This is a repost from my Ice Station Studio site (mixing and mastering work).
I’m really excited to announce the Alcian Blue Collection double cassette box set that is coming soon on Anathemata Editions. This was an idea that Terence and Sean Gray (Fan Death Records/Birth Defects) had a few years back and it took a bit of time for us to get all of the music together.
You can pre-order the tape at Anathemata Editions website and there will be a Bandcamp page setup for digital purchases soon.
About the Alcian Blue Remasters
One of the biggest challenges to doing the remasters was the Years Too Late EP and Fall Behind EP. I had given away all of the Fall Behind CDRs at some point and the only digital files I had were MP3s. Thankfully our friend Greg Sivitl had a copy and digitized it for us so we could work from as high a source as possible.
Years Too Late was a bit more tricky. One of the issues about the EP was the way we mastered it was using too much compression which caused the cymbals to eat tons of energy that created an imbalance especially on Carousel and Years Too Late. Sam still has the original PC we used to record the Joy Slowdive cover, A Strange Day Cure cover, and all of Years Too Late. It took a while to fire it up and get things set up, but we were able to grab original mixes of the songs so we could remaster them and get the limiters and compression correct. The result is a much smoother balance of a song that feels a bit more how we intended for those songs to sound, epic and massive but pretty all at the same time.
Art & Liner Notes
We asked Oliver Ackerman of A Place To Bury Strangers and Death By Audio to write the forward for the tape. We knew Oliver at the very early days of the band forming, he would even sometimes drive up from Fredericksburg VA to run 16mm projectors for our shows and in so many ways helped us figure out how to navigate as a DIY band easier from booking more shows to teaching us how to silkscreen t-shirts. It made sense to see if he would write a few words for the tape.
The liner notes also capture all of the covers of the Alcian Blue EPs and all of the details about who did the art and formats for them. Other than Fall Behind and Years Too Late, all of the releases were done by burning CDRs and hand making the artwork ourselves (this was in the early days of CDRs). I was also able to pull a lot of photos together and we have posted even more on the alcian blue website.
Alcian Blue Collection – Release Details
AE018
Edition of 100 / 2xCS (c68 and c40) in Norelco brick packaging
Comes with digital download (Bandcamp)
Remastered and Designed by Jake Reid
With an essay by Oliver Ackerman (A Place to Bury Strangers / Death By Audio)
“Alcian Blue was one of the most incredible live bands that you probably never saw but if you had would have changed your life.” – Oliver Ackerman (A Place to Bury Strangers / Death By Audio)
ALCIAN BLUE never received the attention they deserved. Starting in 1998, a few years too late for the original wave of shoegaze and ending in 2006, a few years too early for the newer wave. I first witnessed them playing shows together with my band Unlucky Atlas and was immediately smitten with their intensity; loud, psychedelic, punishing pop owing as much to the Cure as Jesus and Mary Chain – but heavier. Live they flooded the stage with projections and the room with high decibels. Of course that they weren’t alone and along with their friends Skywave, (which formed Ceremony and A Place to Bury Strangers) they ushered in a period of intense noisy shoegaze. However, it was ALCIAN BLUE that made me think this kind of music still held vitality at that crucial point in time and could be simultaneously caustic and beautiful. (Terence)
Compiles five EPs: Fall Behind, Silvers Sleep Walk, Angelica Take Me Down, Translucent and Years Too Late