After almost three years in the making, Rork Records is proud to announce the release of 'In The Wood: The Complete Syd Barrett Rarities 1968-1974'.
Of all the eras of Floyd and its various offshoots, Syd's brief solo career has produced by far the most archive releases of rare material. We've had the Opel album, the Peel Sessions EP, the Crazy Diamond box, 'Bob Dylan Blues', and, most recently, the belated surfacing of Syd's contribution to the Kevin Ayers song 'Religious Experience'/'Singing A Song In The Morning'.
Despite these repeated raids on the archive, there is also a great deal of solo Syd material that hasn't surfaced officially. This includes plenty of stuff that we haven't heard, and perhaps never will - such as 'Rhamadan', 'Living Alone', 'Millionaire' and the Stars recordings. However, numerous recordings have reached our ears through ROIO releases, including many outtakes from Syd's solo albums, the Olympia 1970 live recording, the 1971 BBC session - and even a handful of sketchy recordings made by Syd in 1974 for a never-completed third solo album.
These tracks have slowly emerged in dribs and drabs through the years on dozens of different releases, and it was in an attempt to make sense of exactly what's out there that I posted a list of the circulating material I was aware of to Echoes a few years ago, in the hope that someone out there might be able to make some corrections or additions. The result of this was that Sebastien contacted me with the idea of bringing all these tracks together into a one remastered, chronologically sequenced CD compilation: the definitive collection of Syd's solo rarities, the only CD you'd need on the shelf next to your Crazy Diamond discs and Wouldn't You Miss Me. And three years later, here we are!
In the end, enough material turned up for us to need two CDs rather than one. And that's not all - in addition to the straight audio format, the collection is also available on CD-ROM with all the tracks included in the lossless .APE format. Furthermore, the CD-ROM includes a special HTML section, including not only full details of all the tracks, but just about everything else you need to know about Syd's solo career: a full discography, all the articles, interviews and photos we could find, plus a specially written timeline with details of Syd's life from his final Pink Floyd gig to the present day. We've really worked hard on this part of the CD, and I hope that in time it comes to be recognised as a useful resource for information on Syd after the Floyd.
But, of course, the most important part of the collection is the music. I'm confident that this is the best-sounding, most complete assemblage of Syd's solo rarities ever produced: as far as I know, we've got everything that currently circulates, all from the best available sources. Nothing here is taken from old ROIO LPs or CDs: instead, we've been fortunate enough to find superior low-gen tape sources of just about everything. With the exception of the 1971 'Sounds Of The Seventies' session, which is from an unknown "low"-gen source, I don't believe anything we've used is more than two tape copies away from the original master. With the 1970 Olympia live set, we've managed to go one better and snag a CDR copy of a 1st-gen dub from the master. And just for the sake of completeness, we've included the 1970 Top Gear show which, despite having been released on CD some years ago, is now deleted and therefore pretty hard to get hold of these days. The version on our set is mastered from the official 12" vinyl, which for my money has a much nicer sound than the CD.
After gathering these sources, Sebastien has done his usual superb job of remastering everything, declicking, EQing and reducing tape noise (whilst making sure that all of the music remains here it is!). The finished product sounds fantastic to me, and judging from the feedback we've had so far from people we've sent preview copies to, I'm not the only one.
The tracklist is as follows:
DISC 1
1. SILAS LANG (TAKE 1)
2. LANKY PART 2 (TAKE 1) - excerpt
3. GOLDEN HAIR (TAKE 1) - alternate mix
4. SWAN LEE (TAKE 1, INSTRUMENTAL) - Peter Jenner mix
5. SWAN LEE (TAKE 1, INSTRUMENTAL) - Malcolm Jones mix, excerpt
6. CLOWNS AND JUGGLERS (TAKE 1) - Malcolm Jones mix, excerpt
7. SWAN LEE (VOCAL AND GUITAR ONLY) - Malcolm Jones mix, excerpt
8. OPEL (TAKE 9) - Peter Jenner mix
9. LOVE YOU (TAKE 1) - Malcolm Jones mix, excerpt
10. LOVE YOU (TAKE 2) - Malcolm Jones mix, excerpt
11. CLOWNS AND JUGGLERS (TAKE 2, SOFT MACHINE SESSION) - Malcolm
Jones mix, excerpt
12. OCTOPUS (OUTTAKE FROM OVERDUBBING SESSION) - Malcolm Jones mix,
excerpt
13. LONG GONE (REMAKE, TAKE 1) - Malcolm Jones mix, excerpt
14. WOULDN'T YOU MISS ME (REMAKE, TAKE 1) - Peter Jenner mix
15. WOULDN'T YOU MISS ME (REMAKE, TAKE 1) - Malcolm Jones mix
16. SHE TOOK A LONG COLD LOOK AT ME (TAKE 5) - Malcolm Jones mix
17. GIGOLO AUNT (BBC 1970)
18. TERRAPIN (BBC 1970)
19. BABY LEMONADE (BBC 1970)
20. EFFERVESCING ELEPHANT (BBC 1970)
21. TWO OF A KIND (BBC 1970)
DISC 2
1. MAISIE (TAKES 1 AND 2) - "full" mix
2. MILKY WAY (TAKE 5) - Peter Jenner mix
3. BIRDY HOP (TAKE 1) - Peter Jenner mix
4. RATS (TAKES 1 AND 2)
5. WINED AND DINED (TAKES 1 AND 2)
6. WORD SONG (TAKE 1) - Peter Jenner mix
7. TERRAPIN (Olympia 1970)
8. GIGOLO AUNT (Olympia 1970)
9. EFFERVESCING ELEPHANT (Olympia 1970)
10. OCTOPUS (Olympia 1970)
11. BABY LEMONADE (BBC 1971)
12. DOMINOES (BBC 1971)
13. LOVE SONG (BBC 1971)
14. BOOGIE #3 (1974)
15. IF YOU GO #1 (1974)
16. BALLAD (1974)
17. SLOW BOOGIE (1974)
18. JOHN LEE HOOKER (1974)
19. FAST BOOGIE (1974)
20. BOOGIE #2 (excerpt) (1974)
BONUS TRACKS:
21. KEVIN AYERS: SINGING A SONG IN THE MORNING - Fake
22. MILKY WAY (OVERDUB VERSION) - Fake
23. OPEL (TAKE 9) - Malcom Jones mix, excerpt with announcement
MARK S.
--------------------
Hi,
I have only few words to add: We both hope you will enjoy this release.
We spent a lot of time to do it (actually I spent much more time on this release than I did for 'At Dawn V4.00' or 'On the Air'!), but I think the result is rather nice.
Remember all the tracks included on the CD-ROM in the lossless .APE format.
Monkey's Audio lossless compression freeware is included on the CD-ROM. It's designed for Microsoft OS. If you want to run Monkey's Audio on a Macintosh, Linux, Apple II, Commodore 64, Playstation, Palmpilot, or your toaster, unfortunately we just can't help you ;-)
Some of you will possibly tell we should have used .SHN files rather than .APE files. Sure, but on the other hand, the idea was to be able to put everything on one single CD-ROM, and it just wasn't possible with .SHN files
