A love supreme to Rob Joeckel, Mitch Banks, Gadamer Last, Tom MacLean — and to the nineteen-year-old kid operating the four-track in the bedroom on Brookline Drive who pressed record one summer and somehow never quite stopped.
In the summer of 1990, in a bedroom on Brookline Drive in West Hartford, Connecticut, three young musicians recorded six songs to four-track cassette. They called the band Maestro Fury. The tapes were finished, dubbed to a small circle of friends, and set aside while the rest of life happened.
Thirty-six years went by. The cassettes survived in shoeboxes that lived in attics and basements, through decades of bitter cold New England winters and brutal summer heat.
The band did not.
This is the story of what was on the tapes, and how they came back.
How a Hit-Quality Album Gets Recorded on a Four-Track Cassette
The Bedroom
The room was small, on the third floor. A window unit AC gave its life to sustain the musicians and the gear.
The setup was modest by any modern standard. A four-track cassette deck. An Alesis drum machine. A handful of keyboards — a couple of state-of-the-art 1980s synths and a few older ones, a Casio VZ1, a Kawai K1, an ARP Odyssey — alongside Ibanez electric guitars, an Ovation bass (Rolling Thunder personified), and a single microphone connected to the four-track.
For monitoring, all we had was the shittiest pair of Radio Shack headphones imaginable — all midrange, no low end, no high end, the frames bent into some impossible shape so two people could press them against their ears at the same time, leaning into a shared mic, singing over the constant roar of the room’s AC.
Wires and cables ran fucking everywhere in multiple dimensions.
This was the kind of setup where everything had to be bounced — mixed down and combined onto fewer tracks — to make room for the next overdub, because four tracks is not a lot of tracks when you want a song to have drums, bass, guitar, multiple vocals, and keyboards. Once a song was mixed down, the original parts could not be unbounced.
They were locked together for eternity in the bounce. Drums and keyboards welded to one track. Guitars on another. Vocals stacked on top.
If you wanted to re-balance the kick against the snare three years later, you couldn’t. You had a final mix and that was that.
The band did not know in 1990 that this would matter.
The Musicians Behind the 1990 Sessions
The Band
Three people made the recordings.
David Cosgrove played keyboards, programmed the drums, talked and sang on a couple of tracks, took over bass on “Millennium” when Rob was falling asleep, and engineered and produced the original sessions.
Rob Joeckel played guitar, played bass, and sang lead vocals. He also provided the greatest comedy relief, which I am forever grateful for.
Mitch Banks sang on the two tracks penned by Gadamer Last. The lyrics on four of the other songs are his.
There was also a fourth presence on the album.
Two of the six songs — I Love TV and She Knows a Boy — were written by Gadamer Last, a close friend of Cosgrove’s, a professorial influence, and a songwriter in his own right.
Cosgrove took both of Last’s songs and rearranged them as prog rock songs, and the band recorded them in the same bedroom sessions.
The Last songs are reimagined here as something far stranger, more densely layered, and heavier — late-eighties hard rock with the wiring exposed, full Zappa-influence on display — and they give the album its center of laugh-out-loud satirical gravity. Without them, the record would lose its compass.
Recording Six Songs in Three Days on Borrowed Gear
Three Days
The four-track machine didn’t belong to any of them. It belonged to a friend of Rob’s who was on vacation, which gave the band three days — the length of his trip — to record, overdub, mix, and bounce six songs before the owner wanted his gear back.
This is a constraint that explains a great deal about how the album sounds. There was no time to second-guess a take or to come back tomorrow with a better idea. Every song had to be committed all the way through — drums to bass to guitar to vocals to keyboards — before the next song could begin, because tracks needed to be bounced and consolidated to make room for the next overdub. Mistakes had to live. Arrangements that worked had to be locked in immediately. Many a “fuck fuck fuck” were uttered, the tape stopped, backed up and ready to punch-in for another go.
What the three days didn’t have to include was drum programming. Cosgrove had spent the previous month doing that work on his own, preparing the foundations.
What a band sounds like when it has three days and a borrowed machine is not what a band sounds like when it has months and a studio. It sounds faster. More honest. Slightly desperate, in a useful way.
The four-track went back to its owner on schedule.
Storing Cassette Tapes Long-Term: What Survived and Why
The Tapes Go in a Box
When the recording was finished, the band did what bands of that age and era did: made a few cassette copies for friends, kept the masters, and went off to whatever was next.
Cosgrove went into composing, writing, digital strategy, and would later publish novels under his own name and a pen name. Cosgrove is currently known as Del Piombo on all streaming services.
Rob and Mitch went their own way.
The masters survived in a shoebox. Cosgrove had no idea he had them. He didn’t think about them for thirty-six years.
One day in early 2026, digging through some boxes, two cassettes emerged.
Holy shit.
The 1990 sessions.
They were still alive.
From Shoebox to Studio: Restoring the Tapes
The Decision
The conversation that brought the tapes back was small. A casual mention of the cassettes’ existence. A casual question about whether anything could still be done with them. Cosgrove knew who to ask: Tom MacLean, owner of Twelve Tone Studios in the UK, who had remastered Cosgrove’s earlier work — his electronica records, his podcasts, and his audiobook — and done it brilliantly.
The plan was modest.
Clean them up.
Hear them in something better than a bedroom mix.
Maybe send copies to the people who’d played on them.
The plan changed.
Tom MacLean and Twelve Tone Studios
Tom MacLean is the engineer responsible for everything on this record that sounds like a 2026 recording. Working out of Twelve Tone Studios in the UK, Tom is a master engineer operating at the intersection of traditional audio engineering and modern AI restoration tools.
The first step was digitizing the master tapes. To Cosgrove’s amazement, they had survived intact — no damage from time, no degradation from neglect.
From there, Tom used modern stem-separation tools to pull the bounced mixes back apart — to undo what had been irrevocably committed in 1990.
Keyboards and vocals out from under drums. Guitars out from under bass.
Insane hilarious voices from the past, memories exploding.
Once each instrument was on its own track again, he mixed the songs the way they would have been mixed if the band had had access to a real studio in the first place. He enhanced the drum sounds using modern samples, replaced damaged passages, cleaned tape artifacts, and produced the final mixes and masters.
This isn’t restoration in the sense of cleaning up hiss. It is far closer to a total resurrection. The technology that made it possible did not exist and was not even imaginable when the music was made, back in the dark ages of home-brewed multitrack recording.
How AI Stem Separation Brought a 1990 Cassette Back to Life
What follows is for the gearheads. If you just want the music, skip ahead. If you want to know exactly how a four-track cassette from a 1990 bedroom got turned into a 2026 record, Tom walked us through it.
What Shape Were the 36-Year-Old Tapes In?
The tapes were digitized and the raw, unprocessed files sent over. The shape they arrived in was better than anyone had a right to expect. The guitar and bass tones were surprisingly well preserved. The real problems were structural: the synths had been recorded onto the same track as the drums and needed to be separated out, and the vocals were buried under heavy reverb and delay that had been printed to tape in 1990 and could not simply be turned off. There was tape hiss and some high-frequency roll-off — but in the digital era that kind of noise is almost considered euphonic, a pleasing artifact rather than a defect.
Unbouncing the Mix: iZotope RX Stem Separation
This is the move that wasn’t practical even five years ago. Tom used iZotope RX — Music Rebalance to lift the synths back out from under the drums, and Dialogue Isolate to strip the printed reverb and delay off the vocal tracks. Clean stem isolation, on a partially degraded mono source, is the single thing that made the whole project possible. Nothing had to be rebuilt or interpolated from scratch; there were no passages where the tape was simply gone. The information was all there. It just had to be un-fused.
Drum Replacement With Steven Slate Trigger 2
All of the programmed drums lived on a single mono track. To rebuild them, Tom ran Steven Slate Trigger 2 to fire modern samples from the original hits — not audio-to-MIDI transcription, but frequency-band-gated triggering. For the kick, he set a low-pass filter down to its minimum (around 200 Hz) so only the lowest frequencies would trip the trigger. For the snare, he set a high-pass at 200 Hz and up, so the kick wouldn’t set it off. A little tuning of detection threshold and sensitivity in places, and it locked in surprisingly cleanly. The replacement samples came from the Jacob Hansen library — a large, genre-flexible collection of kicks and snares — pushed here with fairly extreme processing for a modern sound.
Why kick and snare specifically, and not the whole kit? Because the kick and snare occupy clearly defined frequency regions and sit at predictable beat placements, while the rest of the kit overlaps with itself — it’s hard for a trigger to tell a crash from a splash. In places Tom was able to trigger replacement cymbal samples too, but that’s genuinely difficult on a partially degraded mono track, so much of the cymbal sound is still the original 1990 tape, with Microshift applied to open it into a faux stereo image.
What AI Audio Restoration Can Do in 2026 That It Couldn’t in 2021
The biggest mix challenge was width. With only four mono tracks to work from, the trick was creating a wide stereo image without it sounding hollow. The mastering goal was not preservation of the original dynamics — it was the opposite. As Tom put it: absolutely smashed. Modern loudness, all the way. And the moment that surprised him most? The triggering really worked. On a degraded mono drum track, getting clean, musically convincing sample replacement to lock in was the part most likely to fall apart — and it didn’t.
Five years ago, none of this is practical. The one capability that defines the whole project — clean stem isolation off a bounced, partially degraded mono source — simply wasn’t there. That is the line between a remaster and a resurrection.
Without Tom, this record does not exist.
Tom was responsible for production, mixing, engineering, mastering, drum enhancement, and digital restoration. He did a fucking amazing job, for which I am eternally grateful and thankful.
The Six Songs
1. Harbinger
Music: Cosgrove / Joeckel · Lyrics: Banks
She’s just a black widow, she mates and she kills,
She’ll steal your life just to get her thrills.
She’ll break all your black windows and find all your sins.
Every time she plays you know she always wins.🕷️
2. Millennium
Music: Cosgrove · Lyrics: Banks
The moon rises on the steel blue sky.
Nothing changes the situation.
Rebels kept at bay for yet another day.
Forced to accept their silent ovation.
Flashing lights ensure a balance.
The power is still in our hands.
Eliminating traitors, resisting invaders.
All in the name of our precious lands.
Stand by at your stations.
The trouble has begun.
There has been an infiltration.
Don’t you dare lower your guns.
Whenever it gets cold.
You wanna race into my arms.
Sometimes the darkness scares you so.
Don’t look back at another false alarm.
Shake off the pain.
Wipe off your tears.
Winter drags on for a half a thousand years.
How can you say those things
When you know how much you mean to me?
I cannot wait ’til spring to see the surface of the street.
You got problems as well as I
As I see your face on my mind
You light up the night as your love ignites the evening sky.
3. I Love TV
Music and lyrics: Gadamer Last · Rock arrangement: Cosgrove
One of two songs on the album originally written by Gadamer Last and reshaped for the band by Cosgrove.
Sitting with my video
All my friends on a TV show
Live my life commercially
Pay the price for what I see
Hero is a Hollywood Square
I just want to go nowhere
I love TV
All my friends are there
I love TV
I just sit and stare
I love TV
’Til the tube turns black
I love TV
Cuz it don’t talk back
My TV
It lets me know what’s true
My TV
It tells me what to do
My TV
Yes people bother me
Can’t you see that I’m in love with my TV
TV does not cause a strain
I don’t even use my brain
Early morning noon ’til night
TV God I’ve found the light
I am stupid as can be
Learned it all from my TV
My TV
It lets me know what’s true
My TV
It tells me what to do
My TV
Yes people bother me
Can’t you see that I’m in love with my TV
Sitting with my video
All my friends on a TV show
Live my life commercially
Pay the price for what I see
Hero is a Hollywood Square
I just want to go nowhere
My TV
It lets me know what’s true
My TV
It tells me what to do
My TV
Yes people bother me
Can’t you see that I’m in love with my TV
4. Chewbacca the Exxon Prostitute
Music: Cosgrove / Joeckel
Instrumental
5. She Knows a Boy
Music and lyrics: Gadamer Last · Rock arrangement: Cosgrove
The second of the Last songs on the album.
She knows a boy, his name is Floyd
She met him on the video screen
She fell in love with Floydie boy
Prettiest boy that she ever seen
I’m gonna pluck my eyebrows clean
Wanna be part of the video scene — HUH!
Hey, boy, I’m talking to you!
Hey, boy, what should I do?
Boy Floyd it’s not looking so good!
Boy Floyd, I think I should maybe…
Change my style
Would it be worthwhile?
I need a new hairdo
And some new clothes too
I’m gonna change my style
Would it be worthwhile?
I need a new hairdo
And some new clothes too
Now I look like Floydie Boy
Skin is so smooth and my face is clean
She’s only a girl, of sweet sixteen
She said she’ll be his King ’cause he is her Queen
I’ll join the club and cause quite a stir
Gonna be like him, just to be like her — HUH!
Hey boy! I’m talking to you!
Hey boy, what should I do?
Boy Floyd it’s not looking so good…
Boy Floyd, I think I should uh maybe
Change my style
Would it be worthwhile?
I need a new hairdo
And some new clothes too
I’m gonna change my style
Would it be worthwhile?
I need a new hairdo
And some new clothes too
She knows a boy, his name is Floyd
She met him on the video screen
She fell in love with Floydie boy
Prettiest boy that she ever seen
I’m gonna pluck my eyebrows clean
Wanna be part of the video scene — HUH!
6. Teflon President
Music: Cosgrove · Lyrics: Banks
Don’t go molding the clay without knowing all the rules.
You might start off winning the tide, but end up losing the pool.
Not all of the strings are broken, although they are beginning to fray.
We can prance on them just as long as they break while we’re running away.
Banners waving boldly, a proud gale comes with the dawn!
I hate being in America when greed is the prevalent song!
Back up just a bit while this feeling sets on in…
Shelter the brittle walls from the soldiers advancing…
Time and time you’ve been reminded of the scorpion’s deadly sting…
My warning went unheeded, now you’re permanently resting!
The sun has finally set.
The wind went along for the ride.
The stars and the stripes can’t help restore your pride.
The stars and the stripes can’t help restore your pride.
The clay has dried.
Let’s uncover the result.
Let’s hope it’s a model of a being we can consult.
Pray that those strings are strong, halt the soldiers in their tracks.
Once the pieces are in place we can resist any attack.
Listening to a 36-Year-Old Recording for the First Time
Listening Back
When all six were mixed and sequenced, several things became impossible to ignore.
The first is that the writing and playing is far better than three kids in a Connecticut bedroom had any right to make.
Some of that is the new mixes — instruments that were murky in the original bounces are now properly separated and audible — but most of it is just that the band could play. The arrangements are tighter than home recordings usually are. The vocals are committed.
The second is that the songwriting, particularly on the political tracks, has aged in directions nobody planned for. Teflon President was written in 1990 about the man who was president then. It does not sound, in 2026, like it was written about him.
Chewbacca the Exxon Prostitute was a savage inside joke about corporate political theater that has somehow become less of a joke.
I Love TV, written by Last and rearranged by Cosgrove, reads now like an anthem for a country that has spent thirty-six years going further in exactly the direction the song was warning about.
The third thing is harder to describe. Some of the tapes feel less like recordings and more like transmissions — signals sent forward, by accident, on equipment that was never meant to reach this far.
Credits
2026
All songs produced, mixed, engineered, and mastered by Tom MacLean at Twelve Tone Studios, UK.
All songs digitally restored by Tom MacLean.
2026 drum enhancement by Tom MacLean.
David Cosgrove, Executive Producer.
Performances (both eras):
- David Cosgrove — Keyboards, Drum Programming, Bass, Vocals
- Rob Joeckel — Guitar, Bass, Vocals
- Mitch Banks — Vocals
1990
Original 4-track recordings engineered and produced by David Cosgrove.
Songwriting:
- Harbinger — Music: Cosgrove / Joeckel · Lyrics: Banks
- Millennium — Music: Cosgrove · Lyrics: Banks
- I Love TV — Music and lyrics: Gadamer Last · Rock arrangement: Cosgrove
- Chewbacca the Exxon Prostitute — Music: Cosgrove / Joeckel
- She Knows a Boy — Music and lyrics: Gadamer Last · Rock arrangement: Cosgrove
- Teflon President — Music: Cosgrove · Lyrics: Banks
Where to Listen, Watch, and Buy
- Bandcamp — Buy it now!
- YouTube — channel handle @CircusTheMedia
- Spotify — Stream it now!
- Apple Music — Stream it now!
Listen on SoundCloud
Once again, the real credit belongs to Rob Joeckel, Mitch Banks, Gadamer Last, and to Tom MacLean — and to the nineteen-year-old kid operating the four-track in the bedroom on Brookline Drive who pressed record one summer and somehow never quite stopped.
I thought this music was lost forever.
You’ve all made an old man proud.
— Del Piombo, June 2026
Frequently Asked Questions About This Restoration
Q: Can you separate instruments from an old mixed-down recording?
Yes. AI-powered stem-separation tools like iZotope RX Music Rebalance can isolate instruments that were permanently combined onto a single track decades ago — something that was impossible until recently.
Q: What software was used to restore these 1990 tapes?
iZotope RX (Music Rebalance and Dialogue Isolate), Steven Slate Trigger 2 for drum replacement, and the Jacob Hansen sample library, all mixed and mastered at Twelve Tone Studios.
Q: Can you remove reverb and delay that was recorded onto tape?
Yes. iZotope RX Dialogue Isolate was used to strip printed reverb and delay off the vocal tracks — effects that, in 1990, could never be undone.
Q: What’s the difference between audio restoration and stem separation?
Restoration cleans up noise like hiss and hum. Stem separation actually pulls a finished mix back apart into individual instruments — closer to a resurrection than a cleanup.
Q: How were the drums rebuilt from a mono cassette?
Steven Slate Trigger 2 fired modern samples from the original hits, using low-pass and high-pass filters around 200 Hz to trigger the kick and snare separately.