NUM202.3
Album cover

Unwound

Rat Conspiracy

Rat Conspiracy, its name a one-time working title for Unwound’s 1993 debut—the earliest Kill Rock Stars LP—brings the roiling, watershed Fake Train into natural integration with its sibling record, 1994’s New Plastic Ideas, on which the band “branch[ed] out into propulsive odd meters...and traumatic contrasts between loud and soft, pulling the arty riffage into much tighter focus.” Trouser Press]. Both get exacting remasters and replica sleeve treatment, while the set’s third LP tracks Unwound’s restless work toward synthesis with the “Mkultra” and “Negated” 7" material, previously unissued radio sessions, indie comp rarities, and the spidery Minutemen cover “Plight.”

This chapter intros the Olympia, Washington, noise-punk trio anew, kicking off with hi-hat thwaks on “Dragnalus” from drummer Sara Lund, whose lockstep partnership with Justin Trosper and Vern Rumsey marked the forging of a 1990s indie-rock legend. The band’s advancing threat is captured in 32 tracks, a trove of house-show b&w period photographs, and a vivid 10,000-word narrative by latter-day Unwound diarist David Wilcox.

  • 3xLP

    3 150g LPs
    3 single LP tip-on jackets
    3 printed Euro sleeves
    3 LP inserts
    1 saddle-stitched LP book
    1 download coupon
    1 wrapped slipcase

Track List

  1. Unwound Dragnalus
  2. Unwound Lucky Acid
  3. Unwound Nervous Energy
  4. Unwound Valentine Card
  5. Unwound Kantina
  6. Unwound We Are And Was Or Is
  7. Unwound Honourosis
  8. Unwound Pure Pain Sugar
  9. Unwound Gravity Slips
  10. Unwound Star Spangled Hell
  11. Unwound Ratbite
  12. Unwound Feeling$ Real
  13. Unwound Entirely Different Matters
  14. Unwound What Was Wound
  15. Unwound Envelope
  16. Unwound Hexenzsene
  17. Unwound Abstraktions
  18. Unwound All Souls Day
  19. Unwound Usual Dosage
  20. Unwound Arboretum
  21. Unwound Fiction Friction
  22. Unwound Broken E String
  23. Unwound Totality
  24. Unwound Mkultra
  25. Unwound Eternalux
  26. Unwound Unsympathetic
  27. Unwound Negated
  28. Unwound Said Serial
  29. Unwound Census
  30. Unwound Plight
  31. Unwound Unknown 1
  32. Unwound Unknown 2