Blog: Futuristic Multimedia UNLEASHED!

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Today is the 22nd Anniversary of the release of our SOPHOMORE album (i.e. our second one), This Is Not A Library, and so to commemorate this auspicious occasion we are unleashing the long-hidden Futuristic Multimedia album of outtakes and alternate versions as a Pay-What-You-Want download on Bandcamp.

This album was originally included as a CD-R extra on the main album - the idea was that if you inserted your CD into the CD Drive on your computer then you'd be able to access a cornucopia of extra stuff, all wrapped up in an interface that I spent literally MONTHS working on. It looked dead good though, and pretty much almost usually worked too, with lyrics and annotations contained in moving drawers, screens of data, and all sorts of JavaScript-based FUN like that. Sadly, due to over two decades of updates, none of that stuff actually works in modern JavaScript, but I've tried to pay tribute to the original design in the cover for this version, THUS:



I thought this was THE FUTURE, as anyone could do it without any special equipment, but as far as I know nobody else ever did!

If you go and have a listen you'll find demo versions of NEARLY every song on the album - there were a couple we JAMMED into being during rehearsals, so there's no demo for them - plus some alternate versions, including an extra demo for Good Cooking and the original somewhat different mix of The Girl Who. There were also extra songs that didn't make it onto the album - some of those later got used as compilation tracks and appear on Warriors of Nanpantan instead, but there's a fab one called It Could Have Been that I sort of wish we'd found time to have a proper go at.

There are TWO(2) reasons it's a Pay-What-You-Want download. Firstly, some of you reading this may well already OWN a CD copy of This Is Not A Library so technically have already paid for it, and secondly they really ARE demo versions, mostly recorded in my loft in Leicester with heavy use of the drum settings on my old Casio keyboard, so they are not what you would call Radio Ready. I've tried to tidy them up a BIT, but they are the very definition of "rough" recordings!

For those blissfully unaware of why on earth we're celebrating the 22nd Anniversary in particular, the very simple and straightforward reason is that I forgot to do it for the 20th Anniversary! I only realised late last year when I was read Mr Bob Fischer's daily analysis of his childhood diaries, and thought "Hang on, I could do that with all the blogs from when this first started!" and saw that they'd begun in the distant days of 2003. THUS, as those who follow me on Bluesky will know, I have been re-posting these old blogs 22 years later, with some contemporary commentary to go alongside it. It's all been good fun, with lovely memories of loads of exciting things happening around the album release, so I thought it'd be good to DO something to mark the occasion.

So, that's the thinking behind it all - as ever, I hope you enjoy it, and if you've not listened before do have a go with the actual proper album too, it's DEAD GOOD!

posted 19/7/2025 by MJ Hibbett

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