Beggars Archive

The Wonderful and Frightening Fall omnibus

The Fall are set to release a new album, Your Future Our Clutter on Domino Records in late April, so that gives a time frame for the Omnibus Editions of The Wonderful And Frightening World Of The Fall and This Nation’s Saving Grace – August / September feels about right.
The mastering of TWAFWOTF continues apace and we finally have the session and live material that’s licensed in from radio stations. An interesting contrast between the BBC who short-sightedly transferred their tape archive onto digital, so can only provide copy masters at CD quality and the Dutch station VPRO who still have their original analogue tapes so can supply high resolution 24bit / 96khz transfers which sound so much better. Not only that, they also kept tapes of the whole show and not just what was broadcast at the time. VPRO…2 BBC…0
So for Fall fans, here’s an exclusive peek at the track listing (provided it all fits onto the discs).

CD1 The Wonderful And Frightening World of The Fall
Lay Of The Land
2 By 4
Copped It
Elves
Slang King
Bug Day
Stephen Song
Craigness
Disney’s Dream Debased

CD2 Singles / Rough Mixes
Oh! Brother
God-Box
O! Brother
c.r.e.e.p.
Pat – Trip Dispenser
C.R.E.E.P.
New Fiend (2 By 4)
No Bulbs 3
Slang King 2
Draygo’s Guilt
Clear Off!
No Bulbs
Lay Of The Land (Rough Mix)
Pat – Trip Dispenser (Rough Mix)
New Fiend (Rough Mix)
Slang King (Edits Version 1)

CD3 BBC Sessions
Creep (BBC Peel session)
Pat – Trip Dispenser (BBC Peel session)
2 By 4 (BBC Peel session)
Words Of Expectation (BBC Peel session)
God Box (BBC Jensen session)
Lay Of The Land (BBC Jensen session)
Oh Brother (BBC Jensen session)
Creep (BBC Jensen session)
No Bulbs (BBC Long session)
Draygo’s Guilt (BBC Long session)
Stephen Song (BBC Long session)
Slang King (BBC Long session)
Copped It (BBC Saturday Live)
Elves (BBC Saturday Live)
Fortress / Marquis Cha Cha (BBC Saturday Live)

CD4 Live at Pandora’s Music Box Festival – VPRO Radio
Lay Of The Land
Craigness
2 By 4
Draygo’s Guilt
No Bulbs
Kicker Conspiracy
Stephen Song
Copped It
Pat – Trip Dispenser
Middle Mass

To finish off this visit to the Wonderful And Frightening archives, here’s a great interview with ‘friendly visitor’ Gavin Friday’ in The Quietus

Comment

1. hot nuts

   — peter · Tuesday March 9, 2010 · #

2. Wow. It looks amazing…….don’t keep us waiting until the Autumn!! June would be fine for a release date :)

   — Bo Dudek · Thursday March 11, 2010 · #

3. I don’t want the release to distract from The Fall’s new album (which evidently is excellent) as the present is more important than the past.

   — Back Cat · Thursday March 11, 2010 · #

4. good lad

   — peter · Friday March 12, 2010 · #

5. the fall gigography says they opened the vpro concert with ‘smile’. is that missing from the tape?

   http://www.visi.com/fall/gigography/gig84.html

   — peter · Tuesday March 16, 2010 · #

6. It is missing if it was ever there. The tape sounds like the start of a show (audience-wise) and feels like a full set (though short) so possibly the gigography is wrong

   — Back Cat · Wednesday March 17, 2010 · #

7. This is excellent news!

   However, what strikes me, is if the Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall attains a 4CD set release, it seems odd that the far more highly rated This Nation’s Saving Grace will get a 3CD set.

   Regarding the “lost” Bremen ’85 tapes, even those who care a lot about audio quality, like myself and “mjungblu” on The Fall forum, are very happy with the extremely high quality audio that circulates of this, and feel it deserves an official release.

   Fall fans are used to extremely variable sound quality – let’s face it, it’s part of MES/The Fall’s art!

   With respect while it’s interesting to read about tapes ‘above CD quality’ being sourced, it’s not the thing that pulls in most Fall fans, or even anyone who has even a passing interest in finding out what The Fall are about. Not that such efforts are appreciated….however leaving off such an amazing quality gig as Bremen – both in terms of its performance quality and sound quality, off a release of TSNG, is shooting yourselves in the foot, I reckon.

   Please reconsider, thanks!

   PS I’d send you a CD of Bremen if you need it, it sounds perfect!

   — Stranger · Monday March 29, 2010 · #

8. Aah Stranger – I’ve followed your posts on the forum and you create dilemmas (but in a good way). You’re probably right, the show is a good one and possibly the best quality recording of The Fall in 1985. However, your ‘perfect’ and mine are approached from different angles. As you say, MES fans have been given some very ropey recordings (sonically) as official releases by some of the, how shall we say it, less conscientious record labels. The boots of Bremen (I like the sound of that) do sound better than some those. However, I approach it from the opposite end and start with master tapes. The boots are a few generations removed from masters (1. FM broadcast / 2. home cassette recording / 3. who knows how many times the tapes were copied before being transferred to CDR). If Bremen radio hadn’t lost the tapes then I’m sure the disc would be included. However, there’s also the economic consideration that we have to legally license the recordings which would raise the price of the box. From the source material I don’t think our mastering would be able to produce a CD that’s significantly better than the one you have. While I wouldn’t condone such activity, you could always do the other forum members a big favour and share what you have with them… then they can add it to the box themselves.

   — Back Cat · Saturday April 3, 2010 · #

9. Any chance of a heads up as to the track listing for the TNSG box?

   — Bo Dudek · Wednesday May 5, 2010 · #

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