Back in the days when I relied on my trusty old vinyl record player, chunky tape decks and absolutely unreliable CD player to provide music it was an absolute distraction to continually have to change up the music as I was doing other things like working, cooking, doing some sketchy DIY work or in the middle of unimportant conversations. Where’s the DJ? The record is now over! Seven inches were even more of a distraction as within five minutes of choosing the record and placing it on the turntable you’re having to flip the thing and then in another five minutes you’re having to choose another record.
The irony of the situation is that I love these formats and when you’re focused on the sole intention of listening to music it’s a fantastic experience but when you’re working it’s cumbersome. Moving into the naughties mp3 players flooded in and provided a playback format that was suitable to listening to music while doing other things. Heck, you could even have the software DJ the music for you in a mode called “Shuffle” where by some software algorhythm (sic) songs are chosen for you. Often interesting and sometimes embarassing, the “shuffle” mode could go on for hours choosing tracks from your collection of mp3s.
Recently I was rolling out the shuffle mode when doing some work and a track called “Towers Above You” came on. It was an outtake that was never used from the last Radio Berlin full length, Glass (2003). At the time I remember actively voicing not putting this track on the record; I think mainly because I wasn’t so into my vocal delivery. Listening to it now had seven years of distance from it and it’s a nice synth-y post-punk dance track and pretty good for a rough mix. There’s some sort of meandering epic bridge and I seem to remember the main lead line at the beginning a musical nod to the Death In June track “Last Farewell”.
Cueing from that I listened to another outtake called “The Nation” from the previous album called The Selection Drone (2001). This was a track mainly penned by our then drummer, Josh Wells. Again I think this one faced resistance from me due to not being sure about the vocal performance. This one was a rough mix as well and listening to it now has some cool chord progressions and subtle time signature changes.
I’m posting these tracks here for some people and friends that I know that might be interested in hearing these as they’ve been buried in my digital archives for years. Here’s links to these tracks with information here.
RADIO BERLIN
“Towers Above You”
Outtake from GLASS (2003)
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RADIO BERLIN
“The Nation”
Outtake from THE SELECTION DRONE (2001)
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P.S. : If anyone out there has a digitized version of the track “The Connection” released on a split 7″ with Kid Commando back in 1999/2000 let me know as I haven’t heard that track since it was released and I remember it being a decent track…
Well, here’s a little mini-series that I’ve started in this little corner of online space for both of you that might be interested. Stashed away on the dustier parts of the several hard drives that I own lay dorment older musical excursions that never made it public. As I was moving items from shelf to shelf I became re-acquainted with the first Primes “s/t” album. This was the first phase of the group in it’s more trashy, distorted, electro-punk phase. Upon listening to the record again only recently a lot of the tracks aren’t as lo-fi as I had them as memorized in my head, especially in today’s musical climate where more and more lo-fi and unorthodox recording techniques are becoming more of the norm, especially as far as electronic music is concerned.
