Max Richter - The Blue Notebooks

Max Richter is prolific to a fault. In recent years he has been releasing records faster than anybody could possibly keep up with, particularly film scores and soundtracks. I've forced myself to stop buying so many of his records because I don't feel like I've really even spent enough time with some of the ones I bought years ago, let alone any new ones. Not all of them have been money well spent (more on that another time), but I still seem to keep thinking about buying more. But it wasn't always like that. Not all that long ago he released standalone albums that weren't held together by a narrative or very obvious theme; The Blue Notebooks is one such album.

Compared to his more recent, non-soundtrack releases, The Blue Notebooks feels like an anomaly, but it's the lack of over-bearing theme that makes it so enjoyable. The songs play like just songs that happen to have been written at a similar time and in a similar way; it's something you'd think nothing of from a rock or pop album, but when you think about it alongside Sleep or Voices or Woolf Works or Vivaldi Recomposed it feels a world apart. Without the weight of a theme, it feels light, which is saying something for the album that spawned On the Nature of Daylight, a song that would carve a life outside of Max's career. It's an incredible song, and worthy of all the praise it gets (and the presence of two versions on this album, and countless other slight variations and re-recordings). Shadow Journal shouldn't be overlooked though, as it probably does a better job of representing what Max's early output sounded like - minimal, electronic but with a cutting and memorable violin. Organum is lovely and The Trees is the other highlight - more soaring violins and melancholy pianos. The build up breaks before it has a chance to explode in a Godspeed or Mogwai or EITS manner, which reminds me more of Low, a band who've often pushed songs to that same point just before they explode/implode. I'm sure there's a wealth of classical influences that a more learned person would be able to reel off here, but I'll have to stick with my rock references.

I bought this copy one Saturday afternoon in Truck Store, along with the second Talons album (a post-rock band with two violinists, so two albums with more in common than you'd assume on paper). I'd often stroll down there on a Saturday afternoon and around that time they always had a cracking box of records labelled "post-rock / neo-classical / noise" and some of the best (non-Jason Molina) records I bought in that shop came from there. It was my fifth Richter album in four years, having been introduced to him on Infra. This is the 2015 reissue, so ten years after the original release and not long after Max's huge increase in recorded output. But I didn't know all of that, I just thought it was another nice neo-classical record to play. Whilst the vinyl is 180 grams, there's a huge amount of crackling on my copy during the first recording of On the Nature of Daylight, but it's far from the only version I have of that song, so I'm not too worried.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 12
Cost: £21 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 15/08/15
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download

At the Drive-In - In-ter A-li-a

There are a lot of interesting questions you can ask yourself when it comes to the new At the Drive-In record. Questions like: if you didn't know it was by ATDI but someone had said "if you like ATDI, you might enjoy this album", would I have still been interested? I'd definitely have marked them down for that artwork and font. I might have been into it after pressing play - the opener, No Wolf Like the Present, is one of the strongest on the album and might have drawn me in; it is very At the Drive-In-esque. Would I have spent £22 on it based on that alone? Almost certainly not.

Of course, all these questions are irrelevant, because it is an ATDI record, so I was going to buy it pretty much regardless. After seeing them on their first tour after reforming, I was amazed that they decided to stay together long enough to write another album - at points in the show Omar Rodriguez Lopez looked like he might not even make it to the end of the set. And like all reformations, you do wonder if it's truly necessary to write another album. There are some great moments here - Call Broken Arrow has a really, really good chorus. It's the sort of chorus that makes you think "yeah, this could have worked". Governed by Contagion is the other highlight - if they played it live you'd say "yeah, this isa good song" before really thinking which album it came from. The rest really struggle to stand out in any notable way. Ghost-Tape No. 9 sounds like a Mars Volta b-side.

All in all, not terrible but by no means essential.

Format: Gatefold 12", picture sleeve

Tracks: 11

Cost: £22 new

Bought: Truck Store

When: 10/05/17

Colour: Half black with pink splatter, half pink

Etching: Side A: "In defence of the hero the sermon on the mount will be" Side B: "Administered intravenously by a state appointed therapist" 

mp3s: download code

Dälek - Asphalt for Eden

I've got a few Dälek albums and would definitely buy more if I ever saw them in shops. In fact, all four Dälek albums I have are because I stumbled across them in record shops, and every single time I've seen a Dälek record in a shop I've bought it, so I guess I'm doing a reasonable job. Despite it sitting fairly far from the usual fare that Truck Store in Oxford stock, they've had the last two Dälek albums in stock when they came out, and I bought both. This is the former of those two.

As I mentioned before, Dälek play a very distinctive style of hip-hop, one that I enjoy in a number of ways - it's very dark and often minimal, but shares ideas with post-rock in how a song should grow and subtly work to overcome you, rather than relying on verse-chorus-verse. The rapping is key, but mostly as an instrument more than as words - half the time you'd be pushed to pinpoint exactly what he's saying. Masked Laughter (Nothing's Left) is a highlight - musically it reminds me of some of the soundscapes that Frank Delgado adds to Deftones, and the rapping is at the exact right point in the mix - lower than the music, but still loud enough to do justify to the fact that MC Dälek is rapping with far more vigour than usual. It Just Is finishes the album with the same energy.

At seven songs and just under 40-minutes, it's a good deal shorter than Abandoned Language and Endangered Philosophies, but these days I'm increasingly thinking that 40-minutes is the right length for an album and, to be honest, the fewer songs in that time, the more likely they are to appeal to my post-rock leanings. I have no idea if they have one album that everyone agrees is their best, but if I was recommending Dälek to anyone, of the four records I know, this would be the starting point I'd suggest.

Format: 12", picture sleeve

Tracks: 7

Cost: £16 new

Bought: Truck Store, Oxford

When: 09/06/16

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: Download code

Nine Inch Nails - Broken

In a lot of ways, Broken represents exactly what I want (and wanted) from Nine Inch Nails. Despite that, I don't think any fan could say it was the band's "best" release – on paper, it's only six songs, and two of those don't really count, although the bonus tracks put it back up to six songs – but more importantly, how could it ever be fairly compared to the two giant albums that followed it? In any discography that contains The Downward Spiral and The Fragile, the odds are really stacked against every other recording.

But Broken is, for me, what Nine Inch Nails were always about – punishingly heavy industrial metal but with Trent Reznor's unique ability to somehow mix that with pop and give it a groove that you'd never normally hear alongside guitars. Happiness in Slavery is a perfect example of this, although also one of the sloppier combinations – the verses are brutal and the instrument break is pure noise, but the chorus could be a pop song in the way it's sung (if not in lyrical content). The back story to Broken was that Trent's anger at the label's handling of Pretty Hate Machine caused him to write these blistering songs, and if that's the case I'm kinda glad it all played out as it did; I like the songs on Pretty Hate Machine, but to me that album is the odd-one-out in the NIN back-catalogue – there are hints of industrial, but really there's a lot more 80’s goth and synth-rock going on. Who knows how Nine Inch Nails would sound now if they'd followed that trajectory! (The fact that this EP contains a secret Adam Ant cover is probably a clue.)

Of course, the order in which I got heard the NIN albums is probably why I'm not a PHM fan, and why I think Broken is such perfect NIN material – I got the albums in this order: Downward Spiral, The Fragile, Broken, All That Could Have Been and then Pretty Hate Machine – I'd heard epic-NIN, industrial-NIN and the industrial live versions of PHM songs on the live album before I'd heard that record; I love hearing those pop-moments soundtracked to savage guitar work and drums that are being beaten more than they’re being played (and a lot more than to a drum machine). Despite that, I never really got into industrial as a genre – I think the pop was part of the enjoyment, as much as it surprises me to say it. I know lots of people wouldn’t call NIN an industrial band, and that's fine, but to me they are and they're at their best when they commit fully to their version of it.

And that's exactly what they did on Broken. All four of the actual songs are brilliant (Gave Up and Wish particularly) and every time they're played live they go down amazingly well. It's impressive how many of their best songs came from a bitterly recorded EP. When With Teeth came out I remember describing it to a friend as being the closest thing they've done to a full length version of Broken, a comment based around the fact it was heavy but didn't have a narrative or concept - I'm not sure I agree with 20-year-old-me entirely, but I still love the relative simplicity of that album.

I first heard Broken in December 2001, just over a year after getting The Downward Spiral and a few months after getting The Fragile. I'd been to a record fair but found disappointingly few records I wanted, so picked Broken up in MVC for £6. They would have had that cd in stock every single time I'd ever been in there, but I guess I decided that was the day to finally get it. I was already a fan of the band, but those songs hit hard and made me a bigger fan. A few months later I rushed out to get the And All That Could Have Been double cd for an at-the-time expensive £17. When the band started reissuing their albums I figured it'd be nice to pick them, and gradually did so. After I'd seen the care and attention that'd gone into The Downward Spiral and The Fragile reissues (bought with my World Cup sweepstake winnings), I picked up Broken the very next time I went into the record shop. The package is lovely, in particular the scratched-out lyrics etched into the b-side, the 7" and the booklet. It' worth the money for the songs alone, but the details makes it even more enjoyable.

Format: One sided 12", 7", booklet

Tracks: 8

Cost: £22 new

Bought: Truck Store, Oxford

When: 31/08/18

Colour: Black

Etching: Lyrics etched into b-side

mp3s: Download code

Run the Jewels - Bust No Moves

The final in a little trilogy of Run the Jewels records, this is a 12" they put out for Record Store Day in 2015. I wasn't buying a huge amount that year - in fact, I only bought four records, but one was a Manics record and the other by the Dirty Three, so both essential purchases (the other was a Clutch album, which I didn't really need but enjoy anyway - I was up early and it felt like a waste to do so for only three records).

I didn't know much about the release ahead of time, but was keen to get it regardless. As it is, we get two new songs - the title track and Blockbuster Night Pt 2, which is safe to assume is a sequel to Blockbuster Night Pt 1 on RTJ2 (I think it might have been a bonus track somewhere, but not one I had). The version of Love Again is the same as on my copy of the LP, but apparently the first pressings didn't have the verse by Boots. Pew Pew Pew is one of the bonus tracks on the second disc of RTJ1 - it's probably the best song on this EP.

It's a nice little record, but easily forgotten between the gatefold sleeves of the RTJ LPs around it - plastic sleeves are rarely eye-catching when side-on on a shelf. The colour is nice, although I couldn't confidently say what colour it actually is.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 4
Cost: £13 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 18/04/15
Colour: Clear with splatter
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 3

I'd started writing about this one yesterday, then I saw that they released Run the Jewels 4 early, so I stopped what I was doing and started listening to the new one. I'd not long finished writing about how I frantically downloaded RTJ3 on Christmas morning when I began frantically downloading RTJ4. As long as Run the Jewels are releasing albums, I'll be aiming to get my ears around them as soon as possible. Anyway, more on RTJ4 another day.

Some people I know didn't rate RTJ3 as highly as RTJ2, but I'd go so far as to say that I love this one even more than RTJ2. Whilst the start is the crazy-catchy big tunes, there are some heavy moments in the second half of the album that hit really fucking hard - Don't Get Captured, Thieves, Thursday in the Danger Room and A Report to the Shareholders/Kill Your Masters are all amazing and have raps that you can't help but be moved by. Thursday in the Danger Room is just devastating - El-P's verse pulls at the heartstrings, but then Killer Mike just destroys you. If you haven't, I recommend listening to that one with the lyrics to hand. Wow. It's hard to not think about all things kicking off around the world right when you hear those songs.

Near the start, you also have one of my favourite of El's verses - his lines in Talk To Me are great, peaking with "You don't get it, I'm dirt motherfucker I can't be crushed". Call Ticketron has a super-annoying hook, to the extent that I skip it most of the time I listen to the album. The first three tracks are a great opening - each one a step up from what came before, and Hey Kids follows this trajectory, so it's just a shame that Call Ticketron gets in the way of that. Panther Like a Panther made it onto my end of the year mixtape in 2017 and, along with 2100 (is that a guitar that pops up behind El's first verse?), was one of my first favourite songs on the album. I think that might be one of the best things about RTJ3 - at various points over the last three and a half years almost all of the songs have been a favourite at some point.

Run the Jewels dropped RTJ3 on Christmas Day in 2016. I found out about it via an email (old school) and frantically downloaded it. It was a strange Christmas Day - we were going to my sister's for lunch, then down to my wife's parents' house in London afterwards - it was the most time I think I've ever spent in the car on a Christmas Day. However, that meant I'd get to listen to the new RTJ on the way; great, I thought. The first hurdle was finding any blank cds to burn the album to. I was trying to find them whilst also trying to pack the car and look like I was being helpful, and eventually concluded that I must have run out. I figured the car had a way of plugging in some audio cables, so I grabbed those, stuck the album on an old mp3 player and hit the road. Annoyingly, that cable was broken, so it was quite a disappointment when we hit the motorway and I couldn't enjoy the new RTJ. Finally, after lunch I asked my brother-in-law if he had any cables I could borrow, and he leant me a 5-meter audio cable, which did the job (and took up most of the glove compartment for a few months until I remembered to return them). As the sun set and we drove to London, I finally got to hear RTJ3 for the first time. Sure, my shitty car hifi isn't the best to listen to a new album on, nor is it easy to pay attention to what they're rapping whilst also navigating the six lanes of the M25, but I enjoyed it. I think I also just really enjoyed hearing the album on the day it came out and having a memorable experience of that. Not sure my wife was such a fan mind you.

A few weeks later the physical copies hit the shelves and I rushed out to get a copy. The shop had this one, or one that came with a gold chain for a small amount more. I decided that I didn't need the chain in my life so plumped for the cheaper option. It's a nice package - gold vinyl and nice touches. I vaguely remember there being an AR app that made the artwork come to life - it wouldn't run on my phone, but I installed it on an iPhone in the office and had a play. I can't remember much of what it did. All that said, the highlight is, as always, the lyric sheet - I remember sitting down with the album and reading every line (sometimes a couple of times as it played) and just taking it all in. There are some fucking genius lines on this album.

Format: Double 12", insert, sticker sheet
Tracks: 14
Cost: £27 new
Bought: Norman Records
When: 20/01/17
Colour: Gold
Etching: none
mp3s: none

The Doublecross - Keep Bleeding

The Doublecross is the name my friend Jon has been recording under for many years now. I got to know him when I was living in Cardiff as he was in a band with my housemate. He knew pretty much everyone in the local scene, so nearly every acquaintance I had in South Wales was a friend of Jon's too. As I was leaving the country for London, he was finishing off is debut solo album - I vaguely remember him playing us a mix of some of the songs on the car down to Porthcawl for the Across the Borders festival where I was introduced to Magnolia Electric Co.

It was a great album, but there was no avoiding the fact that it had one truly great song (October Skies) which made everything else seem less good by comparison. It's a tough situation when there's one song that so clearly stands out from the rest as being the "great song" - there are many records in my collection where that is the case. Incidentally, my other housemate Nicky struggled with the same issue, because he'd written one song for his band Gunrack? that was so much better than anything else it was constantly the yardstick against which every other song was measured. Whenever I hear an album with that issue I think of Gunrack?'s Young Hearts. Anyway, I travelled back to Cardiff for a night just to see Jon's album release show with Caves that December. It was a nice night.

I've kept up with Jon's solo music since then, but for reasons I can entirely sympathise with (small children) his release cycle is slow, so this only his third solo LP. I've bought music in many strange places over the years, but from the musician's car, parked outside a Chinese restaurant in Oxford in the middle of the afternoon is one of the stranger ones - Jon was passing through Oxford on a tour and timing meant he couldn't stay for long, so when he got into town I popped out from work, met him for about five minutes, had a nice chat (partly about how great El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead is, as it was one of the cds he had on his passenger seat for the journey), bought the LP and let him get on his way.

In our short chat he described his second album (which I'm yet to write about on here) as being a "Marmite" album, and I can kinda understand that. Keep Bleeding is a much more consistent album and I can't see why anyone who has enjoyed his music wouldn't like it. I think the most telling praise I can give this album is this: when I saw him play last, at least two of the songs from this album stood out nearly as tall as October Skies - both My Only Friends Are Chemicals and Hurt People Hurt People sounded amazing and I think the audience enjoyed hearing them as much as October Skies. It's a solid album and hard to find fault with - it's probably the Doublecross album I play most often these days.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £10 new
Bought: Jon
When: 24/10/16
Colour: orange
Etching: none
mp3s: download code

Run the Jewels - Stay Gold Collectors Box

With Record Store Day just around the corner again, it's probably time to write about some old releases again. Musically, this was a luxury purchase for sure. There's a lot of stuff in the photos below, but ultimately there are four songs here - Kill Your Masters from RTJ3, an instrumental version, a remix of Stay Gold and an instrumental version of the remix - so nothing vital as such.

Kill Your Masters is a great song and Zack de la Rocha's verse is nice. For reasons I don't understand, it's listed together with A Report to the Shareholders on the LP - maybe because they're thematically linked? Anyway, I appreciate that instrumentals are a thing, but I rarely get excited about them. I mostly just miss the lyrics. It is nice to focus on El's beats though. The remix of Stay Gold by Smiff & Cash works well - the whole feel of the song is different - kinda haunting, which somehow has less of an effect on the instrumental version - and there's some extra verses added.

At £43, I probably should have left this behind on Record Store Day in 2018, but it looks so lovely that I couldn't resist. Plus, I was already spending an obscene amount that morning, so this wasn't that big a percentage, sadly. I missed RSD the year before, and the year after (and probably will this year too), so it kinda evens out on the years when there was nothing I was after. In the gold metal box we have a poster, a slip mat, and alternate sleeve for RTJ3, some stickers and, of course, the four songs on a one-sided, etched clear 12". It's a nice package for sure, and given that some LPs are edging near to £30 on their own, it's not even that expensive really.

Despite it having space for the three RTJ LPs to fit in, I've never put them in there - just doesn't seem necessary. Maybe I'm missing the point (I'm not much of a Marvel fan, so the effort that's gone into the Marvel version of the sleeve is lost on me too). A strange detail to get wrong (if you consider it wrong) is that the writing on the edge of the box goes in the wrong direction (wrong by UK/USA standards - in continental Europe I think most books and records are oriented this way around).

Format: Etched one-sided 12", gatefold sleeve, box, stickers, posters, slipmat
Tracks: 4
Cost: £43 new
Bought: Truck Store
When: 21/04/18
Colour: Clear
Etching: etched b-side
mp3s: no

Public Service Broadcasting - Live at Brixton

Similarly to what I said in my last post about Max Richter, I've also fallen into a trap of mindlessly buying new Public Service Broadcasting records. I loved the first album, albeit less than how impressed I was by seeing them support the Manics in 2013. Since then, I've become increasingly wary of them as they commit even harder to each album having a theme, often at the expense of the album itself. I still enjoy seeing them live, but I do think my record collection probably only needs the actual albums. Even then, I kinda wish I'd started buying them on cd rather than vinyl; I wouldn't feel so bad about being in this trap if I was spending £10 a time instead of £20+.

This live album was recorded after they'd released two albums - it's an early point in a band's career to be releasing a live album, but they'd had a pretty fast rise so I guess that's worth celebrating. On top of that, they were clearly quite pleased with the dancing astronauts they'd taken out on tour and wanted to capture it. I first saw them do that bit at a very crowded show at Greenman festival, and it was a crowd-pleaser for sure. As a result of only having two proper albums, they play most of their songs. The constant change back and forth between the two works against it a bit, as the songs from The Race For Space are so heavily themed that they stand out. But I can see that separating them would feel too forced too. On the plus side, the last side of vinyl contains the highlights from both and ends the set brilliantly (although Tomorrow feels like a strange inclusion, given it doesn't really go anywhere or do anything).

I didn't buy Live at Brixton when it first came out, but did give in to my urges and buy it a few months later after not finding much else I fancied in Truck one day. The part of me that knew I wasn't a massive fan knew I probably didn't need it, but the part of me that remembered how great they were that first time wanted a live album to bring back some of those memories. After a slow start, Signal 30 hits billion times harder than the album version and is exactly what I wanted. The other older songs are just so much more to my liking - heavier guitars, louder drums and a lot more going on in general. But I have come to terms that they're not the band I wanted them to be (that is, early Therapy?) and can enjoy these for what they are.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeves, dvd
Tracks: 17
Cost: £25 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 17/03/17
Colour: Blue
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Max Richter - Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works

I have fond memories attached to this album - not long after it was released, Max Richter played it live for the first time at Blenheim Palace, a place that had become our "garden" (we had a tiny garden, but were a short distance from Blenheim with annual passes, so we'd go there whenever we wanted to be in a nice, spacious garden). I love going to shows in strange places, and have been thoroughly impressed by Max Richter on a number of occasions. As well as premiering Three Worlds, he played his Vivaldi Recomposed piece and On the Nature of Daylight, a song from The Blue Notebooks that had been experiencing some increased attention from it being on the soundtrack to a movie (although I forget which one). It was shaping up to be a nice night.

I dragged my wife along, knowing she'd probably not hate it, but also knowing that since it was seated she might actually enjoy it. At this point she was about halfway through the pregnancy of our first child, who was just beginning to kick. During the concert, our little foetus got quite into the music and really started going for it; it was nice to see her reacting to it. We've played it a few times to her since she's been born, but the reactions are more subdued these days. The sun was shining and the Blenheim concert was lovely - it was a great evening. We were letting out our spare room on Airbnb at the time and our guests were also at the concert, having planned a trip around the UK from Canada mostly around the concert. It was nice to chat with them about it the morning afterwards too.

I'd bought Three Worlds when it came a few months earlier, but didn't really know what to expect. I had a bunch of Max Richter albums at the time, but they were beginning to fall into two camps (and have continued to do so): very strongly themed albums (Recomposed, Sleep, this one) or his relentless soundtrack work - albums as collections of songs seemed to be a thing of the past, Infra possibly being a turning point. Similarly to that album, this one is based around a series of ballets, this time based on Virginia Woolf writings, of which I know nothing.

The three sections of the album are fundamentally very distinct from each other - Mrs Dalloway being a handful of shorter related pieces at the start, The Waves comprising one piece (Tuesday) at the end, and two sides of very electronic music in the middle for Orlando. Spreading the Orlando suite across two different LPs seems strange, when perhaps it would have been easier to pair Mrs Dalloway and The Waves, but maybe that would have hammered the separation home too hard - one LP being the more traditional classical music, the other the out-there electronic stuff. Even with the running order as it is, it's hard not to make that distinction.

On the night at Blenheim, the second movement felt far more out of place than it does on the record - the electronic section clearly not landing so well with the Blenheim audience as it might have in a less fancy venue (it's funny to consider The Barbican a "less fancy" venue, but that is where my mind goes to, being the first place I saw him play Recomposed). People were clearly struggling with that part more than the others. Virginia Woolf's suicide note at the start of Tuesday is a little hard to take too.

It's a good album, but has somehow never found it's way into being a Max Richter album I turn to very often, probably because of the slightly jarring middle section. The strange thing is, before that show at Blenheim I hadn't even really clocked that the middle was so heavy on the electronics, which is a worrying sign that I probably hadn't really listened to it all that well in the two months between.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 16
Cost: £27 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 07/04/16
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

I don't really remember buying this record. Most albums I own I can tell you exactly where and roughly when I bought them, but I'm drawing a blank with this one. I just checked my spreadsheet and it was in a second hand shop in Oxford in 2005 - if I had to guess a few options, that would have been one of them, but I wasn't really very sure.

Piecing events together from other records gigs and memories, I was in Oxford on the way to London for a gig, a trip that also stopped off in Brighton - I was dragging my friend Thom along to see Pop Will Eat Itself, and he was visiting his girlfriend (now wife) in Oxford, then driving back to Brighton; we then got the train up to London for the PWEI show (which he hated - things got much easier when I realised it was better to just go to shows on my own than try to find someone who wants to go). I also bought a bunch of great records in Brighton before heading back up to Lancaster.

The shop was apparently in Gloucester Green, which is only of note because I ended up living in Gloucester Green nine years later when we moved to Oxford. The shop had long closed, but I had no idea where it was anyway - my knowledge of the layout of Oxford was non-existent before moving here, having always been shown around my friends at university in the city. It was a nice little shop with loads of second-hand vinyl. I also found this very tattered copy of Lit's A Place in the Sun. If I remember correctly, it was two-for-£10 on almost all the vinyl, and Badmotorfinger was £9, so I got the Lit record for £1. This LP is in remarkably good condition despite its age (it still has a sticker on from when it was originally bought in HMV for £9.45) and worth a good amount more than that now.

Anyway, three paragraphs in and I haven't even mentioned what a huge album Badmotorfinger is. I honestly couldn't choose between Superunknown and Badmotorfinger as my favourite Soundgarden album. When I saw them the second time and they decided to play Superunknown in full, I was ecstatic because I really love that album (it was the first of theirs I bought), but if I hadn't seen them a first time when they played some of these songs I'd have been a little gutted (although, in truth, my memories of the first time I saw Soundgarden are somewhat murky due to excessive alcohol consumption). Most of my favourite Soundgarden songs are across those two albums.

Badmotorfinger is a much, much heavier album than Superunknown, so much so it's hard to believe they're consecutive albums. The sticker on the sleeve says "The most brilliant band to hit the planet since Slayer unleashed Hell Awaits", which says a lot - in 1991 Soundgarden were being compared to metal bands, and Badmotorfinger is a metal album; after that point they were thrown in with grunge bands and certainly had more of that style about them.

But we've still not really got down to the details. Jesus Christ Pose: fucking hell, what a song. The drums racing a long, the guitar that genuinely sounds dangerous and Chris's vocals are some of their best. I've turned the volume up as loud as I think I can right now without waking the sleeping baby, but I kinda feel this is the sort of song I want her awake to listen to (she's heard it a bunch - when Chris died I made a mix cd for the car and this was pretty near the start). Rusty Cage into Outshined into Slaves & Bulldozers into Jesus Christ Pose is an obscenely strong way to start the album. If it wasn't for the fact there's not a dud on the album you'd have thought someone would have warned them about blowing their load too soon. You do wonder how they can possibly keep that momentum going, but they find a way. (And that is maybe the only criticism of Superunknown - there are a couple of songs that could be skipped). Searching With My Good Eye Closed and Drawing Flies (with the inspired addition of a brass section) are some highlights on the second side.

Badmotorfinger was the second Soundgarden album I got, about a year and a half after getting Superunknown - both on cd for £5 from a record fair. I continued to buy their back-catalogue over the following years, but nothing really came to close to that first pair of albums I heard. By 2005, Badmotorfinger had already established itself as enough of a classic to require a vinyl purchase. The vinyl probably hasn't had that many plays because I had the cd, hence the struggle to remember buying it. Still, very glad to have it in the collection.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 12
Cost: £9 second hand
Bought: Oxford
When: 22/01/05
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Offa Rex - Queen of Hearts

I love end-of-year list time. I love seeing where the records I've enjoyed appear in other people's lists, what records they loved that I didn't and seeing who agrees and disagrees with each other. But most importantly, I love seeing what records people loved that passed me by entirely. I spend most of December catching up on these records and routinely find at least one great thing.

In 2017, Truck Store put Offa Rex's debut album, The Queen of Hearts, at the very top of their list, quite the accolade. Now 2017 was a strange year musically - looking back at my top ten albums of the year I can see that there'd be little overlap with most institutions, let alone with Truck Store, a shop that tailors to a fairly specific part of my collection. But I was still impressed that they'd gone so high with an album that I don't think I saw in any other lists. I have a lot of respect for their musical tastes in Truck, so figured it was worth a punt.

Of course, a certain proportion of the album wasn't entirely unknown - Offa Rex are a collaboration between singer Olivia Chaney and The Decemberists; the former not someone I know, but the latter a band I know well. I'd heard about the project but hadn't bothered to check it out straight away. I like The Decemberists, and Karl mentioned that Colin sang a few songs, so it ticks some boxes for Decemberists fans. I was feeling rich that day I guess, so figured I'd pick up a copy based on their recommendation.

The Queen of Hearts is an ok album, but it's not remotely one that I love. Olivia has an incredible voice - just listen to The Gardener and you'll hear that. There are moments where the music is appropriately haunting and everything works. But the overwhelming theme is that of a fairly straight-forward homage to old English folk songs, a genre I really don't have any interest in. Colin Meloy clearly loves it, as mentioned on his Colin Meloy Sings Live album. Frank Turner went through a (prolonged) phase of trying his hand at traditional English folk songs too. In both cases I was far from into it - I'm sure it's a rich and fascinating area of history, but I don't get anything from it and have no interest in seeing it revived - at best these modern covers sound like an average tribute, at worst they just sound cheesy. I didn't know most of these songs were traditional songs going into the album; if I had, I might not have bought it.

You'll see in the pictures that there are two white stickers in the top right corner - this was the description that Truck stuck on the sleeve which I've left on mainly because I never got round to peeling it off. What I read when I saw this sticker was "majestic folk rock" and "Black Sabbath", all words which are included and enough to draw me in. However, the words before Black Sabbath are "even at times early". Using plural "times" is a stretch, because there is precisely one song where you could try to compare it to Black Sabbath, and that song is Sheepcrock and Black Dog, which is so far from the rest of the album it stands out like a sore thumb, despite basically being the same but with a heavy guitar.

In fact, that's probably my main criticism with the album as a whole, it's ultimately very same-y. Olivia has an incredible voice, but both times Colin takes over on lead vocal I'm more than ready for a change. I think I hoped that the two would share vocal duties more on the same songs, but the simple structures don't really allow for that.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 11
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 07/12/17
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Manic Street Preachers - Generation Terrorists [20th Anniversary LP]

I am the worst person I know. I bought this record nearly eight months ago and I've only just broken the seal. I sometimes wonder if I'm a record collector or just someone who likes spending money.

I'd seen this copy of the 20th anniversary double LP of Generation Terrorists a bunch of times in the Fopp in Oxford and regularly thought "I should buy that". On what would turn out to be my last visit to Fopp before it closed down in the recent HMV collapse, I finally decided to buy a copy. I guess I was feeling rich enough to finally spare £20 on an album I already had eight copies of (yes, eight. Nine if you include the Japanese Stars & Stripes mini-album version). Of course, this version is materially different to the others because it has Theme From M.A.S.H. tacked on the end. It's also remastered, but I'm incapable of ever hearing such differences - even on albums I've heard countless times over the last 20 years (wow, in October it'll be 20 years exactly since I first heard Generation Terrorists - it's funny, at the time it felt like an old album, because it'd been out seven years and they'd already been five different bands, but now to think it was only seven years old makes it seem positively recent). Does it sound nicer because it's been remastered, or is it because it's the newest vinyl copy I have (and not a shitty picture disc)? Who can say.

As well as being remastered, there's a nice 16-page booklet to go along with the release. The boxset version had an arguably nicer booklet featuring the same essay from Simon Price so I've not missed out on any exciting content by not opening it until now. As for Theme From M.A.S.H., I have it on vinyl on a handful of other releases so the appeal of hearing it on vinyl wasn't a big driver. It's interesting though that they decided to append that and not A Vision of Dead Desire like on the Japanese version. M.A.S.H. is definitely the better song, and I guess there's something nice about cramming the other single from that era onto the album.

We should talk about the fact that this incredible album has sat in my collection for so long without the needle going anywhere near the grooves. Basically, I buy more music than I have time to listen to. I'm trying to stop, but it's hard; it's difficult to overcome the habit of a lifetime. Having a baby takes up a lot of my time, and I don't have a record player in a room where I can also play with her (yet - I've got a plan for that). That leaves me with an hour or so each evening to play records. I have a strange commitment to this stupid blog, so when I do finally sit down in front of my turntable I have a choice - play an album I'm yet to play, write about an album or actually spend some time playing those pesky albums that didn't come with a download code (I play everything on the turntable for the first time, but subsequent plays often end up being from mp3s at work or on the bus). For the last eight months, this album has constantly found itself at the back of that queue - the fact I know it like the back of my hand hasn't helped push it to the top.

Huh, well this is actually a perfect example of why it's quite so hard to keep up - half way through that sentence (and the first version of Repeat) the baby woke up so I had to go and settle her. After that was done, it was a safer bet to just go to sleep and get some hours in before she woke again. Somehow yesterday passed too; it's a miracle I ever post anything any more. Update, she woke this time during Methadone Pretty.

There's no point in me actually talking about the songs here - I've done that in the links above at least once. There's also very little left to be said about Generation Terrorists, the incredible, sprawling, ambitious beginning it was. I'm still amazed at how they could go from songs like New Art Riot to Motorcycle Emptiness, Little Baby Nothing and Condemned to Rock 'n' Roll in such a short time. It's always exciting to hear these songs; I hope it always will be.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, 12" booklet
Tracks: 19
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Fopp, Oxford
When: 04/10/18
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Public Service Broadcasting - The Race For Space

A few years ago I wrote a rave review of Public Service Broadcasting's first album, Inform-Educate-Entertain, a review I pretty much still stand by. I also wrote some roughly positive things about their The War Room EP, a fine enough record that somehow struggles to get five songs out of a fairly substantial topic.

Since then, they have committed themselves to being a band who write albums themed around something, which in itself isn't a bad thing; I'm usually a sucker for a concept album. They make for interesting albums, but I wouldn't say either are as good as the first. And that's not a "it's not as good as their earlier stuff" criticism (I mean it is, but that's not how I mean it) - the great thing about the first one is the fact that each song works as a theme by itself. Every song stood out as interesting on it's own merits. In concept albums, it's easy for songs to just become filler and that certainly happens here.

PSB give us nine songs, although the first is really an intro, so we're left with eight. Sputnik is seven-minutes long, but does surprisingly little with that time. There's a good post-rock song hidden in the background, but the build-up:explosion ratio is all wrong - the ending needs far more time and I want someone to turn the drums the fuck up (there is a note about the so-called "loudness wars", but my criticism here is in the mixing, not mastering). As I said about the first record, a lot of the musicianship and power their live shows have is lost on the album, which is a shame. Gagarin, however, is probably the finest song they've ever written. It helped rocket them (no pun intended) to further fame, and rightly so. Their live shows hang around this song, and I often wish they'd play it sooner to get everyone moving. I suppose the problem is that they have too many slow, thoughtful songs and not enough dance numbers to keep that momentum going. Fire in the Cockpit is quite the comedown and, basically, filler.

The Other Side feels like exactly the sort of song you'd expect to come from this source material, and they just about do it justice. Maybe I'm just the wrong sort of fan, but I want to hear how Mogwai or Explosion in the Sky would handle such material - you could go super bleak in the lull or super celebratory in the end and either would work; PSB reign in both emotions for some reason (although live they hit the celebration with much more force). Go! is the other highlight and another song guaranteed to get people moving. Tomorrow closes the album with another seven minute song that does very little and leaves little impression.

I do like this album, in a way. There are some great live songs here, and it just about works. However, I fear they've now fully committed to only doing themed albums, and that feels like a shame. This album and the success it had feel like the catalyst for this direction, so I hold a bit of a grudge against it for that. Maybe that's unfair? If they change tack and release an album of disparate songs again maybe that grudge will fade. I like that to be the case, but I can't see them doing that right now.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeve, 12" booklet
Tracks: 9
Cost: £19 new
Bought: Truck Store, Oxford
When: 25/02/15
Colour: Clear
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code