on The New Order Archives: 20 June 1981 Glastonbury

again, in "best ever" quality!  Go get it!

On The New Order Archives: Tolworth 12 March 1983

In "Best Ever" quality - check it out!

The New Order Archives: a new blog.

With the huge amount of exposure these "stash" tapes have received, and the large number of downloads the files have seen, clearly there is an interest in something more.

So, I've started a new blog, The New Order Archives.  The first post explains the mission statement and what to expect.  Please update your bookmarks, and keep both TPoIT and TNOA on your RSS feeds ;)

For a duration, I will crosspost new entries on TNOA over here, but only links to the posts over on TNOA.  But ultimately all "stash"-type material will only be on TNOA, with my normal non-New Order postings continuing here.

Speaking of New Order.... IFPI/Warners DMCA'ed the Run 2 unreleased mixes post.  I didn't complain this time as in this case it clearly was something the label had rights to and I had squat; I had just hoped that 20+ year old mixes, never released, would escape anyone's attention.  Then again, 6,000 downloads later since they were posted in 2009, there clearly was interest.  Ah well.

Enjoy TNOA!  I think my first post there will be new-ish masterings of the Western Works demos, hugely improved from the version I posted a million years ago.  Watch that space...

- Analog Loyalist

New Order "stash" tapes, 2012 mastering: 7 July 1984 Barcelona

New Order
Studio 54, Barcelona, Spain
7 July 1984

source: Hooky's rubbish bin (the "stash" tapes)
lineage: Master soundboard recording cassette
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

At long last I'm starting to fix up and free a stash of gigs - which first saw the light (heh) in 2004 on the long-defunct Sharing The Groove, but were essentially untouched beyond basic cleanup - that really show how brilliant New Order were in their prime in the mid-'80s.

The quick-and-dirty background:  Whilst cleaning house, a set of master New Order soundboard tapes (various mid-80s live gigs, some rehearsals, and a DAT or two from the band's 1989 US tour) was found by Hooky under the floorboards at his studio Suite 16 in Rochdale, England.  A musician friend of Hooky, who was in his employ for a duration in the early 90s, then rescued the tapes and sold them to an infamous collector in Florida, a collector not known for sharing the wealth.  In the interim, ATR (sometimes called Stash) obtained digital transfers of these tapes before they were shipped off to Florida.  ATR then shared them amongst the New Order cognoscenti, and then in 2004 we fed them to the world via Sharing The Groove.

All these gigs had their various problems as-received from the source in between Hooky and us, the least of which were sector boundary errors (which means, if burned as-is to CD, there are audible "pops" in between tracks) and all off-pitch by varying degrees.  Some were extremely muddy, and others were far too bright.  None of them were just right, but my aim is to make them so.

(The New Order "stash" gigs that were on Sharing The Groove, and various other torrent sites and blogs from 2004 onward, are all from those original 2004 releases and have not been formally mastered since, until now.)



This is easily one of my all-time favorite New Order sets.  Generally fantastic, crystalline sound; great setlist; unique segues; sequencer cockups.  It's all here.

"Ceremony" on the Retro box set live CD was sourced from this very transfer via one of the Stash transfer recipients, though obviously without my mastering (the Retro version is inexplicably slowed down, and has been "muddified" for lack of a better term).  It truly shines here and is one of my favorite performances ever of this track.  Don't let the sound quality of the Retro version scare you, at all - this completely shatters Retro's version and beats it to a bloody pulp.

"Skullcrusher" - enough said.  One of the few performances with "lyrics" - and I put that in quotes because it's basically Barney ad-libbing a lyric.  And it's wonderful, in its absurdity.  The performance is, simply, out of this world.  And "Lonesome Tonight"!  Easily a top 5 New Order track for me.

Throughout the sequenced tracks ("The Village" / "Confusion" / "Hurt" / "Blue Monday" / "Everything's Gone Green" / "Temptation") you can audibly hear problems with the sequencer.  It's cutting in and out (it's actually mostly in, it's only dropping out in a few places) of the board feed; I have no idea if this was a problem with the on-stage equipment or simply the feed into the PA.  It makes for some unique versions, and I absolutely love it.

There's a wonderful problem with the sequencer kicking off "Everything's Gone Green" in that it bleats "Blue Monday" in perfect sync with "Everything's Gone Green" until Gillian sets things right.  And the perfect segue between "EGG" and "Temptation" is done perfectly, the sequencer going for a full 12 minutes straight between the two songs.  Love it!

The original unmastered version of this gig has been spread pretty far and wide since 2004.  Trust me when I say you will want to bin it immediately upon hearing this 2012 mastering - it crushes it like a grape.  This version here is truly spectacular, and could be released tomorrow by Warners.

enjoy!

01 Your Silent Face
02 The Village
03 Ceremony
04 Skullcrusher
05 We All Stand
06 Lonesome Tonight
07 Confusion
08 Hurt
09 Age Of Consent
10 Blue Monday
11 Bernard and Hooky riffing
12 Everything's Gone Green ---->
13 Temptation

FLACs here.

Third of a series...

New Order "stash" tapes, 2012 mastering: 13 Dec 1985 Orleans

New Order
Salle du Baron, Orleans, France
13 December 1985

source: Hooky's rubbish bin (the "stash" tapes)
1st generation dub of cassette master (if not *the* master...)
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

At long last I'm starting to fix up and free a stash of gigs - which first saw the light (heh) in 2004 on the long-defunct Sharing The Groove, but were essentially untouched beyond basic cleanup - that really show how brilliant New Order were in their prime in the mid-'80s.

The quick-and-dirty background:  Whilst cleaning house, a set of New Order tapes (various mid-80s live gigs, some rehearsals, and a DAT or two from the band's 1989 US tour) was found by Hooky under the floorboards at his studio Suite 16 in Rochdale, England.  A musician friend of Hooky, who was in his employ for a duration in the early 90s, then rescued the tapes and sold them to an infamous collector in Florida, who is known for not sharing the wealth.  In the interim, ATR (sometimes called Stash) obtained 1st-generation dubs of these tapes before they were shipped off to Florida.  ATR then shared them amongst the New Order cognoscenti, and then in 2004 we fed them to the world via Sharing The Groove.

All these gigs had their various problems as-received from the source in between Hooky and us, the least of which were sector boundary errors (which means, if burned as-is to CD, there are audible "pops" in between tracks) and all off-pitch by varying degrees.  Some were extremely muddy, and others were far too bright.  None of them were just right, but my aim is to make them so. 

(The New Order "stash" gigs that were on Sharing The Groove, and various other torrent sites and blogs from 2004 onward, are all from those original 2004 releases and have not been formally mastered since, until now.)

This is the second of two French gigs sourced from the Stash.  The first being Rennes; it's not the first to be posted here because Rennes needs quite a bit more TLC than most of these sets.  Regardless, this Orleans set is easily one hour of my favorite New Order, ever.

Here, the band visits two songs that were not long for this world; "Hurt" only saw one more airing after this, and "ICB" went to its lonely place forevermore after this night.  Which is a shame; I love "ICB" and until Hooky's bass packs it in midway, it's well on its way to "classic track" status.

The rest of the gig is no shambles either, though there are a few whoppers in "She's Lost Control" and it's no wonder they don't revisit this song again until New Order Mk. III in 2001/2002.  "In A Lonely Place" cuts where the soundboard tape ran out / at the tape flip spot.  Which is a shame, it was going to be brilliant based on the 1:15 that made it.

"Elegia" sends chills up my spine every time I hear it.  This is easily the best live version I've ever heard.

The original unmastered version of this gig has been spread pretty far and wide since 2004.  Trust me when I say you will want to bin it immediately upon hearing this 2012 mastering - it crushes it like a grape.  This version here is truly spectacular, and could be released tomorrow by Warners.

enjoy!

01 - Elegia
02 - The Perfect Kiss
03 - Weirdo
04 - Love Vigilantes
05 - Hurt
06 - Sooner Than You Think
07 - ICB
08 - This Time Of Night
09 - In A Lonely Place (detail)
10 - She's Lost Control
11 - Blue Monday

FLACs here.

Second of a series...

New Order "stash" tapes, 2012 mastering: 7 Dec 1985 Slough

New Order
Fulcrum Centre, Slough
7 December 1985

source: Hooky's rubbish bin (the "stash" tapes)
1st generation dub of cassette master
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

At long last I'm starting to fix up and free a stash of gigs - which first saw the light (heh) in 2004 on the long-defunct Sharing The Groove, but were essentially untouched beyond basic cleanup - that really show how brilliant New Order were in their prime in the mid-'80s.

The quick-and-dirty background:  Whilst cleaning house, a set of New Order tapes (various mid-80s live gigs, some rehearsals, and a DAT or two from the band's 1989 US tour) was found by Hooky under the floorboards at his studio Suite 16 in Rochdale, England.  A musician friend of Hooky, who was in his employ for a duration in the early 90s, then rescued the tapes and sold them to an infamous collector in Florida, who is known for not sharing the wealth.  In the interim, ATR (sometimes called Stash) obtained 1st-generation dubs of these tapes before they were shipped off to Florida.  ATR then shared them amongst the New Order cognoscenti, and then in 2004 we fed them to the world via Sharing The Groove.

All these gigs had their various problems as-received from the source in between Hooky and us, the least of which were sector boundary errors (which means, if burned as-is to CD, there are audible "pops" in between tracks) and all off-pitch by varying degrees.  Some were extremely muddy, and others were far too bright.  None of them were just right, but my aim is to make them so. 

(The New Order "stash" gigs that were on Sharing The Groove, and various other torrent sites and blogs from 2004 onward, are all from those original 2004 releases and have not been formally mastered since, until now.)

With this set, we see the band in fine form in metropolitan London.  Two notables about this gig:

1) "This Time Of Night" from this gig was shortlisted for the live CD in the Retro box set, and this version (unmastered, presumably) appeared on very early track sheets (and working CD-Rs during compilation).  Bobby Gillespie loved it but Bernard had it binned for another track instead (I forget which).

2) "She's Lost Control" is debuted by New Order.  This period of New Order gigging is weird; it's obvious they were in a bit of a state because they played a handful of Joy Division tracks here in December 1985 to the extent they'd never done before, and wouldn't do so again until 1998.  They unearthed "She's Lost Control", "Atmosphere", and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" during this period.

The original unmastered version has been spread pretty far and wide since 2004.  Trust me when I say you will want to bin it immediately upon hearing this 2012 mastering - it crushes it like a grape.  This set here is easily a candidate for official release (barring the fades/cuts on the original cassette board master), should the band re-activate their once-planned-subsequently-binned live album project.

enjoy!

01 State Of The Nation (fades in)
02 Blue Monday
03 The Village
04 This Time Of Night
05 Subculture
06 Thieves Like Us
07 Confusion
08 Weirdo
09 Ceremony (cuts in)
10 Temptation
11 She's Lost Control
12 The Perfect Kiss

FLACs here.

First of a series...

Joel R.L. Phelps - finally! (a favorite of mine...)

Faithful readers will recall the time in the past when I posted some Joel R.L. Phelps : The Downer Trio records, ones long out of print, and got into a ... discussion with Joel's label owner about hosting music for download without the artist or label's permission, and ethics of file sharing, etc.  I eventually took down the post and I still respect Mr. Cook and Joel's right to release their music the way they see fit.

Joel hasn't put out a record since 2004.  He's virtually unknown, and if he's even known at all it's as the guy who left Silkworm (another criminally neglected band).

That said, he's easily one of my all-time favorite artists, both in terms of songwriting and style/performance.  There's something grossly unique about his vocal style - and I don't mean "grossly" in terms of disgust, I mean it in the sense of exaggeratedness.  If that's a word...  He's also a fantastic guitarist.

So imagine my surprise - when largely not a peep has been heard from Joel since 2004 - to come across a Facebook post of his yesterday announcing a bevy of new tracks on Soundcloud, and also mention that there may be possibly *two* new LPs this year. (!)  So, since he's posted these himself, enjoy yourself some JRLP.

All but "Darla Don't You Go", "The Way Down", "Counsel" (a track very high in my all-time favorites list, by any artist...), "Unless You're Tired Of Living" and "Good Advice For Dogs" are brand-spankin'-new.

Enjoy - and thank you Joel!

JRLP on Soundcloud


JRLP's Facebook group

Paris Angels, blog updates, news, etc

It's been a while.  So, here be some music updates, blather about the IFPI and blog future, and exciting news for your humble blogger!

---

First, I've tracked down two additions to the Paris Angels compendium I posted a couple years ago.  Get yer lossless FLACs here.

1.  "Muffin" - the B-side on the original Perfume 7", it's essentially an edit of "Muffin 2" which we've already had
2.  "Scope" - from the 27 September 1990 Peel Session broadcast (record date 26 August 1990), taken from an archived broadcast of the actual Peel program which debuted the session, it sounds spectacular.

I think we now have every released Paris Angels track, on any format.  "Give Me...Scope" from the Scope 7" is apparently a re-titled "Scope Two" which we already have.  What's left? The third track from the 1990 Peel session ("Smile"), and the entirety of a 1991 session ("Slippery Man", "Chaos", "Breathless", "GBF"), and an unknown number (probably 3) remaining from a January 1991 Mark Goodier session.  Of course there could be other radio sessions as well for other Beeb DJs, all we know about for certain are the two Peel sessions, and the Goodier session.

Moving on...

The heightened awareness of this endeavour by critters no less overlordish than the IFPI has really made me question my purpose here.  Obviously we are on someone's radar and while I've only been subject to two DMCA takedowns (the REM Cassette Set FLACs, and the Wedding Present), I really don't want any more.  Really.  It's pointless to blather on about something, which I feel strongly enough to take the time to compose said blather, to have it then unceremoniously yanked from underneath me.  I can understand the issue with things in print, which is why I've not posted currently-available material in ages and in fact removed the links myself to most other in-print things I've previously posted.  But where's the harm in stuff given away for free in the first place?  Who is losing money?  In the REM case, not the label, publisher or band.  There's no label, there's no royalties to be had for the publisher (I'm not putting up a PA at a renegade coffee shop and playing these without a BMI/ASCAP license), there's no fees or payments at all associated with free giveaways.  If the band has this in a release schedule, that is understandable and in that case I'd not only self-edit the post but be the first one to post the news and the link to where-it-can-be-bought.  But I've heard nothing about any possible release and in fact the band themselves has not - as far as I am aware - made one public peep about this at all.  And I've not heard anything privately either.

I do have some other less-downloady things in the pipeline - I made a promise to my friends at Chunklet to conduct and host another interview of a favorite band of mine and theirs, which I've been slack in arranging due to other time constraints - but as little life as this blog has had lately, do not be surprised if there's less downloads.  Or if there are, they are not entire records but rather "radio show special"-type compendiums focusing on a particular scene, movement or what-have-you (such as a long-promised early Chicago punk sampler).  Regardless, we are not going away.

Moving on, again...

Your blog host has now officially begun his nascent mastering career, as a paid mastering engineer.  Friends of the program reached out to me, and hired my services to master their latest record (release date TBA, and until they announce it, band name/project will remain anonymous here, for now).  That project is now done and delivered, the band is THRILLED with the results, and so I officially fling my door open to all comers for (non-vinyl) mastering services.  I am about as cheap as you could want, and my promise to you is to deliver a record that you yourself will want to listen to daily, on repeat play.  Which means comfortably loud, if that is what the client wants, but clear, precise, and not fatiguing.

Send your queries to DCmastering AT gmail dot com and we'll talk.

this one goes out...

Today we were contacted by the IFPI to discuss removal of the Cassette Set from Mediafire.

From: IFPI <notices@ifpi.org>

Date: June 8, 2012 9:34:42 AM PDT

To: xxxx
Subject: Removal of Mediafire link
Reply-To: notices@ifpi.org

To: Webmaster

               

From:

IFPI

notices@ifpi.org

               

Message:

Dear Sir,

               

Can you contact me via notices@ifpi.org to discuss how the mediafire link containing REM recordings was removed.

Regards,

Reply sent.  Will update with responses as needed.  Interesting to see if this was not initiated by Universal, but clearly feathers have been ruffled because I don't see the IFPI following up on random run-of-the-mill DMCA takedowns with personal emails to the alleged offenders.

country feedback

(crossposted with REMcycle)

Lots of press on the last post (on REMcycle, here).

First was Rolling Stone, I was starting to see pings on the blog at approximately 10am (EDT) from them.

Rolling Stone: R.E.M. Archive Blog Preemptively Shut Down by Universal
Label disputes post featuring the band's earliest demo cassette

Then they started coming in droves, mostly rehashes of the RS article but a few with original content (prefix, aux.tv, exclaim.ca...).

CNN: R.E.M. archive blog preemptively shut down by Universal (RS article feed)

prefixmag: R.E.M. Restoration Blog Pressured To Shut Down By Universal Over Material That The Label May Not Actually Own

aux.tv (Canada): Universal issues copyright takedown notice for songs it doesn’t own on R.E.M. archivist’s blog

exclaim.ca (Canada): R.E.M. Blog Shut Down After Questionable Copyright Claim from Universal

The best one though, as they actually did original research (err, they talked to us) was from Spin - which also presented the most balanced piece:

Spin: Fan's Digital R.E.M. Archive Nixed by Universal Music

Takedown notice thwarts latest project by audiophiles behind Joy Division/New Order blogs

And lastly, my favorite:

soundabble: R.E.M. Archive Blog Preemptively Shut Down by Universal

Here's the entirety of the Soundabble article, preserved just in case the editors realize the writer was beaming in from Mars (or felt that repeating the RS article was much more exciting if run through a loop of Google re-translations first):

The digital archivist who easy a singles catalogs of a Smiths, Joy Division and New Order in a array of blog projects is being strongly disheartened from starting a identical plan collecting R.E.M.’s beginning work. In a blog post on a nascent R.E.M.cycle site, a blogger famous as Analog Loyalist explained that Universal, a record association that owns a band’s IRS Records catalog, expelled a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice for an R.E.M. post on a writer’s sister site The Power of Independent Trucking featuring a easy chronicle of a band’s initial cassette demo, with early renditions of “Radio Free Europe,” “Sitting Still” and “White Tornado.”


“Tell me, what purpose does a IFPI (of that Universal is apparently a member) have to do with unreleased element available when a rope had no record contract?,” Analog Loyalist writes, referring to a International Federation of a Phonographic Industry. “These were demos openly given divided by a band. On low-fi C45 cassettes. And a IFPI thinks it’s their business how?”


The blogger is now reconsidering a knowledge of posterior a project. “So we can see since I’m really wavering to pierce brazen with this blog, usually since we don’t wish to see my efforts as a writer/archivist/engineer wasted,” he writes.


The site would in fact be a really labor-intensive process. As explained in a sidebar for a R.E.M., Smiths and Joy Division/New Order sites, a marks used are “taken from a best/earliest probable sources to equivocate complicated mastering techniques that vanquish a dynamics,” and a design is “scanned during a top probable fortitude and a form was reset when probable regulating a strange fonts.” All works featured in these projects are from out-of-print sources, and some marks have never been commercially expelled or reissued.

A rope has no record contract, indeed.