Developer by Silkworm

“A masterpiece...Silkworm made a perfect album.” - Rosy Overdrive

Comedy Minus One's highly anticipated and expanded vinyl reissue of Silkworm’s out-of-print fifth album “Developer,” licensed from Matador Records, is available worldwide as of February 21, 2025.

This now-double album - originally released in 1997 as a single record - contains six bonus tracks never before available on LP, including five Japan-only tunes you likely haven’t heard yet and a Bob Dylan cover with Stephen Malkmus of Pavement in the fold.

Comes with a CD for the sake of convenience.

Both records are housed in full-cover sleeves inside the record’s gorgeous jacket.

Recorded by Steve Albini at Robert Lang Studios (Seattle) and his house.

Remastered and lacquers cut with Matthew Barnhart at Chicago Mastering Service.

150 gram vinyl manufactured at Quality Record Pressing, with this first pressing limited to 1,000 copies.

Order direct from us and we’ll send you a period-appropriate sticker.

Note: Due to the nature of our licensing agreement with Matador, “Developer” will only be available as a 2xLP + CD but each purchase does come with a download code.

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“Developer is a perfect synthesis of music, mood, and storytelling. A film noir album.” – Paul Tremblay

Silkworm was its own complete circuit, and there is no greater evidence of that fact than our fifth album, Developer.

Many bands back in the late 1990s, irons being hot at the time, felt they had to make a choice:

a) Keep doing things as they came to them naturally

b) Try to offer an imaginary (always larger!) audience something that someone somewhere might imagine they might want, conceivably

Sand off the edges, make it sound good on the radio, etc.

It was nice to realize in real time, when it might conceivably "matter"...that we actually were constitutionally incapable of doing anything that didn't come to us naturally, having long expected that to be the case.

We loved Developer once we whittled it down to what happened to be the weirdest stuff and removed the more conventional things.

If you want to hear the catchiest songs we recorded at that time - aside from Never Met A Man I Didn't Like - they're all on the extra record.

The rest of it…

Weird, bendy, lugubrious, hyper.

Some of the greatest, most unselfconscious drumming and guitar playing of its era.

Many basslines that are 2/3rds passing tones.

Thirty seconds of Andy Cohen laughing like a little child.

It is herky-jerky and overloaded.
It is placid and ruminative and spare.
It was our dear pal and faithful facilitator Steve Albini's favorite Silkworm record.
I completely understand why.
My favorite Shellac record is Terraform, a neat analog in their oeuvre.

When you strip away not just any outside influence but any tiniest bit of overweening ambition...you get a look at what a creative enterprise really is.

At its true soul.

That kind of bare revealment, especially in an art form with a myopic industry attached to it, doesn't happen all that often.

Particularly in bands that have already been around a while.

If I do say so myself.

xo
Tim Midyett
Chicago 2024

silkworm.net