Curl Up And Die

In early June a fun little competition was announced in the weekly update email from RevHQ. This is what it said:

The main riff in "ITSAFUCKINGTIMEMACHINE" was written to sound out a message in Morse code, so they decided to name the track using the same code. If you're able to figure out the message being played by the guitar, e-mail it to us at webmaster@revhq.com, and we'll enter you in a raffle for a chance to win a Curl Up And Die test pressing. Go!

Once I read this, I was intrigued and wanted to have a go. Fortunately, with modern technology the way it is, the fact that I didn't even own the song in question (as it was released on CD only) didn't prove too much of a problem as I was able to play it on youtube. But even after finding the song, and (eventually) transcribing the morse code, figuring out the message proved quite a challenge. It was one of those things that just got in my brain and wouldn't let go, mainly because I felt like I was close to getting it and would probably figure it out if I just invested a few more minutes. Eventually I clocked up a few hours of trying to figure this out, and then just gave up. But to give myself a chance I at least emailed the morse code sequence to show I had done SOMETHING.

In the next week's email they printed this:

Last week, we told you about the Curl Up And Die song that's titled in Morse Code and contains a message within the music in that same code. We challenged readers to try and decipher the message in the song's main riff and the task proved more difficult than we thought. Of the "many" replies we received, only one came close. While our valiant reader translated the notes into Morse Code correctly, he was unfortunately unable to break the dots and dashes up into the correct corresponding letters on the Morse Code chart. The notes in the main riff of track #3 ("ITSAFUCKINGTIMEMACHINE") on Curl Up And Die's EP "But The Past Ain't Through With Us" were properly transcribed by our loyal reader Marcus A. as: -.-...-.--.. But without the spaces between each set of dots and dashes that identify an individual letter, it proved impossible to guess that the bands intention was for it to read as: -.-. ..- .- -.. , which, when translated from Morse Code, spells out C U A D. Thanks for reading, and to the determined Marcus A, we say: -.-. .-.. --- ... . . -. --- ..- --. .... -.-- --- ..- .-- .. -.

For those of you who don't understand morse code, the final bit translates as 'Close enough, you win'. Which I was pretty happy with. A few weeks later and it showed up at my house.

As with a lot of test pressings, and especially those from several years ago, there's no cover. It just looks as above.

The final picture shows it next to the regular sleeve, just because that somehow seems appropriate.

This is far from my favourite record or even Rev release, but I do think it makes for a cool little story. A nice change from 'I bought it from eBay' or whatever. Colour me stoked!