Collectors and music fans wearing the T-shirts of obscure rock bands brave the tropical heat outside a record store near Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, waiting to get their hands on new cassette tapes. No, this isn't a flashback to the '80s, but an event marking the recent International Cassette Store Day, an annual celebration of a music format once believed to be headed for extinction but now enjoying a renaissance.Vinyl's return is well-documented, and now it seems cassettes are returning from the dead, with artists such as Kanye West and Justin Bieber releasing songs on tape.In Southeast Asia, low production costs and a retro-cool image have made cassettes an underground music fixture, especially for struggling bands getting their name out."Cassettes are our bestsellers," said Mohammad Radzi Jasni, owner of Teenage Head Records, after shoving a tape by Singaporean surf-punk band Force Vomit into a bulky player. "They are still the best way to discover new bands here. It's very affordable for the guys releasing it, and the fans buying them," he added.Manufacturing costs can be as low as four ringgit (about R13) a tape in Malaysia, compared to 60 to 80 ringgit for a vinyl record.Vinyl's cost is a hurdle for young bands and DIY labels in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.There are no vinyl-pressing plants in Southeast Asia, tape lovers say, but cassette plants still dot the region.To mark International Cassette Store Day, Teenage Head Records released 200 cassettes featuring Malaysian rock band Bittersweet. Almost all were sold out by the day's end.Bittersweet has released three CD albums, but keyboard player Fadhilul Iqmal said pressing a few more songs on cassette helps pump up the band's discography at low cost, and tapes are more mobile than vinyl.Such thinking has helped fuel a growing DIY cassette label industry. In Indonesia, they have a novelty appeal for young people who grew up with digital music."It's trendy right now with a generation of twentysomethings not used to buying physical music," said Marcel Thee, vocalist of Indonesian band Sajama Cut. "Tapes provide a platform for releasing singles. If it wasn't on tape, it would have garnered less attention."Cassettes were eclipsed worldwide by CDs in the early '90s, although they held their ground in Southeast Asia until the early 2000s.For older music fans, cassettes bring back fond memories of homemade mix tapes. And the vinyl and cassette cognoscenti dismiss digital music as lacking the warmth of analogue sound."Vinyl has a warmer sound but is more expensive. If you have money you can buy vinyl, if you don't have money, you can buy cassette," said Mohamad Nor Yaacob, co-founder of Malaysia's Basement Records, which focuses on hardcore punk and metal.- AFP..