“As a kid, I always loved to play around with anything electronic or anything with moving parts. I had a habit of breaking up anything I could get my hands on in to bits. So, at six years old, when I first discovered my Dad’s record player and began prodding it, he decided it was better if he showed me and my older brother how to use it, instead of coming home one day to find it in pieces.”
“Instead of a normal record player though, he had this crazy player, where – when you turned it on, the platter would slide out. You would place the record on it and then it would slide back in and start playing automatically, like some kind of robot. I’m pretty sure my Dad used Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains The Same for our first lesson in Record Player 101, which was what changed everything for me and my brother. From then on, we’d rummage relentlessly through all my Dad’s records looking for anything that was loud – usually settling on Led Zeppelin IV and Paranoid by Black Sabbath.
I’ve attempted several times over the years to steal his records, but after quite a few failures (and one or two successes) I realised I had to start buying my own. I can’t quite remember what my first purchase was, but I know that it came from a large second hand record store in South London called Beanos.
Growing up, this was where I spent most of my time and all of my money. The place was amazing; three floors full of every kind of record you could imagine. From super rare classics to comedy records. The place even had “The World’s Smallest Cinema” which was six wooden, fold-down seats and an old TV showing Tom & Jerry cartoons.
Sadly, like a lot of other independent records shops, it closed down around three years ago. Now I have to buy most of my vinyl online or hunt down record stores wherever we go on tour. I’ve got a rule whereby I must come back from tour with at least one record – the last one was from a great place called Plato in Apeldoorn, Holland where I found a reissue of When The Circus Leaves Town by Kyuss – an amazing album.
Unfortunately, most of my records are currently locked away in storage as we move around a lot and we’re away gigging much of the time. So, I’m limited to carrying a few essentials with me like Portishead’s Live At Roseland and A Silver Mount Zion’s This Is Our Punk Rock. The rest of my records are living in the driest corner of a secure but dank basement in central London.
Owning records has definitely become an obsession and if I’m not careful, I’ll quite easily find myself spending all my spare money on rare limited edition “I’ll never find again, must have now” records. So, I’ve had to make myself a rule: If there’s a reissue for sale, I’ll buy it as the only reason I want the record and the main reason they exist is so they can be listened to. They’re still the same songs whether it’s a first pressing or the twentieth, so there’s no point becoming bankrupt by always buying the expensive originals (unless it’s the In Utero pressing with all the Steve Albini mixes—then I may have to break my own rule).
There’s something important about being exposed to vinyl at an early age and how your very early impression of it stays with you. There’s something magic about them – when you’re a kid, seeing the needle move and wobble along with the grooves and hearing that tiny sound when you forget to turn the amp on which sounds like mice playing your favorite record.
I think those memories and that inner desire to return to your childhood is a big part of listening to vinyl for me. It becomes an escape from the world, the whole process of running your finger along the spines, trying to decide which one fits your current mood perfectly. Pulling the record from its sleeve and blowing any dust away before the needle sinks into the groove, you can step back and ignore everything else that’s going on and concentrate on something simple: just listening.
For me that’s the best part – not in the hunt for rare vinyl or opening the oversize, incredible artwork for the first time, but in the experience of stopping everything else and just putting a record on.”
—Chris Hamilton
Death Rattle’s first release HE&I, is a enthralling and daring debut and an exciting glimpse of what’s in store as the pair prepare for a UK and European tour starting on October 18th and make plans for their debut album release in 2013.
