zeoevil wrote:Whichever album they cannibalized the least to make subsequent albums.
Precisely. I often wonder if the reason these albums are still unreleased is they have too much in common with what's on R35TT and Old Tunes, and likely even newer stuff. It would be shocking (or perhaps not??) to find for instance Closes has something very similar to Palace Posy on it. At the very least, shared samples and various bits and pieces are guaranteed. There's no way it's all virgin material (I'd love to be proven wrong though).
I think if we get a real archival release it will likely be another comp like Old Tunes, with a shitload of polish and a carefully curated and sequenced track selection. They probably believe that they would be fleecing their fanbase and alienating new listeners if they dropped these one at a time or in a huge expensive box set. There could be too much overlap or (to them) not enough quality. They most likely find them sub-par, and dont want this stuff standing side-by-side among their great works. They're probably not comfortable with charging the general listening public for this stuff (ie dont expect to see Acid Memories on itunes or even spotify).
Having said that, though, I also believe they know they have a subset of superfans that would really dig this stuff in it's original form, and appreciate it in an appropriate manner that us and the brothers could all agree on - we can put it in it's proper context and really enjoy it. I think they'd like to share it with us but cant figure out how.
The problem is how do you package it with that intent, when you're as super image and presentation-conscious as the brothers. I just cant see them officially releasing the actual albums. Even releasing a compilation is probably agonizing for them, they're such perfectionists, but I think there's a good chance they will. Maybe they'll just choose to purposely leak the original LPs as files or have a RDJ-style soundcloud dump.