An update

Removed text of email. I have asked for clarification if this is a general Cease and Desist request for all things Joy Division/New Order; I will update with any response.

DMCA: it's happened again, with Joy Division this time.

Today I received two notices from Mediafire stating the two Joy Division files (Part 1.zip and Part 2.zip) for the University of London Union were suspended due to DMCA complaints.

Dear MediaFire User:

MediaFire has received notification under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") that your usage of a file is allegedly infringing on the file creator's copyright protection.

The file named JD - 1980_02-08 ULU (2012 master) part 2.zip is identified by the key (8nwbdu0xrzkvyge).

As a result of this notice, pursuant to Section 512(c)(1)(C) of the DMCA, we have suspended access to the file.

The reason for suspension was:

                I have a good faith belief that the use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

Information about the party that filed the report:

Company Name: GrayZone, Inc

Contact Address:

Contact Name: GrayZone, Inc.

Contact Phone: (718) 360-9941

Contact Email: grayzone@grayzone.com

Copyright infringement violates MediaFire's Terms of Service. MediaFire accounts that experience multiple incidents of alleged copyright infringement without viable counterclaims may be terminated.

If you feel this suspension was in error, please submit a counterclaim by following the process below.

 I have no idea who GrayZone is.

This is very frustrating.  This material, while released at one point, was given to the label by US.  We enter the questionable area of ROIO (Recordings of Independent Origin) copyright.  Is it worth it for me to file a counterclaim?  Do I - as an "originator" of this work, have any grounds to do so?

I am not re-upping the files.  I also am not going to post High Wycombe (Still's CD2 from the 2007 reissues), also freshly mastered by me after discarding my 2006 work as-released.  That said, punters who did not download ULU yet can find it on the darker sides of the internets; I know at least one site that might be known as why.cd or some similar name has the FLACs available.

Additionally, Mediafire (the 2nd account I used) has suspended the analogloyalist account.  Therefore all previous re-upped links are dead.

At this time I am not re-upping anything - if I decide to re-up anything - until I finally sort out hosting.  It is expensive; with the bandwidth used the contributions from my readers doesn't really cover more than a week or so from what I've researched so far.

Due to the heavy spotlight on this blog, I question whether I can post anything not recorded/owned by me myself and I, such as my old bands.  Why would I want to?

Let's see comments.

Drew

Joy Division 8 Feb 1980 Univ of London Union 2012 master

NOTICE:  Please read this first!!!

In August 2006 I was approached to assist with the sourcing, cleanup and mastering of various Joy Division gigs for inclusion in the then-upcoming double-CD deluxe edition reissues.  The in-between story, between first being drafted into the project and then September 2007's Warner Brothers/Rhino release of the Unknown Pleasures, Closer and Still Collector's Editions, is boring and not really worth rehashing.

What is relevant is that six years is a long time ago, with regards to my skill set and general knowledge of audio theory and mastering.  I listen to the stuff I turned in to the band and Rhino in late 2006 and essentially cringe.  Not because it's bad, because it's not, but with where I've advanced to today my 2006 work sounds amateur to these ears.  And while it's out there for the world to enjoy (and the two sets I did, for Closer and Still, all got great reviews), I can no longer listen without wishing for a mulligan.

Well, with my blog avenue, I can finally take that mulligan.


I went back to the original raw transfers from Duncan Haysom's 1980 master cassette tapes, the very tapes on which he recorded the Joy Division gigs that we released.  I started from scratch - essentially, if Warners came knocking today and asked me to master these gigs, I did what I'd do for them with the skills, techniques, secret sauces and magic I've either advanced or flat-out learned anew since 2006.

They are spectacular.  Not to toot my own horn, but these now simply crush what was used on the 2007 releases.  Even the most hearing-challenged of listeners can tell the difference, and not just by minutiae.  Cymbals ring, drums go THWACK and not "thwop", guitars slice through the murk.

If there were any justice in this world, Rhino would pull the 2007 sets off the market and reissue with these masterings.  One can dream...

So we start, chronologically by performance date, with the set used in association with the Closer Collector's Edition.  Recorded by Duncan, this set from the University of London Union is a stormer.  You get the still in-development Closer tracks (which had yet to be recorded by Martin Hannett) mixed in with stridently-performed Unknown Pleasures and other pre-Closer choices.  You get "Dead Souls" brilliantly leading off the set, and you get "Digital" taking us out.  And thanks to Duncan, it's magically captured on C45 tape for us to enjoy 32+ years on.

JOY DIVISION
8 February 1980
University of London Union
Mastered in November 2012 by Analog Loyalist, from Duncan Haysom's master recording

01 Dead Souls
02 Glass
03 A Means To An End
04 Twenty Four Hours
05 Passover
06 Insight
07 Colony
08 These Days
09 Love Will Tear Us Apart
10 Isolation
11 - encore break -
12 The Eternal
13 Digital

FLACs here.

Please to enjoy!

Joy Division - Warsaw remastered.

You asked, I delivered.

Warsaw, remastered.

Enjoy!

New Order 23 October 2012 Sony Centre, Toronto

I saw New Order last night in Toronto, my third time seeing them (1993 Chicago, and 2005 Chicago, being the other two).

I had aftershow passes to meet the band.

It was, in a word, awesome.  Both the gig - by far, the best of the gigs I've seen them play - and the aftershow.

I didn't record the gig, but did record video of Ceremony and Elegia which once I figure out how to rotate 180 degrees (for some reason my Win 7 PC plays these iPhone 5 1080p videos upside down) I will upload. 

Hooky was not missed at all; Tom Chapman was fantastic in his pseudo-Hooky role and added his own contributions to each song which just plain worked.  The band is clearly in a happy place with their current lineup/outlook, both visually and in discussion, and while I still think the songwriting of more recent times doesn't quite match that of the 80s output, perhaps the reaffirmed bond and outlook of the band/management/personnel will lead to great things again.  Bernard said they will be doing a lot of writing and recording next year... And we can't at all discount the returned Gillian influence on the songwriting.

I didn't discuss the blog or Recycle, or the Archives project, with them because it was not the appropriate setting.

Steve is the most awesome guy ever, he knew straightaway who I was and was obviously just as happy to talk to me as I was to him (clearly he knew, based on the fact that he told me so, what I'd done for the band since 2006).  And a hell of a drummer; seeing him playing acoustic drums (rather than the electronic drumset he'd been using since 1987) - and hearing the audible difference in each song - was absolutely spectacular.

It was quite something getting deeply involved in technoweenie audio engineering discussions with someone who cares, and knows what I'm talking about, with Steve.  I got a lot of questions answered that aren't really relevant to share here, and some essential background on other things that aren't really ideal to discuss in this format.  One thing that is of interest is that our Western Works reel isn't the master per se, but a dub of it (all the Cabs members and NO had reel dubs off the master, and this was likely one of those), and the Rob Gretton vocal track ("Are You Ready...") was unfinished.  He thought how we obtained the reel was awesome.

Here's your humble blogger and Bernard (who was jealous of my iPhone 5; he said his iPhone 4 was getting a bit too slow, haha)...

I am tired, it was a long night and drive back from Toronto but absolutely worth it.  Cheers!

critique the blogger, Pt. II: Helium Derby (1998)

The reaction to last week's post frankly surprised me.  I knew we had some good songs, but the recording quality was shite and my "mastering" job was really quick-and-dirty.  Frankly, they were done in a basement with two mics feeding into a 4-track at standard cassette speed.  Not at all professional.  But I guess, in a sense, it was perfect for our music.  I think we all would have loved to put some of those down in a real studio, multitrack style, because as I said in more than a couple cases the songs were there.  But it's what it is, and if people dug it, that's really cool.

Which brings me to the next one.  Several months after these were done, I was planning to meet up with a college friend in Chicago who was in town from California, visiting a mutual friend from Colorado (I attended university in Colorado).  Turns out the apartment I met my friend at was two houses down from my best friend's flat, which, in a city the size of Chicago, is pretty impressive.  What was also coincidental was that the mutual friend had become a pretty damn good guitarist and, after the "hey man, it's been years!" pleasantries (and more than a couple beers) had been exchanged, a band of sorts was formed.  So for that fall of 1997, and spring of 1998, I'd saunter back and forth from my best mate's flat to the band flat, playing, rehearsing, writing, drinking.  One fall afternoon, I remember sitting on the deck at the best mate's flat, smuggled Fat Tire Amber Ale sat on the floor beside me, and guitar in hand after spending some time listening to Wire's Pink Flag record.  A few strums later, I had a song.  Knowing I was meeting up in a couple hours with the band for practice, I hurriedly grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote some half-assed lyrics.  That evening, we had the full song.

Another time I was in full-on Bob Mould mode at my house and was endlessly playing my 12-string, throwing off a lot of Mould-ish chordings and guitar figures, and suddenly had the framework for another song.  I quickly laid down the basic guitar track on my cheap 4-track, and came up with a pretty cool bass part using the lower strings on the guitar.  The lyrics didn't come as easily as the music, but eventually I had those too (and somewhere still have the original handwritten lyrics, with all the scratched-off changes and crap, on the back of an envelope).  It turned out to be the first original our nascent band did, and remains (IMHO) the best written song we had.

Then there was the song built around a stolen Yo La Tengo guitar riff (the main riff from "I Heard You Looking", namely), that after some struggles with the musical bed, quickly became another song with tossed-off lyrics.  I wrote the lyrics because it needed words, basically...

This band was called Helium Derby.


Eventually, we had quite a few songs written and in good enough shape to record an album.  We had only played a few parties, no real gigs, but figured why the hell not do a record?  One of the guys knew another guy who recorded bands, so we hooked up with him and recorded the album in his Lake View apartment.  The engineer had, which at the time seemed really fucking cool, a hard disk recording setup and other bits of gear which you'd expect someone like him to have.  This was 1998 so the concept of hard disk recording, in an apartment on the North Side of Chicago, seemed really major league to us.  While no ProTools, or 2-inch analog tape, it was better than the 4-track we had.  So we tracked the record; drums in the practice space (the drummer's basement, namely), everything else in the apartment studio.  Some songs took fucking ages to get right (I remember one song taking a month to do the guitars, only because the recording sessions were short, and I was constantly fighting the engineer as to how I wanted my guitars to sound), while others were done in an hour. 

My favorite moment of these sessions was watching the Cardinals' Mark McGwire break the single-season home run record, live, against the Cubs with Steve Trachsel pitching (this was in the thick of the Sammy Sosa / Mark McGwire home run record chase).  And I fucking hate the Cardinals.  We stopped whatever song/instrument we were tracking, watched the festivities, and resumed what we were doing.

We ended up with 10 songs, no mastering, and eventually a few hundred CDs.  Our plans were to play shows, sell the CDs, do more band stuff, but things petered out with one of the guys moving to Minneapolis for graduate school.  But it was fun, and an experience I'll never forget, not having done it since.

So here we are, with these 10 songs finally unleashed to an unsuspecting public.  Somehow I doubt the industry will be beating a path to our doors...

Helium Derby
...Nada en Fuego
(c) (p) 1998 Helium Derby


musicians:
Analog Loyalist - bass (except tracks 1, 5 and 7: electric guitars)
Isaac Adamson - electric guitars (except tracks 1 and 5: bass)
Ian Sethre - 12-string guitars
Sean Ramsey - drums, percussion
Eric Gautschi - vocals

engineer: Todd Nall
mastering (October 2012): Analog Loyalist

01 All Along
(music and lyrics: Analog Loyalist)

This is the song written by yours truly in Bob Mould mold. I play all the electrics, including the "solo", and Isaac pretty faithfully plays the bass line I wrote.  It sounds great both in this loud, driving interpretation as well as on a 12-string (as it was written on an acoustic, rooted on the very Mould-ish G5/Em/C5 chord pattern).  My one gripe with this song is that we never could nail the mix; I remember umpteen mix candidates all rejected for various issues, and I think we ended up with the final mix just by default.  It really could do with a remix, but alas... In this mastering, I tried my damnedest to smooth out some of the really horrible EQ and muddiness the final had, and it's a lot better, but not ideal.

02 Curious, I Know
(music: Helium Derby; lyrics: Eric and A.L.)

This was built from the bottom up in practice; I had been listening to a lot of Massive Attack in that timeframe and wanted to see if we could do something a bit more rhythmic.  We failed, completely, at coming anywhere close to Massive Attack, but out of the debris came this pretty cool song.  I get to express my inner Hooky on bass, much more successfully than "This Curse" from my previous band.

03 Such A Long Way
(music: Ian; lyrics: Eric)

I don't remember why we didn't actually track this in true multitrack fashion; we recorded the music completely live as an ensemble (with little mic separation, meaning we couldn't redo any parts without redoing the entire performance), with Eric laying down his vocals at a later time.  It was quite stressful for me on bass as it fell on me to keep tempo pretty solid throughout, but I think we pulled it off.

04 Nothing More Than This
(music: Ian; lyrics: Eric)

I don't remember much about the genesis of this song at all, but that I really dug the basslines I wrote for it, and just overall liked the feel and poppiness of the song.  I just sort of recall it falling out of the sky from Ian's 12-string, and suddenly we had a song.  I think he and Eric had worked it up before he presented it to the rest of us?

05 Lose Control
(music and lyrics: A.L.)

This is the Wire-influenced song I wrote on the back deck of my mate's apartment.  It's two chords, throughout, with only picking/strum patterns separating the components.  This is all me on electrics, including the descending harmonics.  Thanks Jay for the "2 B Real" lyric snippet!

06 Doesn't Matter Now
(music and lyrics: Ian)

Sometimes I think Ian's goal was to see how many lyrics he could fit in a 2:48 song, hehe.  We get a bit rootsy here, which I had no problem with at all.  Another song that just sort of emerged fully formed, though I think Ian had it all complete anyway and just showed it to us once or twice before we had it down.  I totally nicked U2's "With Or Without You" for the bass.  Sue me.  My favorite part is the stray snare in the bridge; it was an error, but it's perfect.  Perfectly placed and great.

07 Too Damn Cold
(music: A.L./Helium Derby/Ira Kaplan; lyrics: A.L.)

This is the Yo La Tengo song.  Well, a guitar riff is, at least.  One night in practice I started jamming on "I Heard You Looking" with another similar riff against it, and eventually we had a song all ginned up.  It didn't come across on tape as good as it did when played live, but we could only do so much with the time we had.  Lyric idea from Isaac's off-the-cuff vocal when we first were jamming it; he said he was singing something about being cold so I ran with that idea and quickly had a lyric.

08 That's What I'm Talking About
(music: Helium Derby; "lyrics": Eric)

Was and always will be called the Porn Song.  Never had a lyric, just Eric's, err, utterances.  One listen and you'll know why we called it the Porn Song.  Really, it was just an excuse to play ridiculous disco-style bass.

09 The Bitter End
(music and lyrics: Isaac)

Isaac was into 16 Horsepower and came in with this thing pretty much fully formed.  I just wrote up a bassline, and Sean the drums, and we had the song.  Isaac and Todd went gonzo with the guitar FX in the box.  If you listen carefully, you'll hear the drunken Arkansas hillbilly behind Eric's vocal track.

10 San Ysidro
(music: A.L./Ian, lyrics: Isaac)

I came up with this terrific idea for a song on bass, and from the very beginning always knew I wanted it to be an album closer (it just always had that closing feel to it).  In fact its working title was "Closing", from the very beginning.  I just couldn't come up with a decent chorus to save my life, which thankfully Ian stepped in and wrote.  The song is just a plain favorite of mine, in its entirety, and it's a beautiful one.

Get yer MP3s here.  Again, FLAC is available for the bravest of souls, just ask.

enjoy!

new game: critique the blogger's own music!

You've read enough of my words.  How about listening to your host's first band?  Turning the tables, I present to you music of my creation, not of my ripping.  And I want you to critique it.

This band was called V-Girl.  It didn't get beyond the basement.  It featured your humble blogger on bass and a few songwriting bits here and there, and his sister on vocals for most of the non-instrumentals.  We also had a guitarist and a drummer (first human, and then machine).  These 23 songs were recorded at various points in the guitarist's basement in 1997 live-as-she-went, some with the drummer, and some with the BOSS instead.

We fizzled after the drummer quit because we weren't punk rock enough, and she wanted to spend more time with her significant other.

We had fun.  It was my first real experience on bass guitar, as well.

The shitty basement tapes are now tarted up, listenable, and just as important, laughable.  Shit, I laugh at us just listening to it.  We had some really good songs (I'll let you figure out which ones), some jokes-turned-into-songs, and some ridiculous attempts at massacring covers.  We knocked a couple of the covers out of the park (I love, LOVE our take on Seam's "Shame", for example), and others I completely forget the lyrics and just go "aurrrrreh" instead (yes, that's me on a few of them).  At least I nailed "New Dawn Fades".

Enjoy - or not.  I don't mind :)

V-GIRL
23 Songs

Recorded in the basement in 1997 live to two track
Mastered September 2012

Bass/vocals: Mr. Analog Loyalist
Guitars/vocals: Mr. Jeff Hodge
Female vocals: Mr. Analog Loyalist's sister
Drums: Ms. Tricia Wollrab
Replacement drums: BOSS

01 Hello
This was our version of a stupid intro song.  We decided it didn't sound right unless we sang like some idiotic Britpop singers.

02 Johnny Pissed Himself
I really dig this song, to this day; as a nascent bassist at the time I am pretty proud of the bass work.  Our singer didn't appreciate our naming of this song based on the lyrical subject matter.

03 7 Years
Another song I dig.  In an alternate universe - or perhaps professionally recorded - this could have been a real good one.

04 Sad Spot
I liked it at the time.  The Sad Spots are our singer's tear marks on the lyric sheet, at some point she cried while writing it I think?

05 Swill
The first one here that I instigated.  Jeff liked my bassline I was just diddling around with in practice, and a few minutes later we had the song.  I think our singer wrote the lyrics in as much time as it takes to listen to it.  I pick up a bass today and still can't repeat the absolute rhythm and picking pattern I have in the middle of the song when the guitar drops out.

06 Something Significant
The second one I essentially wrote.  At some point we decided it sounded better split into double time bits, so we did.  Our singer sounds like Ozzy, bizarrely.

07 Marry The Moon
For the life of me I can't recall why we decided we liked the start/stop effects.  I like what I do rhythmically and chordally with the bass during the choruses.

08 Play The Game
It always sounded better playing it than it does listening to it.

09 Hell's Demand
We wrote this at a night our singer didn't show up, played it, and then Jeff and I took the tape and sang these ridiculous lyrics over the top of the jolly tune.

10 Death Pit
Just fucking around in practice.  Someone starts playing something, the others join in, and voila: a shitty song (if you can even call it a song)!

11 This Curse
Another one I wrote; it was my first attempt at aping Peter Hook's style on the bass.  It didn't really work.  I have another version somewhere with a full lyric, but the performance wasn't as good.

12 Velour
I have no earthly idea why we decided it would be fun to try some swanky pseudo jazz thing.

13 Shame (Seam cover)
I came in one night and told Jeff that we had to somehow play a Seam cover, because I was just ridiculously in love with that band that week (and still am, really).  He picked this one, which works because the original Seam version also has a girl singing (Sarah Shannon of Velocity Girl).  I really, really love this song and this cover.  I think this was only the second time we played it, and we fucking nailed it.

14 Disconnected (Face To Face cover)
I wasn't, and still am not, a fan of Face To Face.  But someone was, and we learned this song for the hell of it.  I do like our version; I like that I nailed the melodic bass intro-y bit and enjoyed singing backups.

15 New Dawn Fades (Joy Division cover)
I don't remember why we picked this Joy Division song to cover, out of the entire universe of Joy Division songs.  I think Jeff liked the Moby version of it?  I remember him modeling his guitar work after the Moby version more than the Joy Division original, at least.  I sing it, pretty well, and I still like this version a whole lot.

16 99 Red Balloons (Nena via 7 Seconds cover)
We all were punk rock kids when the 7 Seconds version of this song was new/popular in our small circle.  So of course we had to do our own version.  It's pretty funny.

17 Brand New Love (Sebadoh cover)
I just really love this song and got the folks to play it.  I never actually nailed the bass, and completely blew the vocals.  Ah well.

18 Sick Of You

19 Bridge
Tracks 18 and 19 were things that Jeff and I worked up immediately post-drummer.  Jeff does some interesting things with the guitars, and that's really about it.  Unfortunately the drum machine is too loud.

20 Freak Scene (Dinosaur Jr cover)
Jeff's pick.  He does a pretty good J Mascis.  Needs a drummer.

21 Pictures Of You (The Cure cover)
Another one I completely blow the lyrics on.  Jeff and I did it just to fuck with it (though we both love the song), and after "singing" it that night I think I had lost my voice.

22 Hungry LTW (Duran Duran cover)
Another one I have no recollection of why we played it.  It's stupid fun though.

23 Help Me
The music was one of the first things we did after starting playing (I think I originated it), but for some reason Jeff wanted to sing Concrete Blonde lyrics over it.  So this version is after our drummer quit (though somewhere I have a tape as the full band).

There you have it.  Here's the songs.  If you want it as FLAC (lord help me) I am happy (heh) to oblige.

Status update...

First of all I'd like to thank all those whom have contributed to future hosting.  The generosity of others is wonderful and while I will stay with Mediafire for the short term (under the new account set up in the wake of the old account's deletion), permanent hosting is in the plan.  Many have stated that the biggest cost will be for data/throughput, not server space itself; this means that it's critical I come up with a plan regarding lossless FLAC availability to all who want it.  Not sure yet what that will entail (link by invite only? Trackerless torrent using DHT?  Self-hosting at terrible transfer speeds (and the certain notice/hit it will be with my ISP)?  Things to think about.  Regardless, posting will continue.

Second, while activity may have slowed on the New Order Archives posting front, I still have a large pile to plow through.  I've taken a slight break from New Order simply because it was approaching burnout again; I'll bury myself into a project so much, at such a frenzied burst of activity, that I have to step back lest I not want to hear a single note again.  It was getting to that stage.  Rest assured that in short order new posts will be forthcoming, just as splendid as the last ones.  I do have some good ones in the works too for TPoIT only (non-New Order), I just have to get finished with them.

Creative solutions invited to the data throughput conundrum.

status update regarding file hosting - read me!

For the short term I've created a new Mediafire account and will be slowly migrating content over to there.  Not sure if I'll go back in the archives of TPoIT because a lot of the original files I no longer have due to an older drive crash, though.

What's going to certainly be migrating is the recent New Order postings, starting with the stash sets here.  I'll post new links in the comments as I go along.

This is only a short-term solution, however.  A few readers have suggested a collection box to arrange for more suitable hosting as we proceed, and this is a good idea.  I'm also contemplating moving to a newer model whereby the public links are M4A (AAC) files, and readers who would want lossless can simply request it.  This would cut down on server costs, and I am slowly coming around to the convenience idea of the basics being easily accessible and usable off-the-bat by my readers.  The purist in me really is kicking and screaming that I am even considering doing this archival material in any form of lossy format, but the debate is raging healthily inside.

So... followers can help by PayPal, any amount, to dcrumbaugh at gmail dot com (I don't have the analogloyalist account set up properly for PayPal), and this will go to future hosting costs as I transition down the road from Mediafire to something a bit more reliable.

Thanks for your continued patience, and let's carry on!

mediafire account suspension - help your host out!

So, the blog's download host has suspended the account.  All downloads are invalid.  I've submitted a ticket to Mediafire asking which file led to the suspension, so I can remove it and ideally restore access to the overall account.

That said... your host humbly now asks if a follower can generously donate storage/hosting space.  Any helpers are advised to contact me via email analogloyalist at gmail dot com and your generosity will be greatly appreciated.

This affects TPoIT and The New Order Archives.

Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience!