Hum: You'd Prefer An Astronaut (2LP, 180g) [EARTH ANALOG]

Why you'll love it

This reissue spreads the album over two 180g discs cut at 45 RPM, remastered at Sterling Sound and housed in a gatefold jacket. "Stars" reached No. 11 on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart and pushed the album past 250,000 copies.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 180g vinyl
• Cut at 45 RPM
• Remastered at Sterling Sound
• Gatefold jacket

About the album

Ask a certain kind of guitarist about tone and, sooner or later, Hum comes up. The Champaign, Illinois four-piece of Matt Talbott, Tim Lash, Jeff Dimpsey and Bryan St. Pere signed to RCA and made an album of enormous, slow-moving guitars and lyrics about stars, rockets and chemistry, delivered in Talbott's calm, almost conversational voice.

Keith Cleversley recorded and mixed most of it at his Playground Studio in Chicago, with "The Very Old Man" tracked at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. "Little Dipper" opens with a wall of sound, "The Pod" grinds and churns, "Suicide Machine" stretches out past five minutes, and "Songs of Farewell and Departure" closes things on a long, glowing fade. The album's title comes from a line in "I'd Like Your Hair Long."

Deftones frontman Chino Moreno has said the band takes a big part of its tone from this record, and "Stars" turned up on Beavis and Butt-Head and, a decade on, in a Cadillac commercial. A song about the night sky ended up selling luxury sedans, which is about as down to earth as space rock gets.

Also at Kops: more Hum on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Earth Analog (cat# EAR-007), a reissue of the 1995 album.