2 out of 5

Label: People In A Position To Know

Produced by: ?

Bear with me on the rating, here.

This was a super duper limited dealy, silkscreened, one-sided on a 10″, and honestly pretty reasonably priced, given how hand-made label People-in-a-Position-To-Know tends to do everything. But, eh, y’know, these are early demos, and it shows – both in the Brainiac-ness of it all, and the recording quality, which is perhaps one mic in a far away room.

From another point of view, the two fairly complete songs here – Cherry Blossom and Tie Me Down – are much less, er, anything than stuff that appeared on proper Brainiac albums, be it the Nirvana rock of their debut, or the spazz of Hissing Prigs, or the herky-jerk electro of later stuff, but, on Cherry Blossom, there’s definitely a sprawling weirdness that identifies the band, and already a clear willingness to play outside of standard song structures, and Tie Me Down is a breezy number that links to the soft-spoken tracks that appeared here and there. Given how early these are, though, they’re still even less formed than the unearthed Attic Tapes, and that recording quality, which barely allows vocals to peek through, makes the set for collectors only – remaining tracks Thru The Looking Glass and My Dream Isn’t Over are essentially interstitial experiments, and there’s not much identifiable to them.

How much any of this is “worth” to you is where the rating comes in. With a dearth of Brainiac material for billions of years, I’ve been overjoyed to snatch up the aforementioned Attic Tapes and other stuff we’re getting, but at a point it becomes a question of what’s worth “documenting” for wider release. I mean, I realize that’s on me, but the enforced scarcity of something like this gives it a FOMO vibe, and… given how unlikely it is I’ll return to listen to this – it isn’t really formative enough to become more than a passing interest – I’ll need to be more scrupulous should some further unreleased stuff be dropped as a limited release.