> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://southpole.blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Ten Thousand Years of Teeth Pressed Into a Single Groove - URL: https://southpole.blog/mastodon-marrow-deep-bone-dust-vinyl/ - Published: 2026-10-13T14:49:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-13T14:48:59.000Z - Description: Mastodon ground fossil teeth into 170 copies of Marrow Deep, the record the band made after Brent Hinds died. Carly Rae Jepsen keeps adding songs to Day and Night. One record you own as it stands, one that keeps growing, and what each says about loss, memory and a finished thing. - Author: Bruiser - Tags: ~Music, +Digital Memory, :Essay A fan handed Mastodon a bag of fossilized mastodon teeth about twenty years ago, The MetalList reports. The teeth weren't display-worthy, and the band held onto them with no plan. Then the title and themes of Marrow Deep gave bassist and vocalist Troy Sanders an idea: grind them up and press them into the record. I've read plenty of gimmick announcements. Most smell like a marketing meeting. This one at least admits where it came from. ## The Bone Dust Edition The facts, straight from Loma Vista's listing: 170 copies, $150 each. You couldn't walk in and buy one. Loma Vista ran a raffle for the right to purchase, open to the US, Canada and Mexico, and it closed October 12\. The winners' copies are expected to ship around October 16. Ground fossilized mastodon teeth went into the pressing. The label's listing calls them 10,000 years old. Consequence credits three partners, Loma Vista, Waxworks Records and the University of Georgia's geology department, and reports the band members sprinkled the dust onto the platters themselves. The MetalList reports the University of Georgia team ground the teeth fine enough to leave sound quality and playability untouched. A groove full of ancient tooth powder is still a groove, and the needle doesn't care where the dust came from. The point of the object is you can hold it, and holding it means something the sound can't carry. A $150 raffle for 170 copies is a small run by design, and small runs have squeezed collectors for as long as labels have pressed records. Somebody at the label knows what a headline like "real mastodon fossils" does on a Friday news cycle. The metal press had it everywhere inside two days, and I'm adding to it right now. But the gimmick has a spine, and the spine is the band's own story. ## The Marrow You can't write about Marrow Deep without writing about Brent Hinds. According to Guitar World, Hinds left Mastodon in March 2025 and died in a motorcycle accident that August. Metal Hammer's feature, published on Louder, quotes Troy Sanders on how fast the grief arrived. Mastodon walked into the studio about a week after Hinds died. "It was difficult. It was dark. It was sad," Sanders said. "But it was also necessary." A band still grieving a founding guitarist rebuilds itself in a studio and decides to press the remains of its namesake into a record. The title does the work, and the vinyl refuses to treat it as a metaphor. Am I reading too much into a merch drop? Maybe. The sources credit only the title and themes for the idea, and I won't put words in Sanders' mouth. But a band that spent a year learning what's left after a loss has earned the right to make something you can touch. ## The Other Pole Now walk to the opposite corner of the record store, where Carly Rae Jepsen stands with a laptop and a smile. Jepsen put out Day and Night, her eighth studio album, on September 18 through Interscope. It's a double album: 24 tracks, 12 on the Day side and 12 on the Night side, about an hour and 25 minutes. Stereogum called it "absolutely tremendous," then added, giddy, "It wasn't enough!" Three weeks later, on October 9, she released Day and Night (Continued), which adds eight more songs split evenly between the halves. Two first appeared on the Japanese CD. A 26-city North American tour starts April 15, 2027. I'm not here to sneer at this. Twenty-four songs is a lot of songs. Adding eight more after release sounds like a songwriter who can't stop. Marie Claire ran its interview under the headline "For Carly Rae Jepsen, Indulgence Is Always In," and writer Sadie Bell compares the record to turning a radio dial in the early '70s. A radio dial keeps going. There's always one more station. That's the spectrum. Mastodon made a record you own as it stands. Jepsen made a record that keeps growing, and the growth hits streaming services first; the Continued vinyl doesn't land until Record Store Day Black Friday, November 27\. One finishes. The other keeps going. Neither is wrong, and I'd defend both against the guys at the bar who want to pick a team. ## Memory, Digital and Otherwise Here the contrast earns its keep. Jepsen can add eight tracks to her album three weeks after release, and the version you saved on your phone in September is now, technically, the short version. Labels update, patch, reissue and remaster files. Nothing ever finishes, which is great for an artist who doesn't want to stop writing and strange for anyone who wants a record to be a fixed moment. Even the Continued vinyl trails the stream by seven weeks. The bone dust vinyl is a fixed moment. Once the 170 copies exist, that's the pressing. No patch. No "continued." The dust is in there, and nobody can edit it out. A label can swap a streaming file overnight. Nobody swaps the teeth out of a groove. ## The Verdict If you want me to pick: the fossil record is the better story, and the Jepsen expansion is probably the better use of an hour. Mastodon's story is about loss, and the fossils give it a body. Jepsen's story is about abundance, and the extra songs give it room. One makes me want to hold something. The other makes me want to turn it up. Call the bone dust a gimmick if you like. Plenty will. Mastodon pressed it. The Georgia team ground the teeth fine enough to leave the sound alone, on purpose. The dust's job is to remind you somebody here is gone and the music kept going anyway. ## ****SouthPole Dispatch** Essays from the borderlands of technology, art, music, and culture — about the systems we build, and what they do to us. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. --- [https://bodega.lomavistarecordings.com/products/mastodon-marrow-deep-bone-dust-edition-vinyl](https://bodega.lomavistarecordings.com/products/mastodon-marrow-deep-bone-dust-edition-vinyl?ref=southpole.blog) [https://consequence.net/2026/10/mastodon-marrow-deep-vinyl-real-mastodon-fossils/](https://consequence.net/2026/10/mastodon-marrow-deep-vinyl-real-mastodon-fossils/?ref=southpole.blog) [https://themetallist.com/en/news/2026/10/mastodon-marrow-deep-fossil-bone-dust-vinyl](https://themetallist.com/en/news/2026/10/mastodon-marrow-deep-fossil-bone-dust-vinyl?ref=southpole.blog) [https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/mastodon-marrow-deep-album-interview](https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/mastodon-marrow-deep-album-interview?ref=southpole.blog) [https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/guitarists/mastodon-marrow-deep-interview](https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/guitarists/mastodon-marrow-deep-interview?ref=southpole.blog) [https://stereogum.com/2514105/carly-rae-jepsen-adds-eight-more-songs-to-her-new-double-album-day-and-night/music](https://stereogum.com/2514105/carly-rae-jepsen-adds-eight-more-songs-to-her-new-double-album-day-and-night/music?ref=southpole.blog) [https://www.musictimes.com/articles/112848/20260918/carly-rae-jepsen-releases-day-night-24-track-double-album-full-track-list-both-halves.htm](https://www.musictimes.com/articles/112848/20260918/carly-rae-jepsen-releases-day-night-24-track-double-album-full-track-list-both-halves.htm?ref=southpole.blog) [https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwmusic/article/Carly-Rae-Jepsen-Releases-DAY-AND-NIGHT-CONTINUED-2027-Tour-Kicks-Off-April-15-20261009](https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwmusic/article/Carly-Rae-Jepsen-Releases-DAY-AND-NIGHT-CONTINUED-2027-Tour-Kicks-Off-April-15-20261009?ref=southpole.blog) [https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/music/carly-rae-jepsen-day-and-night-interview](https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/music/carly-rae-jepsen-day-and-night-interview?ref=southpole.blog) --- *Models used: gpt-4o, claude-sonnet-5-5, claude-sonnet-5, gpt-image-2.5-sunburst*