Pretty Hate Machine Remaster

"Nothing quite like the feel of something new."

Two albums came out in 1989 that changed music in a big way : Ministry's A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste and Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine. Most electronic music at that time was dance music. You had New Order, Erasure, & Depeche Mode at the top of the heap and most other bands tended to sound like one of them.  Sure you had folks like Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb, and KMFDM starting to branch out in more abstract or aggressive directions but those two albums somehow combined everything I liked about electronic sounds with everything I liked about angry guitar music in a way that nobody really had before. They were kinda dancy and they also kinda rocked. Each album had a larger ratio of one or the other but they both worked and forced me to keep them close at hand for at least 6 moths or so after I bought them. A ton of other people felt  the same way as it turned out, and for a short while Industrial music was was the new hotness on college campuses, and later on mainstream radio as well.

I'm not sure how long it had been since I dusted off Pretty Hate Machine for a listen, thankfully Mr. Reznor decided to give me a good reason to do so. First off, it's sounds fucking amazing. There hasn't been much tinkering with the mix which is always a good thing. What you really get is a crisp, better defined sound with a little larger dynamic range that people just didn't have the ability to produce on CD with the mastering technology available back in the day.

The packaging has been updated as well. You get a nice new digipack format with slightly toned-down artwork that, for me, is a welcome change. The old-school pink and purple cover really never meshed well with all the other albums.

As far as bonus features go there's only one real extra: a cover of Queen's Get Down Make Love which was previously only available on the out-of-print Sin single. Jourgensen was involved in the recording to some extent and you can tell a big difference between that and the rest of the album. Not bad, but much closer to the way Ministry was doing things at the time. What would have been nice.....was to have a 2nd disk similar to the Downward Spiral remaster with b-sides and remixes but none of the remixes from this era are included. Too bad since that's one thing that Reznor is really good at. Most remixes at the time were almost always labeled "extended dance remix" and meant that somebody looped the intro drumbeats at the beginning and end of the song for an extra minute or two. Reznor's remixes tend to be more creative and quite different from the original, worth listening to outside of a club or a party for sure. Hopefully we'll get them on some sort of later release since TVT no longer holds the rights to the songs.

Nerdy nitpicking aside, Pretty Hate Machine holds up really well after 21 years. If you haven't taken it for an angsty spin in a while now's your chance.

Refused Re-Issuing Shape Of Punk To Come

Oh hell yeah. The Shape Of Punk To Come is for me one of the best albums of the late 90s. Refused self destructed too soon to make it big, the fact that bands are still imitating the sounds on this album is proof that they were on to something cool.

On June 8th Epitaph is putting out a 3 disk set with the album, a live set, and a DVD of the film Refused Are Fucking Dead. Awesome.

Stone Roses 20th Anniversary Edition

Original Producer John Leckie & Ian Brown put in some really hard work on this one. There is so much more bass to this thing now it's unreal. This was one of the first albums I learned on bass & I've had a great time over the last two days playing along with the bass parts while recovering from eye surgery. My neighbors might disagree.

After getting used to the new sound, the next thing I noticed was that Elephant Stone was missing from the album. After snooping around the information superhighway a bit I found out that it was tacked on to the initial US release but never on the original UK track list. This is one of those albums I usually listen to front to back, so the updated track list will take some getting used to. If you have The Complete Stone Roses already then you have nothing to fear as Elephant Stone shows up there.

Disk two is full of demos, in various stages of production. The main thing you notice is that they had their shit together very early on in terms of songwriting. It's all here, minus some of the atmosphere that Leckie brought into the mix. Not really something you'll miss if you opt for the single disk version, the one unreleased track Pearl Bastard sounds like a slowed down version of Sugar Spun Sister. It's easy to see why it hasn't shown up anywhere until now.

The DVD has all of their videos plus a live show from Blackpool. The videos reinforce my theory that Ian Brown must have worn that money shirt for at least a year straight during the early nineties. Watching John Squire during the live show just blows me away. That dude is one hell of a guitar player.

All in all it holds up very well 20 years later. If only Second Coming had been worth the wait....

Update: The official site also lists an uber box set with a 3rd CD full of remastered b-sides, all the audio on vinyl, and a USB key with all the audio + other goodies. Very tempting.


- Coop

The Cure: Disintegration Re-Issue in 2010

Fucking finally. Robert posted an update about the Disintegration reissue. The short story is you get a 3 CD set with the remastered album, bonus demos & unreleased stuff, AND...... an expanded version of Entreat which has been out of print forever.

If that wasn't enough Cure goodness for you, we'll also get In Orange & Show on DVD, a Cure at the BBC box set, and something he's referring to as Mixed Up 2. Now give me Wish + Lost Wishes and I'm set. Read more over at Slicing Up Eyeballs.

Two Things I learned from the 2009 Sgt. Pepper's Liner Notes

1. I always wondered why some of the songs featured vocals that sounded higher pitched than usual. The first thing I assumed was that the entire track was sped up, but that would knock all of the instruments out of key, which they aren't. Turns out they recorded the vocals for several tracks at a much slower speed, that way when you play it back the vocals have a higher pitch but maintain the correct key. Ah, the joys of analog.

2. The end of A Day In The Life caught me off guard when it kept
playing after the end of the song with a bunch of garbled noisy stuff at the end , al la the "hidden track" trend of the early to mid 90s.

Turns out this was part of the original vinyl release & subsequent UK CD release but removed from the American pressings in the late 80's. Back in the day, if you had a turntable without an auto-return feature it would replay the last groove on the record until you got up and changed the track. The Beatles thought they would have a little fun at the expense of these folks. Ah, the joys of analog.

- Coop

Polvo & Beatles

Polvo - In Prism

What was I hoping for when I heard that Polvo was recording again? In Prism was pretty damn close. I couldn't be more satisfied with this one, they definitely got back together for a reason. DLB was right, there's lots of Cor-Crane Secret mixed in with some Exploded Drawing. I love the overall heavier sound, hoping for more before too long.



The Beatles - The Beatles (White Album) Re-Master


People slap the label "re-mastered" on a lot of things these days. Most of the time it means somebody added compression and jacked the levels up to 11. Not this time around. Pitchfork has a great article on how/why these were mastered the right way as opposed to continuing the "loudness war".

If you're on the fence about grabbing these, trust me you won't be disappointed. Watch any crappy VHS copy of your favorite movie, then watch the DVD. That's what I'm talking about. These disks sounds about as good as you're ever going to hear em, and I swear I can hear little details that I never noticed before. Well worth the bucks, picking up some more as soon as I can.

- Coop

Radiohead: The Bends - Reissue

Right around the time O.K. Computer came out The Notorious D.L.B. tried to convince me that Radiohead was a good band. He scolded me for not having listened to The Bends in that shame-inducing way that only a record store employee can. I'm glad he did.

The Bends proved that Creep wasn't the band's wonderful one hit of the early 90's. These dudes could really write songs. Fake Plastic Trees, Planet Telex, and Nice Dream are still some of my favorites. This re-issue is really about the B-sides, which honestly are every bit as good as the album tracks. Not a lot of bands can say that. You get the My Iron Lung EP, plus a ton of other non-album and live tracks that have always been scattered across other disks. I've been holding on to the Nowhere soundtrack for the better part of a decade because of How Can You Be Sure. I didn't pick up the 3 disc version that gives you a DVD with all the videos on it, maybe I'll grab that version for the others.

- Coop

P.S. I'm not 100% sure who would win in a "World's Biggest Piece Of Shit" contest, but I bet either Kanye West or the Chevy Cobalt would come very close. Maybe Lady GaGa in 2nd. I mentioned this to my wife who commented: "I'd like to put Lady GaGa in the Chevy Cobalt and set it on fire." I love my wife.