The cassette revival has reached the stage where Pink Floyd’s drummer is being asked to comment on tape hiss. We’re fine with this.
We Are Rewind — the French outfit that has spent the past few years making cassette players people actually want to own — has announced a Pink Floyd edition of its flagship WE-001 player. The box includes a specially remastered cassette of The Dark Side of the Moon, and it’s the only cassette version of the album’s 50th anniversary remaster in existence. The tape is exclusive to this set. It’s out now at €179 / £159 / $199.
Not your Walkman
The WE-001 is a retro object with distinctly non-retro internals. It runs Bluetooth 5.1 for wireless listening, packs a rechargeable battery rated for up to 12 hours of playback, and includes a headphone amplifier designed specifically around cassette playback. There’s a 3.5mm output, line-in recording so you can still make mixtapes (or voice recordings with a compatible mic), an aluminium body with metal buttons, and an upgraded frequency response of 30 Hz – 14,500 Hz ± 3 dB. A belt clip is sold separately, for the full period-accurate look.
The collaboration follows the WE-001, the Curtis boombox and the recent Freddie headphones, and slots into We Are Rewind’s pattern of pairing with artists who have a real link to cassette culture. Dark Side qualifies — it’s among the best-selling cassette releases ever made.
Nick Mason, mostly serious
The best part of the announcement is Nick Mason’s contribution, which manages to be both sincere and gently withering. “I still have enormous affection for the cassette. It really was a major breakthrough — not only with the Sony Walkman but with some of the more up-market recorders,” he said. “I still have my Nakamichi on the shelf and look forward to testing it with the new The Dark Side of the Moon cassette. Am I correct in assuming that the next major issue will be The Dark Side of the Moon in a large package consisting of the album divided up into 78 RPM discs?”
He is not wrong to ask. But We Are Rewind founder and CEO Romain Boudruche made the earnest case: “To call The Dark Side of the Moon a classic album is an understatement. In many ways, it set the tone for what an album experience should be as a continuous piece of sonic art… We’re happy that We Are Rewind can play a part in helping preserve the physical album experience.”
The numbers behind the nostalgia
The format’s comeback is real, if small. US cassette sales are up 17.5% year on year, excluding used tapes. In the UK the figure is 53%, after a decade of consistent growth. Those are percentages on a modest base — nobody is threatening streaming here — but the direction has been consistent long enough to stop being a fluke.
At $199 for a player and one album, this is unapologetically a collector’s item, and an album built on dynamic range and studio precision is an odd fit for a format defined by its limitations. That tension is arguably the point. You can find We Are Rewind at Amazon, Rough Trade and Selfridges, among others.
