In late 2011, Golden Lab Records acquired 50 x plastic boxes that each housed 4 x cassettes as the result of a mixed-up order with Tapeline in Stockport (we’d originally wanted boxes that housed 2 x cassettes, but Alan @ Tapeline was in a daydream and we ended up with these instead). We wondered what to do with them. “A 4 x cassette box set of Howling Hex live material!” was the resoundingly obvious internal mantra. We emailed Neil Hagerty and put the idea to him. He didn’t get back to us and so, after a couple of weeks, we decided to use the tape boxes for a different project instead. It was at this point that Neil replied to say that he’d be excited to release a bunch of live NMH & The Howling Hex stuff and that we should go full-steam ahead. Well, having already assigned the cassette boxes to something else and being as gung-ho about our sorely limited finances as we are, we decided to go the whole hog and put together a 3xLP set instead. Only thing was, we didn’t have any material and, as someone who never records his shows, neither did Neil. To source the material, we approached Matt Valentine (Tower Recordings/MV & EE) as we knew he was both a big Neil fan and had the key ‘Tapers Pit’ city. He got back to us right away and told us he was on it and, within about a week, he’d mailed us a data CD with a note marked, ‘Howdy Nick, here’s a whole lotta booty. You GOTTA credit Jim Hildreth.’ There were seven performances on the disc captured from six shows and over eight hours of material. Hildreth, we learned, is a notorious NYC taper who’s turned up to practically every weirdo show in town armed with a pair of binaural mics and a digital recording device and, after Matt put out the appeal, he’d replied to say he had these shows recorded from over a ten-year period, most of the shit being from the first half of the ’00s with the exception of one show recorded in 2010, and was more than happy to donate them. We took a listen. Sound quality wise, the stuff varied as mics were placed in different spots at each show so there was no real consistency there, but what did come through were the performances. Long, drawn-out solos with intensely applied wah from 2001/2002… Relentless, insanely extended repetitions of All Night Fox riffs from 2005… Cabaret-style medleys with paradoxically slapdash precision from 2010. All incredible and, on top of all that, ready themed by the fact of its source: these were ‘The Hildreth Tapes’. We set about the lengthy process of mastering it with our man P.C. in a tiny flat in South Manchester in the winter of 2012. The result is this 3xLP set, which features typically gorgeous, gatefold artwork by the venerable Lucy Jones. The sound quality has been homogenised to the best of our capability to give smoothness of flow to the sequencing (we decided not to present the material in chronological order, rather in order of vibe – this is just what felt right) and the required kick-up-arse where mic placement had failed to do so. And we think we’ve managed to get it sounding pretty sweet. We’re delighted, too, that Jim Hildreth is getting some credit for his years of efforts in the name of preservation. We emailed him to thank him recently and, in his reply, he told us: “Wow! I have to say, wow! Your email is probably the best mail I\’ve gotten in years, since a long lost girlfriend wrote me out of the blue.” Well, right back at you, Jim.