Do you think the early 'private' releases really exist??

[superuser]

I've always been curious about how Piero Scaruffi

I wish he wouldn't exist

The brothers probably traded him mint copies of all the early releases in exchange for a bunch of minty, super rare Italo records

[circleofthesun]

Lol, some /mu/tants wanted to raid Scruffy's house and be like "WHERE'S THE TAPES, SKINNY BOY?!?"

[Yeah That's Right]

Haha. I still wholeheartedly believe Scaruffi has never actually heard the tapes. There's no reasonable situation in which he could have. He either mistook the fakes for the real thing, or he's lying.

[MindElevation]

Haha. I still wholeheartedly believe Scaruffi has never actually heard the tapes. There's no reasonable situation in which he could have. He either mistook the fakes for the real thing, or he's lying.

He is a clueless human being. BoC Maxima is apparently 20 "ambient tracks" according to this man.

[Yeah That's Right]

He is a clueless human being. BoC Maxima is apparently 20 "ambient tracks" according to this man.

Yeah, I honestly agree with almost nothing that scaruffi says in his reviews, nor his ratings of albums. He's praised nearly unreservedly on /mu/ but he's one of the last reviewers I'd look to for a reasonable opinion on music.

[zeoevil]

I've always been curious about how Piero Scaruffi, of all people, seems to know what the early releases sound like. He may be talking about mislabeled tracks shared on P2P networks, but the descriptions he gives here are cited on Bocpages.

What an incredibly weird article/review that is.

I think these reviews existed before p2p existed.

[Opothecary]

Yeah, those reviews were from long before P2P fakes were a thing, I remember reading them combined with the samples provided on the official website.

I think based off the official samples and interviews given where they describe what type of music they were making in their early years, its easy to guess which releases any given unidentified track from R35TT might be from based on the sound...I remember a track labelled Godever (14A from R35TT) surfacing on P2P on its own LONG before fakes were a thing and R35TT was a thing that existed. Yes, a song from R35TT was out in the ether a good 3 or 4 years before the rest of that tape materialized. I thought it was very intriguing. Some people might remember that, others might not.

Catalog 3 = ???
Acid Memories = the songs that have guitar, but aren't shoegaze. The dark goth-y stuff.
Closes Vol 1 = short, simple keyboardish songs. Think stuff that sounds like 14A.
Play By Numbers = Shoegaze
Hooper Bay = darker, but in Twoism's ballpark in terms of being a more fully formed sound

There is nothing on R35TT that really makes me think of Hooper Bay. We BASICALLY know Circle - and I buy into that live song being a probably slightly sexed up version of Noatak. Maybe it's that cool on the record, maybe not. I really think R35TT is specifically a blend of Acid Memories/Closes Vol 1/Play by Numbers/Old Tunes.

Maybe R35TT acclimated me to getting only the juicy bits of a song, as TH seems to like to do, as those tracks in a lot of cases are butchered to hell to presumably give us the best parts of the song and to hide their true length. Lots of stuff that comes in at exactly at 3:00 or 3:30, especially on side B where they are prefaced by shorter vignettes present on side A within the same track. I'm certain the compiler avoided anything that we had official samples of, live or from the old website.

R35TT is probably my favorite BoC topic, its the biggest enigma among a very enigmatic song catalog.

[zeoevil]

R35TT

For me, the fascination lies solely with who put it together and for what purpose. Was it the equivalent of the modern day mix tape? Was it a record company demo tape? Was it a club mix? A radio mix? What it is doesn't concern me so much as why it even exists.

[Opothecary]

R35TT

For me, the fascination lies solely with who put it together and for what purpose. Was it the equivalent of the modern day mix tape? Was it a record company demo tape? Was it a club mix? A radio mix? What it is doesn't concern me so much as why it even exists.

I still believe it was a thing that was compiled by someone close to the band (an old friend maybe) that wanted to come up with some compromise between being faithful to the Sandisons and also providing a hungry fanbase with some more worthwhile material. The whole thing is so slipshod, songs cut off at odd times, songs from side A repeated on side B, but paired with longer songs within the same track. Maxima and both Old Tunes have both surfaced more than once, but R35TT has been conspicuously absent.

14A is specifically what made me a believer. Sure, anyone could have taken that song from P2P and slapped it on that tape with everything else...but there's some many other small things, like Seven Forty Seven coming out later using samples from this, bits found in Aquarius (Version 3)...I think everyone has their gotcha moment with this tape that makes them a believer.

[Techboy]

Yeah, those reviews were from long before P2P fakes were a thing, I remember reading them combined with the samples provided on the official website.

I think based off the official samples and interviews given where they describe what type of music they were making in their early years, its easy to guess which releases any given unidentified track from R35TT might be from based on the sound...I remember a track labelled Godever (14A from R35TT) surfacing on P2P on its own LONG before fakes were a thing and R35TT was a thing that existed. Yes, a song from R35TT was out in the ether a good 3 or 4 years before the rest of that tape materialized. I thought it was very intriguing. Some people might remember that, others might not.

Catalog 3 = ???
Acid Memories = the songs that have guitar, but aren't shoegaze. The dark goth-y stuff.
Closes Vol 1 = short, simple keyboardish songs. Think stuff that sounds like 14A.
Play By Numbers = Shoegaze
Hooper Bay = darker, but in Twoism's ballpark in terms of being a more fully formed sound

There is nothing on R35TT that really makes me think of Hooper Bay. We BASICALLY know Circle - and I buy into that live song being a probably slightly sexed up version of Noatak. Maybe it's that cool on the record, maybe not. I really think R35TT is specifically a blend of Acid Memories/Closes Vol 1/Play by Numbers/Old Tunes.

Maybe R35TT acclimated me to getting only the juicy bits of a song, as TH seems to like to do, as those tracks in a lot of cases are butchered to hell to presumably give us the best parts of the song and to hide their true length. Lots of stuff that comes in at exactly at 3:00 or 3:30, especially on side B where they are prefaced by shorter vignettes present on side A within the same track. I'm certain the compiler avoided anything that we had official samples of, live or from the old website.

R35TT is probably my favorite BoC topic, its the biggest enigma among a very enigmatic song catalog.

Very interesting. I am also pretty fascinated with R35TT. I buy the Godever thing. Would be interested to hear that original Godever mp3 to see if you can hear Tattoo'd coming in at the end during the fade out haha. Almost no chance of sourcing that though, not after this long.

[plazz]

Yeah, those reviews were from long before P2P fakes were a thing, I remember reading them combined with the samples provided on the official website.

The Scaruffi reviews were published later than I thought (after Geogaddi), it was sometime between February and June 2002.

[Techboy]

bits found in Aquarius (Version 3)

jesus christ! I was listening to this like, a week ago, all like "where the hell do I recognise that vocal sample from!" You can even hear a little bit of the "underwater"-y synth sound that does a little noodle at the end of it! God I forgot how much I love some of these tracks.

[Opothecary]

Very interesting. I am also pretty fascinated with R35TT. I buy the Godever thing. Would be interested to hear that original Godever mp3 to see if you can hear Tattoo'd coming in at the end during the fade out haha. Almost no chance of sourcing that though, not after this long.

Some hoarder somewhere must have it. I wish I'd held onto it, but that was a solid 2 PCs ago, and there was no point in holding onto it once R35TT came out...

The Scaruffi reviews were published later than I thought (after Geogaddi), it was sometime between February and June 2002.

It seemed way earlier than that. I just remember being way intrigued by this stuff circa 1998/1999 once I'd tracked down rips of Twoism/Hi Scores on Napster! It was a serious case of blue balls that only partly went away when R35TT happened. That sounds kind of "that's how old school I am!" but that's not really my intention. Can you imagine a time where even Maxima wasn't a thing? I remember Twoism being reissued with a statement that Warp had purchased their entire back catalog and the speculation being "okay, so they're going to put out one of these old releases every year, 5 years seems like a long time to get all that stuff, but everyone will be happy, right???"

Here we are now, sometimes being a fan is frustrating

[plazz]

The Scaruffi reviews were published later than I thought (after Geogaddi), it was sometime between February and June 2002.

It seemed way earlier than that.

Yeah I always thought he had heard these tapes before they signed to Warp. I can't believe he somehow heard a copy of the tapes as recently as 2002. From reading the February '02 version of the site, it seems he wasn't even aware they existed at that stage.

[Opothecary]

The Scaruffi reviews were published later than I thought (after Geogaddi), it was sometime between February and June 2002.

It seemed way earlier than that.

Yeah I always thought he had heard these tapes before they signed to Warp. I can't believe he somehow heard a copy of the tapes as recently as 2002. From reading the February '02 version of the site, it seems he wasn't even aware they existed at that stage.

I am truthfully a little skeptical that he ever heard that stuff, but who knows. The descriptions seem vague, as if they were extrapolated from hearing the known samples from the releases. Even then, this stuff was like the dead sea scrolls, you'd think some real details were in order.

[plazz]

It seemed way earlier than that.

Yeah I always thought he had heard these tapes before they signed to Warp. I can't believe he somehow heard a copy of the tapes as recently as 2002. From reading the February '02 version of the site, it seems he wasn't even aware they existed at that stage.

I am truthfully a little skeptical that he ever heard that stuff, but who knows. The descriptions seem vague, as if they were extrapolated from hearing the known samples from the releases. Even then, this stuff was like the dead sea scrolls, you'd think some real details were in order.

I'm the same.

According to the pressings numbers listed on the website, there should be at least 500 copies of these floating around, most recent pressing was a batch of CDs made just a year before MHTRTC. Find it hard to believe that not one copy has ever surfaced online (I don't think anyone has ever even claimed to have one).

And yet the Old Tunes tapes (of which surely far less copies were made, and sent to Planet Mu etc as demos) managed to leak when they were never even known to exist in the first place.

[In_The_Annexe]

I do find it interesting that people wouldn't want to hear their early releases.

It's actually some really great material.

[Opothecary]

I'm the same.

According to the pressings numbers listed on the website, there should be at least 500 copies of these floating around, most recent pressing was a batch of CDs made just a year before MHTRTC. Find it hard to believe that not one copy has ever surfaced online (I don't think anyone has ever even claimed to have one).

And yet the Old Tunes tapes (of which surely far less copies were made, and sent to Planet Mu etc as demos) managed to leak when they were never even known to exist in the first place.

It is strange, but telling that at one point, the seller of those tapes said (paraphrasing) "we have more unreleased material, but since these particular tapes are already out in the wild, we're not creating a new problem"

[Techboy]

Possible OTV1 track names, based on track lengths, if they are taken from the old albums:

Side A
Audiotrack 01: Focus on the Spiral (overlap with next track makes it the same length)
Audiotrack 04: Close1
Audiotrack 06: Growing Hand
Audiotrack 08: Drone 18
Audiotrack 09: Godever
Audiotrack 10: Close3

Side B
Audiotrack 01: Focus on the Spiral
Audiotrack 06: Close3
Audiotrack 08: Remmy Kid
Audiotrack 10: Treeline
Audiotrack 14: Trillions
Audiotrack 16: Powerline
Audiotrack 20: Close3

From an old thread.
I personally can imagine 04A being close1 and 20B being Close3 beacuse they are both similarly "silly" little ditties!

[In_The_Annexe]

should have just asked Mike and Marcus during that interview. It's actually been quite controversial. It'd be nice to have some light shed on it.