DFR015: Perfectly Imprefect

Dub Flash presents:

Perfectly Imprefect

Release no.: DFR015

Artist: Dieb In Dub

Demo tape: around 1997/98

Digital release: 11.04.2018
(Bandcamp)

Tracks:

01 - "Trip it, weil nachts is' kälter als draußen und so" 4:44 min.
02 - "Rein in die Kartoffeln / Raus aus den Kartoffeln" 3:34 min.
03 - "Du solltest ihn nie wieder dämlich nennen, Dörte" 2:29 min.
04 - "Twelvebries in Theben (Abba warum fragt keiner)" 3:47 min.
05 - "Revenge of the Terracotta (Downmarket Worseion)" 4:55 min.
06 - "BeatMash (Lekkah Buletten / Zuhause schmeckts am besten)" 8:19 min.
07 - “What the... I Can't Even” 6:24 min.
08 - “Preposterous Techno Medley Says What? Exactly!” 4:18 min.

Credits:

Music by Dieb In Dub at Northheath Forest Studio in 1996-97
Mixed by Der Dieb at Northheath Forest Studio in 1998 (demo tape)
Song retrieval, digitalisation, sound cleanup and newly mixed (?) by Huppuherrasmies at Whimsical Music in 2018
Mastering (of the new mixes) by Matrix Audio in 2018
Photo by… good question... maybe F. Heising in 1995
Artwork by Professor Chaos at Atelier Branle Bas in 2018
Original artwork for the demo tape by T. Pischel in 1997
Video editing by Bingewatch-R at Come Watch TV
Compiled by Dub Rogue at Andromedub
Produced by Ralf Dub Flash at Andromedub
(p) & (c) Dub Flash Records (2018)

Release information:

Before Dub Flash, there was Dieb in Dub. And even before that, there was Der Dieb.

In 2017, a demo tape from 1998 with songs pre-dating Dub Flash was (re-)discovered in a box, digitalised, cleaned up, re-mastered, and then digitally released for fun. Just to give an idea about how it all began, before it even began.

The title and cover were created for the 2018 digital release. The demo tape was called “Invasion From Outer Bass”. However, the demo is actually more about the beats. That's why a renaming felt appropriate. And I think that the new title works quite nicely for this album.

File this release under: #beatmash

Behind the scenes:

1997: A room on the premisses of a hostel in the middle of the forest somewhere South of Hamburg. A Cubasis LE version from the “Ton und MIDI Studio” CD bundle bought at Karstadt. Various sample CDs bought from a catalogue shop. Some forgotten sampling software. 2 turntables, a mixer, and a microphone. That was the Northheath Forest Studio, the early predecessor of today's Andromedub Studio.

1998: A lot of motivation and fun, but no skills, knowledge of, or experience with music production. The trippy beats presented on the demo tape were a chaotic mess of samples, beats, and weird sounds. They have a certain charm, but they are indeed just very early demo versions, never meant to actually be released in this form. Whoever even got a copy of the tape, I wouldn't know anymore.

2017: (Re-)Discovery of the demo tape.

2018: After the tape's resurfacing, this digital edition was created, mostly out of an interest in finding out how songs from an old analog cassette could be cleaned up and made sound fresh with the help of modern music tools and a professional masterer (Matrix Audio).

There were more songs and skits that were rediscovered. Let's just say that the 8 songs presented on this digital edition are the most… presentable. ;)

Additional photos:

This was the original artwork for the demo tape by T. Pischel from 1997.

This was another option, in case the demo would have been a CD or vinyl. Ignore the text above and below the cover. It's not part of the cover. It's a screenshot from an old website of mine. I couldn't find the original picture. Probably, because it's in analog form somewhere.

This is not actually related to this release, but I found another demo tape with MIDI Dubs on it called “The Midiocre Version”. Clever. Those versions were cleaned up as well, but I decided against adding them to this release, because it's a different genre. I won't publish these versions, but you might be interested in reading that a good bunch of those old demo versions later made it on the “Dreams Of A Lost Soul” album. However, in the form of very much reworked new versions.