Slint – Untitled: Albini Rough Mixes (12", 45RPM, Maroon Vinyl)

Slint's Untitled - Albini Rough Mixes captures a crucial moment between the band's 1989 debut Tweez and the sessions that became Spiderland. According to Touch and Go founder Corey Rusk, Steve Albini invited the band into an impromptu session after another group failed to show, then quickly mixed the results and dropped off a tape the next day. Those recordings impressed Touch and Go enough to help set up the label's decision to release Slint's next album.

That backstory makes this a fascinating small document of transition rather than a stray odds-and-ends release. The two tracks here, “Glenn” and “Rhoda,” come from the period when Slint were moving away from the abrasive angles of Tweez toward the more spacious, exacting language that would define Spiderland. Even in rough-mix form, you can hear why these sessions mattered: Albini's fast, direct approach catches the band in a raw, undecorated state, with the tension and precision that would soon become central to their best-known work.

For anyone interested in Louisville post-hardcore's early mutations, this record is more than a footnote. It preserves the sound of a band being heard differently at exactly the right time, and it gives a compact, revealing glimpse of how Slint's next chapter came into focus.