lockdown.

Branco Kegević - Schlag (Santiago's Bass Recording)

Electronic Music Production & Performance student

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Branco made this track using an analog bass recording by his brother, Santiago Kegević. Santiago is a bass player from Chile’s progressive rock and metal scene, who was a member of the band DELTA. The quarantine collaboration reconnected the brothers after years spent apart. “I took this opportunity to make a song that moves my feet and soul,” Branco tells us. “It opened a possibility to keep working with different kinds of sounds and vibes.”

Artifik - Slwdwn

Creative Audio Production & Sound Engineering student Carlos Cordero

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‘Slwdwn’ was composed, mixed and mastered by Carlos during the first weeks of Corona confinement, as part of his upcoming EP. “It illustrates a reflection that occurred to me during my last picnic in a park, on a sunny day, knowing I wouldn't be able to enjoy such freedom for some time,” he says. “As I was snacking on a pack of peanuts, I realised the streets would become gradually emptier and that time would slow down for a bit. Less pollution in the air, less problems to stack on your chair at home, all because of a force that scares us all equally. The track is about seeing calmness emerging from the chaos, and closing your eyes to enjoy the time slowly passing by.”

Romerlin - The Tribute

Electronic Music Production & Performance student Mattia Oggioni

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‘The Tribute’, featuring the voice of Giorgio Moroder talking about the Daft Punk track ‘Giorgio by Moroder’, is Mattia’s tribute to the artist and electro duo.

Anthony Zografski - Sunny Daze

Creative Audio Production & Sound Engineering student

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In ‘Sunny Daze’, Anthony tried to capture the mellow mood of dusk sunshine. “Looking out of my window, I could see the sun setting slowly and everything becoming peaceful for the last hours of the day. I tried to encompass some of the sounds of nature, coming up with my own version of nature's creations with these squeaky noises in the background of the song. Auto-panning them almost gives the listener the feel of the creature moving back and forth. The knocking noise could be comparable to the sound of a bird pecking a tree, which also gives the track a dynamic movement. The overall idea was to combine serenity and nature and give people a pleasurable listening experience at the end of a hard day!”