With garage rock star Ty Segall posting videotapes of his latest album to critics, it seems the black plastic bricks of static are well and truly back. But is it worth exploring this particular avenue of old-school analogue?

Snow-like static. Warped, wobbling visuals. Wildly uneven sound. Looking back, it’s incredible that we put up with videotapes for as long as we did. Now that Sony has ended future production of its Betamax cassette tapes – the ones you probably never used because you stuck to JVC’s VHS – it would seem as good a time as any to quietly close the door on the videotape chapter of human existence.

Try telling that to the prolific garage rock musician Ty Segall, who sent VHS copies of his 11-song album, Emotional Mugger, to music critics at Pitchfork on Monday. Segall’s earliest releases were on cassette and he’s no stranger to 7in vinyl singles, but this dalliance with VHS is his first.

In a year that’s seen both sales and prices of vinyl soar in the UK, it’s no secret that there’s a market for physical formats. But VHS albums? Really? Remember the sight of a video’s black tape, tangled and regurgitated from within the cassette, destined never to play again? Now imagine putting up with that in 2015, when technology has given us so many other options. It’s a hard sell.

Simon V-L (@simonwilliam) cassettes are so over. overdubbed blockbuster tapes and weird crumpled sheets of paper are what's hot now. pic.twitter.com/SDhtAzWy4x

VHS released today by a twentysomething – Segall is 28 – would feel like the very worst of Instagram-generation, romanticised nostalgia – just the sort of grating obsession with VHS and vinyl Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried’s characters display in Noah Baumbach’s excellent recent film While We’re Young. Sound quality has never been the format’s strong point, so why would bands today opt for videotape albums? Sound engineer and audio equipment company co-founder Ethan Winer isn’t convinced.

Music’s great digitally and everything, but the idea of having something in your hand makes it real

“I think those people are deluded and living in the past,” he says, speaking from his home in Connecticut. “A lot of people who are into old-school analogue are really young – and they didn’t even deal with that crackly sound in the first place. CD quality is very high-fidelity, and that’s what you want. Always.”

Winer, who is 67, has written a book on the ins and outs of audio and is a somewhat infamous fixture on audiophile online forums, for plainly expressing his evidence-based findings about sound. He says he worked as an audio engineer for decades, and stresses that VHS sound quality isn’t awful but isn’t great, either. When done well, Winer says a VHS recording could probably turn out better than a 64kbps mp3. Which, in non-data speak, would be the a fairly garbage mp3 that you could play on a laptop, phone or MP3 player.

That being said, Segall’s nostalgic trip back in time isn’t exactly unparalleled. London-based record label Dream Catalogue, founded in 2014, also opts for physical releases. The label puts out “vaporwave” music, a loosely defined genre typified by echoey, electronic ambient sounds and futuristic accompanying visuals. Label owner HKE says he understands why Segall would want to go old-school.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A taste of vaporwave: artist HKE’s collaboration with electronic music producer Zomby

“Music’s great digitally and everything, but the idea of having something in your hand makes it real,” he says. “It immortalises it a little bit, so it’s not just invisible data on a computer.” HKE is 29 years old, so he’s nestled right in the age range of people old enough to recognise the sounds of garbled, chewed-up tape (sigh) and a dial-up modem, but young enough to know about flac format files and MP3s.

He remembers playing with cassettes and videotapes as a child, before quickly shifting, as did most people of his age, to CDs and digital music. “The idea of getting my hands on all these obscure cassettes became this massive hobby,” he says. He and his labelmates’ music fits the crackly formats of cassette tape, vinyl and VHS, “because it’s both futuristic and anachronistic”. From that perspective, vaporwave – like the short-lived seapunk trend – straddles both nostalgia and an aesthetic based on an imagined vision of the future.

One of Dream Catalogue’s artists currently has a VHS album in the works. Under his electronic music producer alias R23x, the 28-year-old Canadian composer and artist Marc Junker records directly from his laptop to VCR, then plays back that VHS tape and records the audio on to his computer. It sounds complicated, but allows him to pick up all the irregularities of tape’s sound. “It adds a whole new layer that I could never have composed myself,” he writes in an email, “with tape warbles, pops, crackles, and skipping. I also occasionally pull out and stretch and scratch it to try and really mess with it,” to create a sound that he finds satisfying.

Ｒ２３Ｘ ｡*ﾟ■ :. (@_R23X_) ＷＩＮ Ａ ＶＨＳ ＴＡＰＥ！！１: giving away my new album on VHS to 2 followers (here and Soundcloud) PLS RT/FOLLOW to enter! pic.twitter.com/RJF2RLiNqS

The recent surge of 90s-inspired lo-fi guitar bands has already shown a 21st-century longing for a retro sound. “But VHS is certainly not as good as CDs and it certainly costs a lot more to make them than the CD,” Winer says, laughing when I ask whether he thinks VHS albums could turn into a viable option for up-and-coming musicians. “Plus, the video players would be expensive. So it’s not practical. It’s stupid, frankly.” Winer does concede that when recorded in stereo and played out through a good stereo system, VHS audio can be of a high quality.

“In the old days we weren’t looking for an analogue sound,” he says, “we were trying to get rid of it. That’s why I think these people are deluded, wanting to add this old-timey sound with hiss.”

I ask HKE – who will only tell me his first name is David, in line with vaporwave’s community of relative anonymity – how he’d respond. Why bother with VHS at all? “I’d love to do more VHS releases, not just of music but video albums. I’m into the idea of merging music and video together to present a whole artistic concept, rather than just an album on its own,” he says. “Our whole ethos on Dream Catalogue is to present these dreamlike albums. A concept that you can lose yourself in.” Given the nature of the music in question – floaty synth pads, slowed-down sequences – there’s an underlying earnestness to HKE’s argument.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest R23x: SOUND_TRACK ~ [MP3].torrent, due for release on VHS on 15 November

“It’s often just written off as trendy and amateur,” Junker writes, of how nostalgia-craving musicians are portrayed. “But there is a kernel of creativity there, that can maybe only be fostered online in a contrived way – and that’s great. There is something kinda badass and punk-rock about anyone being able to go to a library computer and rip a YouTube video of an obscure 80s car commercial, reverse it, slow it down to one-fifth the speed using freeware software, then release it on Bandcamp for free, anonymously.”

Seen from one perspective, VHS tapes are fragile and impractical – I’d need to hunt down a VCR before even thinking about playing either of Segall or Junker’s albums, for example. Seen from another view, videotapes are blank canvas on which to graft unusual compositions and sounds, with the added childhood nostalgia kick. Segall’s music, with its crunching guitars and feedback squeals, already fits the rough-around-the-edges format of VHS, and his videotape’s novelty value probably won’t hurt sales. Maybe some of us born right before the death of the cassette tape just want what we couldn’t quite have throughout adulthood: ubiquitous crackles, a hiss and those fuzzy, trembling visuals.

This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. More information.