New records have been a bit thin on the ground for me this past month. I have bough a few things, but they haven’t reached me from Brighton yet. I did get a couple of the NO 12” from Static Sock for the distro, and that is a great record, but I neglected to get one for myself, so I need to sort that out soon as I really like it.
I want to get more in for the distro, but no one is really buying stuff at the moment and I can’t afford to buy anything more at the moment. I’d like to sell some of the stuff we have so I can pay my debt to Aston at Boss Tunage, and get some more stock.
The only other record I have bought recently is the new Killing Joke album. Killing Joke are one of those bands whose new albums I always get, even if they don’t always totally hit the spot. “MMXII” is a really good album, it’s less “industrial” sounding than their last couple, and although it’s not as pulsating as their debut self titled album or “What’s This For?” and has elements of their more commercial sounding mid 1980’s stuff, it still has enough of an edge to make it interesting for me. Actually, it’s more than that, it’s an good album, their best for a while and I’ve played it quite a lot over the last month. The lyrics are political, and Jaz’s voice sounds better than it’s done for a few years I think, and some of the songs have really locked themselves into my head.
I bought the double LP version (on the day of release), which is on lovely red vinyl in a gatefold sleeve; it was damn expensive, but it was released a couple of days after my birthday, and more importantly payday, so I thought I’d treat myself.
I like the fact that the original line up is back releasing records, now I just need to get my act together and get to see them live again, it’s been far too long.
I have noticed that HMV (sadly the only shop in Southampton selling new music) is stocking more and more vinyl; most of it isn’t very interesting, but I do like to sometimes go in and flick through the records, just for old times sake. They do charge a lot though, the cheapest album I saw was the new Stranglers one, and that was £16; the most expensive one was over double that price. A bit different from the early ‘80s when we’d buy albums in a tiny HMV for £3.99.
I’ve been checking out some stuff on-line and my shopping list for payday is growing rapidly.
Suspect Device Records is going to put out the Shorts 7” fairly soon. We recorded four new songs at the beginning of April, and we plan to back them up with the three songs we recorded last year to make a 7 track EP.
