4 Track Demos

4 TRACK DEMOS
 
 
4-Track Demos  is an album of demos by British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey.  It was released in October 1993 by Island Records.  It consists of 8 demos of songs from her previous album, Rid of Me, along with 6 demos of some unreleased tracks which never made it to being recorded with the three-piece PJ Harvey line-up.  According to interviews with Harvey, all fourteen of these songs were written and demoed at her home between mid-1991 and autumn 1992.  4-Track Demos was Harvey's first self-produced album, a job she would not take on again until 2004's Uh Huh Her.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 

I don't have Harvey’s early albums yet, though I do have 4 Track Demos that show the material on Rid of Me in a different format.  While the intention was to present the PJ Harvey songs in a less abrasive form than the original CD, it is hard to conceive of demos being noisier and at the same time more complete than on 4 Track Demos; normally, a demo is laid down in an unadorned, often acoustic manner in order to establish the copyright and to provide a backbone for the finished track. 

 

(January 2014)

 

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