Elastica - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1995-2000

Here's the third and last of the Elastica BBC albums I'm posting. This is another compilation of BBC studio sessions.

Like Volume 1 in this series, most of the songs come from the official album "The Radio One Sessions," but not all of them. The songs "Connection" and "The Other Side" are from a 1996 session that got overlooked by the official release. "Mad Dog" is from the same 1999 session as the two songs before it and the two songs after it. Finally, "Suicide" is from a 2000 Glastonbury Festival concert, which was broadcast on the BBC. If anyone has that full performance, please let me know, so I could post that here as a fourth volume.

Just like Volume 1, the lead vocals were low in the mix, so I fixed that for all songs using the UVR5 audio editing program. I don't recall why I've added "[Edit]" to the titles of "The Other Side" and "Da Da Da," but I think it was because I took some extra measures to get the balance of those songs to sound better.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 Rockunroll (Elastica)
02 2-1 (Elastica)
03 I Want You (Elastica)
04 Human (Elastica)
05 Love like Ours (Elastica)
06 Connection (Elastica)
07 The Other Side [Edit] (Elastica)
08 KB (Elastica)
09 Da Da Da [I Don't Love You, You Don't Love Me, Aha Aha Aha] [Edit] (Elastica)
10 Mad Dog (Elastica)
11 Generator (Elastica)
12 Your Arse My Place (Elastica)
13 Suicide (Elastica)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15376017/Elastca_1995-2000_BBSessionsVolum3_atse.zip.html

All I know about the cover photo is that it's from the year 2000.

Elastica - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-25-1995

Here's the second of three albums of Elastica performing for the BBC. This volume is a full concert at the annual Glastonbury Festival, which has huge crowds of over 100,000 people for the main stage.

Elastica arguably were at their peak of popularity in 1995, so it makes sense they played at Glastonbury that year. They released their debut album, simply called "Elastica," in March 1995, a few months prior to this concert. It's a great, five-star album, in my opinion. Unfortunately, it would take the band five years to release a second album, and that one was considered a disappointment, followed soon by the band disbanding.

I've noticed that when it comes to this band, just about everything they'd done is improved by boosting the volume of the lead vocals relative to the instruments. That was the case here, so I did the boosting using the audio editing program UVR5. This is a bootleg, but the sound quality is excellent, as is typical of BBC broadcasts.

This is a fairly short concert at 37 minutes. But it seems to be the complete performance. 

By the way, the band played the 2000 Glastonbury Festival as well, but I've only been able to find part of it in high sound quality comparable to this. If anyone has the full thing and wants to send it to me, I would appreciate it.

01 Gloria (Elastica)
02 Line Up (Elastica)
03 Annie (Elastica)
04 Rockunroll (Elastica)
05 talk (Elastica)
06 Car Song (Elastica)
07 talk (Elastica)
08 Stutter (Elastica)
09 talk (Elastica)
10 2-1 (Elastica)
11 See That Animal (Elastica)
12 Smile (Elastica)
13 Waking Up (Elastica)
14 S.O.F.T. (Elastica)
15 talk (Elastica)
16 Connection (Elastica)
17 Blue (Elastica)
18 Vaseline (Elastica)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TidSnXzg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/YwL9fLl6kwUCxzn/file

The cover photo is of lead singer Justine Frischmann at this exact concert. In February 2025, I improved the image with Krea AI program help.

Elastica - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1993-1994

This is the first of three volumes of Elastica performing for the BBC. This volume consists entirely of BBC studio sessions.

There is an officially released album called "The Radio One Sessions" that contain most of the songs here. But most, not all. Three songs, "Never Here," "Father Christmas" and "Blue," are unreleased. I don't know why they weren't on that official album, since they're from the same exact sessions as some of the songs that were included.

But there was an even bigger problem with that official release, in my opinion: the vocals were mixed too low. Perhaps that was a band decision rather than a BBC decision, since I've noticed this problem with some of their studio recordings too. But whatever the case may be, I used an audio editing program to boost the vocals relative to the instruments, and it sounds significantly better now. Three songs have "[Edit]" in their titles because I had to take some extra editing steps to make those ones sound better.

Since Elastica only released two studio albums before breaking up, these BBC recordings are a key part of their discography. Everything here sounds excellent, and there are some songs that didn't appear on either of those albums.

This album is 37 minutes long.

01 Annie [Edit] (Elastica)
02 Spastica [Edit] (Elastica)
03 Line Up (Elastica)
04 Vaseline (Elastica)
05 Brighton Rock (Elastica)
06 In the City (Elastica)
07 Waking Up (Elastica)
08 Never Here (Elastica)
09 Car Song (Elastica)
10 Hold Me Now (Elastica)
11 Ba Ba Ba [Bar Bar Bar] (Elastica)
12 Father Christmas [Cleopatra with Alternate Lyrics] (Elastica)
13 Blue [Edit] (Elastica)
14 Gloria (Elastica)
15 I Wanna Be a King of Orient Aah (Elastica)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15343206/Elastca_1993-1994_BBSessionsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a promo photo taken in Brussels, Belgium, in April 1995.

Elastica - Unheard Music - Non-Album Tracks (1997-2001)

Here's the second of two stray tracks album I made for the British band Elastica.

In brief, Elastica put out a great album in 1995, simply called "Elastica." But then they struggled to come up with a worthy follow up. It turns out they were overwhelmed by success, and put partying and drugs above making more music. The lyrics to one of their songs ("Waking Up") on that 1995 album was a clue: "I'd work very hard, but I'm lazy. I can't take the pressure and it's starting to show. ... If I can't be a star I won't get out of bed." Anyway, they did come out with a second album in 2000, "The Menace." But it was a critical and commercial disappointment compared to their first album. They broke up in 2001. Lead singer Justine Frischmann then quit the music business altogether and became a painter.

So that's the context of the music for this album, as they struggled to match the expectations set by their great debut album. The songs are a mix of A- and B-sides (tracks 6, 7, 12, and 13), EP tracks (3 and 4), bonus tracks (8 and 9), and songs from soundtracks (1, 2, and 14). Three more songs (tracks 5, 10, and 11) are unreleased, with "Operate" being a studio outtake and "12XU" and "Moody" coming from a concert bootleg.

Given these stray tracks were probably considered not strong enough for the band's second album, I find it a surprisingly good listen. In fact, I actually prefer this to that second album. That album dabbled in electronica, trying to find a new second for the band. Whereas many of the songs here stick with the successful punk-pop sound of the debut album.

There was one odd problem with the songs here, however. After listening to it a couple of times, I suspected the lead vocals were low for most of the songs. I used the X-Minus audio editing program to split the vocal and instrumental parts into separate tracks. Looking at the results, I saw that indeed the vocals were usually well below what one would typically expect. So I boosted the vocals for nearly every song, even though I haven't marked them with "[Edit]" as I usually do. (There were a couple that were okay, and a couple are instrumentals.) 

This album is 36 minutes long.

01 In the City (Elastica)
02 Unheard Music (Elastica with Stephen Malkmus)
03 Miami Nice [Instrumental] [Demo] (Elastica)
04 Nothing Stays the Same [Demo] (Elastica)
05 Operate (Elastica)
06 Suicide (Elastica)
07 Bush Baby [Instrumental] (Elastica)
08 Faking [Demo] (Elastica)
09 You're OK (Elastica)
10 12XU (Elastica)
11 Moody (Elastica)
12 The Bitch Don't Work (Elastica)
13 No Good (Elastica)
14 Too Old to Die Young (British Meat Scene & Justine Frischmann)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15111393/Elastca_1997-2001_UnhrdMusic_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any picture of the whole band from the time period here that I really liked. So I went with this one, which is from 1995.

Elastica - Cleoptra - Non-Album Tracks (1993-1996)

I really love the mostly female British band Elastica. (The band was made up of three women, who sang, plus a male drummer, who didn't.) They only put out two albums, one in 1995 and the other in 1999, but the 1995 one (simply called "Elastica") is a stone cold classic in my opinion. The key to me is great songwriting, and they had multiple talented songwriters in the band. But there's also something special about lead singer Justine Frischmann's vocals, which are expressive and sexy.

The one frustrating thing for me is that their recorded output is relatively small. After their debut album was a hit, success went to their head. The band members started partying hard and taking lots of drugs, instead of staying focused on the music. They never reached the heights of their debut album again, and broke up in 2001. Frischmann then quit the music business and moved to the US, expressing a desire to "become a nobody." She's been a successful painter ever since.

Luckily, the band has a bunch of songs that never made it onto either of their two studio albums. There are so many that I was able to make two albums of stray tracks for them. This first one is the better one, because it deals with their musical peak around the time of the debut album.

The first song is an unreleased studio outtake. The next seven are B-sides. The ninth song was released on a flexi-disc only, and the 12th is another B-side. The 15th track, "Pull Up the Bumper" is an unreleased studio outtake of a cover of a hit by Grace Jones.

The remaining six songs are all unreleased songs that were only played in concert. They're all pretty good, and they come from very good sounding bootlegs. However, they all shared a sonic flaw, in my opinion, of having the vocals too low in the mix. So I used the X-Minus audio editing program to boost the vocals. I also did that to "Pull Up the Bumper." That's why those seven song have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Most of the songs are original, as far as I can tell, other than "Bumper." But "Cleopatra" and "Paranoid" are also covers.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Cos Cos [Demo] (Elastica)
02 Rockunroll (Elastica)
03 Pussycat (Elastica)
04 Blue [Acoustic Demo] (Elastica)
05 Spastica (Elastica)
06 Gloria (Elastica)
07 Car Wash [Demo] (Elastica)
08 Brighton Rock (Elastica)
09 Cleopatra (Elastica)
10 What I Want [You] [Edit] (Elastica)
11 Keep It on Ice [Edit] (Elastica)
12 Ba Ba Ba [Bar Bar Bar] [Demo] (Elastica)
13 I Want You [Edit] (Elastica)
14 The Other Side [Edit] (Elastica)
15 Pull Up to the Bumper [Edit] (Elastica)
16 Welcome to L.A. [Edit] (Elastica)
17 Paranoid [Edit] (Elastica)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15111397/Elastca_1993-1996_Clptra_atse.zip.html

The cover is a publicity photo from around 1995.