The Life Story of Claire Green
The Hair!
Guilty
Zelatrix [excerpt]
In The Basement
The Burglar
about
After the roaring success of the Archives collection, Robert Heart stumbled across unheard sessions from 2004 and decided, if to be released, now was also the time for the world to hear the infamous Forge's Horn as was intended.
The first two tracks of this compilation are from August 1995 featuring new guitars recorded by Heart over the previously unfinished title track in 2010. Previously heard on "Archives III" in their dry mono state.
Tracks 3-5 are improvisations from what became Bill & Bob's final studio session. In 2004 they returned to the studio to record Finally It's Over for the rejected 'Bill and Bob' [untitled] album. Around the time, Pippen had been remixing his tracks from Coming Clean; coincidentally Heart stumbled across the sitar Bill had used on those 1993 sessions. In a burst of inspiration, the two found themselves jamming "like the good old days" - except with Bob taking percussive duties (electronically) with Bill picking up sitar for the first time in a decade. What was beginning to take shape was a completely new direction album, with a reworking of Begging Forgiveness and Van Der Lubbe (from at that point unheard 80's sessions). The record company however was not impressed by the revolutionary sound the duo had created, a quantum leap from comeback album Sheep Alert, thus Finally It's Over (a commercially viable song) was tagged to the end of the intended 2003 album [released in 2005 as the Bill & Bob album] and the 2004 sessions were abandoned. Speaking in 2011: "this is definitely not a cash-cow release. Willy was genuinely excited over those 2004 tapes and with this discovery, now they can all be heard in their entirety. I still think what we were doing was way ahead of its time, hopefully the World will think the same when they rush to buy this."
Tracks 6-7 are exclusive 'official bootlegs' recorded two nights after the Forging The Horn: Live In Tokyo concert. Available unofficially for years, the 19th July 1996 gig - described by Robert Heart as "raw, man, real raw" - ended up being the final date of that ill-fated Japanese tour with both Bill and Bob contracting food poisoning the following day; the guitarist notably absent from this performance suffering the same ailment. The excerpts from this show are thought to be the final live recordings of Pippen playing acoustic drums.
Bonus track 8 contains out-takes from the final 2004 sessions.
credits
released September 5, 2011
compiled by Robert Heart, Summer 2011
"Forge's Horn" and "Happy" mixed and mastered by Roy McBrute with new guitar recorded by Robert Heart, 2010.
"Minus", "Exit From Edit Mode" and "Burning Priest" mixed by Robert Heart and William Pippen, 2005.
Bob Heart & Jonty 'Jazz' Bagshaw, from 1986-1989 were The Bob Experience. Their debut album (featuring drum programming by Bill Pippen) was remastered by Heart in 2012. RIP Jonty. Bill & Bob
Cracking compilation of unreleased songs from punk and garage bands in support of the recent Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. Bandcamp New & Notable Dec 15, 2016