Never cross a black cat with a Gypsy and the Out Crowd

Impulsive purchases, I talked about it a little in my last post. Well here's another one. Gypsy - Giant's Despair is my surprise record of the year, I just keep going back to it. It's just a great record that kinda suits any musical mood I'm in, so if I'm pondering what to listen to and don't instantly decide I tend just to reach for that record. I've always been a tad miffed that I joined the party late on them and missed out on some of the slightly more limited pressings. So when Six Feet Under posted up some left over records from the This Is Hardcore fest I instinctively bought one of the Giant's Despair versions.

Now the impulsive part to this is that this version is only really different because of the TIH stamp on the inner sleeve. Also, it's again on the same white vinyl I bought previously. However it's still a rare version of a great LP. Limited to 50 copies and I'm still strangely pleased with it.

 Less impulsive was a TIH version of a record I'd been meaning to buy the standard version of. Wrong Answer - Cross A Black Cats Path.

This is a cracking release and as I was waiting to buy the normal version anyway I picked up this version which has a different limited cover and also as per the Gypsy record a TIH stamp on the back.

It's again limited to 50 copies and is on what is usually described as Coke bottle clear vinyl.

I seem to have written about this band loads on this blog but in reality I think it's only twice. Six Feet Under also had a copy of the Out Crowd / Written Off split release from 2011.

So I think this is the third release I have from Out Crowd and they are a crackingly consistent band, I like all their stuff. Written Off are a band I've not heard anything by previously but they are also good. This was released by Like Glue Records and Iron Mind Crew Records.

This is the red pressing of the record, no idea of numbers though.

I think I'm only missing Out Crowd's 7" demo now, I should track that down really.

Gypsy and the Common Cause

Sooooo....When I ordered the Cold World - No Omega repress earlier in the month I needed something to bulk up the order as usual. It was at this point that my eyes fell upon a release I'd seen mentioned on some other blogs and read about with interest, mainly because of the nature it had been spoken of. It seemed to be a real enigma of a release, people dug it but didn't know why almost. What the hell, I added it to my cart. After all, it features members of Cold World, Mother Of Mercy and Stick Together and I like all of those bands.

This Is Gypsy - Giant's Despair

I have to put myself in the same camp as other peoples opinions on this one, it really is an odd listen and also sounds NOTHING like the band members other outfits. At first I thought, 'yeah it's ok' and although I knew it was an album that would require some patience, I didn't really know where the fuss about it was going to come from, but 2, 3 ,4 listens later it had started to sink in a little and really grow on me, and when I was looking for something to listen to last night and automatically reached for this I really can say this is a really good LP.
On a side note and strangely,my wife thought this was good stuff on the first listen. Guess she 'got it' before me. Or maybe it was due to having no preconceived ideas? I dunno.

Packaging wise, it's a really striking album layout and suits the mood of the music perfectly, it appears to have been done by Jacob Bannon. As I'm late to the party I have the white vinyl version which is a pressing of 715. I think the Lavender version that Mike wrote about probably looks better but the white still works.

Fans of Helmet, Jawbreaker, Quicksand and Make Do and Mend would be into this. This is definately the most 'surprising' release I've bought this year I'd say.

At the same time I also picked up this:

 Norway's Common Cause - S/T 7"

I pretty much bought this just based on the Norway thing as I tend to like scandanavian bands, I've always viewed it as a real musical hot bed. Truth be told though I've only had a brief listen so haven't had chance to form an opinion yet. Sounds alright though.