Album Reviews

Version #1:

When this Steve Albini recorded grunge classic was first submitted to DGC for release back in 1993 label execs where appalled by what they heard. The recording had an odd quality called dynamic range that they found disturbing.

Will the kids understand? Will it scare them? Is that why it disturbed them? Or was it that the shit they had for stereo gear in their offices simply couldn’t handle the dynamic swings.

Version #1:

When this Steve Albini recorded grunge classic was first submitted to DGC for release back in 1993 label execs where appalled by what they heard. The recording had an odd quality called dynamic range that they found disturbing.

Will the kids understand? Will it scare them? Is that why it disturbed them? Or was it that the shit they had for stereo gear in their offices simply couldn’t handle the dynamic swings.

You can’t believe the level of crap on which these so-called music loving record company executives monitored their recordings. I know. I visited many of them and was appalled by what I found.

“Steven Spielberg doesn’t screen his movies on a fucking bed sheet” I would holler in a vain attempt to get them to buy even a modestly performing music system but it was hopeless. Their excuse was that they wanted to hear it the way “the people” listened.

“Well then have a boombox too,” I yelled, “but listen to it the way it sounded in the recording studio!” (this was back in the days when there actually were recording studios).

In any case, version #1 has DGC, feeling the album was not commercially viable, forcing compression upon some tunes, disgusting both Albini and the band.

Version #2:

Having hired Steve Albini to produce a raw, less finely finished album than its predecessor, Nevermind, Nirvana left the Minnesota Pachyderm Studio with a raw product but one that didn’t fully satisfy them. The group felt the final product missed to some degree what they were aiming for and what they felt they’d laid down to tape.

Albini was happy though and he refused to further involve himself in the project. Version two has the band not DGC hiring engineer Scott Litt to make some minor changes, said to be compression, and to re-mix “Heart Shaped Box,” and “All Apologies.”

We’d want the truth to be closer to version #1 with the execs at Geffen appalled by what they heard because they wanted a commercial-sounding record like Nevermind and Cobain never wanting to go fishing for money in a swimming pool ever again, insisting instead upon an artistic statement and a record he’d want to go out and buy if he hadn’t made it himself.

But apparently Cobain’s original positive reaction to the unmastered tapes began to sour. He felt the bass was not sufficiently audible and the lyrics indecipherable. Bob Ludwig mastered the results at his Gateway Mastering facility in Portland, Maine but Cobain remain unconvinced.

Eventually the band chose to sweeten (if that word can apply to a Nirvana track!) and remix “Heart Shaped Box” and “All Apologies” and the album was supposedly mastered yet again, augmenting the bass and some speculate upping the vocals a few dB but how that can be done in the mastering process without a remix is unclear. Whatever happened, apparently Steve Albini wasn’t happy with the results. Search this website for an interview with Mr. Albini conducted a long time ago.

In Utero was issued in America on September 14th 1993 first on cassette and vinyl only (limited to 25,000 copies) and on CD a week later. Though it debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts neither K-Mart nor Wal-Mart would carry the album because of the cover art and the song title “Rape Me.” A revised version with different artwork and “Waif Me” instead of “Rape Me” was released in March of 1994 with the approval of the band.

Doug Sax cut the original vinyl release on his main lathe. The inner groove area shows the TML-M stamp. By that time Bob Ludwid had probably retired his lathe (bet he regrets doing so now!). Sax followed suit but as we reported in the news section, Sax has re-commissioned two lathes and is back cutting lacquers with AAA preview head capabilities.

Incredibly, tapes of the original version of the album made their way to Universal’s Hannover, Germany facilities and the German vinyl release contains the Albini mixes of “Heart Shaped Box” and “All Apologies” and the tunes in general sound less compressed and more like what one expects from Steve Albini than any of the subsequent American releases.

The copy I bought a few years ago (Geffen 424 536 -1) contains what sound like those original mixes of “Heart Shaped Box” and “All Apologies.” There are some substantial differences, most noticeable in a lingering, undulating feedback guitar line in “Heart Shaped Box’s break.

I can’t be sure if the German vinyl that’s currently available continues to be sourced from that original mixes but I am sure that these new ORG 180g releases on colored and black vinyl are the best sounding vinyl issues of the final mixes of In Utero and by a wide margin. Even the Mobile Fidelity gold CD sounds like a pale imitation. The dynamics are unrestrained (or as unrestrained as a mildly compressed mix can sound) and the inner detail resolution is stunning. The acoustic around Curt Cobain’s voice resolves to a degree not before heard.

Look, it’s grunge but the feedback drenched guitar lines should still sparkle and squeal and the drums should really pound with elasticity while the cymbals should shimmer with a crystalline clarity and stand out in the mix. Everything about this recording sounds better on these 180 gram reissues.

As far as black versus colored vinyl, remember that PVC is clear. Carbon black or black dye is added to make records black. Yellow dye makes PVC yellow, blue makes it blue etc.

For some reason, it seems that whatever makes records black also holds a magnetic charge that can be neutralized with a special demagnetizer that clearly makes records sound quieter, deeper, richer and less edgy. Demagnetizing colored vinyl doesn’t seem to have any effect.

So assuming the vinyl formulation is the same except for the coloring agent (and that is an assumption), in fact, the colored vinyl should sound better until you demagnetize the black vinyl at which time they should sound identical and that’s exactly what I found.

As for the music, if you aren’t a fan, you’re not dropping $25 or $30 on something you don’t love. Are you? The album is hard pounding and thick, disturbing, unhappy, dark and spits in your face from the get go as Cobain sings “Teenage Angst has served me well, Now I’m bored and old.” It gets less cheerful from there, but always gripping and worthwhile.

Self-loathing has never been so entertaining or enduring. Get your best sounding dose here. And yes, even when it comes to this dark, messy stuff, sound matters!