Monthly Archives: June 2016

Lord, it’s hard to tell people how you feel, what’s going on, the tides pushing and pulling.

Time was when a mixtape was that bridge, or the spin of a well-intentioned record eliciting its own waltz about a candlelit room with the object of one’s adoration.

It’s an emotional world, it is. Thus, offered without comment, TVD HQ’s recurring fuel for your fires and mixtapes. Reading between the lines—encouraged.

The Vinyl Guide is a weekly podcast for fans and collectors of vinyl records. Each week is an audio-documentary on your favourite records, often including interviews with band members and people who were part of the project.

It’s hosted by Nate Goyer, a self-described vinyl maniac who enjoys listening to records and sharing the stories behind them. Despite his Yankee accent, Nate lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife, 2 kids, and about 1,500 records. (But only about 1,000 of them his wife knows about.)

The Vinyl Guide takes records one by one, telling the tale of how they came to be, why the work is important, and then shares how collectors can tell one pressing from another. Learn more at the TheVinylGuide.com or simply subscribe via iTunes or RSS feed.

In the late ’80s there were 2,200 independent record shops in the UK. By 2009 there were just 269. Graham Jones documented this demise in the book and DVD Last Shop Standing. Plus we discuss the 7 errors in the first US pressing of The Beatles’ “White Album.”

Swans is a formidable behemoth amongst bands. Swans is also the recording and performance entity of one Michael Gira, and with The Glowing Man he’s effectively closed the door on the latest incarnation of his group. Having recommenced activity back in 2010, the two prior Swans studio albums are sprawling examples of collective massiveness and this latest installment is no different; clocking in just shy of two hours, it’s a sustained and immense thrust of creativity certain to engross and challenge listeners for decades to come. It’s out June 17 through Young God (and Mute in the UK) on triple vinyl, double compact disc, 2CD+DVD, and digital.

Like a fair amount of reality, the story of Swans would be unlikely to survive as a fictional construct; chances are great that if made up, Michael Gira’s shape-shifting unit would fall victim to a reduction of size and ambition. Gradually maturing from post-no wave beginnings to serve as a cornerstone of ’80s noise-rock, Gira shed those limitations to reveal unexpected range on a string of more broadly scaled ’90s records. He then dissolved the band and explored various musical avenues beyond the appellation Swans before assembling a new lineup at the start of this decade.

It’s this most recent manifestation of Swans that would exceed fictive norms, as reconvening to make music under an established moniker usually entails returning to a comfort zone and tapping into a wellspring of largely safe ideas. Instead, Gira’s rekindled Swans increasingly offered such grand magnitude that borderline incredulity frequently resulted; reports of their performance juggernaut only raised the head-shaking astonishment.

Of course with 2010’s My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky, ’12’s The Seer and ’14’s To Be Kind, Gira was actually getting back to the epic length, all two hours and 21 minutes, that was explored on ’96’s Soundtracks for the Blind, while far from repeating himself; often still a pummeling experience, the sound of these Swans registered as less antagonistic and not as sharply rebuking of rock clichés.

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Lord, it’s hard to tell people how you feel, what’s going on, the tides pushing and pulling.

Time was when a mixtape was that bridge, or the spin of a well-intentioned record eliciting its own waltz about a candlelit room with the object of one’s adoration.

It’s an emotional world, it is. Thus, offered without comment, TVD HQ’s recurring fuel for your fires and mixtapes. Reading between the lines—encouraged.

“My friend Jeff and I were fourteen years old when we first started creating music from samples. This would be the beginning of a never-ending quest for sounds.”

“We would sample from anything, tapes, CDs, records, VHS—it didn’t matter. It helped that most of my friends and I could find stacks of vinyl in our attics or basements. There were a couple of used record stores on an avenue between our two houses. We dug exclusively in the dollar bins, buying records purely based on cover art.

I noticed that vinyl sounded different right away from looping break beats and riffs. I’d hear the space between each instrument, the dynamic range in the whole mix, the thumpy low end and scratchy highs.

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Never got into T. Rex as a kid. I lived too deep in the sticks, and the only kid I know who owned a T. Rex record refused to tear off the cellophane shrink wrap and play the damn thing because that’s the way he was with all his stuff; he was saving it for posterity, or for somewhere down the line when it would fetch a pretty penny for being in mint condition. He’s probably a millionaire now. I thought he was a complete imbecile.

And the songs I heard after that struck me as a bit fey and simplistic; Marc Bolan truly was a dandy in the underworld, and I failed to get the whole “T. Rextasy” thing that swept England in the wake of 1971’s Electric Warrior.

Before that Bolan was an unreconstructed hippie, in a duo with the wonderfully named Steve Peregrin Took. Their acoustic-guitar-based material had a raga-like feel and ran towards lyrics about paisley unicorns leaping through peace symbols in the tie-dyed sky. But the two band mates had a falling out, and Bolan caught the glam wave, with a funky and more pop-oriented electrical guitar style and a flashier sartorial style. Indeed, he is credited with founding glam, after he appeared on Top of the Pops with a spots of glitter beneath his eyes. Superstardom followed, as little girls swooned and little boys prayed nightly for a pair of platform glitter boots to appear magically in the morning by their bed. Hit followed hit in a manner not seen since the Beatles, and it mattered not a nonce that Bolan and Took’s old hippie audience cried, “Sell out!”

Electric Warrior is generally credited as being the high-water mark of T. Rex’s career, although 1972 follow-up The Slider also wins big props from fans and critics. Electric Warrior was, as its title indicates, Bolan’s move towards an electric rock sound, with irresistible hooks and an almost child-like approach to melody. The journey begins with the shuffle funk of “Mambo Sun,” which highlights Bolan’s almost whispered vocal delivery and playful lyrics, and it’s good, infectious fun. Bolan stuck to the basics, with relatively simple grooves that might run the entire song, and it’s an exhilarating formula. Call it white glam funk.

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Press Play is our Monday recap of the new and FREE tracks received last week to inform the next trip to your local indie record store.

Private Victories – Baby Love
Steel Cranes – Pretty
Colonial Blue – My Treason
Young Mister – Anybody Out There
Lily Frost – Witch Doctor
Jack Ellis – The Storm (Radio Edit)
Honeymilk – Time Will Kill You
Amy Blaschke – Under My Skin
ODDITY – Pressure’s Gone
Ian Sweet – Slime Time Live

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Team Picture – Birthday Blues

Schnarff Schnarff – Mario 1-2
Permanent Makeup – Manhater
Sammartino – Say Hello from Me
Beats Antique – Killer Bee (ft. Lafa Taylor)
Micko Westmoreland – Strange (Luke Vibert Plug Remix)
eckul – Venice (A Long Decay) – Ft.Blanco Son
Maggie Rogers – Alaska (Atrio Remix)
Jovel – On My Way
GITCHII – Yeah
Profit – Drug Dealers Anonymous (Remix)