The arrival of Coronavirus and the temporary end of my video work has facilitated something positive. I finally have the time to archive my old recordings from the 80s and 90s and make them available on Bandcamp. Good thing, and with the added reminder of our mortality it makes this seem all the more important to finally complete. So, the digitizing of all major releases are done. I am am completing art and some liner notes. Here are my guidelines:
1 - These will not remastered from the original 4-track level on up. There is no point to it. They are what they are. I don't want them to sound like something they never were. There will be no George Lucas "special edition" baloney going on here! I honestly feel the masters are fine for what they are. Even with having to record with the effects and bounce tracks, I am satisfied with these. My only interest is in EQ and some processing for clarity.
2 - Artwork will have the same philosophy. The originals were black and white and copied onto colored cardstock. The digital artwork will reflect that same aesthetic but simply cleaned up.
3 - No bonus tracks. I had bonus tracks on the CD-R versions but they will be dumped here. In this current age of digital platforms for delivering music, places like Soundcloud and YouTube and more make it easy to make alternate versions and one-off recordings easily available. Some of my alternate versions may have seemed better because of better equipment, but to my ear the music wasn't always improved. The album will be the album as it was originally released.
4 - Some of this stuff is somewhat embarrassing. Some is primitive and naive, created with little to no knowledge of music theory. Some reflects views I longer embrace. It is the sound of an early twenty-something loner introvert noodling away in his bedroom with electronic instruments and junk. It is not what I do now. However, it is a huge part of my history as a small insignificant person on this planet. It was a small miracle that I eventually gained distribution in the U.S. and through most of Europe selling several thousand of these tapes I dubbed on a stack of 5 Sony cassette decks floating around the world and ending up in some very surprising places I have discovered over the years. I have even learned that I am a part of a scene now termed "Minimal Wave". TA DA! I pioneered a genre and learned about it 35 year later!
So, as I presciently said on Strange Tales, "reality has lost its mind", so it's time to finish a long overdue project to help keep my sanity.
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