Album of the Week #1: Mune Mud debut

Project name: Mune Mud
Album name: Mune Mud (self-titled debut)
Release date: unreleased (recorded in 1990-91)
Release format: cassette
Studio name: none

Tracks:
1. That's All I Need to Know
2. Ominous
3. Why Did You Go?
4. Peachtree
5. Just Defied
6. Harley
7. Fruit Preserve
8. The One-Liner
9. Go West
10. Under the Sky
11. I Dream
12. Lyric
13. SC Paradise
14. Umbra Flame
15. That's Life
16. King Song
17. We Dog
18. EnVenum Above
19. Downstairs
20. Disco Babies

This was the album that started it all. Before the Studio had a name. Even before the Studio was a studio. Prior to this, experiments in writing lyrics to instrumental music from the radio were recorded, but not much original music was created. Using a drum machine, a portable keyboard, an electric guitar and amp, and a microphone, song-writing began in June of 1990 during a week-long break between semesters from school. For the next seven months more songs were recorded, sometimes using friends or family members who happened to drop by the Studio during recording sessions. After the music was finished, it took about a month to master the tape and create/print labels, so by February/March of 1991, the album was finished.

The lyrics were fun. Not much seriousness came out of this time period. And many of the rhymes came from a newly acquired rhyming dictionary. Musical influences were from heavier groups such as Faith No More, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Nine Inch Nails, and Ministry, just to name a few.

The equipment used was rather primitive. An electric guitar thru an amp provided the guitar sounds. There were two options: distortion turned off for a clean sound or distortion turned on for a dirty sound. A portable Yamaha keyboard provided all the keyboard sounds. In the earlier songs the drums also came from the keyboard. A drum machine was later purchased and replaced the tin-can drums from the keyboard. And a Shure SM-57 mic was used for vocals, usually going thru the guitar amp for reverb.

The recording technique used introduced a lot of noise into the songs. This was the recording process: the first layer was recorded to a standard cassette tape using a regular cassette deck. This first layer was usually the drum track (sometimes with the keyboard playing along with the drums). Then the first tape would be played back on another cassette deck and an instrument would be played along with the tape in real-time and recorded to a second tape. Then the second tape, now consisting of the first two layers together, would be played and another instrument or vocals would be added in real-time and recorded to a third tape. By this third generation the first layer of music was usually real muddy and the recording itself was very noisy and muffled. So most songs did not go beyond the third layer. The final songs were usually too noisy to play for other people. When a 4-track recorder was purchased in March of 1991 and the recording quality improved immensely, it was realized this album should never be heard. So the few copies that existed were placed in a box and still sit on the shelf.

The tape jacket was designed using a Commodore 64 and was very basic. There was no copyright date (which has been on every subsequent album recorded at the Studio) and no studio name appeared on the jacket. The two overlapping squares became the Mune Mud symbol and every Mune Mud album since has had the blue/green/yellow symbol on the cover. The computer was programmed to draw each letter since there was no font available like that.

A couple of years later in 1993, it was decided the songs were good enough for people to hear, they were just poorly recorded. So a project was started to re-record every song on the album with the 4-track recorder. Four of the songs were started but the project soon ended.

Then in 1994 it was decided to re-release the album in its original state, even with the poor quality. The track list was changed (a slightly different play order and a couple of different tracks used) and it had a real limited re-release.

And now with computers and digital editing, it has been considered to try to clean the songs up and have yet another release of the album that started it all. But no concrete plans have been made and this project will surely remain on the "to do" list for quite some time.


Next week's Album of the Week: Olympus by Mune Mud from 1991.