Before you write in: yes, I was around when the 1979 TPS-L2 Sony Walkman arrived. I loved it. I also know the necessity of the HB pencil – you'd better believe the one time I took that key piece of audio equipment from the glove compartment of my mum's Citroen 2CV6, with its Audioline tape deck, there was hell to pay. Finally, I vividly remember Julia Roberts singing to Kiss in the movie Pretty Woman, as her Walkman balanced precariously on the edge of the bath in a bathroom that (and I quote) was bigger than the Blue Banana. Check, check, check. I'm qualified to talk about cassettes!

And I'm here to tell you that both cassette tapes and Walkmans are back in a big way. I don't mean Sony's reimagined digital audio players such as the Sony NW-A306 either (although that is one of the best hi-res audio players around in the affordable arena), I mean portable tape players that accept tangible polyester-type-plastic-film-with-magnetic-coating tapes.

My recent personal quest to build my tape collection beyond the much-played and largely decaying albums of my youth – Roxette's Tourism, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814, Prince's 1999, INXS Kick, Les Négresses Vertes' Mlah, Robert Palmer's Heavy Nova, you get the era – also strongly suggests tapes are far from retro, quaint or passé. In fact, they're in huge demand. But look at me getting ahead of myself.

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