Xhol – Motherfuckers GmbH & Co KG

OK, here's the deal: Xhol's MF album has been released five different times. The ONLY version that isn't mutilated somehow, unfortunately, is the first and original issue of the album as an LP on the Ohr/Metronome label. The other versions all have audio problems of one kind or another, and I will detail them right here.

The first reissue was a CD on Germanofon, and of all of them, it may well be the best even though it is a pirate recording. I have it, and it sounds like it was mastered from a tape recording of the original LP. Other than that, it's all there and aside from some mild click removal, no heroic efforts were undertaken to make the record sound better than it really is.

The second reissue was a digipak CD put out by Spalax Music in France, and it is the best of the legitimate reissues. It's biggest problems are that the tape playback azimuth was not (or could not be) adjusted correctly when the analog to digital transfer was done. So if you hear it in mono, you can hear some phase cancellation effects. Also on the Spalax version, for some strange reason, the click of a radio switch being turned on at the very beginning of the album was removed; whether this makes any real difference to a potential buyer is a personal matter. To me, it indicates that whoever was responsible for mastering the album for Spalax must never have heard the original LP, or if they did, they arbitrarily decided that the click was some sort of mastering error, and so they removed it from the Spalax master. We will probably never know the real story behind the missing click.

The next reissue of MF on Ohr/Pilz/Ohr Today is legitimate, but you'd never guess this from the sound quality: it was clearly mastered from a less than excellent copy of the LP, and the noise reduction applied to the CD master was hastily done, heavy handed and full of audible artifacts that ruin the listening experience.

Last of the reissues is the vinyl LP version on Wah Wah records in Spain. They did an excellent job of reproducing the sleeve art, but again, the musical content was mastered from an inferior quality source and for some mystifying reason, has gaps between some cuts that did not exist on the original LP.

And that is that. If you are a purist or OC about these things, the only fully acceptable version of MF is an original LP. Perhaps Garden of Delights will do us the favor someday of finding a minty copy of the LP and transferring it with the care and love this truly bizarro outlier LP deserves.