Origin of the Random 35 Tracks Tape?

[Flory]

I do not remember the name. It wasnt the IDM mailing list and Im pretty sure it was before Xltronic.com was a thing. One thing I do remember though was when all those tapes leaked and Joyrex was lying saying they were fake that leak from that forum and another older one for the mailing list was what was used to call him out on lying.

Ah alrighty well that's okay. Still a cool as can be story to hear. How were they calling him out lying about it? Was it because he commented the leaks were real in the old forum and mailing list?

[cstalin]

I meant when the Full tapes finally got leaked a few years later Joyrex since it was known that he had earlier tapes had said that the leaks were all fake. A bunch of people on WATMM and other forums called him out on lying since some peeps had heard the 35 track tape from that way earlier leak.

[niski]

I personally suspect that R35 was available in some VERY closed off private circle on the internet and the reason it got leaked in so many different ways is that various users from that private circle eventually uploaded their copies. There is the common 320kbps copy that has digital NR done to it and then there is the "Unreleased tracks" copy which is a collection of certain B side tracks in higher fidelity without the digital NR. What I suspect happened was that certain users encoded and modified the original audio files to their liking. One downloaded the whole tape but added NR to it at 320kbps. Another kept just a few B side tracks and encoded it at a lower bit rate without adding digital NR. I even remember finding a rare copy of R35 on the old Soulseek client in which there was an extra five to ten seconds at the begging before the tape even began to play. This means that the original rip was lost to time and the copies that leaked are modified and slightly cut down versions of the original un edited rip. But this is just my opinion. And before anyone asks I can't really provide a copy of that rip since it was on a hard drive that failed a year ago. It's not really that significant. It has the same NR as the 320kbps version has but without the fades at the begging and end of each side from what I remember.

yep this seems to be mostly correct. i assume you meant "unreleased materials" with that other thing tho and it is very strange, NRed A side but no NR on B side. 192kbps "rare cassette tracks" is separate from both too and contains B02-B12.

the tape has its first findable mentions either in march of 2001 or january of 2000 (it is not directly mentioned, but mentions a 35 track tape with old tracks, which is why the ambiguity)

i did receive unconfirmed info (but backed up with a screenshot of the original NRed files) that this tape originally leaked in the late 90s on a private password-protected hotline server, could have smth to do with it

To add on to this I was browsing around my old posts and found an interesting little tid bit on one of the first ever leaked copies of R35 to come out that I apparently posted and forgot about for years after. Apparently I had managed to get a hold of a link to a long defunct boc wiki called "boc.xwiki", something allot like Fandom except in the early 2000s. Using the Wayback Machine I was able to find the page for r35 which had just been created just a few months after the full rip had leaked on SS, November 2004 so it had like tons of interesting information on how the rips slowly leaked under different names and encoding formats. (Here is the link to the Wayback capture) https://web.archive.org/web/20041112023647/http://boc.xwiki.com:80/xwiki/bin/view/Unreleased/Rarities

One of the interesting tid bits is that apparently one of the earliest bits of R35 to leak were the two tracks, A13 and B12 of which is reportedly to have leaked around the same time AFOT did. They were encoded at 32kbps mono and were allot shorter in length compared to the common rip (1:46 for A13 and 1:30 for B12).

This on it's own would be quite interesting on it's own, but long story short I kind of went a bit koo koo trying to find all the listed leaked copies on the page to see if I could get a copy of the A side of R35 without NR. So I installed Soulseek NS (The old Soulseek client that originally was used to host the original rips (I think)) and spent months just downloading copious amounts of gigabytes worth of early R35 rips that I could find that were labeled under early names such as "Old Tunes Vol 1", "Unknown Tracks" and "audiotrack x".

Although I didn't find much other then a copy of R35 without a fade in or out at the tape ends (as I mentioned in the previous post) I did find find a very low bit rate copy of R35 in full that seemed to have had no NR on either side (but the fidelity was so low it was pointless to do anything with it) and along side that I found a very familiar looking file that was very odd on it's own.

It was what appeared to be the very 32kbps copy of A13 that was mentioned in the nearly lost to time BOC wiki page on R35. It's length was nearly exactly the length as listed for "Boards of Canada - Unknown - Track 13" (1:47 compared to 1:46 as listed on the old page) although the file I downloaded was actually titled "Boards_Of_Canada_-_Track_13".

What really convinces me that this is the exact file is that not only are the encoding settings, mono tack and length of the file the same but more importantly (something which was not mentioned in the page itself) is that at the end of this copy of A13 it suddenly switches over to the first two seconds of B12 which is the other only track that reportedly along side it. I can only theorize that for some reason someone had a copy of an audio file that contained the shortened copies of A12 and A13 glued together and when it was leaked it was poorly split into two separate audio files and encoded at 32kbps.

And unlike the fade less and low fidelity copy of R35 that I lost on my hard drive that suffered from sticktion I actually uploaded this exact file to Discord and sent it as a playable file on this forum on a long dead thread as of now. So I now have a copy of the file and will now share it to y'all again if anyone is interested. I really hope someone appreciates this file as much as I did when I first found it among a sea of common 320 and 192kbps copies that everyone already had. It's not the quality that matters but the significance of the early date it leaked at that does, in my opinion at least.

Allas, the file itself.

phpBB [media]

TL:DR I think I found an exact copy of a R35 track that leaked before the main batch of tracks did in 2004. I think.

i got both of those and a lot more like the full "unreleased materials" leak with the noisy B side tracks

[niski]

Flory... around 2001 right before Geogaddi got leaked there was an argument on a old forum which was frequented by a lot of people involved with that scene about BOC older material not being real (Aka the Cosmic Crofter stuff). Some one in the forum then leaked 2 tracks that were uploaded in RealAudio format. (This is really early days of streaming stuff. Like Limewire didnt even exist yet). Im pretty sure the dude leaked on first and then no one beleaved him then a 2nd track was added and said he was gonna release the rest. Shit hit the fan since lot of people like UZiq and pretty sure Cosmic Crofter too were basically freaking out about it and the rest didnt get leaked till years later. The reason that file sounds sooo bad and such a low quality cause the RA its based on is really really bad quality.

could it have been on the yahoo page or the artistdirect (imusic) BBS? cause i know for a fact A14 leaked in 2001 on the artistdirect BBS (benjib, who was also active on the mailing list and had posted about the old tunes back in early 2000)

[cstalin]

It def wasnt Yahoo Groups that had its own drama. Its posible it was artistdirect I would have to see what it looked like to be able to know for sure.

[niski]

It def wasnt Yahoo Groups that had its own drama. Its posible it was artistdirect I would have to see what it looked like to be able to know for sure.

green UI, the thing is the way you worded it makes me doubt it was artistdirect because a whole different old tunes & r35tt related thing was going on in that one around march - april 2001: benjib (shiftsix) was posting about a thing he had acquired (i think he also told ppl on the yahoo page so those 2 "dramas" might have been just the same thing), 2 CDr's 15 and 20 tracks each and mentioning the tracks are different from the old tunes volumes (meanwhile ppl were still figuring out wtf those were so he also posted old tunes and old tunes vol. 2 tracklists)

[niski]

[niski]

another possibility: firefly network (that would've been a tad bit earlier than 2001 though, like late 90s) at firefly.net / firefly.com / ffly.com

[cstalin]

Its a good possibility it was on Artist Direct though I remember it being light grey and not white. It was def in the 2000-2001 time period prob around the time of ATP or before it. Realaudio was already dying/dead at the end of 2001 as a way to share music (You had to rip the stream there was no direct download) so it was def in that time frame. Limewire and Kazaa were starting to become the way to trade music so it was def in that late 2000 early 2001 period.

[niski]

Its a good possibility it was on Artist Direct though I remember it being light grey and not white. It was def in the 2000-2001 time period prob around the time of ATP or before it. Realaudio was already dying/dead at the end of 2001 as a way to share music (You had to rip the stream there was no direct download) so it was def in that time frame. Limewire and Kazaa were starting to become the way to trade music so it was def in that late 2000 early 2001 period.

artist direct def was not light grey and all of the UI stuff was green at that time you're mentioning so if you don't recall that it's probably not it

i just contacted a different user who was active around that era who mentioned a pre-geogaddi forum which had a turquoise header and had a hex sun official account posting on there with stuff on the already leaked "for friends tape", i wonder if it rings a bell to you because currently there is literally 3 forums people don't remember the name of i can think of

[niski]

actually i was wrong, there was the imusic BBS which did have a gray UI around mid 2000 (before like october?)

edit: https://imgur.com/a/VWV8gc4