Eluvium - Life Through Bombardment Pictures

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I just received Eluvium's Life Through Bombardment in the mail yesterday and it is fucking gorgeous. It's a 7xLP boxset, with each record housed in an individual page. From the Temporary Residence site, "The seven jackets are then bound into a beautiful dark green hardbound, linen-cover book, with metallic gold foil stamping and embossed text on the spine, and a beautiful full-color print embossed into the front cover." So, yeah. This is epic.

I saw that this set contained "a bunch of rare and unreleased non-album tracks" and I'd like to clear up any confusion people might have about this. Life Through Bombardment puts Lambent Material, An Accidental Memory In The Case Of Death, Talk Amongst The Trees, When I Live By The Garden And The Sea, and Copia all on vinyl for the first time. So, by "a bunch", they mean 5 extra tracks. And as far as the "unreleased" bit goes, every single song on here has been released in some form before.

At the end of the Talk Amongst The Trees record (side H), there is a track called "Swallows In The Bath." This is probably the rarest song in the boxset, because it was only available on a limited edition compilation from Keepsake Records (Keepsake Volume 1), which may or may not even be around anymore.

Then on the back of When I Live By The Garden And The Sea (side J), there's the other 4 rare tracks. 3 untitled songs (one each for piano, orchestra, and Rhodes & tape) that were only found on the Australian release called Indecipherable Text, which was a 2-disc set containing those 3 tracks plus Lambent Material and Talk Amongst The Trees (neither of which were available in Australia before that came out).

And finally, you have "Carousel" which was on the 100th Temporary Residence release, a compilation called Thankful.

Not that I'm complaining (because I'm definitely not) but I would not consider these "rare" tracks all that rare, nor would I consider this collecting (according to TR) "virtually every Eluvium song ever released." The two notable exclusions are Travels In Constants (Vol. 20) and the split with Jesu. There's also a bunch of various remixes that could have been put on too for comprehensiveness but that might be stretching it.

But, if you're an Eluvium fan, this is a must. You might already have everything that this comes with, but you don't have it on vinyl. And that's what this is about. Sexy, black vinyl, packaged in a hardbound book. Hell yes.