Clint Mansell + Kronos Quartet - Requiem For a Dream

As soon as I saw this record listed amongst the RSD16 releases I knew I had to be up early to sit outside a record shop again this year. I've been listening to this haunting soundtrack for years and was so excited to get it on vinyl. In the few days that followed, most record shops and websites had it amongst their top picks for RSD, so I knew I wasn't the only one. Reading Twitter on the day it seemed that a lot of other people were extremely excited to finally have it on vinyl too.

Back when I was at school I remember reading in the TV guide about a film called Pi which was being shown late on BBC2 one night and looked really interesting; I think the main thing that draw me in was the name, since I've been a maths-nerd for some time. Being 15 or 16 at the time, I didn't really get the film but thought it was excellent and unlike anything else I'd ever seen. I got the dvd a while later and still think the film is great.

Independently of this, I was also a big fan of Pop Will Eat Itself, having discovered them in a rather unusual manner - they'd contributed a few songs to the soundtrack of the game Loaded which I'd acquired on the doomed Sega Saturn. It would be years before I realised that the soundtrack to one of my favourite films at the time, and this ridiculous band I'd come to love were actually the work of the same person. I think most people who listen to any of Clint Mansell's soundtracks would be amazed to hear his output with PWEI.

The exact order of things is fuzzy in my mind - I remember hearing about Darren Aronofsky's second film Requiem For a Dream and I remember at some point hearing that Clint Mansell had composed the soundtrack to that too. Whether I'd made the Clint Mansell / Pi / PWEI connection at this point I don't know, but I remember really wanting to see the film. Needless to say, Requiem For a Dream is an incredible yet brutal affair; it is not for the faint-hearted but mind-blowing in such a good way. On first viewing I was fully aware that the soundtrack played such a huge part of that - the overtures at the start of each section, the hints of the main theme throughout and then Lux Aeterna in its full glory at the end. Things go spectacularly badly for the characters in that film and the music really hammers that point home. It is a beautiful soundtrack.

For years I meant to buy the cd, but put it off for a very long time (for a while I'd just put the movie on in the background to listen to it, but it tended to be a bit distracting). A couple of years ago I ended up buying a copy and I've listened to it a lot more often since then. As someone who has spent a long time listening to instrumental post-rock bands and, more recently, a genre my record store likes to refer to as "neo-classical" (Max Richter, Nils Frahm, etc) I've found that certain soundtracks tick a lot of the same boxes in what I want from the music. When you listen to it as an album, the "Conga" songs jar a little bit, but as a whole it works remarkably well.

Just last month I had the very exciting experience of seeing Clint Mansell performing some of his film scores in London. It was an excellent show and reminded me how much I loved the soundtrack to Pi but also to all the other films that he's scored that I've seen. The highlight for me was undoubtedly Requiem For a Dream and the compressed version they played was fantastic. Clint looked to be having a good time too and spent a lot of time talking to the audience about the history of some of the scores, which gave a great insight into the process.

Going back to where I started, I was also pleased that the artwork had been redesigned for the RSD release and that the resulting artwork was so great (not that there is anything bad about the original, which is brilliantly referenced). It really feels like someone has gone to quite the effort to make this a nice release (despite the spelling mistakes on the back), which I think everyone appreciates given how much people wanted this soundtrack on vinyl. Included is a note from Clint written nearly 10 years ago which gives even more of the insight I mentioned above and side D comprises two bonus mixes of the score. All in all it is a great record and I am very excited to have it in my collection.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 35
Cost: £30 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 16/04/16
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Clutch - The Elephant Riders

This album and I go way back. The second gig I ever went to was Therapy? supported by Clutch and The Yo-Yos in Southampton University. Clutch blew me away with how heavy they were but also with how they managed to maintain such a smooth groove through it. At one point the drummer went on a drum solo that seemed to last for about 10 minutes and eventually went through the skin on his snare drum.

Some years later I decided I should actually pick up an album by Clutch and I remember someone telling me that The Elephant Riders was a good starting point. I have many great memories of listening to this album - I remember playing it whilst driving through the Australian outback - it wasn't to the taste of everyone in the car but Seb and I were having a great time. I also put it onto a tape as soon as I got a car of my own - I selected a handful of albums I thought would be great for driving to and The Elephant Riders was an obvious choice. As a side note, that was the last time I saw that cd; I still have the case but I've not seen the cd since. It's either in another case or somewhere at my parents' house (making all the more reason to get a copy on vinyl).

Despite my love for this album, I've never really persevered with the rest of Clutch's back-catalogue. I bought From Beale Street to Oblivion on Record Store Day a couple of years ago and it's also great. I've seen Clutch a couple of times since - both times involving trips to Wales - once with the excellent Taint supporting and a second time supporting Gwar. I'm a fan of the band and their sound, so there's really no reason not to get more of their music.

I think the main reason I've not bought any more of their albums is because The Elephant Riders keeps giving me so much joy. Every time I play it I can't help but sing along and play every air instrument I can think of. Everything about the album is huge - the choruses, the verses, the riffs. I can't list my favourite songs because they're all great. It's the perfect length - 10 songs and 50 minutes. All in all, it's just a great album.

When I saw that The Elephant Riders was being reissued for Record Store Day I immediately put it on my wish list. This year I had to commit very strongly to RSD or not at all - the last bus goes into town at 2.45 and the first bus in the morning would be way too late. The other option was a 2 hour walk, which if I was going to get a good space in the queue would involve leaving at the same time as the bus anyway. So at 3.10 on Saturday I sat outside Truck with four people in front of me. Two more appeared shortly thereafter and the queue grew from there, although it was definitely shorter than previous years. Luckily I was able to get everything I wanted, including this double red vinyl. A lot of the albums I was after they only had one copy of so it was worth-while.

It's a nice release, with the lyrics printed on the inside of the gatefold. Strangely the records were in the sleeves but not inside the gatefold and sealed that way, presumably to stop them knifing the cover in transit. It's also strange that one sleeve is a picture sleeve advertising other records on the same label and the other is plain black. It's also 45rpm rather than the usual 33 and a third, but from what I understand is that allows for a deeper sound, and The Elephant Riders needs a deep sound.

I nearly had a heart attack at the end of playing it as there is a bonus track tacked on the end of The Dragonfly after a short period of silence. From what I can tell from Discogs, a lot of the cd pressings have one of a number of bonus tracks in this place - the vinyl has the song 05. The most alarming thing was that I discovered that my cd copy has the same bonus track on the end (or, at least, the mp3s of it that I still have) and that somehow in all those years of listening to this cd I never just let it play at the end. Way back in the day I'd check on all my cds whether there were any bonus tracks, either hidden at the end or, more rarely, preceding the album and found by rewinding the first track (see As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt 2 for a fine example) but clearly I never did with The Elephant Riders. I like the way the album ends on The Dragonfly - it's such a good ending - so maybe that's why I'd never let it play out.

This is certainly a nice album to have on vinyl. When I put the album on, I immediately turned it up beyond the "normal" volume I play records at; you can't listen to Clutch quietly.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 10
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Truck Store
When: 16/04/16
Colour: Transparent red
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Dälek - Untitled

I got in Dälek through a method that has steered me pretty well on a number of occasions - I heard the name of a band playing All Tomorrow's Parties, stumbled across an album of theirs in a record shop and bought it without hearing it. I forget which ATP Dalek were due to play, but around the same time I found a second-hand copy of Abandoned Language for £5 in Kelly's Records (I think it was £7 per cd, or three for £15, so I also got Distillers and Múm cds. Another great bargain that day was the fact they'd mistaken Shellac's Terraform as being a single, so it was a mere £3).

Anyway, I quite enjoyed Abandoned Language. Dälek's take on hip-hop is very different to anything else I've heard; musically there's elements of industrial, drone, showgaze and minimal, and vocally it's rarely possible to hear a single word that MC Dälek is saying, but it all works so well together. It makes for a very hypnotic sound.

Independently, I'd also discovered how awesome Southern Records' Latitudes Sessions were having been introduced through an excellent William Elliott Whitmore EP and later getting sessions by Gowns and A Storm of Light. I'd seen on the internet that Dälek had done a session and was intrigued by the fact it was a single 40-minute long song. Whilst record shopping in Manchester last year I found a copy in Picadilly Records and quickly added it to the stack of records I was buying. I was rather pleased to discover when I got home that it was the limited purple vinyl (/300) rather than the standard black (/700).

The session is exactly what I hoped it would be - similar to the music I'd heard on Abandoned Language but with the extra flexibility/strangeness that comes from not having to think about individual songs. The music definitely flows through movements but in the slow, hypnotic way you'd want. It's more instrumental then not (or maybe that's just how I remember it, given MC Dälek's style of rapping). There's a few minutes on the second side where everything jumps up in intensity and serves to bring you back to consciousness a little. The piece was recorded in a few days around the London bombings in 2005 (the day I moved to Australia) and you can't help but wonder how that is reflected in the music and how it might have sounded otherwise. The insert recommends listening to it with headphones in a darkened room, which isn't something I've tried yet, but I can see it working.

Format: 12", die-cut sleeve, insert
Tracks: 1
Cost: £9.50 new
Bought: Picadilly Records, Manchester
When: 18/05/14
Colour: Transparent purple
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Kevin Devine - Brother's Blood

When I lived in Cardiff we all fell in love an album called Every Famous Last Word by The Miracle of 86. There was a small punk record shop in the antiques market called Damaged Records which had a bunch of copies on cd for £3. Somehow Hugh ended up buying a copy and it got played a lot on the hifi in the kitchen (putting a hifi in that kitchen was one of the best things we did in that house). I can't remember if that was before or after we saw Kevin Devine supporting Lucero in Le Pub, but I certainly wasn't aware of the connection at the time (as an aside, I don't really remember much of that show - it was the same evening as my work Christmas party and we'd been drinking since midday - I snuck away at 7 and met everyone else on the train to Newport. I remember the gig being good, but details were hazy).

A while later, another Kevin Devine cd ended up in the kitchen and that's went I learnt that he was in The Miracle of 86. The album (Circle Gets the Square) didn't quite get the same traction and eventually got out-played by whatever the next hot-hit on the kitchen hifi was. After two years of living in Cardiff I moved to London to start my PhD. A week or so after arriving, I decided to go record shopping and blow some my new funding money. I went straight to Berwick Street and picked up some gems in the second-hand stores. One of the cds I picked up was Brother's Blood by Kevin Devine. I didn't know much about his back-catalogue and it was a whole £7 (which is a lot for a second-hand cd) but figured it was worth checking out.

I got home and listened to some of the cds. I remember it was late by the time I first played Brother's Blood - not crazy-late, but after midnight. The first four songs were all quite nice but I was aware that I wasn't giving the album my full attention. I was about half-way through the title-track when I first became aware that I was listening to something really special - the guitars were just menacing enough to warn you that something was about to happen; then Kevin started singing louder and louder, until it was basically a scream and he had my full attention. That verse in Brother's Blood always grabs me and I love hearing it. As song as the song finished, I went back and played it again (something I never normally do, especially on the first play of an album). I turned the volume up a little, enough to wake my housemate who text me from upstairs telling me to turn it down. I waited 6 minutes before doing so - I wanted to hear the whole song again, loud and with my full attention.

I remember feeling amazed that I'd found this incredible song, and I very nearly hadn't bought the album. From that point on I listened to rest of the album totally differently. One of the best things about Brother's Blood is that the title-track isn't the only great song - Another Bag of Bones, I Could Be With Anyone and Yr Husband are all incredible songs too. I've found with most of Kevin Devine's albums I need a few listens to get into - and hearing the songs live usually adds something. Brother's Blood is instantly brilliant and hearing the songs live adds even more to them. I've seen Kevin countless times since and the songs from this record are always my favourites. There are others I've become very fond of and enjoy greatly, but I mostly get excited at the thought of hearing Brother's Blood and I Could Be With Anyone. Some time later I discovered Banquet Records in Kingston and found a video of Kevin playing Brother's Blood in-store, which I have watched countless times over the years.

A while ago it was announced that Brother's Blood was being re-released on vinyl and really wanted a copy. I held off a while because I was buying a house and didn't have much spare cash for albums I already had on vinyl. I recently bought a bunch of records from Big Scary Monsters and was pleased to finally get a copy of this album. It's a pretty nice reissue with the die-cut sleeve and some bonus tracks (including an acoustic demo of She Stayed as Steam, which is another favourite from this EP).

Format: 12", die-cut gatefold sleeve, picture sleeves
Tracks: 14
Cost: £18 new
Bought: Big Scary Monsters
When: 07/03/16
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Loved Ones - Keep Your Heart

There was a lot of buzz around The Loved Ones when they came to play Newport, probably because of the Paint It Black connection (something that was lost on me until recently). I hadn't heard of them before that point, but everyone was going and I figured I'd enjoy the show. I had fun, enough to make me buy the LP (the fact it was only a fiver helped). It's a nice enough punk record, but nothing particularly makes me want to play it all that often. There are a few highlights - Suture Self, Breathe In and Living Will (Get You Dead). 

I figured the band were on to big things, but they kinda just faded away after their second album as the singer, Dave Hause, put more effort into his solo career. I've never really enjoyed his solo stuff, despite having seen him a few times (the Dave House vs Dave Hause show in Kingston was pretty awesome, but mostly for the non-Hause moments). I think the theme here tends to be that there's nothing about his music that especially stands out from other music of a similar style. Or maybe I'm just not paying enough attention.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £5 new
Bought: gig
When: 09/11/07
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no