The Unicorns

Much continued Unicorns hysteria. After crashing the concert they tried to keep hidden from me last night, I've discovered today that I am at least eight songs shy of truly knowing everything about the band. First I discover two unreleased songs (Do the Knife Fight and Ebb Tide, Azure Sky) that are streamed (in very poor quality) from The Unicorns' abandoned website. After downloading and cracking Liatro SWF Decoder to extract what I hope to be higher-fidelity sources behind the Flash facade, I discover that the sources are, in fact, 24kbps mp3s. Still, I am somewhat comforted to have first-hand sources rather than Messer-recorded copies.

I head to SoulSeek to see if I can find better versions (SoulSeek being the place I initially discovered their pre-album demos), and I immediately turn up (in addition to a 128kbps Do the Knife Fight) two songs I'd never heard of (Big Kind Death and Let Me Sleep). Clearly the work of The Unicorns, I ask the owner of the files to expand on his acquisition of them. He tells me he's from a town neighboring the home of The Unicorns, and that the two mystery songs were either the work of Zzzz, a side-project of The Unicorns responsible for There Are No Answers and an early version of Sea Ghost, which I had already encountered...or of All Makes Parts & Collision, a side-project of Alden's (exclusively, I believe; as visitors to a very old Unicorns guestbook note, "Nick is sloppy"). Not only that, but Alden also works on a solo side-project that's pretty good. Finding this shit is hard enough on its own, let alone reconciling inconsistent bands, titles, and recording dates. How can I be obsessed with something that's such a pain in the ass?