About two thirds of my vinyl is currently stored at my parents house, which is a far from ideal situation, but until I find somewhere I want to live for more than 6 months, it's easier to keep it there. Everytime I go back I flick through the records and look at ones I'd forgotten I had. I was popping by yesterday and decided to bring a handful of record back with me, mostly ones that had been neglected. I also picked up this one, an album I have on cd and is definitely not neglected. (For the record, its actually kinda nice to have some LPs there - its like record shopping through albums you know you'll like and they're free!)
So yes, I love End Transmission. I think it's an incredible record. When I was at college Hugh bought it on cd and I borrowed it and enjoyed it. A few months later I picked up a second hand copy of Lookinglasself on cd but didn't get round to any further Snapcase-back-catalogue shopping for a while. I'd heard of Interpunk and was also really getting into The Paper Chase a year or so later. Interpunk was stocking some cool Paper Chase records and I'd just got my student loan, so I did a huge shop on there (I always get carried away when the postage goes down the more things you buy) and bought a copy of End Transmission. Luckily, my memories of how good it was hadn't lied to me and I still think its great now.
I'm a sucker for a concept album, and I like the theme here. I was particularly amused by the fact the songs weren't in the order the story suggested on the insert and that there were songs not on the album. I later bought Bright Flashes on cd which nearly fills in all the gaps. I've never sat down and played the songs in story-order. One day I will, probably. The singer's voice is incredible, and on songs like First Word he just keeps going when most people would be out of breath. New Kata is an incredible song too, but there's not a bad song on there. Musically its perfect too - the drum intro on First Word always puts a smile on my face. Other highlights include The Beat, and the last two songs.
It's also a nice example of a lovely package overall. Deadformat reckons that they only pressed 300 copies of this colour (a colour that a friend once described as "condom-coloured") and I pretty much never manage to find the rarest print runs. I've looked for a bunch of my records on there and I nearly always have the most common pressing (worth noting that that website was the main inspiration behind this blog, that and the new John Peel archive and a few other websites of people doing similar things). It also comes with the last two songs on a bonus 7", a lovely way to include the songs that wouldn't fit (also, they're both incredible so it would be a crime to leave them off). I like the Victory records that have the folded sleeve like this (I have a couple of others). From looking at pictures on Deadformat, it seems all of the inserts have the limited edition number crossed out, although they also reckon there were 3006 pressed.
In a fantastic bit of eBaying I picked up the first four Snapcase albums on cd for a tenner from some guy in America (I gave my second copy of Lookinglasself to Hugh). I also eventually got Bright Flashes second hand in Melbourne. This album is undoubtedly my favourite of the lot. It's quite a different sound to the other albums, less harsh but still as ballsy. Writing this made we check their Wikipedia page and it turns out they've reformed and are playing some shows. I hope so much they come to the UK, I never saw them and would love to have the chance. I bet they're incredible to watch.
Format: 12", 7", a4 insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £7.92 new
Bought: Interpunk.com
When: 06/11/04
Colour: Clear pink, black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
