Man Or Astroman?
Live at Maida Vale BBC Studios for John Peel 2000
London, England
November 1, 2000

01 Spectrograph Reading of the Varying Phantom Frequencies of Chronic Incurable Tinnitus 2:38
02 Theme from EEVIAC 2:25
03 Song for the Two Mile Linear Particle Accelerator, Stanford University, Stanford, California 3:11
04 Television Fission 2:42
05 Preparation Clont 2:50
06 Within One Universe There Are Millions 2:33
07 Engines of Difference 4:30
08 Many Pieces of Large Fuzzy Mammals Gathered Together at a Rave and Schmoozing with a Brick 2:33
09 Um Espectro Sem Escala 3:47
10 Trapezoid 3:18
11 Interstellar Hardrive 2:27
12 Curious Constructs of Stem-like Devices Which Now Prepare Themselves to Be Thought of as Fingers 6:33

Total  39:34


--Kettle's notes on original 13-track version seeded through EZT Bittorrent site, 3/2005:--

This is one that I recently rediscovered in my CD collection.
I'm sorry that I don't have a more specific date or the track titles.
All I can tell you is the slightly convoluted lineage:

Recorded from Sky Digi-box onto VHS then transferred to PC SB-Live via analogue connector,
The tracks were split with CoolEdit and it was most likely burned with Nero to Audio CD
Ripped with EAC.

It still sounds extremely good, no glitches or hiccups.

Kettle

--Diana's notes on minor fix for this 12-track reseed:--

I assigned the date and tracklist with help from the info at
http://www.vheissu.freeserve.co.uk/bands/m.html
and a reference copy of "A Spectrum of Infinite Scale", finding 
that the two original tracks t09,10 were 2 parts of Um Espectro Sem Escala, 
divided at the pause. I joined the 2 wavs using "shntool join", re-flac'ed
and then renamed all tracks. No SBEs were found on any tracks.

Excerpt from Birdstuff's report to the astro-list, 11/22/00:

"...we had
been asked to a live session on John Peel show, which excited
us immensely. You see, normally a Peel session is something
where you show up one day at the BBC's Maida Vale studios in
London, and spend a day with an engineer or two in studio 4,
record a few tracks, eat a heat-lampened jacket potato at the
BBC cafeteria, mix those same few tracks, and then leave
without every catching a single glimpse of John Peel's gristle.
Although we had met him at one of the previous Phoenix
festivals, and we had done five standard Peel sessions, this
would be the most substantial interaction we would have had
with the man. We thus planned a small tour of equally small club
dates to make the tour float somewhat more gracefully.

"Out of the gate, Brighton was a fun excursion into the depths of
punk rock for an audience so drunk they didn't realize the PA
power was off for two entire songs. Next, Halloween night was to
be a venture to the land of many consonants. TJ's in Wales is
one of the more memorable UK Astro-haunts, dating back to
New Year's '94 where our merchandise money flew out into the
crowd like confetti. This show was as psychotic as any another
there, and the additional element of Halloween only secured the
satanic aura surrounding the evening. Out of our depravity in
Wales, and on to what we came here to do: rock the face of John
Peel.

"We arrive at Maida Valle and astonishing hour early. The
engineers were there and were agreeable enough to take on the
head start fate had given us. The head engineer was a
gentleman named James, who had done the "Made from
Technetium" Peel session. Being that there was a few dozen
contestant winners, label and radio representatives, and strange
non-genetic relatives of the band, we set up as if it were a live
show with projection and lights. International Enquirer Secret: All
other Peel sessions have been recorded in t-shirts and jeans,
not standard protocol, I do admit, but it's hard not to cheat in a
purely audio medium. Besides some fidgeting and tweaking
with the drum sounds, the set up and soundcheck went in a very
unremarkable hour or two.

"When it was finally time for the show, we briefly exchanged
pleasantries with the Man of Peel, and were then introduced to
the curious lot of rapscallions who were soon to be representing
themselves as a professional studio audience. John Peel was
instantly mumbling in his wonderfully thick accent, and then half
an hour into it, we were let loose to some 890,000 Radio One
listeners- good thing we didn't know number that at the time.
Fred, our computer voice, as usual got the show rolling, even
getting John Peel to say
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah". The show, which
was basically formed by putting together an abbreviated version
of the present live set, was so enjoyable that I barely was
cognizant that it was all live on radio and in front of John Peel. He
was a cool enough to come out of his dj booth and come watch
us play with the general plebeians. We accidentally milked the
set for about five more minutes than expected due to the fact that
Blazar hit a his delay pedal to repeat the last guitar line, and it
took he engineers a few minutes just to realize we had left the
room and weren't playing anymore. Well, then some friendly,
moderately quiet time in-between records with John Peel and a
few photos to mark the occasion, and it was on to what must
have our tenth stay with long time friend and floor space provider
Nick Brown...."


original tracklist for reference:

Track01 2:38
Track02 2:25
Track03 3:11
Track04 2:42
Track05 2:50
Track06 2:33
Track07 4:30
Track08 2:33
Track09 2:00
Track10 1:47
Track11 3:18
Track12 2:27
Track13 6:33

Total  39:34

-Diana Hamilton, 6/11/2005