15 months ago, Grant who runs the DIY label Bitter Melody took it upon himself to reissue Indecision's seminal 1996 LP 'Unorthodox'. If that wasn't enough, when he learnt that the album was never actually mastered, he set about putting that right and having it remastered from the original DAT tapes of the recordings. All of that sounds to me like it would probably be difficult enough, let alone the fact that he started to discover that no DAT tapes could be found, and that not even an original file of the artwork could be located to work from. But, eventually he pulled all the pieces together so here it is, and it's brilliant.
There were three pressings, I grabbed the most limited two (and yes, now I wish I'd have just got all three). Firstly, a small run of 150 on 180g black vinyl. These come with an alternate screen printed outer sleeve, hand numbered. I got a nice low number, 32.
The standard cover is the same as the original, but with a 'Remastered' badge at the top.
The A4 insert inside tells how, without any original art files to go off, Grant had a photographer take pictures of his original LP, and then edit and touch them up to be reproduced for this re-issue. That, I genuinely find amazing.
There is an etching on the vinyl of the famous "For those I love..." lyric, but my camera couldn't handle the obviously mammoth task of producing a decent photo of that, so I gave up.
Bizarrely / unexpectedly / brilliantly , the Screenprinted covers are printed on the back of an opened up sleeve for Most Precious Blood's 'Merciless' LP. If you didn't know already, MPB were formed from the ashes of Indecision. It really doesn't get much more DIY than that.
I also picked up the pressing on a kinda of clear red / black smoky mix. Limited to 248 copies.
The remaster (master) sounds great. This came with a download code so I spent the next day while driving to site with this raging in my car. The original has a cool, sort of tinny, scratchy quality which was never really an issue but this has been subtly beefed up in all the right ways. I'm not enough of an audiophile to use proper words to describe it, but I'd say 'heavy as fuck'. There's a quote.
Cool to see this, although I feel no desire whatesoever to own it. I'm happy with the pink vinyl copy I picked up when it first came out, complete with all manner of stickers and posters and (I think) Star Wars trading cards.
ReplyDeletethis so fucking awesome mine is 14/150.and i am glad that there are people out there still giving a fuck about real hc.
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