Jack White doesn’t love his music being described as ‘retro’. “Anything that starts with ‘re’ – like retro, reinvent, recreate... it’s always like living in the past – copying, emulating,” he once said. But like many of us, he seems to love retro music playback. After all, he co-founded the vinyl-focused label Third Man Records and under it has released several of his albums on not only vinyl but also cassette. As have the likes of Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers with their music, and Disney with today's best-selling tapes, the Guardians Of The Galaxy: Awesome Mix volumes. White and his fellow tape-backing artists might perhaps then be fans of FiiO’s ‘Retro Product’ category. The Chinese manufacturer has incited nostalgia big time this year by launching two products in particular within it – and ‘retro’ is exactly the descriptor it’s going for.
There are currently three devices under that category umbrella. One is the TT13 fully automatic turntable, which in my mind is no less contemporary a product type today than an electric car, but the other two do, however, firmly fit the retro bill; they are a portable CD player (DM13) and portable cassette player (CM13). No arguments there, right? Unlike vinyl, they are, as technological concepts in the here and now, closer to dead than alive.
