Cassette is:
Devin Smith - vocals/guitar
Rainer Davies- guitar
Patrick Hart - keyboards/vocals
Joe Rehmer- bass
Richard Hargett - drums
Cassette was once a boy, then it was a man, and now it is a band.
Boy: In the summer of 2005 University of Miami music student Devin Smith writes and records over seventy genre-crossing songs in his bedroom in San Ramon, California. Half of these are released as "Beautiful California", a handmade limited edition album on Atomisk Records, the label Smith founded with fellow U of Miami student Patrick Hart.
In September Smith is asked to open for Awesome New Republic, a Miami freak funk duo, and hastily assembles a band to play the entire album live. "Cassette is a band that will be performing only one time - ever," say flyers for the show. "This is the only chance you will ever get to see this art performed live."
Man: Smith graduates from the University of Miami and goes to work for Honor Roll, Inc., a Miami music production house run by Nick Scapa and J. Read Fasse. By this point an instrumental track from "Beautiful California" has appeared in a Visa commercial and Atomisk Records has released sixteen limited-run albums, many of them solo projects by Smith in styles ranging from IDM to indie pop to electroclash to avant/noise. Honor Roll offers to re-release "Beautiful California" in the spring of 2007 with a national press campaign and an Exciting United States Tour, and Devin accepts. It looks like Cassette will perform again after all.
Band: Smith recruits University of Miami music school graduates Richard Hargett (drums), Joe Rehmer (bass), Patrick Hart (keys), and Rainer Davies(guitar) for the new, more permanent Cassette. Hargett is a jazz drummer who played in Miami/LA bands Naked Face and Owl Blood, Hart is a Nashville-born composer who scores films and TV ads and plays drums in Miami punk rock band The Dead Hookers' Bridge Club, and Davies and Rehmer are the cream of Miami's jazz crop who have now completed their training for rock band stardom.