This makes me very happy. These songs take my breath away - in an almost literal sense; I can't imagine a more perfect soundtrack for slowly drifting into the hereafter. Beautiful, frightening, ethereal, wafting away despite being so very, very HEAVY. Marble Index is, after all, an album that is allegedly only 8 songs long because the producer and engineer couldn't handle any more. On the one hand I can sympathize, but on the other... I think I could go on listening until the last glimmer of consciousness had fadedI've been on a major Nico kick lately and this is a lovely remastered pairing of two of her best albums, Marble Index and Desertshore, with outtakes and demos, to boot. It's a nice job by Rhino. The remasters breathe a little more space into the ambience - as if the setting were changed from a mausoleum to a cathedral - but the most striking thing that I've noticed is that the demos that appear here are every bit as compelling and hypnotic as the 'finished' tracks; the power in these songs is entirely in her vision and performance and definitely not the work of a fashion model dilettante as she's occasionally branded. For the most part Cale's arrangements and embellishments are tasteful and appropriate but they add little that isn't already there in her voice and harmonium playing.The only thing that would make it better is if the subsequent album, The End, was also part of this set.A sample: