Dolmot

Free jazz?

Gah, how dare you release limited stuff when I'm about 130% busy with a gaming weekend (and work)? Ah, whatever. Ordered anyway. Bandcamp makes impulsive shopping easy (too easy?), and I'm a sucker. I'll re-check on Sunday what I really managed to do / mess up here...

Reading the Bible six times, becoming a pope or something like that.

The whole vinyl business has got a bit crazy. One largish music store chain here just reported that in 2018 their vinyl sales may have surpassed CDs in revenue. Of course, there's the contributing factor that CD sales continue to diminish, but it's still impressive or even scary. Quite a chunk of that seems to be pure collectibles - special editions, limited editions, weird colours, fancy boxes...you know the deal. I wonder how many of those buyers even have a working turntable and whether they ever really use it. My gut feeling says that a lot of today's vinyl shopping is more like collecting, investment, or getting more impressive display pieces to show one's fandom. Listening is an option which is in there, but in reality it often goes unused. That aspect has obviously always existed, but the overall situation was quite different in the 80s when LPs were a common home audio format or until 2000 or so when DJ CD players were so dodgy that vinyl was a very valid choice if you wanted to mix accurately. I kind of miss the times when we bought loads of bog standard 12"s and spun them daily, just for fun. No huge worries if you lost one, spilt beer on it or whatever. It was just a £5 disc, often easily replaceable. Would you do that with a £100 collectible? I see more and more releases where it seems that nobody is really playing them. As soon as the release is out (and also sold out in a matter of hours, days or weeks), half of the batch appears on Discogs marketplace, still in shrink wrap, for double price. The rest has probably been hoarded to private collections somewhere. OK, nowadays you can typically buy a CD/digital version or stream it with a single click. Participating in the vinyl gold rush is entirely optional. Nevertheless, I find it a bit sad that a playable music format is turning into a display or collecting piece, where you may not even dare to touch it. It's like those action figures that people stash in their safe in original packaging, never opened. Not much action there, eh? We're shipping plastic from the pressing plant to a store, then to the first buyer, then second hand to the next schmuck who is willing to pay double price, then to the next one. Producing some CO2 and trash at every step. Maybe never even opening the shrink wrap. We could just as well be trading bricks with a limited edition serial number on them. Or stamp-sized tokens to save money on shipping. Or digital codes. The concept is getting silly. And still I'm participating, often just out of fear of missing out and regretting it later. It's a never-ending game and it might be very wise not to play at all. However, I try to pick releases that actually see a turntable every now and then and there's no reason to worry about it. I see no major glory in finally getting buried with the world's largest collection of mint condition ultra-special editions, never touched. A few years ago I was living really busy times when I barely browsed or bought a thing. I was also so busy that I had no time to think about missing something. So did I really miss anything - unless I look at the backlog of all those fancy releases I don't have? What a deep philosophical question... I buy CDs, rip them, and keep the originals as a physical backup. That has been my modus operandi since 1995 or so. (Although back then you couldn't just download everything as FLAC, thus CD was the only realistic way to get CD quality.) Sometimes they come with a nifty booklet too. Sometimes the next schmuck will buy them for double price. I don't really believe in vinyl hi-fi either. There's a little bit of truth to it, namely the fact that the physics of vinyl simply prevent some of the worst idiocies of digital mastering. The pressing limitations and cartridge movement force the sound to be somehow more natural and easier on the ears than some bad examples of CD/digital. However, it's very easy to make a shitty vinyl pressing with its own issues, which greatly outweigh the tiny benefits. There are also major, inherent limitations on the dynamic range and stereo image. And you need a good cartridge, a fresh stylus, some effort on the cabling etc. to get even close to digital clarity. And that's the ideal case, which may never happen. And the discs will wear out. Some quality is quickly lost in any case, and unless you're extremely careful, they'll develop crackle and pops. For that reason alone, I don't really bother with ambient on vinyl. It's just a hopeless combination. In that genre I want to be able to press play and enjoy noiseless perfection for hours - with no disc flipping either. In short, don't even consider vinyls if you want high audio quality reliably, easily and repeatedly. If you have a top notch setup, make a digital rip from a brand new copy to get that alternate mastering/playback experience. Beyond that, it's just a fancy ritual. (But what a great ritual it is to spin some 12"s in a small party for people who can truly appreciate it.) OK, that was a lot of ranting. Back to the point. Am I going to get the new Shpongle vinyls? I don't know. They're probably extremely impressive pieces - and yet there's the massive agony of realising that every play would cost you £10 in resale value as the grading will take a hit. Then again, Ineffable is the only album I don't have on vinyl yet... Oh bother.

Nice. The CD reissue of Extended is welcome too. Original copies are nowadays fetching 80€ in VG condition.

OK, this is going to be far from a "today" listing, but as I haven't been updating recently, maybe it's time to take a look at recent-ish arrivals. There may be some useful reminders for 2018 lists, who knows? (Although there are some older releases included too. They're just recently received.) Previously mentioned Zion goods from September or so: Ubar Tmar - Early Fusion Ubar Tmar - Another Transform EP Tandu - Multimoods Remastered DNA - Virtual Jungle Remake In October: Gangguru - Be Your Own Guru One December batch: Youth and Gaudi - Astronaut Alchemists (thanks to technosomy for the LP tip, this sold (out) like hotcakes when I was away) Abraham Carmona - Ibiza Solar Fields - Ourdom (finally) Solar Fields - Red Green Blue (finally) Digital Reprints stuff: Astronaut Ape - To Infinity and Beyond Kuba - Somnia Memoriae Kuba - Animalia (well, came in the same delivery) Kickstarted: Ott - Blumenkraft LP Ott - A Load Up at Nunney Catch / Scilly Automatic Disco Gecko Christmas sales: Banco de Gaia - Farewell Ferengistan Dr Trippy - Bhang Strange-Eyed Constellations 2 Dubmission Christmas sales: International Observer - Free from the Dungeons of Dub Misled Convoy - Sixteen Sunsets Etherealities - Under the Influence More Bass than Space (yep, picked up some random vinyl stock) And then some disco, local curiosities and other randomness. Right now Ultimae has a sale, Blood Music has reprinted the missing CBL releases, our well known goa labels have released new stuff, I may have missed LSD's latest, some vinyl classics have been repressed... Oh my.

Many happy returns! I don't understand that phrase at all but I use it anyway! 19 is well within the legal drinking age in here so I'll have a beer for that! I'd have it anyway but...anyway!

Weird. I've only been away for a month and a half. Not really even away - still reading but not posting. I've also been shopping for this-and-that. Nevertheless, I feel somehow out of touch. There was a certain gap when I was travelling for the whole November and then catching up with the enormous backlog that piled up on all fronts. There were far too few moments when I could cue up some music, press play and really appreciate it properly. It doesn't feel right if I turn some hot new release into background muzak, which is almost like distraction for what I'm really trying to concentrate on. It got so bad that I probably have to go through and list my latest purchases to remember what I've really bought...and start digesting, of course. Then I can continue to checking what's really new. Oh, and happy midwinter, everyone. These few days off finally gave me a chance to post even this one message.

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Gangguru

I received some new and newish releases from Zion 604 this week. The process as a whole took over five weeks. According to my calculations, I could cover that distance faster by bicycle. On top of that, they were delivered to a wrong post office. (The address was entirely correct. Our local post just fucked up that part. Fortunately there was tracking.) But whatever, they're here now. Let's start checking the goods.

Everything that starts with "Simon said" must be true.

Please do. I'd appreciate it.

Voodoof - Thru?

That's a lot of Gangguru...compared to the roughly three tracks officially released as Gangguru until now.