Mick Turner - Don't Tell the Driver

This was very much an impulse buy. I don't regret it as such, but I can think of countless records that I've not bought for £17 that would be better. Mick Turner is one third of the Dirty Three, a band I have a huge amount of time for. I'd consider myself a "big fan" of the band, despite not yet having all their albums - I've been working through their back-catalogue slowly, making sure I give each album the time it deserves. A lot of them are slow-burners, and I'm enjoying taking it at a slow pace.

On 18th May 2014 I was in Manchester to see Neutral Milk Hotel and spent the day record shopping. I don't often get to splurge money in different cities anymore, so made the most of it and spent a lot. A good percentage of that went in Piccadilly Records on a variety of things, including this record. I'd not seen it before, but figured if it was as enjoyable as a Dirty Three album it'd be worth it, and added it to my pile.

In short, it's not as good as a Dirty Three album, but maybe I shouldn't have expected it to be - I'm sure Mick enjoyed making this music outside of the expectations of the band, so I should try to enjoy it as such. Don't Tell the Driver is a perfectly warm and pleasant album, but not remotely memorable. Over the course of an hour and eleven songs, the music alternates between nice moments and moments so scrappy that you wonder if there's another album playing somewhere - the title-track is a prime example of the latter. The Navigator is a great example of a song where the instruments all build together (rather than at odds with each other) and it sounds great - it's the highlight of the album. Long Way Home is good too, with some nice horns. There are a lot of ideas within songs, some are given room to grow, others cut short. I feel like Dirty Three are a band known for letting those ideas go to beyond their natural conclusion, and I guess that's what I like about them.

I don't play this album often and the vast majority of times I think I could be in the mood to play it, I decide to listen to the Dirty Three instead. I should have known it was always going to fall into that category. Still, it's nice to look at that lovely artwork.

Format: Double 12", insert
Tracks: 11
Cost: £17 new
Bought: Piccadilly Records, Manchester
When: 18/05/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Various Artists - First Kiss

This record came out on Record Store Day in 2013, but I didn't buy a copy until over a year later. I can't remember why it was that I didn't buy a copy in 2013, but it would have been for one of three reasons: Banquet hadn't got any copies in stock; it was in stock but all gone by the time I got into the shop; or I simply forgot to pick up a copy. Given how much stock Banquet get in, it's likely not the first reason and I know what I'm like, so it's quite likely the last.

The main reason I was keen to get a copy was that my friend Matt's band, Among Brothers, was on the compilation and I really like their music. Their EP Homes is the only thing of theirs I have mp3s of, but still gets pretty heavy rotation. The other nine songs were mostly bands I hadn't heard of, or only knew the names because Matt knew them (particularly in the cases of Samoans and Without Maps). At the time I thought I was fairly in touch with a lot of what was going on in the British music scene, but this compilation is proof that I really wasn't - or at least the scenes I knew about were existing in entirely non-overlapping circles with these bands. I'd moved out of Cardiff a few years before this compilation and, I assume, before a lot of these bands had their Cardiff connections, so I moved away assuming the punk scene was all there was.

The compilation is ten songs from ten bands who made up the first ten releases on Jen Long's label, Kissability. It open with one of the weaker songs in my opinion - DZ Deathrays' The Mess Up which doesn't do as much as I keep thinking it's going to. Cut Ribbons compare themselves to Deftones, which nearly comes through in the guitars, but Mew is a much more obvious comparison in my mind. It's nice and I imagine they'd be good to watch live. The Among Brothers song, Keep, is unmistakably them, but sounds quite different - as ever, they fit a lot into a short song. It lacks any central theme to hold it together, which was also my criticism of the 7" they released. They're followed by Without Maps, whose math-rock is much more to my liking, and reminds me of a lot of bands I've enjoyed over the years, including Grown Ups, a band Matt got me into. Thumpers close the record out nicely with Velveteen - apparently they released an album on Sub Pop, which is pretty impressive.

Anyway, a year after RSD13 this record did find it's way into my collection. I was in Manchester to see Neutral Milk Hotel with my friend Aled and went record shopping during the day. Piccadilly Records (a great record shop with some really interesting stock) still had at least one copy in their shelves, and had been sat there for over a year. I was pleased to finally add it my collection, so included it in the armful of records I was buying that day (as an added bonus, it was reduced to £5). The sleeve is numbered (#22/100) and has what I think might be an actual lipstick kiss in the corner. The insert looks like it was supposed to chopped about an inch shorter in each direction, or it's possibly intentional that all the print/layout stuff is left around the edge. It didn't come with a download code, so it's not had very many plays at all, which is a shame. I'm not sure I would have become a huge fan of any of the bands had I listened to the songs many more times, but it would have been nice to feel more in touch with a clearly active part of the UK music scene.

Format: 12" white label, insert, numbered 22/100
Tracks: 10
Cost: £5 new
Bought: Piccadilly Records, Manchester
When: 18/05/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: None

William Basinski - Melancholia

Like a lot of people, or so I assume, I first heard of William Basinski from hearing about The Disintegration Loops. The things I read about it made it sound really interesting and I was just beginning to get into new genres (for me) by the way of Max Richter's Infra, so I thought it might appeal to me. I've listened to sections of the 4-hours+ of music on those albums and enjoyed it. The cost of purchasing a (vinyl) copy has long been the thing putting me off getting any further into it.

A few years later I was in Manchester to see Neutral Milk Hotel and spent the afternoon record shopping. I found a few records I fancied in Piccadilly Records and this was one of them. At £20 it was a pricier purchase, but I figured I'd enjoy it. Plus, it was on Temporary Residence, which is a comforting sign of a good album. It's rare I chance £20 on such an unknown album, but I guess I was feeling adventurous.

I like Melancholia. It's gentle but somehow ponderous. I get a similar calming effect from it as I do Max Richter's recent Sleep album - the second it starts I begin to feel myself unwinding and relaxing, but it also keeps me alert. The piano builds some suspense, but not horror-suspense but just the feeling that you should aware that there is more going on. That feeling ebbs and flows throughout the 14 movements (each named with Roman numerals). I couldn't call out any highlights because I couldn't imagine not listening to the album as a whole.

My only complaint with the whole record is an annoyingly minor one - the labels on the records aren't stuck perfectly centrally, which means the needle hits them at the very end. It makes an amazingly unpleasant noise, which is not at all what you want after 20 minutes of very calming music. It's such a minor thing but does take away from the enjoyment of the record - either I remember and have to dart over to the turntable to lift the needle or I forget and get rudely awoken by the noise.

I really should check out more of William Basinski's work. The cds of The Disintegration Loops aren't hard to find and would probably get more play than the many LPs that work is spread over (although it is a very nice looking boxset). I imagine my collection will grow, but it's unlikely to be on vinyl, so you might not read much more about it on here.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 14
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Piccadilly Records, Manchester
When: 18/05/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

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