The Velvet Forum

Hiya, I'm writing to inform you'all of the imminent release of a new 2-CD edition of The End, the legendary 1974 album Nico recorded in her makeshift studio in the grotto of a 13th century monastery in northeast Bordeaux, while pregnant with the Devil's seventh son:

http://tinyurl.com/WeveGotTheGold

I understand that for the buyer of the 1,000,000th copy, Eno will come to that person's home to personally program his or her synthesizer to recreate his deranged sounds from the album. (Alas, the offer extends to owners of analog synths only.) My mother has pre-ordered three copies, to better her chances of winning this coveted prize. She added, "I'd have bought more, but I'm on a fixed income."

This is interesting... quite aside from the release itself, which looks great, we have a previously unreleased Das Lied Der Deutschen from June 1st, 1974. Now they've dug into the vaults for that one, wonder if the whole concert will follow?

Another interesting Nico release coming soon:

Nico ? Reims Cathedral ? December 13, 1974

1. Janitor Of Lunacy
2. The Falconer
3. Valley Of The Kings
4. The End
5. Abschied
6. Mutterlein
7. Frozen Warnings
8. You Forgot To Answer
9. We?ve Got The Gold
10. No One Is There
11. Ari?s Song


http://cleorecs.com/store/shop/nico-rei ... r-13-1974/

The End was the first Nico album I ever heard and it remains my favourite. Well - the first side is great, the second I could live without. Eno's musique concret synth work really puts the album into a league of its own. I think there should be a lot more gothic harmonium albums smothered with avant garde blocks of damaged noise. A LOT more.

schnittstelle wrote:Another interesting Nico release coming soon:

Nico ? Reims Cathedral ? December 13, 1974

1. Janitor Of Lunacy
2. The Falconer
3. Valley Of The Kings
4. The End
5. Abschied
6. Mutterlein
7. Frozen Warnings
8. You Forgot To Answer
9. We?ve Got The Gold
10. No One Is There
11. Ari?s Song


http://cleorecs.com/store/shop/nico-rei ... r-13-1974/

You can download this and 76 other Nico concerts at the Pink Robert Page: http://forum.pinkrobert.net/index.php?s ... 38199511b8

schnittstelle wrote:Another interesting Nico release coming soon:

Nico ? Reims Cathedral ? December 13, 1974

1. Janitor Of Lunacy
2. The Falconer
3. Valley Of The Kings
4. The End
5. Abschied
6. Mutterlein
7. Frozen Warnings
8. You Forgot To Answer
9. We?ve Got The Gold
10. No One Is There
11. Ari?s Song


http://cleorecs.com/store/shop/nico-rei ... r-13-1974/

Cleopatra sells a lot of recordings you can otherwise find free on torrent sites and elsewhere. Not a "bootleg company" in the traditional sense, as they have lots of bands on their label, but obviously take advantage of torrents.

EDIT: I just looked on our fave torrent site and saw this. How much you wanna bet the Cleo recording is derived from this? I guess a good way to tell would be to check the between-track transitions (read the comments below).

Nico
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims
Place du Cardinal-Luçon
Reims, France
December 13, 1974
Opening for Tangerine Dream

Compiled from a French FM radio broadcast *
and an audience recording ^
Sources combined where possible )(
Occasional editing was used to smooth tape pauses
and to remove all Francophone radio host commentary

1. Janitor of Lunacy (4:21) ^ )(
2. The Falconer (5:38) )(
3. Valley of the Kings (3:29) )(
4. The End (The Doors) (9:32) )(
5. Abschied (3:05) *
6. Mütterlein (4:26) ^
7. Frozen Warnings (4:44) ^
8. You Forget to Answer (4:49) ^
9. We?ve Got the Gold (4:50) ^
10. No One is There (4:04) ^
11. Ari?s Song (Encore) (3:09) ^

Basically I was given two rare recordings of this concert
and this is a compilation and a combined version
of both of these shows removing the French DJ commentary
that was present on the FM broadcast version.

The FM broadcast portion although from an official radio broadcast
and of much better quality, does not seem to accurately convey
the magnitude and ambience of this extraordinary venue,
which is amply evident in the audience version of this recording.
I found that by combining the two together, you get the best of both.
Unfortunately this was only possible for about 1/3 of the show
as the FM broadcast was quite short.

The audience recording was pitch matched to the FM Broadcast version,
which is very close to Nico's performance on the official June 1, 1974 CD.
The Indian harmonium she used was not a perfectly tuned instrument
and so digital analysis is not an accurate reference.

The audience portion aside from the pitch correction is untouched,
but the FM broadcast portion required some mid range compression
to reduce giant volume spikes in Nico's vocals.
There was a fair amount of hiss present as well that was removed
as this is more than compensated by the ambience of the audience
recording which had plenty of nice high end frequencies.
A widening of the stereo separation was also applied to match
the audience recording and because it sounded better in my opinion.

The first two minutes of Janitor of Lunacy is missing from the FM broadcast,
so it begins with only the audience recording.

The beginning few bars of Abschied was subbed from a show
at the Squat Theatre in 1980 to assist in the removal of the DJ dialogue.
Oddly this song was missing from the more complete audience recording,
likely due to a tape flip.

The remainder of the show is only the audience version and is
not present in the broadcast without dialogue on top.

Also of note is the rare encore of Ari's Song.
This may be the only recorded live performance of this
classic from the Marble Index record.

A number of liberties were taken to simulate transitions between tracks
as the audience taper shut his recorder off between every song.
Infinitely preferable to the jarring Francophone DJ interruptions.
If anyone has the pre-FM broadcast tapes, please contact me
and I would be thrilled to upgrade this further.

Thanks for the information Sunshine and MJG196! I had my doubts about the Cleopatra release (just looking at that cover artwork ) but I was hoping that they may have used a superior source for their release, like the pre-FM broadcast tape... Wishful thinking, I know.

Cleopatra Records is the label to be steer clear of. I've bought their QMS bootleg anthology box and found, to my amazement, that they managed to "remaster" the outtakes disc by cutting off everything below 11 kHz (the tape, freely available through torrents and the like, had just a modicum of hiss). Even the MP3 of the same release I've downloaded off the Web sounded better and had frequencies up to 15 kHz, how would this be possuble, you'd ask? Easy! first Cleopatra issued the proper version, and then they decided to "remaster" it, so the second batch sounds worse than MP3. The guy who shared an MP3 bought a first batch issue with proper quality; unlucky me bought the shite second batch - same barcode, same design, same everything except a tiny amendment in the tracklisting. They do not think twice about taking a quality tape and ruining it.

This february Cleopatra will release Reims Cathedral on vinyl with a matching (!) cover:

Er interesting artwork! Certainly eye catching - is that really a pic from Reims Cathedral from 74 in the background of the cover. Looks abit like Sterl from 66..