Album of the Week #19: Pryme Material

Project name: Mune Mud
Album name: Pryme Material
Release date: September 7, 1993
Release format: cassette
Studio name: Circle IX Studio

Tracks:
1. Reality Found Me
2. Four Concepts
3. Clouds Set Free
4. An Urban Theory
5. The Only One
6. Up A Lonely Road
7. Etesian Wind (Ethereal Mix)
8. Turn It Up
9. I Still Know You
10. To My Owl
11. Wait A While
12. SID II
13. Aqua Celeste
14. You Noticed Me
15. Mental Instru
16. I'm Sick
17. UFO

This was the follow-up to 1992's Mune Mud album titled Underwater Problem Factory. The music on Underwater Problem Factory was really diverting from the easy-listening pop sound that the previous Mune Mud album Olympus had introduced. So it was during this Pryme Material "era" that the music was split into two projects, the original pop music was left as Mune Mud but the weirder heavy music using many effects was now labeled NueroMorgue.

So with the heavier music filtered out, Mune Mud's sophomoric effort was able to take shape as a more mature album than the previous two. The story-telling continued in songs such as "Reality Found Me" and "UFO". A few of the songs revisited earlier versions. A few of the songs were heavily nature-influenced (including "To My Owl", "Aqua Celeste", etc). And now the influence of Jason's favorite band, R.E.M., was starting to come through in some of the guitar work and arrangements.

The album title came from a game that Jason grew up with, Dungeons & Dragons. There was a drawing in one of the books that showed all the known planes of existence. The one we live is called the Prime Material plane. Although other-worldly sounding at times, the album is based in our world so he chose that plane as the title but changed the spelling of "Prime" to "Pryme".

For the album cover Jason went back to his Commodore 64, the same one used to create the Mune Mud debut album cover a few years earlier. It showed a 4th-dimensional hyper-cube of the Mune Mud symbol.

The Studio was now called Circle IX Studio, a more serious name than the previous Quintessential Disco-Quest Tapes & Discs. The name change came about when the Studio received a large equipment upgrade now providing the ability to sequence songs and offering a much larger sound library with its new sound module and use of MIDI.

A lyric booklet was created for this album. It was a bit more elaborate that the one for Underwater Problem Factory. This one had a table of contents, an introduction by Jason, and an equipment list.

It would be three more years before the next studio album was released from Mune Mud, but this album held up well and still provides an easy listen to the ears.

In 2003, the Pryme Material 10th Anniversary Collection was released.


Next week's Album of the Week: Devaulted by Mune Mud from 1994.