Sky Larkin - Still Windmills

In doing this blog, I've realised just how many records I've received as gifts from people. This one was bought for me as a gift by Alex last summer, although he didn't know at the time that I already had a copy from when it was super-cheap somewhere or other. Still a lovely thought and this one is signed, unlike my other copy, which makes it a little more special. I probably owe him something in return, and should work out what to do with my other copy. If anyone is interested in it, let me know.

Right. A cover! It's pretty snazzy, although the pedant in me wants to point out that they are weathervanes not windmills. I could definitely get behind a cover with loads of windmills on it. This one will do, though. There's the three scrawlings on it, including from Doug who recently left the band. Guess that makes it a little more special.

This is possibly the nicest-coloured record I own. It's an absolutely gorgeous deep red, and it's slightly see-through (as you can see in this picture). Lovely plain labels too, with the letters in various shades of red. Absolutely top notch.

Somehow I managed to not mention Still Windmills way back when I wrote about Kaleide (which you can find here). It's the first track on the album, and sets the tone for the album very well. It's loud and catchy and great fun. The B-side, We'll Be Detectives, is a bit of an odd one though. There's a lot of piano on it and Katie's vocals seem to have been recorded strangely or have some kind of effect on them. The song's pretty atmospheric I suppose, but I just can't get into it. No bother, when it's this pretty it's not too big of an issue.





N.B. in finding We'll Be Detectives to listen to on Spotify, I found that the top search result for Sky Larkin is a remix Katie did for the Bloc Party Intimacy remix album and this makes me massively sad. I'd argue both Sky Larkin albums are better than Intimacy (an album I really disliked, for the record), let alone remixes of it. Shame on you, Spotify users.

Meet Me In St Louis/Secondsmile Split 7"

The final item from my BSM sale order is a rather special one. A split 7" from two bands I love and only got into after they'd split up. Way back in 2007, BSM released this split between Meet Me In St Louis and Secondsmile. A mere 5 years on, I'm now the proud owner of it.

The record itself is inside a sweet shop bag with a badge pinned to the outside of it. It's pretty cool, and something I've not seen anywhere else before. There's apparently a blue and white version too, which I'd like to see.

The actual 7" is pretty plain, but I can forgive it in light of the sweet shop bag (and the sweet BSM logo stamped onto the back of it).

Right, the songs. On one side we have I've Got Knives In My Eyes, I'm Going Home Sick by Meet Me In St. Louis. Long-time readers of this blog may recall that the first record I ever posted about was MMISL's only album, and this song is indeed taken from that album, and it's a pretty typical MMISL song. It's stop-start, it's quiet-loud, and there's some lovely angular guitar alongside great lyrics from Toby. All of these things are good qualities to have. On the flipside, we have Aspen Fears by Secondsmile. Sonically, Secondsmile aren't a million miles away from MMISL but they're a fair amount less aggressive. This is one of my favourite Secondsmile songs. So all in all, a great single. Sweet!

Tubelord - I Am Azerrad

The second item from that BSM sale order is a single from my beloved Tubelord. This was actually released a good while before I got into the band, so it was pretty awesome to pick up a copy without breaking the bank.

Every one of the 500 copies of this single was spray-painted by hand, and apparently there are some larger pictures formed when you put some of them together (EDIT: found them. I am the bottom-left corner of the D in this. Amazing. There's also an Azerrad one here). I just have the one, but it looks pretty nice by itself. The sleeve is also a very thick card, which is always good.

The back of the sleeve is pretty plain, but there's some good stuff inside. Plain black vinyl this time, but also a CD with both tracks plus a demo of Synthesize (a great song, as I've mentioned before). As any regular readers will know from my past bleatings on this topic, I love when there's a free download or CD included with a release and it's excellent that Tubelord did this. Moreover there's yet another track (a demo version of Stacey's Left Arm) on the digital version of the single, which is available for the cheap price of absolutely free. Fancy. As for the songs on the record itself? The A-side is I Am Azerrad, a fairly typical slice of shouty Tubelord joy. The B-side is Dun Dun Dun Scissors, Rocks and Tonne which begins in a similar style but grows and develops into something quite different, with probably one of my favourite "quiet" bits in a Tubelord song. Both tracks are pretty wonderful, which makes for quite a nice single really.

Tellison - Collarbone

Tellison are swiftly becoming one of my favourite bands. A couple of months back, Big Scary Monsters had a big sale and this was one of the items that was beautifully cheap. I couldn't resist, so I picked this up (alongside a couple of other singles I'll try and put up in the next few days) for only a couple of pounds.

I really like the cover. The combination of the almost digital-looking heart with the very organic butterfly makes for a nice contrast. Not a clue what it's about, mind.

Plain black vinyl, but I absolutely love the labels on it. Lovely font and colouring for the A and B sides. There are just two songs on the 7" itself, but there's also a download link for both of these songs alongside two remixes. Unfortunately, the link was no longer functional by the time I bought the single. No biggie, I don't really care for remixes. Having found Mountain Mode to listen to, it's not a bad song at all. This release, however, is all about the A-side. Collarbone is just a tremendous song. It's summery and euphoric and, frankly, should've been huge. Pity for them, but still plenty enjoyable for me.

Tubelord - Romance

Right. So it's been a busy few months with exams and stuff, so I've managed to get behind on this yet again. My bad. On the plus side, I've acquired a new camera in this time and as such the photos here should improve in quality noticeably. Boss.

Tubelord are, as I've said before, one of my favourite bands. This is their second album, and was released in  October of last year as I believe the first collaborative effort by the wonderful Pink Mist music collective. It was bought for me as a gift by Rob in March, for which I was hugely grateful.

Lovely artwork. I can get behind anything that is a) geometric and b) plays with perspective. You'll also notice I have two copies of this record. You'll find out why later on.

The inner sleeve (which is nicely weighty) is the same for both copies, so this picture shows you both sides of the sleeve. It's got some writing on it in a fairly unreadable font, and in silver on a silvery picture. Perhaps not the wisest of choices. All it is, though, is the tracklisting on one side and the obligatory thanks section on the other. It's functional, and looks kinda cool so that's all good with me.

And this is why we have two copies. TWO DIFFERENT COLOURS. Plain white (matching the vinyl version of Our First American Friends) and a gorgeous "blue and white haze" (as it's described on the website) which is limited to 100. Both are, as I'm sure you'll agree, beautiful and the packaging as a whole works pretty nicely, so well in Pink Mist.

In terms of sound, this album is fairly different to OFAF. While that album was chock full of angular guitars, this one is much more electronic. This might have put some people off, but I still really enjoy it. There's something about it that is unmistakably "Tubelord" and when the songs are as good as My First Castle, I don't really see how you can complain. On balance I think I prefer OFAF but I still foresee this being a pretty prominent album for me over the summer months. You can find it on Bandcamp or Spotify as usual.

Biffy Clyro - Blackened Sky repress

So my initial plan to do Biffy releases in order (and to catch up on the many non-Biffy releases I am yet to post) is going out of the window today because I received something amazing in the post this morning and my urge to write about it (on its release day, no less!) is too strong.

2012 marks the 10th anniversary of the first Biffy Clyro album, the magnificent Blackened Sky. It also marks the beginning of a series of repressings of the first 3 Biffy albums by Beggars Banquet, the band's old label. The question that presents itself, then, is whether this is a cash-in on the band's latter-day successes. Beggars definitely have a history of doing it (see: the "Singles" CD released around the time of Puzzle's success), but I think they deserve some credit here. The first pressing of the album goes for a pretty high price on ebay these days (a lot seem to go for upwards of £40) so there's certainly the demand for a repressing and, as you'll see, they haven't half-arsed it. They are definitely trying to milk the success a bit, but there's enough to this release to make it not feel like a rip-off. It wasn't very cheap, it must be said, but frankly I was always going to get it so I suppose it could have been worse.

Hnnng yes. I love the cover, it's a bit odd but very cool. Why the plastic figures are staring at the sky, I'll never know. Maybe they're listening to the start of Scary Mary. Who knows. I love the way the text sits at the bottom as well. This record also came in a thick PVC sleeve, which is always appreciated.

I think this is a pretty well-used gatefold. The two sides of this are, cleverly, the same as the two sides of the inner sleeve from the first pressing of this album. I really like the right side, where each line is a different lyric from the album.

And the back cover. 4 sides! Here, I can begin to explain why I think Beggars have done a pretty good job with this. The first record contains the whole of the album, while the second record consists of all of the B-sides from the album's singles (excluding a session version of Kill The Old) plus the two tracks from thekidswhopoptodaywillrocktomorrow (one of two EPs the band released prior to this album) that didn't make it onto Blackened Sky. I think this was a really good idea from Beggars, because it makes this release feel really well-rounded, and it's a good way for newer fans to hear everything from the Blackened Sky era in one fell swoop (and a convenient way to get hold of some of those old B-sides on vinyl, because those singles are getting expensiiiiiive). There's a slight error here, which sees "Time As An Imploding Unit" mis-typed as "Time As As Exploding Unit". It's not a big deal really, but it's an interesting tidbit.

YES. After a short period of no coloured vinyl on the blog, say hello to beautiful purple. An absolutely delightful shade, I think it compliments the artwork (and the lovely right side of the inside) nicely without being too similar to it. The purple isn't completely smooth either, there's a light marble effect which I've tried (and sort of succeeded) to capture in this next picture:

Nice, isn't it? Both records are also in black paper sleeves, which makes a pleasant change to the usual white.

Here comes the point where I'm meant to describe the album to you, but I don't know how well I can. Look, it's one of my favourite albums of all time. I'd go as far as saying it's one of the best debut albums I've ever heard. It does the whole "quiet-loud" thing pretty brilliantly, and it's got some of the best songs the band has ever written on it. There's not a song on it that I dislike, and that's saying something. I'm keeping this as brief as I can, because I know as soon as I start getting into detail I'll be writing forever. It's an album I hold dear to my heart, and it makes me happy when other people feel the same. The B-sides are also, I have to say, pretty consistently excellent. That Hope For An Angel wasn't on Blackened Sky is an absolute travesty, because it's a great song and I really feel it'd fit well on the album. My other personal favourite among the B-sides is Breatheher, a wonderful acoustic song that only gets better with every listen.

I'm really, really happy with this purchase. Beggars could have done a really simple, plain repressing of the album and still sold a fair amount, but there's clearly been a lot of thought put into this release. I'm excited to see what they do with The Vertigo of Bliss and Infinity Land (which hopefully will be released later this year), especially if they pick some more lovely colours for the vinyl.

Perfume Genius - Put Your Back N 2 It

Right. So I'm a good few posts behind, but I'm going to skip a load of stuff because I actually bought a newly-released record recently and sometimes it's nice for this blog to be almost relevant. I hope that's okay with you.

So on the 20th of February, the second album by Perfume Genius was released. Put Your Back N 2 It (weird spelling necessary, apparently) is the follow-up to 2010's magnificent Learning. I was pretty late to the party as far as that album is concerned. Indeed, I listened to it for the first time in January and swiftly fell in love with it. Upon spotting that he had a new album out soon, I umm'ed and ahh'ed over pre-ordering the album on vinyl, forgot about it for a while, then eventually picked it up a few days after it came out from the HMV website with that magic discount I've spoken of before. And now, pictures.

Yeah, cover! As per usual, I have no idea what it's about. This one annoys me slightly, because the words (I believe deliberately) off-centre and it doesn't sit right with me.

The inner sleeve has a nice denim-y pattern on one side, and we've got the usual plain black vinyl. Yep.

I've done these photos slightly differently to usual, because the reverse of the aforementioned inner sleeve is great. It has the lyrics to the whole album and in the bottom-right a download code for the album (which I have blurred out, as usual). I love me a download code. The back of the outer sleeve actually looks really nice as well, very pastel-y.

As for the album, it's awesome. It's the kind of thing that needs to be listened to in headphones late at night. It's fragile and emotional, and the sort of thing you can completely lose yourself in. It might be a bit excessive for some and as such it's not going to be for everyone, but if you're interested then it's on Spotify and there's a full stream on the Guardian's website. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

65daysofstatic - Silent Running

Hello! Since I last properly posted, Christmas has been and gone. Santa was kind to me and brought some new records to my door, but in going home for Christmas I also finally managed to get hold of something that had been sat waiting for me for a long while and that's what I'd like to post about today.

At the start of last year, 65daysofstatic did a live re-scoring of 1972 film Silent Running in Glasgow, the start of all beautiful stories. The success of those two performances spawned several more around Europe, and subsequently the band set up a project on funding website Indiegogo to gauge whether they could get enough backing from fans to make a recorded version doable. By the end of said project, they'd gotten almost four times the amount of money they were looking for. Proof, if it were needed, that people can be awesome. One of the funding levels (at $25) was for a vinyl version of the album, complete with some postcards of artwork that came from the project and a download of the album. Yeah, I was all over that.

Amazing cover. Really appropriate for the album as well. I can't talk this up enough, but any words I use will be less effective than you just looking at it. Magic, right?

Big piece of black plastic, with some nice labels to match the artwork. Always a plus in my book.

So the Indiegogo project said the first 250 orders of the vinyl version would be numbered, and what do you know we have a number here. I can't tell if it's 103 or 203 but eh, it's inexplicably nice to have one of the numbered ones.

And these are the postcards. They look quite nice, but I will obviously never send them. The fun of being a collector.

The album itself is quite an interesting one. Although you can definitely tell it's the work of 65, it also feels like a film soundtrack. Slightly more grandiose than their usual offerings, it's really well-made and works excellently as an album but I'm not sure what happens to the songs now. Will they become part of the band's live set, or is this going to effectively be treated as separate from the other 65 albums? Personally, I think the latter makes more sense and probably is the more likely outcome. As a little deviation from their regular path though, this was definitely a worthwhile exercise. I've only one slight fault of this set, which is that much of the incidental music the band created for the film was not included, and as such you can't watch the film with the 65 soundtrack over the top as they did in the live performances (although it's worth noting there is a bonus EP of songs available only as a download, which are pretty good too). This I feel is a missed opportunity but it shouldn't detract too much from what is a good album, and moreover a very well put-together little package.