Shellac - Extraneous Material (1993-2000)
Singer/guitarist/recording engineer (he hates the term "Producer") Steve Albini (of Big Black and Rapeman infamy) formed Shellac with drummer Todd Trainer (Rifle Sport and Brick Layer Cake) and bassist/engineer Bob Weston (Volcano Suns) in 1992. Shellac has an angular minimalist rock sound that, while vaguely reminiscent of Big Black, is totally unique. Albini's incisive lyrics are delivered in a vocal style that ranges between deadpan narrative and temper-tantrum hysteria. Steve Albini is an industry saavy analogue technician that owns his own studio (Electrical Audio) and works only on his terms. Check out his eye-opening critical essay on the music biz, "The Problem with Music" here.
Shellac are the type of band to release exclusive tracks on vinyl 45s that never appear (or appear in different form) on later album releases. There are also numerous exclusive compilation appearances. For all the members of Shellac, the band is a permanent side-project that only releases material when they see fit. On the occasion of their new album Excellent Italian Greyhound, their first official release in seven years, I thought it would be cool to compile all of these rare out-of-print non-album tracks together. The title Extranous Material just sort of popped into my head while I was trying to think of a title that wasn't totally lame.
While I have their early 7" singles, I never ripped them while I still had a turntable. This complete collection has literally taken me years to put together, pulling tracks that I've gathered from eMule, Soulseek, bittorrent bulletin boards and other full-album music blogs. I've downloaded several different encodes of every track, compared them and kept the versions with the best sound quality. Sometimes the best sounding version isn't the highest bitrate version, but so be it. For the BBC Radio One Peel Sessions and "Copper Song," I lucked out and found lossless versions that I encoded myself with LAME 3.97 (--preset fast extreme). The sound quality varies; most of it sounds very good to excellent and nothing really sounds bad. I added record label info to the Copyright tags and release info to the Comment tags. I also manually corrected the volume of each track using MP3Gain so that the songs play at roughly the same volume. As a final step, I also double-checked the actual record labels for exact song title information using the various scans over at Discogs.com.
Which reminds me, I'm especially proud of the cover I created for this compilation. Starting with a scan of the Uranus single, I used my "mad Photoshop skillz" to clean up the borders, remove specks, recenter the band's name, remove the stamped-on Uranus lettering and add the compilation title, matching the look of the original typeface. I'm pretty happy with how it came out. For more infomation on each of the original releases, including the fascinating story behind the Futurist single, take a peek at the excellent Action Park Shellac Discography.
Check out an unofficial fan-made music video for the album version of "Copper Song":
Shellac - Extraneous Material (1993-2000)
From The Rude Gesture (A Pictorial History) 7" [Shellac Record #1] (1993):
1. The Guy Who Invented Fire (1:37)
2. Rambler Song (2:39)
3. Billiard Player Song (3:42)
From Uranus 7" [Shellac Record #2] (1993):
4. Doris (3:10)
5. Wingwalker (5:00)
From The Bird Is the Most Popular Finger 7" [Shellac Record #3] (1994):
6. The Admiral (2:34)
7. XVI (3:41)
BBC Radio One Peel Session (Maide Vale Studios, London) (July 22, 1994):
8. Spoke (2:04)
9. Canada (2:27)
10. Crow (4:43)
11. Disgrace (2:20)
From Billiardspielerlied 7" [Shellac Record #6] (1995):
12. Billiardspielerlied (5:32)
13. Mantel (1:17)
From Ground Rule Double 2xLP Compilation (1995):
14. Copper Song (1:54)
From Sides 1-4 2x7" AC/DC Tribute Compilation [Shellac Record #7] (1996):
15. '95 Jailbreak (4:25)
From The Lounge Ax Defense & Relocation CD Compilation (1996):
16. Killers (1:25)
From Soul Sound 7" Split Release w/Mule [Shellac Record #8] (1997):
17. The Rambler Song (2:55)
From Futurist 12" (Originally Recorded for La La La Human Steps, Montreal - Recorded in Chicago & Angers, 1995) [Shellac Record #9] (1997):
18. Futurist Side 1 (14:12)
19. Futurist Side 2 (13:20)
From Agostino/The Safeword 7" Split Single w/Caesar from Barbara Stock's Sex, Drugs & Strips Comic Book [Shellac Record #12] (2000):
20. Agostino (2:26)
124.44MB RAR archive
MP3: Constant & Variable bitrate (213.2kbps average)
DOWNLOAD
Password: p-l-m.blogspot.com
38 comments:
Thank you. I've got about half these songs, but now my collection is complete
Kevin, I'm grabbing this specifically because of the cover art you created! Hopefully I'll find something great to listen to as well... Keep up the great posts!!
why am i having password trouble....i sooooooo need these amazing tunes...and the chris haskett too...i feel like im doing something wrong...how tough is it to type a password and im fuckin it up apparently
I never type passwords, I always highlight, copy and paste them. Maybe it's the program you're using to extract. Are you using WinRAR or 7-Zip?
tnx for this real gem
WOW!!!! Thank you!
Hi kevin sartori :) Just wanted to let you know i found the soundtrack to Children Shouldnt Play With Dead Things that you went through the trouble of trying to find for me a month or two ago. Its at the Soundtrack Rarities blog at the bottom of the comments section at:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=38298174&postID=6650353688292296116
Thanks :)
Smashing idea, this collection is. Shellac's numerous rarities are all but impossible to track down - especially The Futurist.
Danke, friend. Fantastic job!
Crappola this is AWESOME!!!!!!!
Thanks soooooo much.
yessssssssssssssssssssss.
Well, thanks! But who's crappola?
Thanks for compiling this album. I was working on something similar but you beat me to the punch!
thanks very much!
Christ, you saved me so much time.
After losing all my music when my HD crapped out on me, I just got virtually everything by Shellac in just an hour, with special thanks for the rare stuff to you, for this really great collection, and also lucidmedia, http://lucidmedia.blogspot.com which has some really great Rapeman and Shellac rarities. Check it out.
Just wanted to add I finished the d/l and checked it all out... I gotta say this is fantastic, I really appreciate that you're sharing this with all of us.
Many thanks indeed. Much appreciated. -- Murf
Thank you Kevin Sartori for sharing it, it is absolutely awesome. Being in greece I would never be able to find half of this stuff. In two weeks Shellac will be playing here, I just can't wait. Thank you.
Awesome, thanks a million. Now if I could find the 11 Oven demo tracks.
a huge thank! that's f****ing great!
Thank you so much! What all cool Shellac fans have been trying to do for 10 years :)
Check out some nice metal whose one major influence is Shellac:
www.myspace.com/thegirlthing
cool thanks you very much..
Thanks for this. Like others here, I already had some of this but not all, & hadn't gotten around to digitizing most of it. So thanks.
Haven't started listening yet, it's late Sunday morning and someone's still asleep, but WinRAR allows password entry and I've used it in the past, looks like I got everything. Ah, the sabbath.
as an old fan who had this stuff on tapes back in the day this is incredible...I've gotten by with their albums (which I've always purchased) but I needed to hear these tunes again...thanks!
Thanks for this. I own all of the early vinyl anyway & zapped the Peel sesh when it was originally broadcast over here but those comp tracks & ESPECIALLY (phew!) The Futurist have eluded me 'til now. Much appreciated, old bean!
I think it's totally fucked that assholes who claim to be fans of music put it up for free on the net when they have absolutely no right to someone else intellectual property.
I'm probably wasting my time commenting, but I only post music on this blog that is OUT OF PRINT. Meaning you can't buy it. Besides, I don't pretend to own the rights to this intellectual property. In fact, at the top-right of my blog, there is a message there that explains my position and I'll gladly take anything down if I'm just asked by the appropriate party.
But let me get this straight. If you're a fan and you'd like to hear this music, then I guess, in your opinion, you're SOL. Unless you try to find it used. Which provides absolutely nothing financially to the original label or musicians.
I provide a service here. I provide a way for folks to hear music that is no longer available commercially. For free. I put a tremendous amount of time and effort into this blog and I don't make a penny. If something I've posted gets reissued, I take it down. Period.
So get off your soapbox and explain to me how what I'm doing here is wrong or morally bankrupt or whatever.
Besides that, why are you trolling full-album music blogs if you're not looking for free music to download?
solid post
hey! i was super psyched to find this, but every time i try to expand the .rar i get an error message that says "An error has occurred while expanding the file "Shellac-ExMat-PLM.rar" (Format Error)", then Error # 17540. Arggh. Any suggestions? thanks!
I did a quick Google search of "Error # 17540" and it seems that this is a StuffIt error. Did you read the big red Please Read This First section at the top of the page?
;)
If you're on Mac, you need to install UnRarX.
i did now, and worked like a charm. thanks a million!
thank you i used to have these early singles but they are long gone. i always thought it was some of their best stuff.
Shellac at "le bataclan" Paris ! Good sound !!!
For part 1 :
http://www.mediafire.com/?8zmedmdq3iz
and for part 2 :
http://www.mediafire.com/?9y0ye9leuzg
And thanx a lot for what you've done there !
For 2 others lives see there :
http://www.eggcityradio.com/?p=219#comment-1404
It was really hard to find, but...
Yeah ! It's done... and so good !!!
Shellac rules, man !!!
thank you so much for the compilation!
thanks for making this music available, its much appreciated
some of this- like the rude gesture and dori/wingwalker 7"s, is some of shellacs best stuff, i think. used to have a lot of this on vinyl but now it's gone. thanks so much- i feel whole again!
Very odd - when I attempt to extract the archive all goes well apart from tracks 7 and 18. This produces the error "wrong password?"
Full error:! D:\_downloads\Music\Shellac-ExMat-PLM.rar: CRC failed in the encrypted file Shellac - Extraneous Material (1993-2000)\18)Futurist Side 1.mp3 (wrong password ?)
What program are you using to extract with? 'Course, maybe the download was corrupt. If you're already using 7zip or UnRarX, try re-downloading. If that doesn't work, let me know!
Hi,
Thanks for this. I have most of the original shellac stuff on vinyl but I don't have a record player at the moment. Until Albini decides on a deluxe edition reissue campaign this may be my only chance to hear this stuff.
Excellent
drphunk
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