Free mixtapes

As you may or may not know, this Saturday just gone (18th April) was Record Store Day. An international event, the basic idea was that a bunch of record labels sent out limited singles, live EPs, rarities discs and that sort of thing to independent record stores all over the world. The majority of participating stores were in America, but there was a sprinkling of others dotted about the globe, including, quite incredibly, three in my home county of Wiltshire.

Over the last few years, as I've slowly developed a passion for music, I've come to lament the lack of an independent record shop where I live (there was one in my hometown once, but it closed many moons ago, and there's only HMV where I go to uni). Of course, I don't need one. Through high street shops, online stores and eBay I can get my hands on pretty much any album I want to. All that's really missing is the personal touch. I savour the few occasions that someone serving me in HMV recognises the album I'm buying. In an independent place, you'd likely get that a whole lot more.

So anyway, last Saturday I was heading down to Salisbury anyway, and decided to take a look at the participating store there (StandOut Records - it's a nice place, with a section at the back dedicated to house, techno, DnB and "weird shit" vinyls). I bought a limited Smiths single, had a flick through the album racks and generally enjoyed the atmosphere. I was handed a couple of free CDs at the till as well, which I'll never complain about. It felt oddly sad though, as if I was somehow being bribed into coming back. The truth is that unless I had tracked down something elusive (example: when after a long search I found Person Pitch by Panda Bear in an independent store in Brighton for £12 - happy days), I wouldn't willingly spend £11-20 on an album, and as year by year it gets increasingly easier to find the music you want online, is there really a place for the independent record shop in the modern world? While they still exist, they are increasingly, unfortunately, becoming irrelevant, and I'm pretty sure the mainstream consumer doesn't really care either way. With each passing generation people will care less and less about the plight of these stores - if they are even aware of them at all, and I can't help but feel that gestures like Record Store Day just won't cut it in the long run. Regardless, it's a cause well worth supporting. All I can say is that it'd be nice to someday take my kids to the local record shop.

Comments/thoughts/debate welcome, if you're reading.

Intermission/Recommended listening

It's been a while, I know. I intended to use this blog to write about all the different music I listen to or hear about, which is usually fairly varied. Unfortunately, over the last few months I've pretty much just listened to Animal Collective (with splashes of other stuff I'll detail further down), and since I reviewed their new album for my last post I thought I'd leave them be for a bit.

Anyway, to the hypothetical reader who has spent the last several weeks wringing their hands in despair, I'm back! To my real, admittedly tiny readership, here's another post. Not a proper post per se, more a quick rundown of what I've been listening to of late. I call it recommended listening, because there isn't really a more exciting way of putting it.

Animal Collective
Feels
[FatCat, 2005]
May as well get this out of the way first. Since "discovering" the wonderful Animal Collective late last year, I've been slowly working through their back catalogue. They are a consistently excellent and inventive group of musicians, and Feels is a perfect example of this. Part warped sunshine pop, part drifting clouds of strange sound, the album is built on awkward guitar plucking, bizarre lyrics (all of which are about love, one way or another), bashed drums and of course, copious yelping. A beautiful, atmospheric album.

Deerhunter
Microcastle
[Kranky/4AD, 2008]
If the production on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless is a little too dense and murky for you (don't tell Creation Records, it cost them a lot of money), then perhaps Microcastle is for you. Deerhunter's epic shares the soft vocals, flat percussion and focus on guitars that shoegaze music is famous for, but mixes these elements together in a manner rather more palatable for the average ear. Microcastle often soars, and some might accuse it of being overwrought, but it is never anything but an intimate listen.

Neko Case
Middle Cyclone
[ANTI-, 2009]
I'm all for experimentation, weird sounds and ridiculous beats and all of that. Sometimes though, all you really need is a man or woman with a bloody incredible voice. "Case" in point (haha) is Neko here, who sings tales of sentient tornadoes, prison life and magpies with a voice that could make statues shiver (couldn't resist the hyperbole, sorry). More to the point, her considerable talents are not overused like so many supposed "country" singers, but instead weighted just right. Often gentle, she unleashes a full-throated belt very rarely, but it counts when she does.

Daft Punk
Alive 2007
[Virgin, 2007]
If I ever meet someone who doesn't like Daft Punk, I will.. er, well I'll be extremely surprised. Live album, greatest hits and DJ mashup all at once, Alive 2007 is a great party album. Familiar beats and samples pop up everywhere, tracks wind in and out of each other, songs from opposite ends of their career matching up as if they were made on the same day. What's more, this is one of few live albums where the atmosphere of the captured performance somehow carries through. An addictive, euphoric listen.

So yeah, those are all good treats! I'll be back within less than two months this time, promise.