You probably know Brett Netson from his work with Built To Spill and Caustic Resin. Now he’s back with the excellent Scavenger Cult EP, credited to Brett Netson & Snakes. Netson will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.
Netson: These reissues got me obsessed and started on my current record project. All of Jimi’s records “remastered from original master tapes,” yadda yadda. But there was one significant difference with these—they are analog mastered. At the time, I thought, “Huh, that’s kinda cool, I guess.” (Nearly all vinyl is digitally mastered, since the late ’80s). The first one I bought was Electric Ladyland. I had worn out two cassette copies of this and played the hell out of the vinyl, too, when I was a teenager. Fuck off if I didn’t have chills and goosebumps when I got to “1983 A Merman I Should Turn To Be.” Holy crap! There’s sub frequencies in there. It all came out like listening to Jimi through an open window. I like records a lot, mostly because of the harmonics that come with the medium. Some from the original recording and some from the record itself. There’s just more stuff flying around the room when I put a record on. It seems to have more longevity emotionally with an analog signal, and the ritual and physicality is profound and blah blah blah. I read the tech articles when I come across them and all that, but you know what? You can take all that tech worship dogmatic hoo haw and blow it out your ass!! This shit is pure fucking magic! End of story, end of debate. Magic.
