Photo: David S. Holloway

Shelby Cinca is a longtime fixture in this town, going back to the early 90s with his days with the noisy post-punks in Frodus. Following that band's 1999 breakup, Cinca played with Fugazi's Joe Lally in Decahedron, and then formed a whole slew of other bands, the most well-known of which is probably The Cassettes. With The Cassettes, Cinca shifted gears away from the sound and fury of many of his previous bands toward a rootsier tone that owed heavily to classic rock in its early days, and has moved more heavily into folk-influenced territory since a significant lineup shift 5 years ago.

Yet for all the "traditional" influences, The Cassettes remain somewhat difficult to categorize, committed as they are to stretching the boundaries of those forebears, combining guitars with theremin with tabla in unpredictable ways. With their latest recording, Countach, the band defies expectations once again, by releasing the record as a cassette. If you've already ditched your tape deck, don't worry, digital download is included. Few bands are as well suited to such a blend of the past and the future; The Cassettes pull it off with a wink, a nod, and some really great tunes.

Find them online: thecassettes.com

See them live:: At the Black Cat November 22 with These United States, and December 6 at the legendary Kansas House in Arlington.

Questions for Shelby Cinca of The Cassettes:

How did the Zombie Prom show go over the weekend? Was it really exclusively Theremin instrumentals, and if so, can you really pull that off for an entire evening?

We didn't quite do only theremin instrumentals but we had lots of strange interludes with heavy theremin, beat poetry, etc. And we did slower and stranger zombie-versions of our songs. We managed to capture a pleasing Twin Peaks atmosphere which is what we wanted to create. The night went amazingly well, probably one of the most fun and best shows we have ever played—it was truly a special event.

The Cassettes have been together for nearly 10 years now. Which is a pretty long time, for this town especially, it seems. To what do you contribute the longevity?

A shift in lineup from the original to the new helped us last this long. The current lineup began in 2003 so mentally I see our "start" around that time these days. We don't even play any of the previous material live really—maybe one or two songs on occasion from the 2nd album O'er The Mountain. We stick around since we enjoy the music we come up with when we are in a room together and constantly feel like we can one up what we did previously. It's still fun. I think when a band becomes "unfun" for the musicians they should break up.

Writing, Recording, or Touring. What do you think The Cassettes have the most fun doing? And what do you think they're best at?

I enjoy recording and writing the most since it's like painting a sonic picture and it's the creative moments that I always love the most. Though I think we do well at all of the above, we like to play live as well and bring something special to live shows with our theremin player and mix of songs.

You've done a lot of international touring...how does the response in other parts of the world differ from here?

They seem to be positive everywhere. Chieti, Italy and Fürth, Germany both stand in our minds as strange dreamlike experiences. We haven't been back to Europe since 2003 so it would be nice to go back there with our theremin player as he wasn't with us when we played there. The response was drunker and crazier than the States generally.

How do you balance The Cassettes with your other projects these days?

It's pretty easy actually! I do my electronic music as Triobelisk by myself with a laptop in a car, bus or at home, etc. The Cassettes requires some planning since there are 4 members—so really the balance is simple since that's the only project that requires coordination of wandering human brains. Then there is freelance design work but I tend to do that at normal business hours of 11 a.m to 3 p.m. and 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. Man and Wasp doesn't really do much since the drummer is in Sweden and the other members are always on tourmyspace.com/manandwaspso that just happens naturally when everyone has some time.

When you're working with multiple projects, how do you determine which ideas to use with which ones? Do any of your Cassettes bandmates ever hear something from another thing you've been working on and say, "Hey! That could have worked for us!"

Right now since Cassettes is the only one with guitars; pretty much all the ideas go there that don't involve synthesizers and drum machines!

The Cassettes' sound is a pretty significant departure from the previous bands you've been with. What led you in this direction?

Bored of screaming and of the punk/emo/whatever scene which eventually became really commercial and yucky in 2001. Consequently, The Cassettes got tired of our old sound a bit so we updated and mixed things up on our recent album, Countach.

How does the songwriting process work with the Cassettes?

At first it was kind of skeletal ideas I would bring into practice along with just spontaneously coming up with things as we rehearsed. Now it is purely spontaneous and off the cuff in the room we practice in.

Great idea releasing the new record on cassette (and the cover art is a brilliant throwback). Is it difficult to get these manufactured these days?

Not at all—the same place that pressed Frodus cassettes in 1993 and 1994 (Lion Recording Services) are still in business in Springfield, VA—so we just went there! They seemed to still make tapes for the U.S. Postal Service and various Ethiopian artists, plus they survived by pressing CDs as well.

My lingering memory of the days of cassettes was that "new cassette smell" that there was when you first got it out of the case, probably even more distinctive than the "new car smell". Any similar nostalgia moments when you had these made up?

Definitely—the layout is inspired by major-label cassettes of the 80s, so there was a very nostalgic moment for us when they were completed. It felt like our childhood dreams came true and we had a tape out on Chrysalis Records and it would be filed next to Cinderella in the Hard Rock rack at Waxie Maxies.

Did you ever consider releasing Countach exclusively as a cassette, as an experiment to see how long it takes a limited edition release on an analog medium to find its way to file-sharing on its own?

Nah—we felt that would shoot ourselves in the hoof—we wanted to include a download card with it so the experience is still there for people who don't have tape players yet want to purchase it as a pleasing cultural artifact. Surprisingly, lots of people don't have tape players anymore so I think we would have limited our audience too much. Also we don't have enough of a rabid following which I think that would occur. If for some reason we gain a bigger following where that would occur I would happily attempt that experiment.

What do the Cassettes listen to when they're hanging out and not playing music?

We have a last.fm account:

http://www.last.fm/user/thecassettes - which is mostly Stephen, and I have one:

http://www.last.fm/user/triobelisk

So, I would break it down to:

Me: Electronic music, Britpop
Stephen: New Wave, Rock N' Roll, Electronic Music
Saadat: Banghra, Classical Indian Music, Minimal Electronic Music, Britpop
Arthur: 1930s and 1950s music

You're playing a sci-fi convention in Williamsburg after the new year. How do you get hooked up with a gig like that?

Once we played at NASA we became an "events" band; so we get offers pretty regularly from various random event-organizers. My dream is to play the Dreamland Conference one year.

Will the band be in costume for the Halloween show at Suny tomorrow? What are you all going to be?

Very possibly we shall—much like we were at the Zombie Prom! We would be THE (DEAD) CASSETTES. There are some pictures of us on our Myspace from that night.

What does being a D.C. musician mean to you these days?

Holding a strong footing in the DIY/Punk ethos of my roots in Dischord Records and playing with Frodus along with keeping a foot forward into the madness of music in the information chaos of post-year-2000.

Since you've been playing around here for quite a while, how have you seen the city evolve, musically, in the past decade or more?

It's changed quite a bit, there is a lot more happening as far as different types of music but it doesn't feel as unified as it did in the '90s. It is unified in its micro-pockets without much crossover these days. Each micro-scene has its way of functioning and thinking about things. I think the up and coming electronic/dance music scene is interesting in its cultural development. It's a little territorial and could be more experimental and brave yet it totally functions as a thriving underground economy. Sometimes I wish that scene was more punk like the electronic scenes in Scandinavia and mainland Europe that I have observed—which has the same energy and brashness of the glory days of '90s D.C. hardcore with what it is outputting musically and how it's carrying itself. I guess once you grow up with Fugazi you have a high expectation of music on any level pushing the limits of what is "acceptable" for its genre and scene—so maybe it's my high standard that looks at everything critically. But since it's D.C. I think all D.C. musicians owe it to themselves to keep that standard to some degree.

D.C. music in the past was able to keep an experimental edge on things because there was no big "music industry" in this town, it wasn't like N.Y. or L.A. in the 90s, it was a bastion of underground experimentation and getting to the roots of creativity. I think the internet threw all that out of the window to some extent, since a lot of younger bands came up and expected to be "discovered on the internet" , so the mindset shifted from its creative-bubble days of the 90s. D.C. today has a lot more happening on many creative levels with all its micro-scenes and tons of new bars/venues/etc. However, I do wish there was more mass weirdness and experimentation in the actual music being created like it used to be. People should aspire to make records that really are terrible in a "shark sandwich" kind of way or totally amazing; no middle of the road. More Syd Barret and less perfectly-tousled Rhett Miller. Every D.C. musician in the 2000s should just pose the following question when they commit something to their hard-disk: "What would The Psychic Soviet think?"