Its so weird that the Chipmunks thing is blowing up this week. Many thousands of kids discovered this themselves ages ago at home. In the 50 years that "band" has existed...shit, so many, especially earlier on. In the 60s most console stereos still had a 16 RPM setting on them for playing transcription discs, and EVERY kid f*cks with the speed on a turntable so...I guess only 90s kids and later would even think this was a thing to be discovered. That IS how it was recorded, btw, demonically. You'll recognize slowed down Alvin is the exact same voice as Dave, and the two other brothers are just hugely exaggeratedly dumb voices so that when sped up they could be distinguished.
I used to dub Chipmunks to my microcassete recorder which allowed for two speed play/record. I was interested in the audio engineerring side of things, how they recorded the music and such, but the demonic nature of the shit was plain.
f*ck, there was even a huge Paton Oswalt bit on this very subject some years back that was quite hilarious.
Talk about news cycles...
Anyway, currently listening to the 8x12 version of New Order's Music Complete.
I suppose the idea was to give us two versions of every song, in the style of great New Order singles of the past like Round and Round, Perfect Kiss, etc.
Back in the day, the 12" versions of these songs were the definitive version, and the "single" mix, which often was the same as the album, was seen as necessary for radio, videos, or containing the album to the running time of a single LP. These "extended" versions of songs are my favorite stuff from NO and something I've been missing since Technique. Giving them their own side of a 45RPM 12" also meant terrific sound quality. To me they weren't "extended", it was obvious the shorter ones were edited down. Once you became used to the 12" ver the 7" would sound abruptly truncated.
With the 8x12 version of Music Complete they basically did that with every song, if it needed it or not. Extended versions of Singularity or Restless I wanted from the minute I heard the single. Some of these other tracks though...yeah, not needed. Having heard the standard album about 50 times since it came out, I was really familiar with the short versions. I'm not sure how much that taints my bias but to me the extended versions sound...extended. I thought for sure that songs like Singularity and Unlearn This Hatred would have all sorts of cool outtakes restored like Round and Round or Run2 did but...not really. Only a few new elements, mostly breakdowns just last longer. I still prefer the longer version of all of these songs, but its not really a %100 success, IMO.
Packaging is insanely opulent. The box is hand sampled and embossed made from some paper only Peter Saville (no relation) can source, each disc gets its own translucent color wax and the standard 2LP is included as well. The odd side is etched in a decorative design that does nothing for me, but thats still cool. Black paper jackets with black poly liners...pure class, and the best.
Tony Wilson would be proud. Finally bloated box sets for washed up pop bands are being aimed at MY generation, dammit, I'm going to enjoy this cynical cash-in shit so f*ck off.
