.

Kurt Cobain's Pre-Bleach Era Mixtape Surfaces Online

11/04/2014
.
(Radio.com) Twenty years after the death of Kurt Cobain, it still doesn't feel like we'll ever get tired of Nirvana nostalgia. Another piece of proof for that is a recently surfaced mixtape, dubbed "Montage of Heck," made by the late frontman the year before the band released their 1989 debut Bleach.

It's a fascinating time capsule of where Cobain was at sonically, because it's so different from the band's album which would follow. On the mixtape, unearthed by Dangerous Minds, Cobain tinkers with noise rock, layering samples from the radio and his home collection of recordings along with sounds and drones. By the time he made it, noise rock - an offshoot of Krautrock - was in full swing in San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., especially.

Cobain's take on it spans 15-plus minutes and includes moments from Jimi Hendrix's speech at the Monterey Pop Festival, Fred Flintstone screaming after his bowling ball, the Jackson Five's "ABC," James Brown's "Hot Pants" and, most surprisingly, William Shatner's cover of "Wild Thing."

Cobain would have painstakingly compiled each sample from its source manually, well before YouTube or Spotify existed, using a four-track cassette recorder.

Listen to the project and check out a list of its samples via United Mutilations here.

Radio.com is an official news provider for antiMusic.com.
Copyright Radio.com/CBS Local - Excerpted here with permission.

Nirvana Music, DVDs, Books and more

Nirvana T-shirts and Posters

Share this article

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Pin it Share on Reddit email this article


...end