Audi cassettes. Even if you often had to rewind them (we did it with a pen or a pencil, remember?), we loved them dearly and we loved playing them. Despite them being 'a thing of the past' now, there are many who miss them in the digital era - who miss the old ways of dealing with physical formats instead of scrolling around computer folders to locate mp3s in the clouds.
Conceived and designed by audiovisual art organisation BrainMonk (Andrius Žemaitis and Marius Paulikas), Elbow is a new minimalist cassette player design concept, created to 'restore the glory of a cassette tape' for those who are not at all yet ready to part ways with the legendary tape, much like the lovers of vinyl. Desing-wise, the player has been reduced to the core, leaving only the parts that were aboslutely needed.
The team behind Elbow explained that because they feel an audio cassette is a cultural icon, it needs to be 'brought in the forefront of user's attention', revealing all the physicality and the mechanical motion behind it. A single pulley drives the tape, while tape speed is tracked by an optical sensor to ensure constant playback rate. It comes with a biaxial arm, which rotates in two directions (upward and sideways) and in a way resembles the tonearm of a vinyl record player. The control wheel has three functions: when in its initial position, the palyer is off. If you turn the wheel left, the cassette will start to play and the volume will go up. If you turn it right, the cassette will fast-forward gradually, increasing speed when you turn the wheel more and more.
Elbow is a clip-on device, so it can be pinned to clothes and fabrics, making your tape a fashionable accessory. To make it even more convenient, it works via two connections - a standard 3.5mm audi plug as well as a mini-USB port through which the device can be charged and, of course, the audio can travel from the player to your comupter.
For more updates and orders, you can follow Elbow via Facebook.