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Rational Youth - Rational Youth Box - 20-May-04 06:45 AM
The story on the inlay card tells us why this box was made:
"One night during our 1999 Scandinavian tour, my dear friend Dennis Berggren and I were sitting around a dressing room somewhere in Sweden, killing time before our show. I ventured the opinion that since he has been so nice as to re-release our Cold War Night Life album on October, it would be a great thing if he could find a way to get some of our other unreleased 1980's material out to our fans. I tentatively suggested some sort "singles collection" and Dennis immediately said "It must be a Limited Edition Box Set!" Well, here it is.
If your already own Cold War Night Life (and I'd be suprised if you didn't!), then along with this collection, you are now in the possesion of our entire 80's synthpop catalogue. We have tried to make this set as authentic as it can be, short of re-releasing all of these records on vinyl.I like to think it as a stack of "5 1/2-inch singles".
First of all, the sleeves are all exact replicas of the originals, featuring Alex McDonald and Sue Halle's great Rational Youth graphics, and Dennis has done a great job of designing this beautiful package to put them in. In re-mastering, we have tracks sound as big and powerful as digital technology will allow, while keeping the early 80's vinyl vibe of the originals. In some cases the original sources were in such bad condition that a major salvage job was required, but I'm really delighted with the end result. We were actually able to make some of the tracks sound totally brand new, and then realized that we had gone too far and ended up putting some of the old grunge back in, bcouse that's part of the fun of these records.
You will notice that four of the five discs have a extra tracks wich did not appear on the original records. On the "Rational Youth EP" we have included the live version of Holiday In Bangkok that was recorded at the 1998 Tivoli Synthfestival in Helsingborg and we have added Bill Vorn's remix of Coboloid Race to the disc of our first single. To the Saturdays In Silesia disc we have added a single version of that song, and finally, on the In Your Eyes disc we have included a track called I've Got A Sister In The Navy, wich I originally wrote in my pre-Rational Youth days. This track was never released. A different version of this song was released on the 1985 album Heredit, and a longer version of the mix was released once on a compilation.
That's about all there is to say, except to thank mastering engineer Andy Krehm at Silverbirch for a fine job, Per and Tony, and escpecially Dennis.

Trace Howe, 2000"