i've had a couple of things land via the miracle of mail recently, so with nothing all that much better to post here i thought i would upload a few pictures. what a bonus if they are of interest to anyone!
i really quite like amazon. i would prefer to be able to go to a store and purchase what i want, but we shall get to that later. in the mean time, amazon offer decent prices, remove the tax from items bought for delivery outside the UK (something HMV never did!) and get the stuff to you within about 10 days. when the post office manages to "misplace" an item, which is rare but annoying, amazon reship no problem. this was the case with my Kubrick blu ray set, i am happy to say.
it wasn't a Kubrick set i ordered this time, though.
what's in that parcel? two albums that i had been very keen to hear for a couple of months. two that i was trying to purchase here, but with no joy. as in weekly trips to the only two music stores here, Musica and Look & Listen, and not a sign of either. neither were listed on any of the online stores here either, not even as imports.
i was not left with much acceptable choice, then, but to order them from amazon. this despite the rather nasty exchange rate at present. and just what two obscure albums was it that i was after?
yep, you are seeing right. More Light from Primal Scream and the new Beady Eye album, BE. not exactly what you would call two obscure, unusual albums, are they?
it's disappointing that no one stocked either as i would have been quite happy to buy them off the shelf here. neither of the "flagship" stores for both listed shops and with a massive range, had so much as a copy of one of them. i am not sure about Beady Eye but all the other Primal Scream albums have turned up here.
with no store stocking either, i have to ask myself am i really that isolated in my tastes that i am the only person in a nation of about fifty million that wants to hear these records? a pretty depressing thought, if we are honest, and one that i hope is not the case. the stores here are going from bad to worse, i suppose i should reassure myself. regular readers will recall the baffling case of Bowie's The Next Day album, whereby it was advertised a fair bit yet only made it onto the shelves some two weeks after the announced release date.
why do i not go all 21st Century and just get a download of them, legal or otherwise? here are two very good reasons, as well as some things of interest you may like looking at.
yep, that's my stag. two super huge 80s JVC speakers, kindly given to me by my Dad when he moved on to one of them surround sound home theatre system things. they sound as awesome as they look, and thus should be treated with respect when playing music through them.
these download things, be they legal or the type most people get, are compressed mp3s. basically, to make them the small, easy to download things they are, the cost is a compression of the noise and sound range levels of the music. the loss of quality is OK when you are using headphones in an iTwat or similar, but it's just ghastly when played through a proper stereo. that is why i wanted the proper discs. plus, the artwork and booklets are always class.
what are the albums like? well, a review now, so late after their release, would be pretty pointless i suppose. for me they are outstanding, and worth the extra cost, indeed the extra time i had to wait for them too.
More Light is all that i could have hoped for. in Primal Scream terms, it's easily the most exciting thing they have done since Evil Heat and at times is as significant as the album many still consider to be the single most important record of this century thus far, XTRMNTR.
it's the first proper exposure i have had to their new bass player, Debbie Googe, who stepped in when Mani departed to reform that other band whose name escapes me for the moment. as was the case with Mani on the Vanishing Point album, the rule for joining Primal Scream is that you have to look and sound like you have always been in the band. Debbie meets this rule with some ease.
the Beady Eye album arrived after i had heard tales of "hmn" and "what's going on here" in reviews. a few had said that the only problem with the album was "the singer". in that regard, i had seen and read the interviews where Liam had spoken of this record being "experimental".
at first, one suspects "experimental" in the world of Liam Gallagher means "a bit of piano and strings fiddling at the end of each song". that fear fades fast as the album goes along, and i am delighted to say i really, really like this album. at heart Beady Eye are a band that want to make interesting music, as well as just get out there and do rock and roll, man. BE is i imagine going to get played frequently through the speakers pictured.
whereas i am glad to have them and thrilled that they were worth the cost, it remains depressing that no one thought to release or even import them for sale here, yet lesser, over-hyped rubbish like the horrid "new" Daft Punk album turns up on the international release date. record stores worldwide, but in particular here, love to whine about how the "internet" is killing music sales. well, i am one of those who loves the experience of going to a store, searching and buying. if they insist on stocking rubbish and ignoring great albums, though, what can one do?
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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