Nine Inch Nails - Quake

Around 2000 or 2001 I bought a Sega Saturn. By this point, it was already considered a failed console, a slight oddity of the generation between the classic cartridge eras and the huge success of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. A friend who I'd spent a lot of time playing Goldeneye with had discovered drugs and was already selling off all his possessions to buy weed; he asked if I wanted to buy his Sega Saturn and six games for a fairly measly sum - I can't remember how much, but I want to say £30. I wasn't a huge gamer, but enjoyed my N64 enough to think I should try another console. In amongst the games included were Quake, Alien Trilogy, a futuristic racing game that I didn't enjoy as much as F-Zero X, and Loaded, the game that introduced me to Pop Will Eat Itself (who themselves eventually crossed paths with NIN near the end of their career, and at the start of Clint Mansell's incredible film-scoring era. I wonder if he and Trent ever chatted about the Quake soundtrack).

Anyway, I found almost all of the games on the Sega Saturn incredibly hard to play, and Quake was particularly disappointing since the graphics were so basic compared to what I'd grown up used to on Goldeneye (which I'm sure looks beyond shit to anyone playing games now). I'd heard so much about what a landmark game Quake was that I had very high expectations, but couldn't progress in it very far because I was so bad at it, something I attributed to the crappy graphics, but was much more likely related to my skill level. However, I knew that Trent Reznor had done the soundtrack, and I remember hearing these haunted, sparse but sufficiently industrial soundscapes and thinking they were cool. The great thing about Sega Saturn games was that you could put the cd in your cd player, skip the game data on track 1 and play the rest of the soundtrack as an audio cd - that was how I heard Pop Will Eat Itself, and where I first heard all these songs (I honestly was so bad at the game I probably heard at most three of them whilst actually playing the game).

Fast forward 20 years, and I was stood in my kitchen having just got my children to bed when I saw on Twitter (or possibly an email) that NIN were putting out the Quake soundtrack on vinyl as well as reissuing With Teeth (one of my favourite NIN albums), and The Social Network soundtrack (which I didn't buy - I think collecting all the soundtracks that Trent Reznor has done is a rabbit-hole too far). I immediately ordered Quake and With Teeth and they turned up amazingly soon afterwards. They'd done such a great job with the previous reissues, with such attention to detail and care that I was keen for more.

The Quake soundtrack is no exception to this rule. The ten songs are spread across three sides of vinyl and the fourth is etched with some lines of what I think are C++ relating to the songs in the game code (there's a line that looks like a comment starting with // which I think is C++, although I've never dared to try to use that language myself). It's basically impossible to photograph, so you'll just have to believe me on that. There was due to be a nice booklet containing details of the recording like in their other reissues, but I think a legal dispute meant it couldn't be published, although Trent leaked it on the internet as he is known to do. The Quake logo on the sleeve is embossed, although my favourite detail might be the images of the blocky off-white CRT monitor on the inner sleeves. It's funny how something once so prevalent now looks so dated.

It's probably fair to say that about 20 years passed between me hearing the songs on my Sega Saturn cd and getting this vinyl. I would have played them a few times back in the day, but nowhere near as much as I played The Downward Spiral or Broken or The Fragile. I went off to university and the Sega Saturn spent a good few years sat in a cupboard at my parents' house. Eventually I told my brother he could have it, but I have no idea how much he played it. He is a much better gamer than me, so I like to think he heard more of the soundtrack in its natural habitat than I ever did, but I don't know for sure. When the vinyl got released, I asked him to dig out the cd so I could make a copy of the mp3s, something that had never crossed my mind in the years in between. I still don't listen to these songs often, but when I'm in the mood for instrumental Trent Reznor songs, they often fill the void nicely (it's a very heavily populated genre of music, and the pandemic-released Ghosts albums have become my go-to listens).

Often here very little happens, but the mood is set perfectly. I find it hard to think that people could genuinely have found the gameplay scary, since the graphics were what they were, but I guess expectations were lower. However, this music is thoroughly haunting in isolation, so perhaps it was exactly what the game needed. It's funny to think of 1996-era Nine Inch Nails creating this soundtrack having no idea that Trent would go on to become one of Hollywood's biggest film-score composers. It's nice to hear the beginning of that arc, and how established the style already was.

Format: Double 12", picture sleeves, gatefold
Tracks: 10
Cost: £44
Bought: Nine Inch Nails website
When: 19/09/2020
Colour: Black
Etching: lines of code on side D
mp3s: None

Explosions in the Sky - The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place

 

I think we're all totally in agreement by now that this album is perfect. It's not a term I use lightly, but surely this is the time to use it, if ever. Explosions have released a bunch of other great albums - some that sound a bit like this, others that sound a bit further away - and countless other instrumental bands have released albums that sound broadly similar, but none have done so as wonderfully as Explosions did here. Five songs, each fascinating and emotive and majestic; no messing around, no filler. Perfect.

I suspect it wasn't always that way, but somehow nearly two decades have passed and this album has become even more of a gem. I got into the band just after they'd released All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone and had heard that this album was worth seeking out, so bought a cheap cd copy a few months before going to see them at the All Tomorrow's Parties they curated. I loved it from the outset and seeing the songs thrashed out on the main stage in Minehead that spring was amazing. 

I gradually bought their other albums, but ended up waiting until the pandemic hit to upgrade my cd copy for the vinyl. Record Shops had been shut for only a short period at the time (compared to how long this thing would stretch on for), but it'd been a hard time, so I figured I'd buy some records I was after from a few of my favourite shops (that had a reasonable online presence) and fill some holes in my collection (plus, being at home meant I wasn't really spending any money). Resident Records had this one in, so I was pleased to get a copy. I distinctly remember gasping at the stunning etching on side D - the simplicity of it makes it stand out from most other etched records. Every record collection should have a copy of this masterpiece.

Format: double 12", picture sleeves
Tracks: 5
Cost: £18.49 new
Bought: Resident Records website
When: 30/04/20
Colour: Black
Etching: Etching of birds on side D
mp3s: Download card

Various Artists - Tiny Changes: A Celebration of Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight

 

I was gutted when I heard the news of Scott Hutchison's disappearance and subsequent death. I'd drifted away from Frightened Rabbit's music at the time, but The Midnight Organ Fight remained a firm favourite. I'd bought it at the very start of my PhD having read a review in the university newspaper (which dates the time I read it, as I'm pretty sure no one reads the university newspaper beyond their first few weeks), and the line "While I'm alive, I'll make tiny changes to earth" became something of a mantra for the next three-and-a-half years - the only way to motivate yourself through a PhD is remembering that the very minor thing you're studying is entirely new, and the whole purpose is to say something no one has ever said before; there are mathematical theorems that I discovered and they're mine and forever will be - I was the first one to discover those things and those "tiny changes" are mine (and, trust me, they are tiny). It got me through that period of my life.

But I ended up loving The Winter of Mixed Drinks less, and I somehow missed out on Pedestrian Verse entirely. I picked up a copy of Painting of a Panic Attack in 2017 and really found little in it for me. I'd lost track of Scott's side-projects and didn't discover the excellent Mastersystem album until after his death (more on that another time). I vividly remember scrolling through Twitter one morning at work and seeing the final tweet Scott posted and the ensuing panic from friends and family. It was a (thankfully, so far) unique feeling and one I hope not experience again. Whilst I'd never even met Scott, his music on The Midnight Organ Fight had meant so much to me I was really thrown; I felt particularly helpless, wishing there was something I could but almost certainly being hundreds of miles away from anywhere useful. 

As a big Manics fan, my mind soon drifted onto thoughts of Richey Edwards. When I first heard the Manics, Richey had already been missing for years, but seeing the panic and fear in real time from Scott's loved ones made me think about different it must have been in 1995 without the internet. Two days later, there was a sad ending to Scott's story but it felt like longer - in my mind there was a week between the two events, but maybe that's how time feels like it passes in situations like that. I can't begin to imagine what it was like for Richey's friends and family.

Three paragraphs in and I've not even mentioned this record yet. Before Scott's death, this tribute album was in the works - it's status as a classic album was already established. I wasn't aware how well-loved it was by people other than me, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was universally adored. Perhaps "surprised" is the wrong word - there's no reason to be surprised; it's a huge album. I didn't (and still don't) know most of the names of the artists covering the songs here, but Biffy Clyro, The Twilight Sad and Craig Finn were enough to give me an idea and also draw me in. I remember watching a heart-wrenching video of The Twilight Sad covering Keep Yourself Warm at Primavera Sound shortly after Scott's death (although they cover Floating the Forth here, a song I can only imagine was even harder to manage).

When we first moved into this house, my daughter's room was the only one that we'd decorated and spent much time in, so I kept a record player up there with a small handful of records. This one was up there for a long time and I played it a lot with her, particularly while my wife was in hospital after our second was born. It's not the most appropriate record to play in front of a young child, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't listening to the words. As a result, I have bittersweet memories of these versions of the songs - playing Duplo with my two-year-old, but also thinking about the sad end of Scott's life. The memories felt a world apart from my memories of the original album - academia and going to as many gigs as I could manage in London. A critical but very true statement is that these songs aren't as good as the originals - few add anything to the excellent song-writing of the originals (Craig Finn's cover is one of the better ones, and Biffy's take on The Modern Leper is unusual, but comes together in the end). But I love that I had a chance to reconnect with these songs in a thoroughly different phase of my life and create new memories of them.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, booklet

Tracks: 17

Cost: £25.50 new

Bought: Resident Records website

When: 05/08/19

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: none

Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks

I don't have many particularly strong memories of Hesitation Marks. So much so, I remember getting this LP recently and looking quite hard at the tracklisting before really recognising any of the songs at all; for a short moment I wondered if I'd not even heard the album before. For some reason, I kinda lost my way with Nine Inch Nails after Year Zero - that was 2007 and my last year of university. I loved that album and everything that went along with it (and I loved With Teeth, which came out in my second year of university even moreso). That summer I saw NIN play an incredible set at Sziget Festival in Hungary (we happened to be in Budapest when the festival was on, but that was partly because I'd suggested dates that meant I'd be able to see NIN there). But the end of 2007 marked the move to Cardiff and the immersion in the punk scene. Nine Inch Nails weren't punk.

I downloaded The Slip when it came out (as we were encouraged to do), but somehow still haven't bought a real copy of that album (which I do occasionally feel guilty about). It was fine, but it didn't do much for me. Maybe the fact I never had a real copy to prompt me to play it meant it never got the time it deserved. There's still a scratched cdr copy of it in my car, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't play. Then, five years later, Hesitation Marks came out and for whatever reason I waited a whole year to buy a copy (and probably only did so because the cd was a fiver in Fopp). In the time in between Year Zero and then, I'd started and finished my PhD and moved to Oxford. A couple of years later I'd rediscover the band and my enjoyment of them, and I got back into them properly; I even found myself quite enjoying the trilogy of EPs they put out. But Hesitation Marks remained this strange album in a 10 year gap of not caring about the band.

Looking at what else I bought that day, I can remember clearly bouncing around the central London record shops spending a good whack of money, but don't remember adding this one to my pile of cds and records (and one tape - Shellac's At Action Park). I spent £65 on music that day, and another £43 the next day in Banquet (having been to see the excellent La Dispute show that Banquet had put on in the All Saints Church, later immortalised on the Tiny Dots LP/dvd). I suspect Hesitation Marks suffered from not standing out sufficiently against the large amount of competition (and wasn't flat out terrible, like the Soulsavers album with the guy who isn't Mark Lanegan - I tried to listen to that again recently and still found it terrible).

So when Nine Inch Nails put the Quake soundtrack on vinyl up on their webstore, I ordered this one along with the reissue of With Teeth - they'd reissued enough of their albums to make having a complete collection of NIN LPs a realistic goal, so I figured this would be in fine company. On listening to it, the songs kinda came back, but with no strong connections. Copy of A and Come Back Haunted must have been singles, or at least songs that had some life outside of the album, because I recognised them, but that's about it. If you'd told me that there were NIN songs called Various Methods of Escape or I Would For You I'd have said "huh?" and "no, that's Jane's Addiction", respectively. The former has a great hook in the chorus, but plods through the verses; the latter has a huge, soaring chorus and probably would have been a hit had it not been left as song eleven on a 14-song album. All Time Low is a straight-up banger and Trent Reznor doing perfect pop, so I'd like to think I'd have remembered that one too. The saxophone on While I'm Still Here is amazing but totally wasted as a curio on the penultimate song.

If I'm being critical (or, perhaps, just reviewing things like a reviewer might), I'd say that Hesitation Marks is too long, lacks focus, is neither a guitar album or a synth album, and has too few memorable moments. I don't think those are very negative things to say, because they're all very true statements. Maybe they're all fair in isolation but sound damning when strung together like that. There's a strong eight or nine song album, but really I'm just including some fodder to make it an album - there's a great EP for sure.

As part of my NIN collection, I'm glad to have this one, and it's good that I've finally given it some attention, but even shelling out £35 wasn't enough to make me actually get much from it. 

Format: Double 12", picture sleeves, insert, gatefold

Tracks: 14

Cost: £34.80

Bought: Nine Inch Nails website

When: 19/09/2020

Colour: Black

Etching: None

mp3s: cd included

The Draft - The Fest 12 Edition

 

I don't have mp3s of these songs, so they've had a fraction of the number of plays as The Draft's excellent, only album has had. Devil in the Shade is worth digging the 7"s out for alone, and Hard to Be Around It is pretty strong too. I really should play this much more often.

I wasn't aware of what this record was when I bought it - I'd been buying the "Fest Edition" version of any records I was into that weekend and they're all pretty cool. At the end of the weekend I found this in Arrow's Aim, the No Idea record shop in Gainesville and added it to the stack of records I was buying (before we jumped in the car, realised we mis-calculated our timings a bit and had to drive very fast back to Tampa to catch our flight home). I'd seen The Draft for the first (and only) time at Pre-Fest a few days earlier, but not seen the record there. If they'd played the main event too they must have clashed with someone else, otherwise I'd have watched them again.

The strangest thing about this record is that it's a double-7" version of a triple 7" they'd released for a separate tour (which Discogs refers to as "Tour Edition"). That record comprises all three 7"s they released in 2007, the year after In a Million Pieces came out, but this one is only two of those records; I've not heard the other two songs. I should probably check them out one day.

Format: Double 7", Fest edition

Tracks: 4
Cost: £7 new
Bought: Arrow's Aim, Gainesville
When: 04/11/13
Colour: Purple
Etching: Side A: "Mini soccer? Are you kidding me?" Side B: "I like grown up JB even better" Side C: "Draft beer, not me" Side D: "Draft is a fine cleaning product"
mp3s: no

Bear Vs. Shark - Right Now / Terrorhawk

I love both these albums and I listen to them a lot. I found an unmarked cdr in the car a while back that had both of these albums on back-to-back - I have no memory of burning that cd or even thinking that I should do, but I evidently did and I'm very pleased that I did; every time I see it and think "what's on that unmarked cd", I smile when it starts to play.

For a long time, and partly because of that cd, I couldn't really distinguish between the two albums (maybe it's just because I've not been driving so much recently, I couldn't even tell you which is first on there). I don't mean that to be a bad thing - both are incredible albums, truly unique together - by which I mean I have nothing else that sounds like this, which itself is a shame. A lot of bands can only strive to write two excellent albums then break up.

It strikes me as strange that I can't tell them apart better, especially considering that I bought Right Now You're in the Best of Hands back in 2012, and a full three years passed before I finally got Terrorhawk. I got the reissue of Right Now that Big Scary Monsters put out and eventually loved it - it was a bit of a slow-burn at first, because I don't think I was listening to it loud enough. I remember thinking that it'd be nice to have Terrorhawk on vinyl too, but didn't fancy paying the second-hand prices it was going for; in the end I decided I'd be happy enough to just have it on cd, and then picked up a copy for very little on eBay (during a short-lived period of buying very cheap second cds on there). I paid £1.83 for it, a bargain for sure. (I think sometime between those two events, I found a cheap copy of Right Now on cd in San Francisco, but gave it to my friend Sarah after copying the mp3s - she described it as sounding "like Hundred Reasons", a comment I still think a lot about - what was she hearing?)

A while later the two albums got re-issued together as a double vinyl, and I ended up picking one up from Specialist Subject. The last year I subscribed to their year-long subscription they ended up releasing fewer records than expected, so gave everyone a voucher at the end of the year. I'd already decided against renewing for the next year (breaking a very long run of subscriptions) as they were drifting further away from the music I was into (or I was drifting further away from the music they were releasing), so I put it towards this pair of albums. I hadn't even noticed they'd had it stock before that point. There are more interesting colours out there, but this is just the plain black version. To add to my confusion between the albums, the sleeve lists Right Now as LP01 and Terrorhawk as LP02, but Right Now plays on sides C and D, and Terrorhawk on sides A and B (the matrix numbers suggest that the labels aren't wrong too). I began making notes about the wrong album when I first started writing this.

However, I have now firmly come to the conclusion that Terrorhawk is my favourite - over those 15 songs there are so many huge, huge moments and brilliant songs. They manage to write incredible fast songs (like 5, 6 Kids) and equally incredible slow songs (like Song About Old Roller Coaster), which is quite a skill. But the real gem of Terrorhawk is the pairing of The Great Dinosaurs With Fifties Section and Baranga Embankment on the first side - the former starts off so strongly and builds to a truly mammoth ending, and the latter brings in horns and keys perfectly and is so wonderfully slow. When those two hit, I always think "yeah, this is my favourite of the two".

But Right Now can't be faulted - Ma Jolie has one of those rare moments you can actually sing along to, and I love the "yo yo yo" breakdown in The Employees. The lines "Pull yourself out of the gutter, motherfucker" in Broken Dog Leg are another great moment. This pressing doesn't have the bonus tracks that a lot of others include - to be honest, I'd forgotten my BSM-reissue did have the extra songs.

Format: Double 12"

Tracks: 27

Cost: £29.75 new

Bought: Specialist Subject Records website

When: 21/11/18

Colour: Black

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

Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 2

When Run the Jewels released RTJ2, it felt like everything fell into place. They'd released an album that was truly incredible and everyone uniformly agreed - I don't think I heard (or have heard since) a single bad word about RTJ2. You'd play that album and people would be bowled over; moreover you'd play that album and without fail someone would reveal themselves as an RTJ fan - not that they were necessarily hiding it, but it was people you simply hadn't spoken to about music before. It was great. I was so pleased to see Killer Mike and El-P finally get the respect they deserved; this album propelled them to the place they should have been for years.

They released the album for free on October 24th 2014, and 364 days later I finally bought a copy. I'd planned to get it as soon as it was announced, and then really wanted to get a copy after I heard it. I can't remember why it took so long - maybe it sold out most places at the start. Either way, I picked up this pink vinyl copy (with some money going to a breast cancer charity) and sat down with the lyrics sheet open for the first physical play. Even though I'd played this album a lot in the year before that point, it was incredible reading the lines and hearing these brilliant moments and subtleties that had passed me by. It's been a long time since I've played a record and been so engrossed in the lyrics. Routinely I had to wait for breaks of choruses to go back and re-read some of the lines. Mike and El wrote some incredible verses here. When RTJ3 came out, I had another incredible time reading the lines and I'm so, so looking forward to doing the same thing with RTJ4.

There's no point listing the best raps because I'd end up re-writing huge sections of the lyrics sheet. Similarly, listing the best songs would mean listing most of the song titles. When I wrote about the debut album I said that the first nine tracks were good and then Christmas Fucking Miracle was just a step above it all; on RTJ they take the step-up that song represented, make another step beyond that and wrote 11 whole songs at that level. Oh My Darling Don't Cry is a perfect example of that, and it's only the second song on the album. The way Mike and El trade verses and work off each other's energy is perfect and seamless throughout, but All Due Respect might be the finest example of that. All My Life is the first real moment to breathe on the album, but the raps are still dense - it's a needed moment after the four songs that proceeded it. I saw RTJ for the first time at Primavera Sound in 2015 and Lie, Cheat, Steal always takes me back to that set.

One final note on this album - when they announced the album, El and Mike jokingly (and whilst high) put out a bunch of ridiculous kickstarter rewards including re-recording the whole album using cat noises. Someone then made an actual kickstarter to raise the money to make that happen and they agreed to do it, with the money going to charity. Being a cat-owner, I couldn't resist and chipped in to make sure it happened. I'd say about 1-in-10 times I put on RTJ2, I decide to put on Meow the Jewels instead.

Format: Double 12", insert, sticker sheet
Tracks: 11
Cost: £21.50 new
Bought: Norman Records
When: 23/10/15
Colour: Pink marble
Etching: none
mp3s: none

The Twilight Sad - No One Can Ever Know

The Twilight Sad's third album, No One Can Ever Know, marked the beginning of me really struggling to get into their songs but really liking them at the same time. If you played me a song from this album or the one that followed, I'd probably not be able to tell you which was from which (their fifth and most recent album, is a little less punishing and a little more 80's, so easier to tell apart); when I have a craving for this era of The Twilight Sad, I play this and Nobody Wants to Be Here... in fairly equal measures, mainly because I've never decided which I prefer - they tick the same boxes.

It's a solid album - there are hints of their influences throughout - The Cure on Nil and Radiohead on Not Sleeping. It's also incredibly fucking dark, which says something given the albums that came before it - Sick is a pretty bleak example of this. The highlights are Dead City, where the vocals build gradually against the consistently dark and industrial music, and Kill it in the Morning which is strangely danceable; the abrupt ending is unexpected and a brilliant way to end the album.

There's no particularly interesting story about buying this one - I was in Banquet a couple of days after it came out and picked it up along with a Fucked Up 12" and a Q and Not U album. I had a voucher, which I applied across the purchases in my spreadsheet, hence the strange price listed below. Looking at Discogs, it seems that this has gone up in value a lot since it was released.

Format: Double 12", insert
Tracks: 9
Cost: £15.81 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 08/02/07
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code

Marvin Gaye - Anthology

I'll be the first to admit that, when compared to the full range of recorded music since records were created, my record collection is far from eclectic; the vast majority can described as white dudes playing guitars between 1990 and now. It's not intentional, but those just seem to be the records I buy mostly. And (very importantly), that's not to say that there certainly isn't room for music by people who don't fit into that category. But, ultimately, I like rock music, and a lot of rock bands fall into that category for whatever reasons.

I dabble in other genres but that dabbling rarely goes deep - I guess I just don't like other genres to feel the need to dig as deeply as I do for post-90's guitar music. I also don't feel I have enough knowledge to discern good from bad in most other genres. Anyway, there are some records in my collection that most people would agree are out of place given the rest of it. This is one such record.

I own Marvin Gaye's Anthology because I was given it for free in a hold-all of records my old colleague Gunnar found in the attic of the repossessed house he'd bought (the same hold-all of records that I got Born to Run and Bob Marley's Legend). I'm not exaggerating when I say he literally dragged this filthy hold-all of LPs into work, dumped them next to my desk and let me have a rummage. There wasn't a great deal I wanted in there, although I do sometimes wonder if there any hidden gems in there I wasn't aware of at the time. After I'd taken the few of interest, the rest went to a charity shop (I think) and the hold-all went in the bin (I hope).

I don't know what caused me to take this one home with me. I had a couple of covers of What's Going On, and Let's Get it On and I Heard it Through the Grapevine are just songs that everyone knows are classics. A few things to note about this album:

• It's impossible not to enjoy these songs, pretty much regardless of what music you like. They're just great pop songs. Even that strange one about an onion.
• It's a really long album. I've never known so many songs squeezed onto four sides of vinyl.
• The strangest thing about this record, by a long margin, is something I have never seen before or since - sides 1 and 3 are on the same disc, and 2 and 4 are on the other. That's crazy, right? Is that so I can have the other record queued up on my other turntable for a seamless listening experience? If so, it's a real shame that I only have one turntable (in this room).
• You is a really great song. That one really stood out.

Format: Double 12", gatefold
Tracks: 33
Cost: free second hand
Bought: Gunnar's attic
When: 25/03/09
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

The Mars Volta - Live at The Electric Ballroom

I remember being pretty excited when I found this record. I was in London for a night before going to the airport. In a lot of ways, it was a bad time to go record shopping - I was going away for nearly two weeks, going to Heidelburg, Vienna and Lancaster before going back to my parents' house for just three nights before going back to Australia for another six months. Not only did I have to lug this, a couple of other records I bought in London (and the ones I bought on my travels) on a number of flights and trains, I also had only three days to enjoy it (I frantically recorded all the records I bought that fortnight onto tape before going back to Canberra, but somehow missed off a whole side of the Murder City Devils live LP, something I was annoyed to find out when I tried to play it in Oz). After buying this, I stayed at my friend Jo's house and we watched the Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and had an early night ahead of my flight; there's a detail no one cares about.

Anyway, I was really into The Mars Volta at the time. I'd enjoyed Deloused in the Comatorium but really got into them on Frances the Mute (an album I'd still argue is their finest). During my first six months in Australia, they released Scab Dates which contained some incredible live recordings along with some frustratingly long field recordings of bollocks. This record - a straight-forward live recording from the sound-desk at a London show in 2003 - was then right up my street. The tracklisting is basically all of Deloused (in order) along with Concertina from the Tremulant EP (which I bought about six months later, just before I left Australia for good). On top of that, the sleeve stated that it was for promotional use only (but probably actually a bootleg) as well as singing the praise of being a purely analog recording, something I was pleased to see other people consider important, having had frequent and irritating conversations with my friend Tom about whether digital could be better than analog - see the last picture for the full text. I also bought the 12" single of Frances the Mute that day.

The quality of this recording is perfectly fine - you couldn't call it outstanding, but it does the job. What is perfect is the band, who are on incredible form. The thing that amazes me is that I saw them just two months after this recorded and they were terrible. I remember being really excited to see them at Reading Festival and they played what felt like two songs over a 45-minute set - two elongated jam-fests (which I might enjoy now to be honest, but wasn't in the mood for at the time). I can't have been the only person in the audience who was hoping to hear Inertiatic ESP. In hindsight, we were probably being treated to some early versions of songs from Frances the Mute, but we weren't to know. I saw them a handful of other times over the years and had far better experiences after that - their set at Southside Festival in 2009 was particularly brilliant. The version of Cicatriz ESP is far more enjoyable than the version on Scab Dates because you don't have to fast-forward ten-minutes of bollocks to get the huge climax. The recording of Televators is pretty breath-taking too - Cedric's voice on top form - and Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt is a superb closer. I think for a long time they'd take the stage and introduce themselves as a different band - on this particular show they came on stage with the line "Hello, we're Mudvayne", a nu-metal band that I'm sure most people have long forgotten. It's a strange blast from the past whenever I play this album.

Despite being a bootleg/promo/"unofficial release", copies of this album seem to be about two or three times more than I paid for it, which is always nice (although peanuts compared to how much the reissue of Deloused is now going for - and to think I complained about my copy costing £27, an annoyingly common price for an LP these days). A nice bonus was that the two records are on coloured vinyl - transparent yellow and blue. Whilst not strictly an official release, I'm very glad this is sat in my collection and that I decided to lug it around Europe rather than leave it in Selectadisc that rainy January day. I miss The Mars Volta, so it's nice to have a live recording of some of their best songs.

Format: Double 12", plain sleeve, insert, promo-only
Tracks: 9
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Selectadisc, London
When: 13/01/06
Colour: Transparent yellow and transparent blue
Etching: none
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