27

I bought this maybe 5 months or so ago and I just listened to it again and realised that I haven't written about it. This is Holding On For Brighter Days by 27 and it was released on Marcus' label Endless Quest Records. You can read his blog of the same name right here

I think I was buying another release by Endless Quest in the form of Hope Defeated's 7" when I first noticed this record or at least the description of the band and their sound, described as 'melodic dark pop finds its own path, as if it’s sprouting through a cracked cement playground at night; it moves easily from lushly full to gently sparse, revolving around the alluring and captivating vocals.' That sounded pretty interesting to me and I made a mental note to check it out at some point.

 

A little while later I picked up this amber glitter version of the vinyl limited to 356 for a VERY reasonable $6. It's had maybe 15 spins since then. It's a really cracking album and sounds exactly as described above. Dark stripped down haunting pop songs i guess kinda in the vein of Jonah Matrangas acoustic One Line Drawing stuff, but not really. In fact this is actually quite hard to describe which is odd really because you wouldnt think it is until you actually come to do so. Both beautiful and painful.

 

This is the best I could do to capture the vinyl, i assure you that is glitter and not my dandruff on the record. It's a really good looking record. I love a surprise buy like this, it's had way more spins than I ever thought it would and it's a really good record to chill out to late at night. The bands cover of Crazy by Gnarles Barkley is great and well worth a listen to that track alone.

 

If Marcus has any left I highly recommend giving this a chance for those times when you want something a bit different to your usual heavy as f*ck hardcore diet. I really need to check out the bands other stuff.

 

'Part of me just wants to go,

But I keep it high to keep it low'

 

NYC Classics

First post of October? Arrrghhhh I'm busy right now.
It pains me these days that when I originally collected vinyl back in the 90's I got rid of the vast majority in favour of CD's and what not. What a doofus. Anyway, here's two compilation records from my collection that I didn't get rid of that I figured would be fun to post up here.

Revelation Records #7 New York City Hardcore, a record no hardcore collection should be without. Just look at that cover.

This is the first pressing of the record from 1988 and I'm gonna hazard a guess that I got this around 92/93 after a strict diet of metal had lead me to hardcore music. I used to love getting compilations like this back in the day as it was a good way to hear lots of bands all at once to weed out the ones you might like. I'm fairly sure this was my first exposure to Revelation Records.

 

 

Instantly bands like Gorilla Biscuits, Sick Of It All and Youth Of Today jumped out at me and I would quickly pursue their individual releases.

 

 

Made all the easier by this catalogue/trade insert that was inside. Pre-internet this sort of thing was invaluable.

 

The flip side of that insert listing all the bands. I still don't know a huge amount about Youth Defense League.

 

Also included is a rather nice lyric booklet with each band getting their own section with band logo and photo etc and a intro to the compilation from Ray Cappo.

 

 

Great tracks, great bands and like I said before a must have for any hardcore or Rev collector.

 

Standard black vinyl. I think there was a 2000's repressing of this record on blue.

 

Next up this:

 

 

Where The Wild Things Are... another New York Hardcore compilation that came out around the same time as the Rev compilation, maybe a year later.

 

 

This one features bands like Killing Time, Sheer Terror and Maximum Penalty. Interestingly Breakdown and Gorilla Biscuits are the only bands to appear on both compilations with GB contributing Buzzcocks cover Sitting Round At Home here.

 

This is on Link Records, which I always figured was the UK version of this record, especially as the insert looks badly reproduced, I'm sure the original on Blackout Records would have been clearer than this but I've never seen one so could be wrong.

 

 

Random Records Part 2

I wasn't gonna do this again, I wasn't going to just post up a random batch of records again as I did a few weeks ago but god damn it I'm busy at the moment and I once again have to clear the blogging decks a little. If I posted these all up separately it would take me an age and frankly I ain't got the time, patience or inclination. So it might be a disservice to you dear reader that I'm not giving these records the write up they deserve, but they'll be more in depth posts on the horizon...honest.

I guess I got the records I wrote about in the earlier Eleven Random Records and the Records From Andras and this little lot all at the same time pretty much, which is why blogging about them was such a daunting task. That's a hell of a lot of records all at once. Anyway, bar I think one of these I again got all of these from the same seller on eBay.

So what we got?

Let's start with 'Margate's Least Wanted' Age Of Kali

This is their 2006 Demo and the Pre-order sleeve version numbered 78/100 on clear vinyl. Normally I couldn't willingly get behind an Ugly Kid Joe reference but that's a fantastic little play on the 90's chart botherers Ugly As They Wanna Be cover.

Sticking with the theme of English bands and limited sleeves.

This is What Hope Remains S/T release on Courage To Care Records. I'd had the regular release on black for a while now so couldn't resist this version. Decent little record for sure.

The Maiden cover version is the record release show cover on blue vinyl with the date and bands that played. I think I've seen all of those bands at some point.

Numbered 2 out of 50

Staying on these shores. Sheffield's The Legacy - Dead Weight. I saw this band a few times around 2002/2003 but never picked up any vinyl at the time (doh!). Fine band though.

Turn Cold - S/T on white vinyl. 300 pressed.

 

Next two from Iron Boots, their '04 demo and Weight Of The World. Both on standard black vinyl.

Cloak & Dagger - S/T on Grave Mistake Records. Man, Grave Mistake release some quality stuff. White Vinyl.

Outspoken - Survival, I do like those Conversion Records centre labels. The Insted 7" I picked up a while ago had the same and they look really striking and classically bold.

 

 

To round off this little lot. Piece By Piece - We've Lost Our Minds on Malfunction Records. This is the black vinyl version but I think it was pressed on blue vinyl too which I can imagine looks much better with that cover.



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.

Old stuff and OLDER stuff

Seems I've been posting up a right mixed bag of stuff recently. I don't know why I've been picking up so much random stuff but I have. I wasn't actually going to write about any of these but I was sitting there looking through the newer harder stuff I've bought recently and my eyes went straight to these four records and I just thought Fuck it! Why not.

In my record store day 2012 post I'm sure at the end of it I mentioned not picking up the Sensefield Killed For Less record. I put it back that day as I felt I'd bought enough already. A few weeks ago I was in a record store and finally picked it up.

 

Good looking Orange vinyl which suits the cover nicely, it's another Revelation reissue I'm pleased to pick up.

 

So I don't know about you but when I'm in an actual honest to goodness record store rather than buying over the interwebs I tend to get a bit impulsive. So on the same day from the same store I also picked up this

 

Jawbreaker Unfun. I like Jawbreaker so it's cool to pick up this reissue of their 1990 debut album. Strangely it's promoted on the front as being on 'Jet Black' vinyl, like they chose black as the colour, maybe they did, it certainly is one of the blackest records I've seen. I'd have liked it to be on colour though, maybe the colour of the JAWBREAKER text on the front cover?

 

 

Okay so I like Jawbreaker so that wasn't that impulsive granted, but this fucking was.

 

So yeah I picked up The Stooges 1969 self titled debut. Now here's an admission, might not be that crazy I dunno but truth is I've never really cared for The Stooges, not one bit, maybe I'm too young who knows. I've met people in the past whose eyes have popped out at that sort of talk, but also people like me who are also a bit meh! about them.

 

 

However, and this is the thing about actually being in a store with all those lovely records infront of you, something about the record, the look, the packaging, the price, called out to me that day. It really is a nicely packaged record and I figured it's a classic and there must be something I'm missing that other people hear so I bought it.

And you know what, it's alright actually, probably not aged that well, I suspect the follow up Funhouse has aged better but it's a decent listen if the mood takes me and another 'classic' for the collection.

Following day I went to a record fair and bought a record that needs no introduction.

 

I'd been looking for a cheap clean copy of this to also add to the 'classics' part of my record collection and I found one. I probably hadn't listened to this record for the best part of 15 years, yeah I'd of course heard tracks off it during that time but I was instantly struck by how fresh and ripping most of it still sounds. Say what ya like about the pistols and god knows they are fairly easy to criticise but this is still a barnstormer of an album.

 

So yeah random shit indeed.