My Little Bastard Soul and The Castle were never designed to be a single unit, but together they comprise almost everything NRSK recorded in 1992, the year before the band made its public debut.

Bastard Soul, the near-legendary debut, has been hopelessly rare for a number of years, but word-of-mouth enthusiasm pushed for an eventual reissue, thus this CD. Recorded in the late winter between blizzards and sub-zero temperatures. Faithfully re-mastered, near-original cover art, this timely release is bound to enliven those who were too young or too dense to appreciate it the first time around.

The Castle is a different animal all together. The material is collected from a variety of sources, principally from a late-autumn production of a play written by a particularly caustic English playwright. The rest is filled out with either Bastard Soul outtakes or early demos (recorded, truthfully, in 1991). Issuing "outtakes" or "live tracks" or "alternate versions" is, granted, a gimmick which has long since lost its novelty. Here, rather, The Castle provides strong evidence of NRSK's multi-tiered growth during that one crucial year. Need evidence? Check out the quietly cinematic atmosphere of the original "Surf King," and pair that up against "The Castle," an explosive 25 minute semi-raga that is almost certain to completely re-define "driving" or "road" music within our collective lifetimes.

While never intended to rest together in the same CD jacket, The Castle here provides a more subdued (for the most part) contrast to the relentless frenzied assault of the more familiar My Little Bastard Soul. Carry them with you as you would the extremes of the seasons.