#now spinning

[partyofthemind]

Enjoying a Saturday with the record player.

[fght-ff-yr-dmns]

Underoath They're Only Chasing Safety

12" LP - 20th anniversary tour exclusive 2024

[arhygatoo]

Algun pasatiempo ?

Vinyls, lots of them.

[ifonlyifonly]

Only Boundaries / Balance & Composure

[crepuscularpete]

[1001albumsrated]

#25: Elvis Presley - Elvis Is Back! (1960)

Genre(s): Rock n Roll, Pop

He's back! I already said my piece on Elvis early on in this series with his self-titled debut, so I'm going to keep it short with this one.

What was he back from? The army! I imagine it's common knowledge, but Elvis very publicly was drafted and spent 2 years in active duty at the peak of his career. Despite the opportunity to join the Special Services as an entertainer, he opted to enlist as a regular soldier on a standard tour of duty. This was a brilliant move with the press, taking him from a figure who caused outrage in the 50s to a well-loved, warm-blooded American in the eyes of the public. He came back from deployment in West Germany to find that his fanbase was older and more conservative than it had been before, but still just as large or larger. However, his deployment also saw the traumatic death of his mother, and the beginning of his long history of prescription drug abuse that would eventually kill him.

After two years out of the game, Elvis was eager to get back to recording and develop a new sound. Elvis Is Back! finds him taking a poppier approach, more in line with the popular "Nashville sound" that would take over country music in the 60s. This sound suits him well, and feels a little more natural than his early rock n roll escapades. The band in particular is a highlight of this album for me. Boots Randolph (better known to most as The Yakkety Sax Guy, but in reality an all-star session player) is really on fire on this one. The tracklist is a little hit or miss, but the highlights are well worth it. I'd argue Elvis's version of Fever here is the best recording of his career (albeit frankly still a few rungs short of the Peggy Lee version).

I think there's an interesting alternate reality where Elvis could have pursued this sound further and done some interesting things with it. Instead he did a bunch of terrible movies for a decade, phoned in a bunch of soundtracks, quit performing live, burned out, started performing again 8 years later, and spiraled out over the next decade to eventually become the sad Mr. Las Vegas Revue man who would end up dead in the bathroom. I'm not a big Elvis fan, but he deserved better than what Colonel Tom gave him. Regardless, MUST you hear Elvis Is Back! before you die? I was on the fence with this one, but I'm leaning towards Yes purely on the strength of the band and the strength of Elvis's performance on Fever. I'd be hard pressed to give him two slots if I were writing the book, but I think there's a good enough argument here.

Next up: Miriam Makeba's self-titled debut!

[the-saddest-lampshade]

After work spins

[mournograph]

Today's jam

[melmoonbow]

Beautiful girl named Stomachaches xNauseousx Deluxe Anniversary Edition showed up on my porch 🕸🖤

[randomcollectionitem]

clipping. - Face

https://www.discogs.com/release/11980126-Clipping-Face

Hey, we finally had a record show up! This is the 2018 vinyl reissue of the 2012 debut EP from beloved industrial rap trio Clipping (they stylize it as "clipping." but it fucks up my formatting mojo so I'm sticking to the capital C for this one). The A side is the original 3 track tape, and the B side is remixes and an acapella. This version was released by Deathbomb Arc, the same label that put out the original EP.

I was a little late to the Clipping party and got on board with them shortly after the release of their semi-self-titled debut album, CLPPNG. CLPPNG dropped right after Death Grips broke up and the hype surrounding Clipping on the internet was mostly /mu/ posters heralding them as The Next Death Grips. I always thought that comparison was questionable. Outside of a vague sense of being in the same genre they don't share a lot of DNA, with Clipping pulling heavily from harsh noise and power electronics in contrast to Death Grips' sample-heavy sound fueled by math rock-adjacent live drums. Regardless, the JENNY DEATH WHEN era hype train brought Clipping in front of a relatively big audience of outsider rap nerds looking for another hit of bizarre sounds, and they brought it in spades. After listening to CLPPNG an embarrassing number of times I worked my way back to midcity (their first mixtape) and Face. Face really stuck with me, so I was thrilled to see it reissued in 2018 and picked it up immediately.

The original EP is a short-but-sweet three song affair that wastes no space and takes no prisoners. The opening track, the eponymous Face, is a blistering assault of lighting fast bars, blasts of noise, and a catchy x-rated chorus. It's followed by Studio Freestyle 01, which serves as a sort of mental breather in the middle of the list (as much of one as Clipping will give you at least), with mid-tempo freestyle verses alternating call-and-response style with bursts of harsh noise. The EP rounds out with Block, my personal favorite track from the project. Block showcases Daveed Diggs' uncanny ability to make even the smallest things seem profound and significant. A song about nothing becomes a song about everything as he paints a picture of a city block on top of a slow-burning beat. There are no characters. There is no action and no narrative. And that's the beauty of it.

The B side is a collection of remixes backed with an acapella of the first track. I'm normally not a huge fan of remixes, but the selection here is a fun listen. The first two are remixes of the title track, with the first turning it into a stompy industrial club tune and the second chopping it into a wall of samples (including a shockingly straight-faced interpolation of Gangnam Style, and a slightly less straight-faced interlude of the intro to Never Gonna Give You Up). This is followed by Clipping's remix of This Song Is A Drug Deal, by LA noise rock drum-and-shout group Foot Village. It chops up the spastic drums from the original song and uses them as a bed for some verses from Daveed. The side closes out with the acapella of Face, not exactly critical listening but I'm glad it's out there for DJs and remix artists to take advantage of.

As previously mentioned, the copy in front of me is the 2018 Deathbomb Arc vinyl issue, the only vinyl issue to date. The 2012 original pressing was only on cassette, and this deluxe reissue was also available on cassette with an expanded tracklist containing additional Face remixes. I opted for the vinyl version because, frankly, I lived through tapes the first time around; they sucked then, they suck now, and part of me withers away every time I have to buy a new one. Regardless, the vinyl edition is simple but well-presented. The album art still looks good when blown up to 12"x12", and they did a nice job typesetting the back cover. It includes a download code for the download-inclined, and opts for a polybag rather than a paper inner (I breathe a sigh of relief every time I open a new record and don't need to immediately resleeve the LP, records are too damn expensive now for these labels to cheap out with the crappy paper inners that shed everywhere and scuff your new record up). The pressing is fairly shallow, but my copy plays well with little to no surface noise. The sound is a bit dull, but it's not exactly a hi-fi recording in the first place so I'm not going to complain. No inserts or liner notes on this one, but an EP doesn't really need all that anyways. Overall I think they've done a nice job with the reissue.

I think the beauty of Face is that it paints a fairly complete picture of Clipping in only 3 tracks. You have the high energy sonic assaults, you have the artsy contemplation, and you have the fearless harsh noise and power electronics interludes. While it's not their most essential work, if you want a short elevator pitch for why you should care about Clipping, this is it. A great start to a legendary career. Rest assured, if I keep doing this long enough we'll see plenty of other Clipping releases in the future, so strap in for some more noise rap greatness down the road. In the meantime, may your music stay pleasantly abrasive and may your preferred genitals be in your face.

[partyofthemind]

Original pressing of Ween's White Pepper bought years ago.

Times thine inequity The flutes of the chi Will sound again, my friend

[snail-and-snail]

record player

[sufferinproxy]

[fght-ff-yr-dmns]

Something Corporate North 2023 re-pressing (signed inlay)

This record has been on my vinyl bucket list for a very, very long time. Which is how I justified the import fees and the insane cost of this record!

It's my fave SoCo album and perfectly captures a time in my youth that I still really don't want to let go of. I didn't write the lyrics but they still feel like they belong to me, if that makes sense.

A high quality repress that i'd definitely recommend to any fan. Side A+B on 12" and C+D on 10"

[crepuscularpete]

[1001albumsrated]

#13: Miles Davis - Birth of the Cool (1957)

Genre(s): Jazz, Post-Bop, Cool Jazz

Welp, it only took 13 albums for me to screw up and skip an album by mistake. I went back and edited my prior posts to correct the numbering. Birth of the Cool is a pretty embarrassing one to skip too; like all self-respecting jazz listeners, I'm a big Miles fan, and had been looking forward to talking about some of his work (this is far from the last Miles album in 1001 Albums).

Despite being number 13 on the list, these are actually the earliest recordings in the whole book. Ironically, despite now being considered a classic jazz album and typically viewed as a single coherent album, Birth of the Cool is actually a compilation album comprised of 78 sides recorded by the Davis nonet for Columbia between 1949 & 1950 and later reissued together as an LP. This is more common in Miles' discography than you'd expect; many of his later albums were released a few years after the initial recording as his workflow shifted towards recording long sessions with a single band and then producing multiple albums from a few related sessions.

At the time of recording Miles was coming hot off his breakthrough success as part of Charlie Parker's band. These sessions were some of his first recordings as bandleader and established him as a pioneering voice in jazz. The cool jazz sounds on these sessions stand in stark contrast to the fast-paced technical showcases heard on most bebop albums at the time. He'd already made a name for himself as someone concerned with the aesthetics and timbral quality of sound with his unique approach to trumpet playing as part of Bird's band, focusing on playing "straight" with a pure, unembellished sound (this is a stark contrast to trumpet playing at the time, which had a strong Louis Armstrong influence with a highly embellished approach), and the Birth of the Cool sessions cemented it. The arrangement and instrumentation was highly unusual at the time (a nonet with a french horn!) but was crafted with intention to create the specific timbral textures present on the recording. This kind of thinking was mostly unheard of in jazz at the time (and arguably in music at large), with the main focus of most groups being the technical elements of the performance rather than the aesthetic ones. This approach is one of the few consistent elements in Davis' long, storied, strange career. While the aesthetic goal often changed as his sound evolved, the focus was a constant one that I personally believe is largely responsible for consistently setting his music apart from the crowd over the years.

The Birth of the Cool sessions also started to overarching trend of constant change in Miles' career. He was always trying to find the next new thing, and was never satisfied with resting on his laurels. It's as evident here as it would be throughout his career: by the time Birth of the Cool was compiled and released as an LP, Miles had already moved on to innovating hard bop, and was only a few years from pioneering modal jazz with Kind of Blue, which would turn the genre completely on its head once again. Frankly, most artists would have never left the immensely successful and influential sound of Birth of the Cool, but by the time it was released Miles was already honing in on the NEXT next big thing. To me, what's what made Miles different from the majority of his peers and earned him his legendary status today as one of jazz's finest composers and bandleaders. If you follow the careers of the other top jazz players in history you'll see similar trajectories of never being satisfied with stagnancy (artists like John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Sun Ra all come immediately to mind; incidentally 3/4 of those listed had large roles in various iterations of Miles' bands).

Another innovative element here was that the nonet was racially diverse and integrated. I need to remind you, this was in 1949. Brown v Board wouldn't come to pass for another 5 years, and the South was still steeped in segregationist Jim Crow thinking. While things were becoming more integrated in the jazz scene, racial tensions in the US were still high at the time and it was very uncommon to see a mixed group like this, both due to the tensions of the time and due to the challenging logistics of touring with such a group (particularly in the South). Miles always said that he simply picked the best players for the job when selecting band members for a session. In this case, he was heavily inspired by modern classical music and found that many white players played that style more to his liking. You could write a whole essay on the topic of racial politics in jazz at this time and I simply don't have the room in a Tumblr post to give the topic the time it deserves, but I'd be remiss not to put the band and recordings in the context they existed in.

Anyways, it probably goes without saying, but yes you MUST hear Birth of the Cool before you die. It's a spectacular listen, and a highly influential one. Also of note, it's a good starter album if you're just getting into jazz and don't know where to begin (I'd also recommend Kind of Blue, but we'll talk more about that when we get there). It has enormous music depth, but is highly accessible to a non-jazz listener.

For the nerds: I listened to this one in hi-res on Qobuz, purely because I was on a roll at the time and didn't feel like going to the other room and throwing the CD in my main system.

Next time (skipping ahead chronologically, because I fucked up and skipped this album): Jack Takes the Floor, for real this time!