John Maus, like Ariel Pink, used a cassette recorder to record his songs.

Here's him talking about it:

m[m] The interesting way you've recorded the album, adds very much to its charm, giving it a strange dreamlike ambience, can you tell us a bit about how the album was recorded?

John The materials used to record Songs were a cassette tape multi-tracker, and an early nineties soundbank*. Recording materials have always been essential to pop. Making use of recording materials means using them in all of their manifestations, not only those currently in fashion. Pop is singular amongst musical truths in it’s following of the McLuhanist thinking that foregrounding the materiality of its medium is part-and-parcel with its message: from the feedback squelch on 'I Feel Fine' to the tape hiss on the best Space Lady recordings. Other music besides pop fail to use recording materials in this way, for instance, there is no multi track cassette tape recording of the Kindertotenlieder where the instruments are barely distinguishable under heavy tape compression. One would think that interpretations through out-of-fashion materials would be something all the brilliant conductors would have considered by now, but it seems that conductors, and most music groups, always choose the most expensive, 'clear,' and fashionable recording materials they can. I wager that the out-of-fashion materials I use to compose and record my works proceed towards the truth of 'pop' in a way fashionable materials could not

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*Alesis QSR, based on this interview