Abbey Road in 336 audio cassettes: how I created this Pop Art portrait of the Beatles

Abbey Road is one of Mister Melody's most ambitious works: a portrait of the Beatles composed of 336 vintage audio cassettes, spread across four 80×80 cm panels. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at a creation that required months of collecting at flea markets, hundreds of hours of meticulous preparation, and an absolute standard of excellence in assembly.

When the medium becomes master

For Abbey Road, I chose nothing. It was the cassette that spoke. Four 80×80 cm panels. 336 cases lined up like an equation. In my work, the object is never a mere ornament: it is the standard, the rule, the skeleton of the work.

Sunday archaeology

These cassettes do not come from an Amazon box. I hunted them down, Sunday after Sunday, in the dust of flea markets and the smell of mothballs in attics. Every time I pick one up, I read the handwritten inscriptions, the faded titles. And then, that little pang in my heart: do I have the right to erase this?

Sometimes, I feel like I am committing a gentle murder: silencing a voice recorded forty years ago. So I sort through them. I spare the gems. The rest? I sacrifice them so they can be reborn as immortal icons. Forgotten variety becomes eternal Beatles.

Hell hides in the gears

Behind the brilliance of Pop Art, there are hours of meticulous surgery. Peeling off 336 labels that refuse to die, clinging as if they were defending their last trace of existence. Emptying each cassette of its magnetic entrails, by hand, reel after reel. A hypnotic, almost monastic ritual. Without it, the work would collapse under its own weight.

Zero tolerance

Working with cassettes is like composing on an unforgiving checkerboard. One millimeter off and everything falls apart. On Abbey Road, each cassette is a note. If even one sounds wrong, the entire symphony goes off the rails. I detail this requirement for perfect alignment in the article on stenciling audio cassettes.

The work in brief

• Subject: The Beatles
• Series: Major works
• Format: 160×160 cm (four 80×80 cm panels)
• Number of cassettes: 336
• Year: 2023
• Technique: stencil and aerosol on vintage audio cassettes