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

Pitch Shifter - The 1990 Demo

I probably didn't need to buy the demos of Pitch Shifter's debut album, but here we are. On one hand, the band meant a huge amount to me for a good and important period of time, and despite not being a fan of their earlier industrial stuff when I first heard it I've found I quite enjoy it now I'm older. On the other hand - and I say this as something of a compliment I guess - I'd honestly struggle to tell you whether I was listening to the demos or the album itself, and I already have that album on vinyl and on cd; this LP feels pretty redundant. I was vaguely aware of the band putting the record out via Kickstarter but I didn't go out of my way to buy it, only picking it up a while later when it found it's way into the Record Culture sale section (where I think there is still at least one copy). I can't turn down a good offer.

Of the eight songs on Industrial, six of them have demos here (Gravid Rage and New Flesh are missing), and we instead have Behemoth, an unreleased song from the era, originally called Mouthscape. Musically, the quality of the demos is on a par with the album itself. I wouldn't necessarily call either "good", in fact part of the charm of Industrial was the bleak, imposing wall of sound and lack of frills. Mark's barked vocals might be different, or they might be exactly the same - there are only a few moments when you can really tell what he's saying anyway. I'm sure someone somewhere would have noticed if they'd just pressed six of the exact same versions of these songs in a different order, but I can't help but wonder if this is just some elaborate prank - that maybe they did just put out the exact same mixes but call them demos (possibly even by accident). Or maybe I should listen to the actual album again to be more sure. The vocals on Landfill do sound different (a bit more echo, perhaps?) but I've not listened to the album in a while, so maybe I'm just mis-remembering. I still love the simplicity of those lyrics. Behemoth is the only thing that really sounds like a demo - it fits perfectly onto the album musically, although the vocals are much cleaner than anything else from the era. It's a nice addition, but not worth the entry cost on it's own.

Thinking about it, it's a rather major criticism of a record - the idea that it really doesn't need to exist because it sounds identical to one that I paid the grand sum of £2.85 for on eBay (including postage!). A bigger criticism is the artwork, which looks like someone bashed together in about 3 minutes in a Word doc. The font is definitely the first one they found in the dropdown menu. It bothers me that there's a white square before the word "Pitch" and one after, but not one after "Shifter" - it makes sense when the two words are written one above the other - as on the Industrial artwork, but makes no sense in one line. Mostly it's one of the least interesting looking record sleeves I own, but that aspect is just infuriating. The italic version of the font on the centre label is even more horrific. I'm no design snob, but it looks terrible.

Some nice things to say about it - it's a really heavy, thick vinyl (but why you'd want the demos (allegedly) to be pressed on nicer vinyl than the album itself I don't know), and it's on clear vinyl which is more interesting than just black vinyl. Etched into the run-out grooves are the coordinates of a location in Bristol, which I think is where they hid a "Pitch Shifter skull", although I remember a tweet that no one had discovered it for a good while; I don't have much time to spare, let alone in Bristol, so even if I had noticed these earlier, I doubt I'd have made the journey. It didn't come with a download code, but I'm pretty sure I could just shuffle around the tracks from Industrial in iTunes and have six-sevenths of the experience digitally. 

Format: 12", numbered (462/500)
Tracks: 7
Cost: £18 new
Bought: Record Culture
When: 26/01/21
Colour: Clear
Etching: Side A: "51°26'33'' N - 2°32'10'' W" Side B: "Seth-Wynn-Seth Forever"
mp3s: no 

Deftones - White Pony (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)

Oooh, this is going to be a long one. I've been actively avoiding starting this blog post.

Luckily I've mostly calmed down now and I think I can finally listen to Black Stallion without the rage I had the first time I heard it. In fact, if you skip the terrible, tossed-off, barely 2-minute-long "remix" of Feiticeira, it's not a bad album. Now, that's not the praise it could be - "not bad" is a pretty low bar, especially given the source material here. There's a fair amount to unpack here, and I'm still not sure where to start.

Let's go back to the beginning. When Deftones started talking about the 20th anniversary of White Pony, there was talk of "Black Stallion", a plan they always had to get people to remix the album - not a revolutionary idea, but certainly not one that many metal bands could have pulled off in 2000, and still quite interesting in 2020. When the re-release got announced, I got very excited, even though few of the remixers meant anything to me (five of the eleven were names I knew, or had at least heard of). There were a few options, all very expensive - for £55 you could get the 4LP version, or for double that you could get the 4LP version with the albums on cd too, and a fancy book. It'd just been my birthday, and between my parents and my in-laws I had precisely £110 in birthday money (partly in the form of a Norman Records voucher). Despite knowing that I didn't need to go for the more expensive version, I went for it anyway. Hilariously, I remember thinking "if Black Stallion is awesome, I'll be pleased to have mp3s of it"; little did I know. 

At some point towards the tail end of 2020 Black Stallion was released on streaming services (I know this because my desk was in the sitting room, but it hadn't got so cold that I moved it nearer to the radiator - during a monotonous pandemic, the various locations of my desk are really the only way I can distinguish within the passage of time). I frantically dug out my long-forgotten Spotify password and gave it a listen. My heart sank almost instantly. What the fuck was that remix of Feiticeira? How could DJ Shadow not focus the entire remix of Digital Bath around Chino's "I feel like moooore", instead of letting it drift off into a blur of noises? Even Robert Smith's remix of Teenager was thoroughly underwhelming. The only remix that I didn't hate on first listen was Mike Shinoda's remix of Passenger - I read some comments about the album on the internet afterwards (a dangerous thing to do, and not recommended in general) mostly to see if I wasn't the only one who hated it. One person made the interesting comment that the mixers didn't "respect" the band or the material enough to do a good job, and I see what they mean. Mike Shinoda is the exception to that rule - I suspect he is the only one who looks up to the Deftones (Robert Smith is a fan, but the admiration goes the other way there). Then I read a review where someone said that remix was the low-point of the album. I think I agree with the offended metalhead more than the artsy-reviewer though.

I'm now going to dedicate a whole paragraph to ripping into the remix of Feiticeira, so if you've already had enough of my rage about that particular song, you can probably skip this one. If you've not heard the remix, it starts off with a few lines of the original guitar, before falling away to something that barely resembles anything from the original song. One or two of Chino's lines are somewhere in the background, and the whole finishes before it even really starts. Feiticeira is one of the greatest openings to an album ever, and is a huge song. How Clams Casino thought they could spin it into a half-baked interlude I don't know; how it got onto the album is a bigger mystery. The "respect" comment from before feels particularly apt here - how could anyone who actually enjoys that song, that album and the importance it plays turn in something so half-hearted? It's making me angry all over again. Utter garbage. I'm nearly tempted to buy that over-priced Record Store Day 12" just to have a better remix of Feiticeira (the b-side), and I've not even heard that one. But I can't see how it could be any worse.

But, if you just skip that song (in what world do you "just skip" Feiticeira? Argh!) then there's less to get angry about. Once I realised that was the solution, I have played Black Stallion a few more times. I couldn't say I've enjoyed it - it's not a patch on White Pony - but I've seen some of the appeal. In fact, in places it becomes an album you could play in polite company and people might enjoy (hang on, I'm trying to say the positive is that they've turned one of the greatest albums of all time into generic background music? What have I become?). The exception to that of course being Blanck Mass's remix of Elite, which somehow manages to be even heavier. I almost wish they'd gone the other way - I'd love to hear a non-brutal version of that song. A few of the songs really have few redeeming features - I'd be hard pushed to tell you anything about the remixes of Korea and Change (in the House of Flies) and I'm literally listening to the second one right now. It feels like a fucking relief when Squarepusher doesn't do away with the guitars in Pink Maggit - I'm always desperate to hear a guitar ever since they disappeared in Feiticeira (of course, he punishes us by distorting Chino for no reason other than he had to do something to get his fee I guess).

So those are my thoughts on Black Stallion. I keep thinking back to when it announced and how naïve I was to have high hopes about it, which is ridiculous because it was a year ago, not something that happened in my youth. I should have known I'd hate a remix album, I hate almost all remixes of rock music. With very few exceptions, they're all terrible. I guess that remix album of Explosions in the Sky's All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone was good, but I feel like the remixers were peers, rather than intentionally different. Why did I think this was going to be good? Maybe because the original album was so great, I figured how could anyone make it sound bad. Well, now I know.

I never thought I'd be writing about the 20th anniversary version of White Pony and have had such bad things to say, let alone to have written six paragraphs without talking much about the eleven songs that changed my life back in the year 2000. As written about on here many years ago, I have an original pressing of White Pony on vinyl, so I didn't need to buy this to have a copy of the album I love so much on vinyl. I love that album, I think I always will. It was special, unique and the peak of so many things. I still love Deftones, but I don't think I've loved them more than when this album came out. It felt important and we were lucky enough to be right there at the right time to watch it unfold.

So, original White Pony and dubious-at-best Black Stallion aside, what else is there to say? Well, still more! For one, there's amazingly little here for a 20th anniversary version. For the prices they're charging, you'd want more for sure - would it have killed them to throw in The Boy's Republic from the limited edition cd? They could even have put the Back to School EP on vinyl and that would have been exciting (although I appreciate their animosity to that particular release). Demos, live songs, literally any other material would have been welcome. In all the various versions of this release, you just got the same 22 songs. I can't believe there aren't fascinating curios from the era that fans would have lapped up (and all of them would have been better than Black Stallion). The deluxe edition includes a book with some notes from the band about the songs (well, one comment per song. Again, more would've been nice) and a lot of photos. 

One thing that particularly bugs me about this release is that the regular 4LP version looks so much better than this one. I saw it in a shop the other day and thought "I wish I'd bought that one instead" (regardless of the price and content). The black and white art looks so much cooler than the silver and white here - it's really bold and impressive. I ordered this long before images of each one were available, so I wasn't to know. I don't like the idea of "regret" in general, and I certainly don't regret buying this one, but in hindsight I kinda wish I'd spent my money differently - I have White Pony on vinyl, so I could've just bought the cd version to hear Black Stallion; if I'd loved Black Stallion (ha!) I could've then bought the 4LP and still have money to spare. Oh well, you live and you learn.

Format: 4x12", book, picture, picture sleeves

Tracks: 22

Cost: £110.99 new

Bought: Norman Records website

When: 26/02/21

Colour: Black

Etching: etching on side H

mp3s: cds

Run, Forever - A Few Good Things

 

For a short while, Run, Forever felt like a really important band. Then they just sort of vanished. It happens a lot I guess, and there's probably not always a dramatic end; a lot of bands just fizzle out. I assume that's what happened here, but I have no idea really. 

Between 2011 and 2015 I bought a bunch of their records. Not quite everything they put out, but most. I even bought all four colours of their second album Settling, although I think that was more because the option was presented to me by the record label than a real desire to actually go deep on collecting them. Even the bands I love the most I don't go down to colour-variant-level of collecting. Those for records are something of an anomaly in my collection with their identical spines all next to each other, but a nice reminder of that brief period when Run, Forever seemed like a really important band.

This 7" came out between their first and second albums. I've not played either in a while now, but this feels like a good mixture of the two, possibly more in common with the first, but I'm only saying that because two of the songs here are huge, and in my memory the first album had more stand-out songs like that. Those two songs are the first on each side - Letters and Get Better. The former probably ranks among their best songs, and both are earnest, eager punk-rock songs, full of energy and hard-hitting. Growing Pains is a nice reflective closer, which is a perfectly normal sort of song to write, but an unusual one to put on an EP when you have fewer songs to play with. Fall Hard is a nice acoustic song, but feels unfinished.

I bought this 7" when I saw them play at Fest in 2013, although I don't particularly remember the set - I couldn't tell you which venue it was in, unlike the first time I saw them at Fest 2011, which is firmly etched into my mind. It was the fifth day of the festival and they were the ninth band I saw that day, sandwiched between 1994! (who I do remember seeing) and Restorations (who I think I remember seeing, like 80% sure which venue they were in). I had the other albums they were selling, but picked up this and a t-shirt. Two years later they released another album and then sort of disappeared. More on that when I get round to writing about the final, self-titled LP.

Format: 7", folded sleeve, insert

Tracks: 4

Cost: £3.15 new

Bought: Fest

When: 02/11/13

Colour: Purple

Etching: Side A: "Better step aside home school, there's a new sheriff in town! Side B: "They’re break dance fighting!"
mp3s: download

Hot Water Music - Live in Chicago

It’s now been so long since I went to a concert that live albums are starting to take on new meanings. I bought this Hot Water Music triple live LP because at the time there was no best-of compilation and I quite liked the idea of having all their best songs in one place. And this record ticks that box and then some; just look at those first four songs – A Flight and a Crash into Remedy into Wayfarer (one of their greatest songs full stop) into Trusty Chords. What a way to start a show. That is a truly amazing run of songs, the sort you end a show with not start with. It'd be fair to say that the rest of the album doesn't hit such heights again, but how could it?

And pre-pandemic, this album was just a good way to hear all my favourite HWM songs in one place (although three discs is stretching the definition of "one place" – I could equally play Fuel for the Hate Game, A Flight and A Crash and Caution in their entireties, hear 90% of my favourite HWM songs and have got out of my seat the same number of times). But it's now been 16 months since I last went to a concert, an otherwise unfathomable gap between shows, and it's only going to get longer. So when I put the needle on this record, my mind is thrown back to the first time I saw HWM play, in a sweaty dodgy venue in Newport, South Wales surrounded by every punk I'd made acquaintances in the two years I'd lived in Cardiff - it was 9 months after I'd left for London but there was no doubt in my mind that if I was going to see HWM it'd be in South Wales. It was horrifically hot, beer-soaked and chaotic. We'd been drinking in beer gardens in the afternoon and the show was perfect. More than 10 years have passed since, but this record puts me right back there, struggling to sing along to any of the choruses (partly because I still know less than a third of the words being sung at any given point). I saw HWM twice more after that show - to a disappointingly small crowd at Reading Festival and to a raucous hometown crowd on the first night of my first Fest, but that Newport show will always be my favourite memory. And it's nice that I can take myself right back there with this record.

I've only mentioned the first four songs here so far, but there are some other great moments - "God Deciding" and Kill the Night are two of my favourite non-album songs and both get played, which is great (they'd both be missing from the alternative choice of three records I mentioned above). Moonpies for Misfits is a great slower one that I often forget about. Side 5 has the opening duo from Fuel (in reverse order) which is another huge moment on the album, and The Sense from Caution sounds amazing - it's not a song I'd ever have listed as being amongst my favourites but it's definitely up there.

This copy, as with most variants, is from the second run which featured different colour sleeves to match the records and Discogs tells me that there were 550 of each colour. I bought it one day in Banquet - I don't remember them having any other colours, but I was perfectly happy with blue. I was aware of the record before seeing it there that day, and without the tracklisting printed anywhere on the sleeve I had to trust that it'd be huge, but it was just after Christmas and I guess I just fancied spending some money. Of course £17 for a triple LP is now a bargain regardless what's actually on it.

Two years later an actual best-of compilation did come out, but I've not bought it - mostly because I have this record, which is more interesting owing to it being a live recording, but also because it doesn't have "God Deciding" and Kill the Night on (however does have Poison and Drag My Body, two of the best songs they wrote in their more recent eras). To be honest, if I saw it in a shop, I probably would buy it, but that says more about my compulsive record buying than it does the relative merits of these two albums.

Format: Triple 12", insert
Tracks: 30
Cost: £17 new
Bought: Banquet Record, Kingston
When: 04/01/13
Colour: Blue
Etching: Side A: "I love these chords" Side B: "From voice to ear" Side C: "Scarred but here" Side D: "You are not alone" Side E: "I must always remember" Side F: "This makes me whole"
mp3s: Download code

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

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

Songs: Ohia - Songs: Ohia

As much as I love Jason Molina's music, I never really feel like I've cracked his early lo-fi days. There's a lot of hints of what Songs: Ohia would become, but it's not easy to hear it as the music of the same musician who wrote the albums towards the end of the Songs: Ohia monicker.

I picked up the debut Songs: Ohia record at the same time I got the Soujourner boxset. At that point, all I knew was Josephine and What Comes After the Blues - it wasn't the usual order of albums to hear (it'd be another year before I heard The Magnolia Electric Co record). I can't remember which I played first, but given the four discs of Soujouner, I suspect I played at least one of those first. I wasn't really expecting these songs to be quite so different to Magnolia, but I'd been brought in towards the end of his varied career and wasn't remotely familiar with the subtle twists and turns his vast recorded output went through. Part of me wishes I could have heard it all in a more sensible order, but most days I'm just glad I was introduced to his music by seeing him play live, and that I got to see him play live at all.

On Cabwaylingo Jason's voice is more nasal and high than it ever sounded again, which throws the listener off from the start (or, at least, this listener). It's not as warm as the version recorded as Vanquisher that appeared on the Journey On boxset; Crab Orchard afterwards sounds much more like the Molina I've spent many hours listening to. There are songs with a lot more bite to them though - Our Republic builds to something far bigger than most of the songs that preceded it, and Cotton Hill and Dogwood Gap are great examples of him dabbling in reaching beyond lo-fi. Tenskwatawa is a highlight, as is Little Beaver, although it shows just how little that I feel I've gotten into this album - if you'd mentioned those two song titles to me, I'm not sure I'd have known they were Molina song titles, let alone some of the songs on this album I like the most.

I bought this from the Secretly Canadian stall at the Independent Label Market in London. That was the first time I went when it was amazing; the second time was thoroughly disappointing in comparison and I've not been since. The Secretly Canadian stall had a bunch of Molina records and I regretted for a while not buying all of them (although it was wise to buy the Soujouner boxset then, because it sells for at least double what I paid for it now). I've probably since bought all the other ones they had, but I don't recall exactly which ones were there. This is the triple gatefold version of the reissue, unlike the single LP sleeve it's often found in now. The etching on the record says "edition of 500", but scrawled out, so I assume that was referring to an earlier pressing. It wasn't until a good number of months (possibly years) after I bought it that I found the download code inside.

Format: 12", triple gatefold
Tracks: 14
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Independent Label Market, London
When: 13/07/13
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Edition of 500" (crossed out)
mp3s: Download code

The Smith Street Band - More Scared of You Than You Are of Me

Don't Fuck With Our Dreams announced a new level of songwriting for The Smith Street Band, and one I was really impressed by. Sunshine & Technology was a fun record, but relatively simple; on Don't Fuck With Our Dreams they wrote their first song that had different parts and movements and things more complex than just verse-chorus-verse. Throw Me in the River was, for me, something of a let down, as it had none of this new-found greatness. I went into More Scared of You Than You Are of Me with some hesitation, only be blown away - this album has that next-level songwriting overflowing at every turn, so much so it was my album of the year in 2017.

I'm going to struggle to describe this album appropriately, because I'm just not that great with words, and I throw the words "excellent" and "brilliant" around on here so much that they lose meaning. But how about this: in the summer of 2017 I'd had a really shitty day at work (side note: I've not had a single one of those since I changed job - if only I'd realised that shitty days weren't compulsory sooner) and I was sat on the train coming back from London. The sun was still high in the sky and it was a really nice evening (or would have been without a long commute). I wanted to put the day behind me, and decided to put this album on my iPod and crank it up loud. Instantly I was in a happy place and smiling to myself. Within minutes I'd forgotten why I was angry. Any album that can change your mood for the better so quickly is truly remarkable.

There's barely a let up in the energy here, which is part of the charm, yet somehow they manage to still vary between "lots of energy" and "ridiculous huge sing-along moment energy" regularly and perfectly. Every song has at least one moment that I love and would be the highlight of any other album. Death to the Lads would have made the album incredible alone. Run Into the World starts off like the first dud on the album (the chorus is amazingly flat, but maybe that's just in relation to the soaring chorus (and verses) elsewhere), but then some female vocals take over before being layered against Will's building to a huge crescendo, proving that maybe it wasn't a terrible chorus. I even put that song on my end-of-year mixtape. Shine is another great example of a song a million times bigger than their first couple of albums (as are Forrest, Birthdays and Suffer). The strange end to Laughing (Or Pretending to Laugh) is literally the only bad moment on the whole record and, after the 45-minutes that came before, I'll let slide.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £10 new
Bought: Specialist Subject Record subscription
When: 06/04/17
Colour: Pink with blue splatter
Etching: Side A: "More scared of you" Side B: "Than you are of me"
mp3s: Download code

Small Brown Bike - Our Own Wars

Three years after getting Dead Reckoning, and just two months after getting Fell & Found, I finally started to delve further into Small Brown Bike's back-catalogue. This was mostly because I was going to be seeing them at Fest that October and wanted to know some more songs. I picked this up in a large online order from Specialist Subject Records (back then, they weren't a shop too, so it was all online). I remember enjoying it, but nowhere near as much as Dead Reckoning or Fell & Found. I don't know if there's a commonly accepted order of preference for their albums, but for me it happens to go in the order I bought them, with Dead Reckoning out in front by a good distance.

Our Own Wars is Small Brown Bike's debut, and it's definitely a bit rougher around the edges - the start of Zerosum sounds like a demo. The bass, however, sounds incredible throughout, particularly on Now & Never where it's really pounding and high in the mix - that song has levels of aggression they'd rarely show again. There are some favourites here - Atlanta has a great outro and Running, Swimming & Sinking has a huge chorus. The Cannons & Tanks is a brilliant opener and a great use of the two vocalists - it's always nice when the first song on a debut album so perfectly shows what a band is about.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 10
Cost: £9.50 new
Bought: Specialist Subject Records website
When: 31/08/11
Colour: Pink
Etching: Side A: "Umber midget tricycle" Side B: "I want the banana erectors"
mp3s: Download code

Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing

Steady Diet of Nothing is the only Fugazi album I don't have a digital copy of, which means it's had far, far less play then the others. It was also the last of their albums I heard having gradually picked them all up over the course of a couple of years. Beyond Repeater and the self-titled EP (the first two Fugazi albums I heard), I'd always found that each album had a handful of songs I really loved and a lot that I was basically a bit indifferent towards. The album I heard before this one, End Hits, I struggled with a lot, and looking at the tracklisting here, I'm not seeing any I've ever taken a particular shine to. Maybe I'd just rushed through their back-catalogue a bit too fast.

Recently I made a Fugazi mix cd for the car. I went through and found all my favourite songs and put them into a playlist. Just the ones I knew to be great songs took up 90 minutes, so I didn't even revisit the albums to see if I'd missed any (and had to find 10 minutes to remove). But because I didn't have mp3s of this album, none of them made the cut. The mix has been getting a lot of play in the car - they wrote some truly incredible songs.

Listening to Steady Diet of Nothing now, I'm aware of two things: I should play this album far more often and Reclamation, Latin Roots and Polish all would have made the mix cd if I'd had mp3s - they're all great songs. Reclamation in particular has this huge wall of guitars, and Polish is one of those slower Fugazi songs that works perfectly with Ian's tortured vocals. The fade out between Latin Roots and Long Division straddling the two sides of vinyl is strange, but I'm sure there's a good reason for it.

I say this a few times a year, but the point of this blog was to make sure I revisit all my records at some point, and every now and again that process unearths a forgotten classic. I should have given this album a lot more time in the past.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 25/10/08
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Don't worry" Side B: "This is the last one"
mp3s: none

Jawbox - For Your Own Special Sweetheart

I think I've finally learnt which band is Jawbox and which one is Jawbreaker - Jawbox are the one I have a couple of albums by and quite enjoy, Jawbreaker are the ones I watched a documentary about on Amazon Prime thinking they were Jawbox (it was reassuring that even Steve Albini couldn't remember which was which). The Jawbreaker documentary was interesting and I stuck with it, partly because they seemed to really hate each other, but partly because people really love them and, it turns out, I've never listened to them despite them being the sort of band I feel like someone would have played to me. But enough about Jawbreaker.

Like a lot of people (I suspect), I was introduced to Jawbox because Deftones covered Savory and their recording ended up on their 2005 B-Sides and Rarities compilation (as well as on the 2011 Covers LP). That recording also features most of the guys from Far, and I also had a recording of Jonah covering Savory on his The Three Sketchys compilation, so it's safe to say the song hit hard amongst that group of friends. I liked the song and made a mental note to check the band out; over the years I heard about For Your Own Special Sweetheart being a classic and landmark album.

In 2010 I finally stumbled across a copy - this is the 2009 reissue and Spillers had it in stock when I was back in town for some reason (it wasn't for a gig, so I'm not sure why I was in Cardiff that weekend in particular). I still hadn't actually heard Jawbox when I first played the record, but the covers of Savory and the general fanfare was enough to draw me in. Plus, it was on Discord, so it really couldn't go too wrong. Jawbox have a lot in common with Albini-related bands from Chicago but they have a far greater ear for a melody and throw in some incredibly catchy choruses; it's a far easier listen than anything Big Black recorded, which I see as a plus. It's still pretty abrasive (my wife made some strange faces at the start of FF=66 just now and left the room before the chorus kicked in). Of course, Savory is a great song, but so are Breathe, Motorist, Jackpot Plus! and U-Trau, mostly because of their soaring choruses. Reel feels quite different from the rest of the album, but is a nice moment.

Many years later I found a second-hand copy of My Scrapbook of Fatal Accidents on cd in Oxfam and that reminded me that I really should have bought more Jawbox records by now. It's no surprise that the only blocker has been that I never ever see their albums in shops and forget to seek them out online. I've bought both Jawbox releases that I've ever seen, so that's a reasonable effort I suppose. I should try harder; I like their music and could happily listen to more of it.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Spillers Records, Cardiff
When: 17/04/10
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "This is not a psychotic episode" Side B: "This is a cleansing moment of clarity"
mp3s: Download code

Explosions in the Sky - How Strange, Innocence

Explosions' first album - How Strange, Innocence - was the last one I bought of the four they'd released at the time. In the two years since I'd bought All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone I'd gotten pretty heavily into them and seen them play at the All Tomorrow's Parties they'd curated (although it was The Paper Chase that led me to know about that festival). One afternoon in Fopp in Bristol I found a copy of this album on cd for £10 (the 2005 reissue, not original, of course) which was a lot by Fopp-standards, but I very keenly added it to the pile of cds I was buying, probably putting some others back to make space (and not blow all my money) because of it. I can't remember why I was in Bristol, but it might have been to meet potential PhD supervisors - that would have been around that time for sure.

My main memory of this album, however, is from that summer. It's crucial to remember this was 2009, so basically before smartphones and certainly before streaming platforms; going on holiday or even a road trip meant needing to be prepared when it came to playing music other than the radio - if you packed cds, a cassette-to-headphone-jack adapter, a headphone-to-RCA adapter and an mp3 player, you might be able to play some music you want to hear. So I always took all those things. That summer we went to Devon, and by plugging my shitty little USB stick mp3 player into the back of the TV (via an audio cable) in our rental place, we were able to listen to music and, crucially, only really my music. The mp3 player had a capacity of something comical, like 2GB, so I was frequently having to change the albums on there.

For the holiday I'd thrown on How Strange, Innocence, and pressed play on it one rainy afternoon when we were all hanging around. After a song or two, Hugh asked me who it was and said something along the lines of "why is it so out of tune/time?" - I can't remember which, but he was pretty scathing about their musicianship at this point. Without the context of the cd sleeve explaining that the band were also pretty embarrassed by it, it wasn't maybe the strongest of their albums to play, but these were the problems of limited 2009-era technology. Of course, having no musical ability whatsoever, whatever criticism Hugh had of their playing, I hadn't noticed it (so much so I can't remember if he complained about their timing or tuning). I was enjoying the album - I guess I appreciated it had a certain roughness, but just felt that added to it's charm.

Despite the band's (and Hugh's) opinion of it, there are some great songs here. Magic Hours is probably the highlight, with the incredibly fuzzed out guitars that creep in on-and-off before taking over in the inevitable post-rock explosion. Glittering Blackness is another great one, although I will concede that those huge drums need to be way louder. Remember Me as a Time of Day might be the most Explosions-in-the-Sky title ever written.

As soon as I read the back-story of this album, I knew that getting a vinyl copy was out of the question - if the original cd sells for an obscene price, the only word for the 2004 vinyl is "terrifying". Luckily, Temporary Residence realised the same and have reissued the album on vinyl so we can all have complete Explosion back-catalogues on our shelves, which makes me very happy. As is always the case, the package is lovely - two colours of vinyl, neither of which words quite do justice, a triple gatefold sleeve, and the story of the history of the album from the 2005 cd reissue etched onto the fourth side of vinyl. I would have been happy with double black vinyl stuffed into a single sleeve, so this extra effort was very much appreciated.

Format: Double 12", triple gatefold, insert
Tracks: 7
Cost: £30.97 new
Bought: Temporary Residence Records website
When: 19/08/19
Colour: Light blue splatter / dark blue splatter
Etching: Recording notes etched into side D
mp3s: Download code

Hermano - Only a Suggestion

The sticker on the sleeve of this albums said "eight tracks reminiscent of classic Kyuss strained through a Soundgarden at 100 miles an hour", which is a pretty good summary - John Garcia sings, so it sounds a lot like Kyuss and I think everyone can agree that is a good thing. It's definitely a bit faster than Kyuss and I guess I can see the Soundgarden reference - heavy and fast in a way that stoner-rock typically isn't, but Soundgarden often were. Either way, you put a sticker like that on a record and I'm going to buy it.

I'm not sure I knew anything about Hermano when I found this record in Generation Records in New York a decade ago. I used to work with a guy who wore a Hermano t-shirt, so I knew they were a band, and the music makes sense given what I knew about the guy. I bought a lot of records that day, and even more at my next stop in Boulder, so I had quite a stack to work through when I got home. I can't remember the first time I played this, or how long it took me to get to it in amongst all the other purchases.

This is the strange thing: this album is huge, yet I've made no effort to check out the other Hermano albums. It makes me smile so much when The Bottle gets going, Senor Moreno's Plan has such an incredible groove to it and Landetta (Motherload) has a chorus I never want to end, but Only a Suggestion sits alone in my collection as the only Hermano album I've heard, let alone bought. Now part of that is down to the fact I have never ever seen another Hermano record in real life (and I'd definitely buy any others if I found them), but the internet exists so I could find them very easily if I tried. But I haven't.

Ultimately, I guess the reason is that I have all the Kyuss albums and when I want a band who sounds a bit like Kyuss I listen to Kyuss. Sure this album is huge and makes me smile, but the Kyuss albums are even more massive and make me so fucking happy. I love John Garcia's voice - I'd go so far as to say it's one of the main reasons I love Kyuss so much - so I should feel compelled to seek out everything he's sung on, but I'm just not bored of Kyuss yet. If the day ever comes when I do get bored of Kyuss, then working through the many albums he's sung on will be the first thing I do. I'm just not sure that day will ever come.

This might not sound like a very positive review, but this really is a great album. I'm sure John Garcia hates that he can't do anything without people constantly banging on about Kyuss, but I see it as a compliment.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 8
Cost: £5.96 new
Bought: Generation records, New York
When: 11/04/08
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Ouch that's hot" Side B: "Ouch that's hot"
mp3s: None