Stereolab Emperor Tomato Ketchup 2x Vinyl LP Record Expanded Edition 2019 NEW M

$

35

New expanded reissue circa 2019. Download card included but not guaranteed to work (some companies stopped supporting downloads)

Unplayed mint condition!

Mastering notes

This series of re-issues were mastered from the original 1/2" tapes at Calyx Mastering, Berlin.

As [Stereolab] started the project it became obvious that most of the tapes were showing signs of deterioration and some of the earliest ones were already at an advanced stage of decay and were actively shredding. They would need to be baked. Baking is not done to improve the quality of the sound and can lead to some softening and loss of fine detail but the process was necessary to preserve the contents of the tape long enough to transfer the tracks. Great care was taken during the baking of the tapes.

The earliest tapes would not have been able to withstand the stress put on them by a normal tape machine set up, with its high tension mechanism and multi head configuration, plus [the] 1/2" tapes needed to run at 30 inches per second - this increased tension and would have most likely snapped the tape.

As a solution Bo decided to commission a bespoke tape block which consisted of a single playback head and a simple, no tension tape guide. This allowed the tape to be simply held in place as it passed over the single head.

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Demos

The demos were all recorded onto a Foster X-15 4-track cassette recorder - mainly using a DI'd Fender Jaguar guitar and a microphone for Laetitia's vocals. Sometimes [Tim Gane] would use a keyboard too.

The demos were mixed onto 1/2 " tape using some analogue EQ, compression / limiting and a spring reverb.

These demos were just working material to play to the band at the rehearsals or in the studio to show the rough structure of the song. As they were not meant for public release not much care was taken in the presentation, just something to show the general idea and for [Tim Gane] and Laetitia to get the parts down on tape so [they] wouldn't forget them.

Every so often Mary would come over to the house and record a vocal or two but as the songs were normally knocked out pretty quick, and [they] didn't live that close together, Mary doesn't feature on most of the demos.

The demos from around Emperor Tomato Ketchup are still generally representative of the final recorded versions except for the tracks with Moog chords which are played on guitar here. [Stereolab] still rehearsed some of the songs before recording them but not many. On later albums the demos and the final recorded versions would take different paths and vary quite a bit more.

Throughout all the LP's recorded up to Margerine Eclipse the demos were recorded to cassette tape. The interpretations, once [Stereolab] ditched rehearsing before recording, changed enormously.