Advance Cassette, Not for Review, This is Stoopid!

*warning* long listen, the audio content in this post is 25 minutes

*warning 2* it's also very stoopid

*warning 3* it is purposefully lo fi and un-mastered to maintain the authentic cassette feel

*warning 4* it contains some coarse language at 25:14, more specifically, the word "shit"

*warning 5* cassette silence at intro has been preserved.  plus it builds anticipation.

Okay, now that you've been warned...

Continuing with our 20th aniversary Carpal Tunnel Syndrome celebration this year, I wanted to share with you the audio from this "promotional use only, pre-release work in progress sampler" as hosted by Eric San. (that would be me, albeit a much younger sounding me).

Ninja Tune sent a handful of these cassettes to music journalists prior to the album being released.  I guess they did this because as you may have learned from this post, the recording/production process of the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome album was 3 years longer than anticipated.  

This cassette is a bit of a preview, but as you'll learn, some of the tracks on here weren't even finished yet, so the label specifically wrote "Not for Review" on the J card.  I think they wanted to warn the journalists of the weird that was to come... A little bit of a heads up that this wasn't going to be a club or dance floor record, which the label was more known for.  

For the record, this not my handwriting or my font.  Someone at the label chose it because it reminded them of my handwriting I think.  And although my handwriting is admittedly a little "immature" looking, I would say this font choice is more of a Kindergarten-Gr. 2 level. But I digress... and the point was to keep it playful. Plus, as you know I was definitely in the Kindergarten of my record production skills at the time so I guess it works perfectly. Carpal is also spelled incorrectly here. Oops.

Speaking of early production skills, I've lived with one foot and one ear in the lo fi world since forever. Remember the album wasn't finished or mastered yet, so we figured we could make it even more lofi for this "preview".  So the audio on this cassette was recorded onto a reel to reel.  And then recorded off the reel to reel with a mic in a vocal booth at my friend Carl Bastien's studio. You can hear him yelling at me from the mixing desk/control room every now and then. So keep in mind that these are unmixed, unmastered, and mic'd recordings off a speaker plugged into a reel-to-reel recorder.  The intention was to make it feel like the journalist was just visiting me in the studio while I played through some stuff.  I'm not sure that's how it turned out... I'm sure a lot of them were confused when they listened to this tape. 

But what's up with How The Record Starts?

A quick note on How The Record Starts, the track which would be later entitled "Nerdball" (2:30 min mark on this preview tape) is based on real life, much like the track "Fender Bender" is.

You'll hear a high speed skitter-y scratch pattern and then later layers of swing drums and bass being scratched in.  It's all very high velocity with an occasional "UGh!" interjected every now and then.  

This was the autobiographical track I made from my experience of going to my first Record Convention. I forget which city it was in but I went there with a few DJs from the label while we were on tour in the late 90s. For those of you who'd never been to a record convention, things get pretty fierce and competitive at those things (I had no idea).

Imagine a convention center with rows and rows of 8' tables, each with about a dozen record crates on them. Behind them stood a dealer who often specialized in one type of music... say 60s psychedelic rock, or rare reggae, or 78s... 

When the doors open the collectors would literally run to the tables and start flipping through records 2 crates at a time, one crate per hand, and eyes pingpong-ing back and forth as they scanned each record cover for whatever gem they were looking for. (I tried to make the scratch equivalent of this with the skittery scratch pattern). 

I also found out there was a record convention etiquette, in that if you were too slow flipping through records, or if you went to a crate that someone had not dug through yet, you could get elbowed!  (hence the "Ugh" sound!) After the first couple of elbows, I thought people were just being rude. But later, DJ Food, who was there with me, told me about that unspoken Record Convention etiquette about who has "right of way" on a record crate when you get to a table.  Once you understand that, then it's kind of like who has right-of-way at a 4 way stop traffic intersection. It all depends who got to the table earliest. 

I realized, "Wow there are some HARD CORE RECORD NERDS here and they're out for blood!"  So I made a track about it and it became "Nerdball".... just me poking fun at record digging as "sport".  Anyhow, those of you who know the track might just think it's a pile of fast scratching, but to me it's always been a narrative track with turntable sound-design about that ridiculous first day at a Record Convention!

Enjoy!

E