Reissues coming: BAUHAUS (Deluxe Editions!), PIXIES and more from Beggars Banquet

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Mr Sam, Aug 2, 2009.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Mr Sam

    Mr Sam "...don't look so good no more" Thread Starter

    Location:
    France
  2. jsayers

    jsayers Just Drifting....

    Location:
    Horse Shoe, NC
    Thanks for this! I'm all over the Bauhaus releases, probably go for both boxes.
     
  3. Levitated

    Levitated Forum Resident

    Location:
    Littleton, MA
    Wow, looks like a lot of cool stuff coming. Thanks for the link, strange to hear about Pixies playing Doolittle at the Wang Theater this fall. Hope it's true. Cult Love 4 disc set looks cool too.
     
  4. akmonday

    akmonday Forum Resident

    Location:
    berkeley, ca
    yay more Fall reissues (j/k)! although I guess these ones haven't been done 500 times by the band.

    Having just shelled out for the MOFI Pixies SACDs I doubt I'll spring for these, except for Trompe, which I gues MOFI isn't going to do?
     
  5. I'll probably grab the Bauhaus discs.

    Love that band!
     
  6. I think I'll be all over the Bauhaus discs as well, but of course the Standard Forum Caveats apply...
     
  7. Maurice

    Maurice Senior Member

    Location:
    North Yarmouth, ME
    The Bauhaus sets, with the pre-order bonus disc, look mighty intriguing. I'd want to know what the price is though.
     
  8. jsayers

    jsayers Just Drifting....

    Location:
    Horse Shoe, NC
    This is a good point - I bought a Beggars Banquet reissue of Gene Loves Jezebel's "Promise" 2-cd set a few years ago and boy, is it mastered loud.
    Worth it for all the extra stuff on disc 2, though, and I suppose I'll get the Bauhaus sets for the extra stuff as well even if they are "jacked up". I wouldn't be expecting "audiophile" mastering here, folks. :sigh:
    Always the "double-edged" sword concerning these remasters, isn't it?
     
  9. JayB

    JayB Senior Member

    Location:
    CT
    BTW, the "Slicing Up Eyeballs" site/blog is fantastic. I read it often.

    I believe the person running it is a member..
     
  10. Slicing Eyeballs

    Slicing Eyeballs Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Hey, thanks. Much appreciated. And yes, he is a member.

    For those interested in the Bauhaus reissues, I've also recently posted an interview with Daniel Ash about the new Love and Rockets tribute album and many other things (including why there'll be no more Love and Rockets or Bauhaus).
     
  11. axnyslie

    axnyslie Forum Resident

    Well I just got all the Bauhaus vinyl reissues and the Pixies SACDs so I'll pass on these. A lot of good additions to these though.
     
  12. JayB

    JayB Senior Member

    Location:
    CT
    You're very welcome! Great site! :righton:
     
  13. Dan Halen

    Dan Halen Active Member

    Location:
    New York
  14. ReductionDeath

    ReductionDeath Member

    Location:
    New York City
    I'll be all over the Bauhaus and This Mortal Coil releases.
    (And possibly Fall and Pixies as well).

    Now if only, as in all cases, we knew about the sound q. in advance.
     
  15. CraigVC

    CraigVC Senior Member

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    I got an email from MOFI earlier today (in response to some feedback I had offered them), and part of it said:

    Considering how much of the Pixies catalog they've already done, there's little doubt about what "titles" they could be referring to! ;)

    Craig.
     
  16. JimSmiley

    JimSmiley Team Blue Note

    That's good news. I'm really pleased with the Doolittle release on Mofi--seems like I've been waiting forever for the "Surfer Rosa" LP.
     
  17. hutlock

    hutlock Forever Breathing

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH, USA
    Oh MAN. These folks sure are working hard to take my money. I might actually be in for ALL of these.
     
  18. dobyblue

    dobyblue Forum Resident

    I find it hard to consider ordering any more SACD's of The Pixies from MOFI (I have Doolittle) when the Matador boxset is going to feature 24/192 stereo and multi-channel (5.1) mixes of ALL the Pixies albums on Blu-ray (and also includes 24/96 2.0 and 5.1 DVD-A mixes on DVD)

    https://secure.infomercial.tv/www_v2/templates/2142/store2.html

    Shaa!
     
  19. jsayers

    jsayers Just Drifting....

    Location:
    Horse Shoe, NC
    Interesting MySpace report from one of the guys that worked on the 2 upcoming Bauhaus Omnibus releases next month:

    Ancient Earthwork – the 2009 exhumation of Bauhaus



    It all began in the form of a rather cryptic e-mail entitled…Just Supposing back in January of 2006. The content suggested an imaginary expanded edition of the 4ad / Beggars Banquet Bauhaus catalogue, suggesting that we look beyond simply the B sides…but avoiding the BBC cuts (if possible). The only rule being we look at the recording date rather than release date as the basic blueprint.

    Back in the late 1990’s I catalogued all the session tapes that were available whilst researching Bauhaus - Beneath The Mask – some of which were clearly missing, and with that in mind this was not going to be an easy task. So I set about building 4 sister CD’s of potential useable material to hold hands with a straight re-master of the original albums…bear in mind Crackle aside this material had not been touched since 1988. A badly mastered edition of In The Flat Field was done in 1998 but we won’t talk about that…To jump the gun a little we settled on a format: disc one would be a straight re-master of the original analogue album, disc two would be the bonus material, the coup de grace – period B sides, demos, out-takes and any other oddities we could find along the way. Whilst disc three would be a full live show from that particular period all boxed up with a book that would tell the story behind each album and it’s recordings in fine detail – basically a one-stop-shop.

    Over the next 3 years we would suffer many headaches (piecing together the Mask sessions), heartaches (the loss of the live disc for In The Flat Field) and finally the joy of holding our babies… Flat Field was the obvious place to start and so all potential tracks were assembled to a listening test CD this included multiple mixes of Terror Couple Kill Colonel and no less than four mixes of Double Dare. Track repetition was beginning to be an issue already, but essential really to trace the origin of a particular track – we opted to drop the regular single version of TCKC very early on in favour of an otherwise unavailable alternate mix – a path we would try to follow where we could, opting to use some fine alternate / out-takes we found of Stigmata Martyr, Telegram Sam, The Spy In The Cab and Dive A slimmed down workable volume was assembled and Flat Field was beginning to take shape. Once we had reached a compromise on the track selection (agreed, disagreed & argued) research for the accompanying sleeve notes began. I put together a very comprehensive set of notes that explored the Bauhaus story from the end of 1979 and into the Flat Field period proper. A few edits later and we had it nailed…”I think an introduction leading up to the formation of the band is required” so said The ‘Haus Keeper. I had not given much attention to this period on purpose as I didn’t think it relevant to the period we were addressing…so I jumped headlong into the project as always and went away with the completed notes and rebuilt it, boasting a terrific introduction piece that began in 1976 packed with details of the previous bands associated with our heroes….only to have this version rejected by one or two of said heroes on the grounds that it isn’t relevant to the period. Agreed, it wasn’t – and the very reason it wasn’t written in the first place. However The ‘Haus keeper managed to do a sterling edit with it whilst still incorporating much of the detail of the rejected draft.

    In the meantime we had Loud Mastering transfer the only official period live recording of the band we had from 1980 a ¼” analogue tape of the band performing at London University, from October of that year – to a digital CD listening format. Now this recording was always going be a bone on contention, we both knew this as the mix from the onset was very poor and as this was recorded straight to ¼” at source no remixing was ever going to be possible save for increase / decrease in top and bottom end. I have always been fond of this particular show (warts and all) but the mix was always going to be a worry (bass way too loud and very little guitar is audible – although it does get better as the show progresses which is how we managed to salvage at least some of it for …and Remains) Sure enough this met with pretty strong objections, all of which were justified. What are going to do now? We considered our options (i.e. not a lot) and began trawling a bunch of mixing desk cassettes, although quality recordings, we were not happy dropping to what would essentially be cleaned up bootleg quality. Not what we wanted. Edinburgh from the 1980 August tour was our hottest nugget, recorded by Pete ‘Plug’ Edwards at the mixing desk but again, whilst boasting a much healthier sound balance, it was very muddy and again because of the original format (a cassette tape) no remix was possible. Again – back to the starting block – one final attempt was a CD compilation which utilised the salvageable cuts from Edinburgh, ULU, Dusseldorf and Chicago – but after careful consideration this just did not hold together very well as an album and so with regret In The Flat Field was now reduced to two discs.

    One nice story however that does spring to mind during the close of our work on In The Flat Field was as follows: I was clearing out some bits and pieces and came across a letter I had received from someone (this was one of a handful forwarded to me after Bauhaus - Beneath The Mask was published in 1997) anyway…the writer speaks of his band recording in a studio that Bauhaus had used, Gold Dust in Sidcup, according to the engineer they used it to record the flip to their debut single Bela Lugosi’s Dead. The flip being Boys. This was interesting as the studio for this particular track had eluded all of us band included. I decided to pick this up and investigate – I traced the studio without too much effort and found a contact, within literally minutes of sending that first e-mail I had a reply suggesting I ring the number on the mail…I did. That call and the many others that took place over the next week or so proved pivotal in piecing together the missing link between Small Wonder and Axis and although it turned out not to have been the studio that bore Boys the session sheets however revealed a real gem. The real regret of course is that as this session fell outside of any record contract the ownership sits firmly with the band, plus of course we had missed the boat as production of the discs was already underway. With positive feedback received Flat Field was now firmly in the can and we began work on Mask.

    Now things got really tricky…We started as we had done with the Flat Field masters, transferred everything that was available in mixed down ¼” format. Again we already had a basic blueprint in place thanks to the session log done in ‘97 and for the most part that initial blueprint remained in place from conception to birth. We even uncovered a couple of early takes that we didn’t expect (that pre-dated a later vocal overdub – see In Fear Of Fear on disc 2). Having pieced together (loosely) the recording schedule for Mask establishing that unlike Flat Field, Mask was recorded over a handful of separate sessions jumping from one studio to another and back again utilising different engineers – resulting in masters claiming to hail from Jam when in fact they were conceived at Playground with overdubs added at Jam. Masters and Safety masters mislabelled throwing us off scent.…then along came a saviour, who didn’t and still doesn’t know how important he was. I hit upon the idea of contacting Kenny Jones, one of the engineers on Mask – who it turned out held a key to a previously, albeit badly locked door. Although in terms of memory Kenny suffers like we all do – it’s an age thing you understand, his diaries however don’t suffer…although Kenny didn’t remember recording proper (he remembered mixing) it seems he did actually record two tracks from scratch – two very late additions to the album (after the previous Mike Hedges version had been rejected). The session sheets proved beyond any doubt that these indeed were brand new fully fledged recordings. We were now able to piece together Mask – and the book to accompany it with relative ease. Once we had assembled a tentative running order (again choosing recording date rather than release date) which was largely unchanged from day one – we could concentrate on the live disc – we had a couple to choose from here with both Liverpool and London both professionally recorded on 2” multi track - in full. We opted for The London Hammy Pally show for a couple of reasons firstly this show was barely touched on Press The Eject and Give Me The Tape (save for The Man With X-Ray Eyes and Bela) unlike Liverpool which was dipped into quite heavily. Secondly after reviewing both shows as bootlegs it was clearly the better performance. The multi tracks were taken to Good Luck Studios and a rough mix expertly prepared under the guiding hand of Mark Wallis with valuable assistance from The Keeper and Pete ‘Plug’ Edwards who had of course mixed the live Bauhaus sound back in the day. Initially mixed without the audience track – it was clear even at this early stage that this was going to be a stunning live set even with all the faults that are usually associated with live albums - no airbrushing this time…Press The Eject anyone? It really didn’t take much, after three or four test runs with the mix Mark had it nailed. Tagged on the end of the multi mix however was a real find…a brand new studio vocal of Bela Lugosi’s Dead – we suspected this was recorded with the intention of mixing it over the live backing track for use on The Hunger movie – but for one reason or another was never completed as the band opted to use the live version proper instead. Such a find could not be left alone and Mark Wallis did what Bauhaus never did – mixed it with the live backing track, time sequenced to perfection - this was the catalyst for …And Remains. The idea of which was to compile the best of the rest as a giveaway CD as a thank you for purchasing both packages direct from Beggars Archive. Be advised This CD will not be available anywhere else – you have been warned. I don’t recall any objections from our heroes for the Mask assemblage actually? A couple of anecdotes that do spring to mind whilst preparing it though were; firstly I had my reservations about including the Searching For Satori single version of Kick In The Eye for two reasons, firstly utilising a third version of the same track (repetition) and secondly that this was not a Mask period mix, it was done some four months after Kenny Jones had completed the album – fortunately I was overruled however (and rightly so) and this track nicely wraps the up the period with a full stop. We also briefly discussed including Daniels’ solo section from 1-2-3-4 as a hidden track but looped backwards so the vocal was forward…. the real bone of contention for Mask however was Harry. But sticking with our unwritten rule of period only Harry was never really an option, quirky & fun yes but with regret not for this project. Sounds great at 24 bit though! Once we had agreed on the final running order for both sets, we began choosing the selections for …And Remains. It has to be said with the exception of the new mix of Bela (now christened rather aptly the Tomb Raider mix) I got pretty much free reign here, we could use the stunning rejected Spaceward version of Terror Couple, I wanted to include the first of the four mixes done of Double Dare – I thought it would be nice to trace its journey as the final mix was on disc two on the Flat Field set. Plus it meant we could salvage at least some of the London University tracks that we had to abort at birth. This compilation really was a lot of fun to assemble actually. One final story worthy of mention here was the lyric to Earwax, all the internet lyric sites were way off we knew that, each of us adding that little bit more – it’s quite amazing what one ear hears that another one doesn’t – but there were holes – I know, let’s ask Peter!

    If anything was apparent during this project it is simply that Bauhaus never over recorded, and pretty much what was recorded – was released. We transferred every single ¼” analogue tape. So to round up the journey from Flat Field to Mask – and for all the doubters out there here’s what we left off and why…

    Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Boys – Some Faces – Harry – Bite My Hip (affectionately known as the Bela session) recorded out of contract and too early for inclusion.

    Harry, Small Talk Stinks, Double Dare (The Gold Dust session) recorded out of contract.

    Terror Couple Kill Colonel (mix 1 and mix 3 of the single A side) we opted to use mix 2, the actual single mix was 3 and is currently available on the superb best of…Crackle (repetition)

    Telegram Sam (single A side) mix 2 was the single version see above – subtle sonic differences between the two mixes.

    Double Dare (mix 2 and 3 of the Southern take) we utilised mix 1 and 4 which trace the journey no need to include these mixes (repetition)

    Earwax (single edit) we opted to use the full unedited previously unreleased version (The single edit is available on the first CD issue of Mask)

    Of Lilies And Remains (full un-edited version) four extra bars at the start we felt didn’t warrant inclusion, the slightly edited version appears on disc one of Mask set)

    Dave and Danny’s Waspy Dub #1 Number two was much more fun!



    Andrew J Brooksbank (August 2009)

    MySpace address:

    http://www.myspace.com/factorytown
     
  20. 93curr

    93curr Senior Member

    I'm all over the Bauhaus and The Fall remasters, though I may wait to see with the This Mortal Coil discs. (not sure I need remasters of albums that were issued after the CD format was introduced) Maybe if they're SACD hybrids like the Dead Can Dance discs?
     
  21. jsayers

    jsayers Just Drifting....

    Location:
    Horse Shoe, NC
    Even though it's more expensive, I just pre-ordered the 2 Bauhaus titles from Beggar's Banquet so I'll get that limited bonus cd. Gotta have it!
     
  22. hutlock

    hutlock Forever Breathing

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH, USA
    Yeah, I might have to do that myself, but I'm on the fence. I'm a little dismayed about some of that stuff they left off...

    Plus, my Cult Love Omnibus edition showed up. The packaging is nice, but not as fabulous as I expected it to be. It may be that I'm just spoiled by the Beatles Mono Box packaging in that regard though...
     
  23. jsayers

    jsayers Just Drifting....

    Location:
    Horse Shoe, NC
    How's the mastering? Is it nice or loud?
    What didn't please you about the packaging?

    Thanks in advance - John
     
  24. hutlock

    hutlock Forever Breathing

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH, USA
    Well, I think the mastering is fine -- not too loud at all. I should say, however, that I've NEVER owned this album on CD -- I've had nothing but the original Beggars UK vinyl all this time. But yeah, it sounds great to me so far. I haven't played all four discs yet, however, but I'm less concerned with the bonus stuff anyway.

    As for the packaging, it's all VERY minor stuff, but it sort of adds up. The box itself is sort of hard to open, first of all. Second, the booklet, while nice and thick and full of great info, was a little mangled/wrinkled on a few pages, and the first all-white title page when you first open it had some ink streaks and things on it -- which was weird because the facing page was also white, so I have no idea where the colored streaks came from! The Japanese-style mini-LP packages are nice, but not as nice as the Beatles mono sleeves -- the cardboard is thick for one thing, and the record company info is missing from the LP, so it isn't 100% replica packaging. To get the four discs out of the little cubby they rest in inside the box, you pretty much have to tip the thing upside down and let them fall out into your hand -- there's no other way to dig them out without risking damage.

    That all said, for the money, it's definitely a nice set, and I totally admit that these problems are VERY minor - and in some cases, your set may not have these problems at all! So I DO think it is worth getting and I'm enjoying it, but it seems like maybe a corner or two was cut in the box production, or else there wasn't the best planning there.

    So I'd buy it again, but I was a tad bit let down, I guess.
     
  25. Modern_Mannequin

    Modern_Mannequin Active Member

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    Do these guys (Beggars Banquet) still put out respectable-sounding CDs? Their earlier issues of stuff from The Fall and Gary Numan sounded pretty good. They weren't squashed to hell or EQ'd all wonkily.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine