Showing posts with label Matador. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matador. Show all posts

Year Of The Pig

(US, UK & Japan 7" versions)



Punish the products but not the machine...
Sleeve - Front (US Version)
Sleeve - Back (US Version)
Vinyl:
All versions have WYR? labels on 'A' Side & Matador labels on 'B' Side

Insert - Front:
L-R: US, Japan & UK versions.
UK & US versions on white paper; Japan version (centre) on off-white paper.

Insert - Back:
L-R: US, Japan & UK versions have respective lyrics on back.
(See below for Ring image)




Stats - US Version:

Tracks:
Year of The Pig B/W Mustaa Lunta
Released: 2008
Label: Matador Records & What's Your Rupture OLE 831-7
Matrix A: OLE 831-7-A
Matrix B: OLE 831-7-B Salt
Pressing Info: (TBC)
Inserts: Image of farmer and pigs, with lyrics on reverse
Variants: No (known) variants


Stats - UK Version:

Tracks: Year of The Pig B/W Anorak City
Released: 2008
Label: Matador Records & What's Your Rupture OLE 830-7
Matrix A: OLE 830-7-A
Matrix B: OLE 830-7-B Salt
Pressing Info: (TBC)
Inserts: Image of farmer and pigs, with lyrics on reverse
Variants: No (known) variants


Stats - Japan Version:

Tracks: Year of The Pig B/W For My Friends
Released: 2008
Label: Matador Records & What's Your Rupture OLE 828-7
Matrix A: OLE 828-7-A
Matrix B: OLE 828-7-B Salt
Pressing Info: (TBC)
Inserts: Image of farmer and pigs, with lyrics on reverse
Variants: No (known) variants


UK & Japan Sleeves:

Sleeve - Front (UK Version)

Sleeve - Back (UK Version)

Sleeve - Front (Japan Version)
Sleeve - Back (Japan Version)




Notes:

Mixtape 4 Side B (Damian discussing lyrical themes - starts at 09.20):
We wrote it about soda pop and chips

General:
Whilst these are grouped together, they are actually three different records, each has a regionally specific edit of the title track and each has a unique 'B' side

(Cropped From) Announcement on LFG (July 22 2008):

Years of the Pig
In case you are confused:

US version: The aside is "Year of the Pig" edited by Eric Boucek, and a bside called "Mustaa Lunta" that G Beat wrote and recorded, and is very punk.







UK version: The Aside features an edit of YOTP by the prodigious Carlos Hernandez, and the bside features our cover of "Anorak City" by the great Another Sunny Day.






JAPANESE version: Features an edit of YOTP by Corona, anda bside called "For My Friends", which is a cover of the band Castlemusic, whose singer, you may recall, is the same Jennifer Castle, that does lead vocal on Year of the Pig.






COMPACT DISK version: Compiles not only all these 7" singles, but also the original 12" release, and its own bside ("The Black Hats"):

It is our belief that the bulk of each release will stay within its territory; it however, is also our belief that the effort must match the reward, in so much as the spoils are for the enterprising. It is unclear at the moment how many copies there are of each release. What is known is that 250 copies of the Japanese 7" currently reside in Barcelona, Spain.



Sleeve Notes:

The Three Little Pigs (From Wikipedia):
The Three Little Pigs is a fable featuring anthropomorphic pigs who build three houses of different materials. A big bad wolf is able to blow down the first two pigs' houses, made of straw and wood respectively, but is unable to destroy the third pig's house, made of bricks. Printed versions date back to the 1840s, but the story itself is thought to be much older. The phrases used in the story, and the various morals that can be drawn from it, have become embedded in Western culture.

The three little pigs leave their mother and go off to build three little houses...
They defeat the big bad wolf (a generic archetype of a menacing predatory antagonist) and live happily ever after...
In real life, things don't always work out the same as the fairy tales. This photo shows men taking a rest from hauling  the weight of  three pig carcasses.


The Rhinemaidens & Alberich

Illustration for Richard Wagner's ''The Ring'' by Arthur Rackham
The illustration shows the three Rhinemaidens, the ring and the two dwarves, Mime and Alberich

From Walkürepedia
In the opening of the Ring Cycle, Alberich is mocked by the Rhinemaidens for his futile attempts to catch them. He steals the Rhine gold from the Rhinemaidens, and renounces love so he can craft from it a ring to rule a world. With the ring Alberich takes control of the Nibelungs and forces them to mine gold for him. He plans to eventually enslave the world with his army and force women to sate his lust



Commodity Fetishism

YOTP Test Pressings:
Something odd about the one on the left - ''The Black Hats'' was the 'B' side to the 12"...


''Daytrotter''


Sleeve - Front (Generic version)
Sleeve - Back (Generic version)
Vinyl - 'A' & 'B' Sides (All versions)
Insert - Front & Back (All versions)



Stats:
General:
Tracks: Magic Word / David Comes To Life B/W Crooked Head
Released: 2010
Label: Matador Records OLE 931-7
Matrix A: OLE 931-A GOLDEN
Matrix B: OLE 931-B GOLDEN

Pressing Info:
Generic Sleeve: 1000 (TBC)
Mispress: Unkown
Tribute sleeve: 100 of each sleeve (TBC)

Inserts: All versions have 'regular' insert - see above.

Variants:
Generic sleeve
Mispress (as above, but has B-Side labels on both sides of disk)
Tribute sleeves - ten different sleeves, each dedicated to a different a record shop



Sleeve Variants:
Ten tribute sleeves were issued for Record Store Day, the titles and artwork relate to different record stores (see notes below). The generic version has a 'pocket' sleeve, the tribute sleeves are 'fold-out' and most have a picture of the store on the back panel and a 'happening', or detail on the front; the ten sleeves are pictured 'folded out' below:













Notes:

Cropped from ''Couple Tracks inlay / insert:

Magic Word: Daytrotter is a cool little studio in the west part of Illinois...  You get in there for a session and instead of using your own gear, you use these crazy 1950's amps from Sears and mutron pedals. For our session we switched all instruments and changed arrangements on the spot.. This song turned into something you might hear on a steamship in the industrial revolution, if you know what I'm saying...

David Comes To Life: Wow, we did a disco version of David Comes To Life (kind of). Like ''Magic Word'' we basically made this song up on the spot, because we are irreverent when it comes to our non-paying show musical obligations... Damian is using an effects pedal on his voice from the future that hasn't been invented yet.



Record Store Day Announcement on LFG (Feb 07 2010):

Fucked Up's history with vinyl is long and celebrated (by us). Every time we do an interview, one of the first questions (still) is about the amount of 7"'s we've done (more than 35). We created the band out of a devotion to collecting rare punk aesthetics. Damian and Jonah still finesse their record collections like sports cars. While some of us have moved on to an extent (my Sunday so far: Chelsea vs Arsenal, Fiorentina vs Roma, Penguins vs Capitals, Canadiens vs Bruins, Saints vs Colts), Fucked Up and Records will probably also be somewhat entangled.

Record stores are a big part of why we are a band at all. When we were all younger kids, we used to treat the few cool record stores in Toronto like they were libraries. We all started our record collections at Full Blast, started to go to Rotate This when we could tolerate "non-punk" records being in the same room as Assuck 12"'s, all started working at Who's Emma a while later, and finally started going to Ric's Collectibles in the near-suburbs when we got too jaded to deal with the back rooms and behind the counter areas where the rare stuff had started to migrate. We started to make friends and enemies on the scene in attempts to score stuff. You'd call up your friend if you found something they were looking for, and you'd try to fill up your bag if there was stuff you knew someone who had punked you was looking for. On boxing day you'd see everyone you knew on the bus trying to get to every store in the city looking for stuff half off.

Record collecting is already so close to those dismal and dark solitary pleasures, the secret obsession you keep in your basement away from your visitors, if you ever get any. When that documentary "Vinyl" came out, we all got shocked a bit. Collection records can easily turn into a depressing lonely quest. It's record stores that help to legitimize it as somewhat of a social activity. Even though its kind of like having an AA meeting at a liqour store, at least in a store you're out an about, the owner is your friend, you'll maybe get a deal. Better that than going through the 19th page on your "kbd" ebay search at 4 in the morning on a Saturday.

Somehow we've never participated in Record Store Day before. We've done lots of instores all over the world, and have had to stop at stores to shop in probably every record store in the free world. This year we decided to do something special for RSD, because we think it's important. This April you'll be able to leave your house and go to a record store and get this cool record. We decided to use our 7" as a tribute to a bunch of cool stores in the US. Ten stores will each be featured with their own cover artwork, using pictures that they sent in to us. The 7" is just gonna be the two daytrotter songs from couple tracks, plus one that isn't on the CD ("Crooked Head").















''Couple Tracks''

Anthems that should have toppled Kings, now preserved in collections of precious things...


Sleeve - Front
Sleeve - Back:
Band shot pre Ben Cook & Ben Sherman 

Vinyl




Stats:

General:
Tracks: Couple Tracks B/W HeirApparent
Released: 2009
Label: Matador Records OLE 925-7
Matrix A: OLE 925-A GOLDEN
Matrix B: OLE 925-B GOLDEN


Pressing Info:
First pressing 2500 on December 11, 2009.
Second pressing 250 on April 6, 2010


Inserts: No regular insert


Variants: 
  • The first pressing has the labels and matrices on the 'wrong' sides of the vinyl. It is unclear if the labels were corrected for the second press... TBC.
  • A 'one off' sleeve was made as prize for a competition - see notes below. Several pictures on this site have been cropped from Steve Witsels winning collection



Notes:

Initially came free with pre-order of album of same name (and same sleeve image). Note on reverse of sleeve states: 'This 7" is not available for individual sale'. Subsequently available for individual sale via band webstore and on tour.


From Mixtape 4 Side A Notes:
8) “Heir Apparent” - From the Couple Tracks 7” single

This song is about Holden, Damian's young son. I'm not sure how many people actually got a copy of this single, because it was designed and executed strategically as a marketing tool, released in tandem with our second singles collection album, with which it shares its name. For some reason this song made it regularly into the set list throughout 2010 and 2011. It is a “sweet little ditty” and resides purely on the “ripped off the Undertones” side of the FU tracks.





Contest Sleeve - Text From LFG Post (Jan 29 2010):
We pretty much spent the rest of the day at the office just trying to think of what kind of contests we could layout in anticipation of our new singles comp, that is actually out NOW.So we shot down almost all their ideas for contests, and settled on this kind of cool, but pretty obviously derived from The Simpsons contest, where the winner will get his or her face on a Fucked Up 7".

All you have to do is have the best collection of Fucked Up records in the world (other than me, because I have the best one), take a picture of it Tall-Rob style, and send it into the ceo of the Matador Contest Debt. Matadors Contest Master General will pick the collection with the most heft, and the owner will have his/her likeness memorialized on a limited to ONE version of the already-limited Couple Tracks 7", which will then be sent to that winning person. Take a look at the link HERE for more details.






'Tall Rob Style'  -  Extract from interview: 

MRR: Can you also tell me what those ‘Baiting The Collectors’ pictures you and Matt Clarke did were for?
Tall Rob: Haha, sure. The band I was in at the time (Reflect) was playing a show with them and I decided to make a few flyers showcasing my collection. Decided to go with the Man is the Bastard slogan/font and "Baiting the Collectors" just made sense. Matt Clark made one in response for the show in Chicago on that tour. Just both of us being nerds I guess.




Sleeve Notes:

Self Reference:
The ''Couple Tracks'' artwork revisits ''Epics in Minutes''; both titles refer to a compilation and a 7", both have the same layout for the artwork, both compilations are primarily collections of 7" tracks and the songs on both 7"s are about collecting 7"s (Assuming that's what the ''Epics in Minutes'' song is about...)


''Couple Tracks'' & ''Epics In Minutes'' 7" singles and CD compilations.








Commodity Fetishism:


'Contest Sleeve' 

''Year Of The Tiger''

So filled with sorrow, so filled with hate, otherwise empty, a relic of grace...
Sleeve - Front

Sleeve - Back

Vinyl - 'A' Side

Vinyl - 'B' Side

Inert - Front:
Tiger image by Rico White

Insert - Back:
Lyrics & credits






Stats: 

Tracks: Year Of The Tiger B/W ONNO
Year: 2012
Label: 
Matrix A: L-20653M-A OLE-974-1 ⓤ
Matrix B: L-20653M-B OLE-974-1 ⓤ
Pressing Info: 
TBA

Inserts:
Lyric sheet as above

Variants:
No variants



Notes:

Promotional info:
Since 2006, Fucked Up have been releasing an annual 12" single on each Chinese New Year. "Year Of The Tiger" is an anthemic progressive rock masterpiece featuring guests Jim Jarmusch, Annie-Claude Deschênes and Austra. The 15-minute long track features the band's familiar layers of guitar and roaring vocals, taken to a new level with the addition of piano, Jarmusch's dark recitations and Deschênes's gorgeous crescendos, in this menacing but uplifting story about the predation of predators. $1 from the sale of each record donated to the Save The Tiger fund.


It's about a Tiger (From Pitchfork review):
Total running time of Year of the Tiger: 37:35. Total running time of the Ramones' debut album: 29:04. Total running time of Nick Drake's Pink Moon: 28:22. Total running time of Fela Kuti's Expensive Shit: 24:13. Let's call this an album, OK? In any case, Fucked Up have been releasing long songs for each year of the Chinese Zodiac since 2006, although they're running a little behind at the moment. (The Year of the Tiger ended in February 2011; we've passed through the Rabbit Year and are now in the Dragon Year.)

Year of the Tiger is a pair of tracks that have been around for a while-- the band claimed to have finished the title song almost two years ago. It's the first music we've heard from the band in a while that doesn't have some formal connection to their David Comes to Life project. "Year of the Tiger" itself is a 15-minute song with a very long lyric (apparently by guitarist Mike Haliechuk) about an aging tiger approaching his death.


Julius Evola 'Tiger Riding'  reference from "Looking For Gold"






"Do All Words Can Do"

(DCTL Prologue - David Eliade & Veronica Boisson)


I'm a dim boy, but she makes me shine...
Sleeve - Front:
David Eliade

She is the fire, not the flame...
Sleeve - Back:
Veronica Boisson

Vinyl - 'A' Side

Vinyl - 'B' Side

Lyric Sheet

Lyric Sheet


Stats:

General:
Tracks: Do All Words Can Do B/W What Would You Do (For Veronica)?
Released: 2011
Label: Matador Records OLE 961-7
Matrix A: OLE-961-7 A GOLDEN
Matrix B: OLE 061-7 B GOLDEN
Pressing Info: 2000? TBC
Inserts: Regular insert as pictured above
Variants: No variants



Notes:

Extracted From LFG Post (June 28 2011):
As I've written on here before, this collection of records is meant to act as a prologue to David Comes to Life... to describe the characters and the setting in a bit more detail.

The Five  Elements:
Right to left: David Eliade, Vivian Benson, Veronica Boisson, Octavio St. Laurent, Nick Fenstle
Random Facts About The Artwork:
-David Eliade is Ian from the band $100
-Vivian Benson is our friend Kate who is also on the cover of "The Beat and the Pulse" by Austra
-Octavio St Laurant is a Beggars Banquet employee
-The town on the Byrdesdale 7" is where Ben's real life mom was born
-It's the same lightbulb on each cover (and the back cover of DTCL, and the front)
-Nick Fenstle is Josh's Dad, and every member of Josh's family appears on the cover of DCTL







David Eliade

See David Eliade Part 2 for more info.

David & his plants (EARTH)


Sleeve Notes:
The above image has been brightened - it spoils the moody effect, but makes things a little easier to see...

There used to be some conjecture here about the symbolism of knights, grails, left and right arrangements, natural light and all that, but summarising that stuff in bullet points just didn't work.



Veronica Boisson:

Mixtape 4 Side B liner Notes:
I've read that often authors of books and plays will put a lot of meaning and care into naming their characters. One day I was checking my email and noticed a message from one “Veronica Boisson”. That's what the female lead in our new album became. Another day I got another message from someone called “Vivian Benson” - same deal. They both kind of work out, because as you know, Veronica is a cool name, and Vivian is from an early FU song title anyways.

Veronica (From Wikipedia):
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the name "Veronica" comes from the Latin vera, meaning "true" or "Truthful", and the Greek eikon, meaning "image"; the Veil of Veronica was therefore largely regarded in medieval times as the "true image", the truthful representation of Jesus, preceding the Shroud of Turin.

Boisson f
1. drink (consumable liquid)
2. drink (a serving of drink)

She drinks from the cup of life (lyric)
The elixir of life, also known as elixir of immortality and sometimes equated with the philosopher's stone, is a mythical potion that, when drunk from a certain cup at a certain time, supposedly grants the drinker eternal life and/or eternal youth. The elixir of life was also said to be able to create life.


Damian Abraham Speaking in AV Club Interview
I’ve kind of always looked at Veronica as, in addition to being a real person, just falling in love with the idea of being in control of your own destiny and workers coming together to improve their lives. It’s almost that moment you get as a kid where you realize that there are other systems to this world than the ones you’ve been exposed to, be they political or musical, and just that feeling you have like, “Oh my God, you mean there’s music out there that’s not the crap I’m hearing every day? Or people out there that don’t think this world is functioning perfectly well and want to change things?”And I think that’s David—he’s just a workaday kind of guy. David is as much me as anyone. And then all of a sudden he’s exposed to this whole world by Veronica, and it just changes his life. I can’t believe how pretentious this is getting, but also like when she dies, I think that’s symbolic of the death of organized labor in Western democracies; that happened specifically in the United States, England, and Canada, which is kind of an amalgamation of the systems, but that’s the rise of Reagan, that’s the rise of Thatcher, and that’s the death of organized labor, so Veronica dying is almost the death of organized labor that happened at that time. And it’s a love song, too. [Laughs.]
Veronica and her candles (FIRE)

Sleeve Notes:

There were some notes here too but they were a bit too lame.


David & Veronica Together