cake: the unreleased master tapes
Francisco Espregueira
Formed in 1973, Cake was an underground soul-funk group from New York City, now (almost 50 years later) re-introduced to us by Mutual Intentions. The Oslo-based imprint reissues their only 7-inch single "Make Up Your Mind" / "Let Your Body Go” that was originally from 1979, but gained notoriety among DJ’s in the late 2000’s. That status on the modern-soul and disco-collector scene led prices on original copies to rocket as high as $1000 in online marketplaces like Discogs, cementing its rarity.
The story of this re-edition of Cake’s masterpieces begins in 2012, when Hans Jørgen Wærner (Mutual Intentions Co-Founder and notorious disco collector) got in touch with the producer of the record, Art Snay. Eventually Hans reached Cake’s lead singer Bob Treffiletti, who had a cassette tape with unreleased long versions of the songs. But the sound quality of the tape was not adequate for what he had in mind, and the project was almost abandoned after Art Snay passed away. The tide of bad luck would change…
Treffiletti finally managed to get hold of the master tapes via Art's wife and they were sent away to legendary disco mixer / remixer John Morales, who transferred the tape to digital format. After several rounds of noise reduction and sound ‘surgery’, while maintaining the soul of the original recordings, the songs were finally ready to be pressed on the format they have always deserved: a 12-inch disco single. Courtesy of Mutual Intentions, The Unreleased Master Tapes by Cake are now reissued in vinyl to calm spirits and minds of the collectors. "Make Up Your Mind" / "Let Your Body Go” is a piece of diamond of soul-funk music.