Neutral Milk Hotel - Beauty (Remastered) [FULL ALBUM]

IF YOU WANT THIS REMASTER, DO NOT COPY THEM TO MP3. MP3S STRIP MUSIC OF THE MAJORITY OF ITS TOTAL CONTENT. IN THE END, MORE SENSELESS MP3 DUPLICATION CAN AND WILL DEFEAT THE PURPOSE OF THIS PROJECT. JUST EMAIL ME: fissionaryartist@gmail.com and I will send you the files!

Restoration and remaster by Charlie Hall Stubbs, 2020

Originally recorded by Jeff Mangum, 1992

Mastering notes, and about the album:

"Jeff Mangum assembled and recorded this project in 1992, only the second to be released under the Neutral Milk Hotel moniker. Distinguished from his 1990 project of the same title, “Beauty” featured 10 original demos, and two that would be re-recorded and reimagined on Mangum’s first full length LP, “On Avery Island.”

Anyone who seeks out this album will notice an overwhelming particle hiss playing ceaselessly throughout. In YouTube comments and various other media channels, I’ve noticed three prevailing assumptions: 1) That the hiss has always been present at such a blaring volume 2) that Magnum’s recording inexperience is to blame and 3) that the hiss, even at such a volume, adds to the album’s lo-fi charm.

Perhaps the second and third assumption are true, but the first is entirely misguided. What you hear is NOT purposeful degradation. Rather, “Beauty” is a victim of time and of poor digitization; the album seems to have been transferred from a cheap type 1 cassette copy to CD at some unknown point, and subsequently MP3 duped into near oblivion on file sharing sites like SoulSeek and, of course, over YouTube. (MP3s strip music of audio content and fills the gaps with noise, and this added noise accentuates existing noise within recordings. This is the ugly truth about audio file compression.) Because of this, there are no uncompressed files (as far as we’re aware,) and just as devastatingly, it is nearly impossible to come across an MP3 copy over a true sample rate of 192 kbps, though many are deceptively listed as 320. This was shocking and sad to come across, and presented an extra challenge…

I prevailed, however! Without further ado: I’ve taken many weeks out of my life to finally bring you a full fledged restoration and remaster, wherein I:
- Reduced particle hiss,
- Fixed stereo offset
- Rebalanced vocals
- Resaturated stripped low end (see: Noisy Racket & Hypnotic Sounds)
- Attenuated clicks and pops
- Tamed original artifacts
- Added (savory) high end excitement
- Mastered according to YouTube streaming loudness standards (-14 LUFS)
- +much more, too much to explain here

I see this as a fun project, a difficult challenge, and a service for the community of one of my favorite bands. This is a must listen for NMH fans, and I don’t want people to be held back by the abysmal quality of the surviving recordings. Good music and the quality level at which it’s consumed are NOT entirely exclusive.
The unfortunate implication of all this is that every medium has a lifespan. Even our beloved uncompressed digital music (whose intangibility leads us to perceive it as floating in some Aether of convenience,) will be subject to the same blight that cassette tapes are subject to now. That means WE have to take care of the good stuff. Please enjoy my contribution."

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