Three Trapped Tigers - Route One or Die

This past Wednesday I went to see the magnificent Tubelord in Birmingham in what was one of my favourite gigs in a long while. At the merch table there were a few Tubelord things for sale (including the band's new single on cassette, which I bought both versions of and will post about once I've found a way to listen to them) and also a record box of various Pink Mist releases. In that box I spotted this album, one I've been looking to get for a long while, for the lovely price of £10.

This cover is amazing. It's very distinctive and bright and I loved it from the moment I saw it. There was a t-shirt of this design with the pre-order of the album but it had sold out by the time I saw it, which was annoying. It's also worth mentioning that the album comes in a plastic outer sleeve with the little title label on, which I appreciate a lot.

The paper inner sleeve has this on the front, which looks nice, and recording information and thanks on the back. I like it.

The back cover's got a weird repeated-style font going on. The reverse of the inner sleeve has the same effect. It looks pretty cool, but can be kind of hard to read. Black vinyl, but with absolutely lovely labels. Since Blood and Biscuits is only a small label, it doesn't make sense for them to pay lots for hosting of the tracks and include a specific download code with every copy of the record. Instead, they've very cleverly put all of the albums tracks as a private set on Soundcloud and printed the link to this on the A-side of the label. As anyone who has read this blog before will know, I think records (albums at least) should come with a download code, so credit to Blood and Biscuits for a good way of doing this.

There's a reason I've been after this album for a while. It's spectacular. TTT are an instrumental band, but a very electronic one at that. They're quite heavy but there's a lot of melody in the album. Elements of post-rock and sounds that border on chiptune blend together beautifully for 43 minutes of absolute joy. One of my albums of the year so far, for sure.

It's also worth noting that the album has produced two wonderful videos. The first, for Noise Trade, is a gorgeously-animated affair about hearts and robots. I don't want or need to explain any more.

The second, for Reset, might be my favourite video of all time. It features Matt Berry, of all people, as some kind of world saviour acting against an evil space alien trying to destroy the earth. Exactly. It's 7 minutes long but absolutely worth watching.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

I'm pretty late on this one, even by my standards. The only other Arcade Fire album I own is Neon Bible, which is a solid album but never grabbed me all that much. So when this album came out and wasn't on Spotify, I felt no rush to go out and buy it. Last weekend however, my dad and I ventured into Head in Leamington and they had the 12" for a tenner. He offered to buy it for me, and I'll never say no to gift vinyl.

The cover's not bad. Very lo-fi, with a fair amount of film grain and some light leaks up the right side. Lovely. There's 8 different versions of this cover for the CD version apparently, but I'm not sure whether there are any variants to this (the UK & Ireland) version of the 12". Discogs mentions alternate covers for the Europe and US versions, but not for this one, so I'm going to presume this is the only one. Upon seeing them all, it's my favourite of the 8 though which is nice.

Double LP, so it's a gatefold. The inside is fairly sparse, with only a small logo in the bottom right on top of an extended version of what appears to be a photo of the same area as the picture on the front. This means that all the song information and lyrics are printed on the dust sleeves, which is super-cool and actually makes a lot of sense. The lyrics are very readable on the white of the dust sleeves whereas they might not have been overlaid on a picture.

The labels are nice and subtle, continuing the lo-fi nature of the rest of the artwork, and the back cover is the only place apart from the spine that features the album title. The gold text used is far shinier than my poor camera skills could capture, and it looks really good. Here comes my problem though - no download card. It annoys me quite a lot that this record doesn't come with one. This isn't some bedroom label release, this is the new album from a fairly massive band. It will have sold thousands of copies on vinyl at an eye-watering release price of £18. I don't understand why they couldn't put one in, and I resorted to downloading the album from Mediafire so that I'd have a copy to listen to. Morally I think I have the right to do that, but I know it's a bit of a dubious area.

To bring things back onto positives, the album is really really good. I know most of you are probably already aware of this, but it took me by surprise somewhat. I don't think I need to go into that much detail about it, but if you've never listened to it then maybe you should. Arcade Fire are arguably the "indie" (for lack of a better word) band of the moment, and they really stepped their game up after Neon Bible. If they keep going at this rate, the next album will be phenomenal.

Biffy Clyro - Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies

Time to resume the Biffy spree. Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies (henceforth referred to as LIAPBED for simplicity's sake) was the second single to be taken from Puzzle and peaked at a respectable 19 in the UK singles charts. It's one of the band's more well-known songs and as such gets played live with unerring regularity. I picked up both versions of the single for a measly £2.50 plus shipping from ebay last year, which was a total bargain.

Okay so as with Saturday Superhouse, we have two slightly different covers for the two different versions. I am, unsurprisingly, a big fan of this. The artwork is fairly nice and, as with every release from this album, definitely has the feel of a Storm Thorgerson piece (I don't think I mentioned last time, but he did all the artwork for the Puzzle and Only Revolutions releases. Awesome stuff).

Lovely coloured records. The blue is particularly nice. This time there are pictures of the band inside the gatefold sleeves. They're alright. Not much I can say about them, in truth.

More seemingly pointless numbering. These numbers are low though, so my brain likes them. I don't understand either.

Music-wise, both versions of the single have a radio edit of LIAPBED as their A-side, a radio edit that cuts out ALL of the weird long intro to the song. I love that intro, and thus really dislike the radio edit. The blue version has a track called Loneliness as its B-side. Loneliness is one in a long line of slightly off-kilter Biffy songs, with its jangly guitars and strange lyrics (chiefly, "I have a secret to tell, shit looks like chocolate to me") including some that are ripped directly from other tracks on Puzzle (a theme common to a lot of the B-sides from this era). Indeed, the red version's B-side (the wonderfully titled "Kittens, Cakes and Cuddles") has the word "loneliness" in its chorus. KC&C is a more straightforward Biffy song, but is still pretty good. Unfortunately, my rips of both songs are pretty poor so I don't listen to either as much as I arguably should. A shame.

Crywank - James Is Going To Die Soon

A guy I know called James started writing acoustic music a little while ago, under the unusual moniker of Crywank. He recorded an album about a year or so ago I think, and now it's been released on a limited run of tapes. I bought one. Here it is:

Yeah, Javier Bardem! The release of the tape saw 13 different covers done of various white males, with 4 copies of each cover done. I chose this one because Javier is an absolute badass. All of the covers are black and white and look really good, you can see a picture of them all here.

Cassettes aren't as nice to look at as a lovely record, but this is all white with no writing on it at all and looks neat. It also came with a little folded lyric sheet, which is nice.

The music itself is pretty good. Some heartfelt acoustic music with pretty good lyrics in parts. The recording quality isn't the best, but it does the job. The entire album is up for free download here or on a pay-what-you-want from Bancamp here, and I encourage you to at least give it a listen 'cause the first 3 tracks are genuinely awesome. If you're really interested, there are still a few of the cassettes available here for the lovely price of £3.50 including shipping. Rad.

Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight

Oh man. This is a huge one.  My second favourite album of all time, an album I never planned or expected to own on vinyl. Indeed, I owe a massive thanks to my wonderful friend Marcus who was considering buying it but decided not to so that I could. What a guy. The album was a spectacularly cheap £7 from Rise, which made me very happy. As with my The Winter Of Mixed Drinks post, I've included the CD in my pictures so we can see similarities etc.

I love this cover. The 12" version is a little more creamy in colour than the CD (although my crappy picture doesn't really show that) but both have the same odd sketch. I don't fully understand it, but it looks nice.

Black vinyl again from Frabbit. I wish they'd do some coloured records, but in this case it provides a nice contrast with the artwork. I also absolutely love the labels on the record being the same as the print on the CD, it's more brilliant continuity from a band who seem to like it as much as I do. The little heart model in the top-right corner of both the record sleeve and CD case looks really cool, too.

It's about now that I should try and speak about the music. Of the many Frabbit posts I've done on this blog, I've never actually covered any of the tracks from this album. It's an insular, emotional, beautiful album. I can't do it justice with words, you just need to listen to it. If you are lazy and want me to pick just one track, it'd be Old Old Fashioned. My first exposure to Frabbit came through seeing them support Biffy Clyro (who else?) on two consecutive nights. At the time, I didn't particularly "get it" but I liked one track from their set. When I got home I listened to it again. And again. And again and again and again. I then decided to listen to the other tracks I could find, and just became hooked on Frabbit. The rest, as they say, is history. That one song was Old Old Fashioned. You should listen to it. As with The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, there's a track-by-track summary of the album written by the band's lead singer Scott Hutchison. It's another great read, which you can find here.


I've delayed doing this post for a couple of weeks while I waited for this photo to surface:

Yep. I met Scott before their headlining set at 2000 Trees. I'd love to pretend to you, dear reader, that I was calm and eloquent and composed at that moment, but that'd be an absolute lie. He is one of my favourite songwriters of all time. I told him how much I love the band and basically freaked out a bit. He was nice and polite and everything I'd have liked him to be. Amazing.

Errors - A Rumour In Africa

This past week or two I've managed to amass a few new records so I'm going to have a little diversion from what could easily have become a solid chain of Biffy posts. Errors are a glitchy instrumental electronic band from Glasgow (obviously) who I enjoy a lot. I spotted this single for £2 on Norman Records (the wonderful people that they are) and had to pick it up.

The cover has a lot of chickens on it. I don't really know why. It reminds me of a kaleidoscope, which is cool. The font's nice as well.

Look how pretty that is! Half creamy yellow, half translucent red. Whoever thought of that deserves a medal, because it's superb. The back cover of the single is also a nice picture of the band looking jolly in front of a decidedly British seafront. The A-side to this single is A Rumour In Africa, the excellent second song from the band's latest album Come Down With Me. It's fairly typical of the band, and is very catchy. I suck at describing this kind of music, so you'll have to listen to it yourself if you're interested. Here's a link. The B-side is a slightly slower song called Beat The Bookies which is also pretty good. All in all, not too shabby indeed.

Biffy Clyro - Saturday Superhouse

In terms of Biffy Clyro as a band, I think Saturday Superhouse can be considered a fairly pivotal single. The first physical single from their then-upcoming album Puzzle (the album that would give the band their first taste of mainstream success), the band's first top 20 single (peaking at 13) and to date their 4th-highest charting single (behind Mountains, That Golden Rule and, sadly, Many Of Horror). It was also the first release by the band to feature the artwork of the much-revered Storm Thorgerson and the first time the band released two vinyl versions of a single. So, as you can see, a lot of firsts for the band. This single was also, as it happens, the source of a couple of firsts for me. It was the first Biffy Clyro song I actively listened to and, if my memory serves me right, the first records I ever bought (which may or may not have been with the Dananananaykroyd single I posted about the other day, I forget). Indeed, the only reason I collect vinyl is because I craved more Biffy B-sides. Yep, fanboy-tastic. These records, therefore, mean quite a lot to me and I felt it'd be doing them a disservice if I didn't do that small explanation. But you're here for pictures, right?

There are two versions of this single. They each have marginally different artwork, neither of which I understand but both of which look awesome. Each one also comes with a poster of its cover, posters I will obviously never put up due to my completionist nature requiring that they are never damaged. Still pretty though.

So the record arbitrarily deemed "1 of 2" is orange, and "2 of 2" is (a poorly photographed) purple. Amazing colours that my camera has failed to capture adequately, and both come in gatefold packaging that emphasises a part of the cover of that version, and I like it.

These records are also both numbered, but it seems somewhat pointless to me since the numbers are so high. Even if we assume that the numbers are out of a total for the two colours, that implies each colour is "limited" to 3000. Not really worth it, is it?

So, the music. Saturday Superhouse is, as I implied before, a brilliant song. A summery, fairly poppy Biffy song with a huge chorus that begs to be shouted along to. The B-sides, Miracle of Survival and I'm Behind You are fairly competent (at least as far as Biffy B-sides go). I'm Behind You is a fairly jaunty acoustic number, while Miracle of Survival is a more traditional stop-start Biffy song, somewhat reminiscent of Wave Upon Wave Upon Wave from the band's previous album. It's worth mentioning, however, that both are totally overshadowed by the B-side on the CD. Scared Of Lots Of Everything (what a title!) is a moderately heavy song, featuring guest vocals by Matt Caughtran from The Bronx. I'd be willing to say it's one of my favourite Biffy B-sides, which is high praise indeed. Go listen to it.

Biffy Clyro - Only One Word Comes To Mind

Oh yes. It's time. Given the wealth of free time I have this summer, I'm going to make a start on the fairly large amount of Biffy records I have to write up. I did a quick mental check and I think there's about 11 posts to do because a lot are parts 1 and 2 of the same single. I'm also going to do them in release order, because that makes sense and I have no idea in what order I acquired them.

The "oldest" piece of Biffy vinyl I own is, sadly, a single from their 3rd album (and my favourite album of all-time) Infinity Land. I'd love to have some stuff from Blackened Sky or The Vertigo of Bliss but paying >£15 for a 7" single isn't quite possible in my budget at the moment. One day though, hopefully. However, this post isn't about that so let's leave that behind. This is probably one of my favourite records. It was a gift to me from the incredible Andy for Christmas 2009. Andy's my long-term Biffy partner, I've seen the band 4 times with him and now him not being there at a Biffy gig feels wrong. He knows the love I have for Only One Word Comes To Mind and sent me this. Love him.

And this is it. I love the cover. It's by Chris Fleming, who did most of the artwork from Biffy singles of this era. This cover itself is most similar to the My Recovery Injection cover, as both depict damaged people (although the MRI cover is a bit more stylized). As I've stated before, I'm a big fan of continuity and every piece Fleming did for the Infinity Land era has a distinct "feel" to it (something that has been continued since, as we will see soon).

Black vinyl, although this is somewhat of a rarity when it comes to my Biffy collection (seriously, if you like coloured vinyl as much as I do then you're in for a treat). It's nice though. The fairly plain red labels on the black vinyl look nice. In terms of songs, the A-side is obviously Only One Word Comes To Mind. It's a quiet, beautiful song with one of the greatest cymbal hit sounds I've ever heard. It's one of my favourite songs from my favourite album, which should tell you all you need to know. The B-side is Tradition Feed, the "hidden track" on Infinity Land. It's a poem read by Simon Neil about his late mother over some tuneless noise. I like it. I like this. I like you.