TheDarkenedDoorstep💙💔🇵🇸 🇨🇺

In the late 1980s, Mr. Tape, real name Modris Skaistkalne, was one of the first Soviet DJs to compete at an international level. The Iron Curtain had cut off the USSR from most Western music for decades. Vinyl records of Western hip hop and funk were essentially impossible to find. State produced Soviet records of Alla Pugacheva and other approved pop stars were useless for the kind of DJing developing in New York and London. So Mr. Tape improvised. He recorded Western music directly off foreign radio broadcasts onto reels of magnetic tape. Then he taught himself to mix, cut, and scratch using two reel to reel decks.