BUNDLE OF HISS - Audio Design Sessions: 1987-1988 LP

Highly recommended.

Between 1987 and 1988, when Seattle was still a circuit of small clubs, four-track tapes and bands sharing drummers, Jack Endino went in to record one of the most solid – and most unfairly invisible – outfits of that scene: BUNDLE OF HISS.

Those sessions fell into limbo, stored in the basement of Dan Peters (who would soon go on to MUDHONEY) and for years they were a kind of pre-grunge legend: everyone knew they existed, but there was no record, until Loveless Records from NYC released it on CD.

This Bang! Records LP is, finally, that record. It gathers the core of those 1987–1988 recordings done by Endino: the moment when the band is tighter, darker and closer to what the press would later call the “Seattle sound”: minor-key melodies, thick fuzz, vocals on the edge, and that mix of hard rock, punk and Sabbath-like heaviness we’d later hear in Mudhoney, TAD or early Soundgarden.

And it’s not just us saying it. Kim Thayil (Soundgarden) said it when talking about the bands that never made it to the racks: “Among the bands that made up the Seattle grunge scene of the late ’80s, a few never released material at the time… Until now, one of the most prominent missing from the shelves was Bundle of Hiss. I’m waiting for my copy because my 12-year-old cassette is wearing thin."

Released on vinyl for the first time, just as it should have come out in the late ’80s: a basement document turned into a collectible artifact.

For those who want real grunge, not the domesticated version. Here is Bundle of Hiss exactly as Jack Endino captured them in 1987–1988.