Happy Rhodes: Ectotrophia 2LP/CD compilation coming from Numero in 2018

An unboxing of the LP.

 

You look different than your avatar, Chris.

 

Heh! Vickie Tweeted this one out. I filmed one of her unboxing it, but she wasn't happy with it.

 

Here's an interesting thing Numero Tweeted out this morning...Marissa Nadler covered Happy's song Where Do I Go. Other artists have covered Happy in concert, but this is the first studio recording of one of Happy's songs.

 

Here's the official Numero unboxing video:

 

I picked up the vinyl release yesterday... I think this is the first time any of Happy's material has been on vinyl?
Anyhow - I'm glad Numero finally decided to start using a decent pressing plant after using bottom-tier plants like United and Erika in the past (this was pressed by GZ). Although I wish they had sprung for poly lined inner sleeves instead of crappy paper sleeves. This sounds pretty good overall, no complaints here. Nice gatefold sleeve and liner notes as always.

 

Was this at a record store?

 

An interview with Happy in PopMatters

Happy Rhodes: "My Whole Thing Is the Quest for Genius"

 

...and she's the Artist of the Week on BandCamp!

The Beautiful Monsters of Happy Rhodes’s Art-Pop

 

That was a great article -- thanks for posting the link!

 

The folks at Numero deserve the credit. I'm just happy that Vickie's decades of work promoting Happy have come to fruition.

 

...and hope this is successful enough to warrant a Volume 2!

 

Yep, picked it up from a local store here. According to Amazon.ca it's not out until July 6th?

 

I think the official release date is Friday June 29th.

 

Checking this set out on Spotify. Awesome.

 

Picked up the vinyl today.

 

Mine is incoming from Amazon. Only having one CD of hers, glad to be getting this release. Also have a Security Project CD en route. May very well overdose on Happy Rhodes!

 

This arrived today. Dead quiet, beautiful pressing and packaging. Feels like a steal for $23.99 on Amazon.

And of course the music, essentially my introduction to Happy Rhodes. I already have the CD of Building the Colossus but haven't spent a lot of time with it since picking it up several months ago. The songs are enthralling and will certainly enjoy repeated listens which undoubtedly will lead me down the rabbit hole in search of the rest of her catalogue.

 

I mentioned this earlier, but the mastering of this album was by Chris Muth of Dangerous Music. Happy is married to Bob Muller, who co-owns Dangerous Music with Muth. I'm not sure of the timeline, but Dangerous Music started out as a recording studio, and Chris Muth was the engineer, building custom boxes to improve the quality and flexibility of digital recording systems. They proved so popular with other studios and mastering facilities that they closed the studio to concentrate on building the equipment (Happy herself actually assembles some of the equipment.)

Here's a little bit from the Dangerous Music site about Muth's work:

By the time we reached the 80’s we saw a growing audio mastering industry, and with more experience under their belts, mastering engineers began to demand more from their equipment. Along with increased demand for audio mastering, digital recording first appeared in the 80’s, and it was during this time that Dangerous Music co-founder and equipment designer Chris Muth was commissioned by mastering engineer Jack Skinner of The Hit Factory (and formerly Sterling Sound) to build a custom mastering suite to Skinner’s specifications, thus began Muth’s mastering equipment saga.
In 1990 Muth went to work at Sterling Sound for chief technician Brad Johnson as the CD format began really selling as a consumer medium. Working with famed Sterling mastering engineers Ted Jensen, George Marino and Greg Calbi, Muth modified existing mastering gear, which led to designing custom gear for the studio that met the new sonic challenges of dynamic range and reproduction on consumer playback devices by allowing the engineers more refined control over monitoring, routing, level handling, and other innovative ideas never seen in mastering equipment before such as M/S (or Mid/Side) processing. With the ears and experience of the Sterling engineers, Muth was able to collaborate to create gear that “sounded really fantastic,” as Muth states today. After also working at MasterDisc studios, in 1995 Muth began making mastering equipment under his own company name that grew out of all the custom and modified gear he had made for these studios. Eventually Muth returned to Sterling to create 6 all-new mastering suites, 14 rooms in total, using his Muth designed gear integrated with each engineers’ other equipment; A project that took several years to complete. Today, the Dangerous Music line of equipment springs from this sonic innovation during this time period, and fulfills the promise of revealing and preserving the highest audio quality.​

 

Here's an interesting thing - "Radio Free Numero" with an episode featuring Happy introducing songs in the genre her fans dubbed "Ecto"

The Numero Group - Ecto Music Special by Happy Rhodes 28.06.18

 

Just finished giving this its inaugural spin, and wow, I'm very pleased.
Great music, mostly great sounding recordings, flawless pressing, high quality packaging.
A winner!

 

I'd have to check but I believe everything was recorded at Cathedral Sound by Pat Tessitore - not a world-famous recording studio, not a world-famous engineer. Just proof that you can make a good sounding recording almost anywhere as long as you don't deliberately screw it up.

All About Jazz has a very good review of the album:

Happy Rhodes: Ectotrophia

 

Anyone fluent in French?

HAPPY RHODES : Ectotrophia - Adopte Un Disque

 

google says:

Hard to catalog Happy Rhodes. This is perhaps why the American artist has remained cloistered in a certain confidentiality despite vocal and musical qualities as impressive as destabilizing? I must tell you that this "Ectotrophia" is not the new and twelfth album of the lady, but a compilation of these great deeds. Often compared (rightly) to Kate Bush, Happy (her real name is Kimberley Tyler, but she made it change still teenager) shines indeed by a certain vocal versatility (with 4 octaves, we can express things!) , and a traveling musical mood, between pop, classical music, experimentation, folk and neo gothic rock. A music whose ice-cold beauty and melancholy often contrasts with his name, but who always manages to find the path of the heart. A music with which we do not get bored, each song looks like a blockbuster. Ample, leaving necessarily a lot of room for the voice (with multiple tessitaries answering and completing), the eighteen titles of this compilation often tuise the heavens, involving a stripped guitar and touching (the first instrument mastered by the artist ), and keyboards intervening as regulators and enhancers of emotion. We find here a selection of titles from the first four albums of the artist, with a more rare title ("When the rain came down"). This suggests that a volume 2 will see the light of day soon, and perhaps even a third, if each focuses on a period of 3-4 albums. The important it is here that there are plenty of good reasons to look at the discography of Mrs. Rhodes, whose last solo album dates from 2007, but has since fricoté with The Security Project, taking over Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel (as c is weird!) If you like the last two artists mentioned, you would be well advised to pass the door of this disc disturbing and fascinating!

 

Yeah, I tried both Google and Microsoft translate and both were pretty bizarre. Hopefully a native French speaker will come along with a reasonable translation.