Collectors and music fans wearing the T-shirts of obscure rock bands brave the tropical heat outside a record shop near Malaysia’s capital, waiting to get their hands on new cassette tapes.
No, this isn’t a flashback to the 1980s, but an event marking recent International Cassette Store Day, an annual celebration of a music format once thought headed for extinction but now enjoying a rebirth.
Vinyl’s renaissance is well-documented and now it seems cassettes are rising from the grave, with artists such as Kanye West and Justin Bieber releasing songs on tape.
In Southeast Asia low production costs and a retro-chic have made cassettes an underground-music fixture, especially for struggling bands getting their name out.
“Cassettes are our best sellers,” Mohammad Radzi Jasni, owner of the shop, Teenage Head Records, said after shoving one by Singaporean surf-punk band Force Vomit into a bulky tape player.