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The Quietus did a piece[1] celebrating the anniversary, remarking on the pregap[2] and how various artists would leverage it: > On their third album, 1999’s Gu

The Quietus did a piece[1] celebrating the anniversary, remarking on the pregap[2] and how various artists would leverage it: > On their third album, 1999’s Guerrilla, Super Furry Animals slipped one of their best songs, ‘Citizens Band’, into the pre-gap, that is, the neverzone before the album proper. Autechre pulled the same trick, in the same year, on EP7, hiding an eerie six minutes of intricate sound design which seems years ahead of its time, and then three minutes of silence, before ‘Rpeg’. They did it again, including the untitled track in the pre-gap to the fourth disc of EPs 1991-2002. > Pre-gap tracks are a CD-specific phenomenon, paralleled only by DVD Easter Eggs, or hidden levels in a computer game. On the one hand, they’re only possible digitally, on the other, they seem to be an attempt to add some mystique to a circle of plastic. They are a defense of the physical medium because it is impossible to rip them to your computer. Finding them meas having a bit of extra knowledge about the artist, uncovering a hidden layer of depth others hadn’t noticed. > Earlier, experimental artists took even greater strides into the CDs unique sequencing possibilities. Otomo Yoshihide’s 1993 release The Night Before the Death of the Sampling Virus is a fluctuating voice collage designed specifically for the medium. Its 77 tracks are tiny, most less than a minute, few going above two. The listener is encouraged to hit the random option on their hi-fi. “To play this release in random mode is to allow the SAMPLING VIRUS to regenerate, to mutate with near infinite possibilities.” > Eccles, UK-based experimentalists Stock, Hausen, & Walkman encouraged listeners to do something similar with their debut album, Giving Up. From the release notes: “The Original CD had 60 ID points deliberately inserted in the middle of a lot of the tracks so that random play would cut the music up and present the listener with a new and unique 'remix' version if desired.” There were things you could do with a CD, that you definitely couldn’t do with a tape or LP. 1. https://thequietus.com/articles/32116-cd-40th-anniversary https://thequietus.com/articles/32116-cd-40th-anniversary 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap

jrootabega 4y ago
I bet a lot of people here fondly remember They Might Be Giants' Apollo 18 album, which had about 20 short tracks meant to be shuffled. But we listened to the album in order enough times to be able to sing the random tracks from memory anyway.
iggldiggl 4y ago
> because it is impossible to rip them to your computer Which luckily isn't actually true. They might or might not have been problematic with certain software and/or disc drives, but in principle – especially these days – they can normally be ripped without any difficulties. (Nevertheless, Columbia/Sony still managed to lose all the pre-gap material from a number of live Bob Dylan Bootleg Series albums while uploading them for digital distribution, so all streaming services and download stores currently only have faulty versions of those albums. Maybe they really ripped the physical discs in order to upload them and somehow chose the wrong settings? As silly as that theory sounds, in another coincidence on iTunes, none of volumes 1 to 10 – the actual releases affected are 4, 6, 7 and 10 – inclusive bears the "Apple Digital Master" logo, so Columbia/Sony actually uploading mangled CD rips remains a distinct possibility…)

jrootabega 4y ago

I bet a lot of people here fondly remember They Might Be Giants' Apollo 18 album, which had about 20 short tracks meant to be shuffled. But we listened to the album in order enough times to be able to sing the random tracks from memory anyway.

iggldiggl 4y ago

> because it is impossible to rip them to your computer Which luckily isn't actually true. They might or might not have been problematic with certain software and/or disc drives, but in principle – especially these days – they can normally be ripped without any difficulties. (Nevertheless, Columbia/Sony still managed to lose all the pre-gap material from a number of live Bob Dylan Bootleg Series albums while uploading them for digital distribution, so all streaming services and download stores currently only have faulty versions of those albums. Maybe they really ripped the physical discs in order to upload them and somehow chose the wrong settings? As silly as that theory sounds, in another coincidence on iTunes, none of volumes 1 to 10 – the actual releases affected are 4, 6, 7 and 10 – inclusive bears the "Apple Digital Master" logo, so Columbia/Sony actually uploading mangled CD rips remains a distinct possibility…)