NIN uses a cassette 4-track as an instrument

In this video, we’ve got Nine Inch Nails collaborator Alessandro Cortini writing and mixing in Logic Pro using digital techniques, then running the project as 4 tracks in a dynamic mix through a cassette tape recorder, combined with various analog guitar pedal effects and pre-recorded synth patches.

These are similar techniques (in general) to how an old school professional analog mix session might have worked, but using lofi gear instead of high-end studio gear.

Back in the day, when doing a tape bounce using an analog console, each individual mix would be a mini-performance. Whereas nowadays many mix moves are programmed into a computer and can be exported sounding exactly the same every time, it’s impossible to achieve that level of precision using analog techniques.

Each time you record a mix off an analog board, you’ll turn the knobs just a little bit differently.  That makes a fully analog mix a unique, one-time performance rather than something that's programmed in and precisely repeatable.

In this video, Alessandro Cortini is taking this same basic idea and applying it as a finishing mixing technique to a digital Logic session of music that’s already been written.

He's using a cassette recorder as an instrument, but not in a compositional sense so much as icing on the cake to an existing digital mix, combined with additional pre-written synth sequences also playing through the cassette 4 track at the same time.

I'll point out that when it came time to release the album this music was a part of, this wasn't the final finishing step before release; this music wasn't released off of cassette tape directly onto the internet.  Instead, this digital mix with analog enhancements was then converted back into digital land before being professionally mastered, then released from there.

I’m highlighting this example because it’s an interesting combination of old vs. new. We’ve got modern digital recording techniques combined with old-school analog concepts, all while using affordable lofi gear in interesting ways that push the envelope. Well worth a watch.