Pale Saints - Barging Into The Presence Of God [12"]

Came across this 12" EP by the PALE SAINTS recently. Sight Of You (on the A-side of this BARGING INTO THE PRESENCE OF GOD EP) was a single taken from The Comforts Of Madness album. A pleasant song; a bit in the vein of The La's with a sing-along chorus. She Rides The Waves on the other side is a lot noisier, and my favourite song on this EP. Mother Might is a sad and slow song with a very irritating guitar (?) sound throughout the whole song, which kinda ruins it for me. A typical B-side song, i guess. But overall a pretty cool EP.

Label: 4AD
Year of release: 1989
Cat.nr.: BAD910

SIDE A:
01. Sight Of You

SIDE B:
01. She Rides The Waves
02. Mother Might

School Of Seven Bells - SVIIB [12", LP]

It's been a few years since SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS released an album. Their previous one, Ghostory, is from 2012. It was the first that Benjamin Curtis and Alejandra Deheza did as a duo, after Alejandra's sister Claudia had left the band. A lot has happened since then. Benjamin was diagnosed with Lymphoma and died from that terrible disease in 2013. The songs you'll find on SVIIB were written not long before his death, and completed by Alejandra in the past few years. It's become a beautiful album. Heartfelt, honest lyrics. Sad at times, and with reason, but also joyful and uplifting. I think it's amazing that she found the strength to finish this chapter by completing the album. Musically it's one of their strongest albums as well. A worthy farewell of the band in this form. I sure hope we'll continue hearing of Alejandra though, because she's a great songwriter with a beautiful voice.

Label: Full Time Hobby
Year of release: 2016
Cat.nr.: FTH257LPA

SIDE A:
01. Ablaze
02. On My Heart
03. Open Your Eyes
04. A Thousand Times More

SIDE B:
01. Elias
02. Signals
03. Music Takes Me
04. Confusion
05. This Is Our Time

Vök - Circles [12"]

As one of the concert DJ's at our local music venue i am receiving a monthly update of bands that'll be playing there, to request to play at gigs of choice. When i saw VÖK was booked it didn't instantly ring a bell, but the moment i had checked out some of their tunes on Spotify i was hooked. Definitely my kind of electronic music. So i got the job for that evening and i must say it was an amazing show. Excellent performance of a great bunch of talented young folks from Iceland. It's not without reason that they won the annual local band contest Músíktilraunir in 2013. Their debut full length should be coming out later this year, but so far they released the Tension EP in 2013 and this CIRCLES EP last year. Luckily they had these 12"es with them at the merch stand so i bought both of them after the show. The 4 songs on this EP are almost equally brilliant, but If I Was is definitely my favourite. It's got a great groove, which reminds me a bit of Austra. And of course you can't deny the catchiness of their very strong single Waterfall. The EP sounds excellent and was mixed and mastered by Biggi Veira of GusGus. I actually had some GusGus ready to play after their show, but when the band had chosen Crossfade as intro tune, i skipped that plan. I tried to re-create my playlist of the evening by the way if you're interested: Vök - Leiden 09/03/16. You can find Waterfall in there, marking when the band played. Definitely worth to check them out if you never heard of them before and are into artists like the xx, Austra or The Knife. And now let's wait for this killer debut album to be released!

Label: Record Records
Cat.nr.: RELP043
Year of release: 2015

SIDE A:
01. Waterfall
02. Adrift

SIDE B:
01. If I Was
02. Circles

Iggy & Ziggy - Sister Midnight Live At The Agora [12", 2LP, Unofficial]

Today it's been exactly two months since DAVID BOWIE passed away.

This particular double live LP SISTER MIDNIGHT LIVE AT THE AGORA captures an IGGY POP show from 1977. March 21st, Agora Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio to be exact. Bowie fans will know this, but other people might not: Bowie was part of Iggy's band for the Idiot Tour, a one-and-half month tour in the UK, USA and Canada during March and April 1977. He didn't do any solo stuff, but just wanted to be a band member, playing keyboards and doing some occasional backing vocals. The other band members were Tony and Hunt Sales, who helped record The Idiot album (and who'd both be with Bowie in Tin Machine just over a decade later - a band in which Bowie also wanted to be just one of the guys), and Ricky Gardiner. Ricky had worked with Bowie on the Low album, as well as The Idiot. 

The recording of this bootleg is pretty good. There are quite a few other versions released of this show over the years. Wild Animal on the French Revenge label is probably the most wellknown. Also on the official RCA album from 1978 TV Eye Live 1977 there are a few songs from this show. Although the tour was to promote The Idiot, there are mostly songs from The Stooges present here. Turn Blue, Sister Midnight and Funtime are therefore almost the only ones on which you clearly hear Bowie's backing vocals. Besides that, he does some fine repetitive keyboards on I Wanna Be Your Dog. I would've loved to see one of the shows on this tour. Quite a package, Iggy and Ziggy on the same stage.

Label: The Vinyl Countdown / Store For Music

Cat.nr.: SFMVC1206

Year of release: 2012

SIDE A:

01. Raw Power

02. 1969

03. Turn Blue

SIDE B:

01. Sister Midnight

02. I Need Somebody

03. Search And Destroy

SIDE C:

01. TV Eye

02. Dirt

03. Funtime

SIDE D:

01. Gimme Danger

02. No Fun

03. I Wanna Be Your Dog

Blindness - Wrapped In Plastic [12", LP]

Apparently BLINDNESS was already formed way back in 2008, but it wasn't until last year when their debut album WRAPPED IN PLASTIC came out. These three ladies are indeed from London, as you might have suspected from the London Eye picture on the sleeve, and their best known member is Debbie Smith who played in Curve, Echobelly and Snowpony. Musically, their sound comes pretty close to what Curve did back in the days. It's dark and seductive electro rock, with mechanical beats and distorted guitars. But most importantly it's LOUD. Mighty fine stuff. I bought this album right after it came out late summer last year, and it says on the label's website that the initial run was limited to 250 copies - so my copy must be a part of that. Not even sure if they did a repress since then.

Label: Saint Marie Records
Cat.nr.: SMR066
Year of release: 2015

SIDE A:
01. Serves Me Right
02. Deserving
03. Last One Dies
04. No One Counts
05. Sunday Morning

SIDE B:
01. Humming Song
02. Broken
03. All In One
04. Confessions

Fujiya & Miyagi - Electro Karaoke [7"]

Recently i came across this 7" by FUJIYA & MIYAGI; their debut single from 2002. I just love their modern take on krautrock, and ELECTRO KARAOKE is a perfect example of that. Actually i think it's still one of their best tunes. The motorik beat keeps on going and makes it a great indie dance track. The song on the B-side, Rot, is a pretty laid back tune. Both are from the band's debut album Electro Karaoke In The Negative Style which until now sadly has never been released on vinyl.

Label: Massive Advance
Cat.nr.: MADV001
Year of release: 2002

SIDE A:
01. Electro Karaoke

SIDE B:
01. Rot

David Bowie - Amsterdam [7"]

Today it's been exactly a month since DAVID BOWIE passed away.

This particular 7" on clear orange vinyl was exclusively made for the David Bowie Is exhibition in Groningen. AMSTERDAM on the A-side (originally a B-side to the Sorrow single in 1973) was appropriately chosen, since it's the capital of the Netherlands where the exhibition's final stop takes place. Although it remains to be seen if it won't continue travelling the world after the recent developments, of course.

And i have no idea if Bowie himself was involved in choosing the song on the other side, but also MY DEATH turns out to be more or less appropriately chosen, with today's knowledge. The version on this 7" is from the Carnegie Hall concert on September 28th, 1972. It was previously only released on a compilation CD from 1995 called RarestOneBowie. Apparently RCA recorded the show for a Ziggy Stardust live album that was never released. It's funny by the way how the name Bowie is spelled in typical RCA logo letters on the labels, while the release is on Parlophone. Both songs on this single are covers of Jacques Brel songs, and both were frequently played during the Ziggy Stardust tour.

When i was in Groningen in December last year, when the exhibition had just started a week before, both this 7" and the other exclusive release (the Man Of Words, Man Of Music a.k.a. David Bowie a.k.a. Space Oddity album) had already sold out for the first time. That was a huge disappointment. There were 1500 copies made of each, and apparently they would arrive in batches of 500. I heard stories that people had bought 4 or 5 copies each at the time, and flipped them on eBay for up to 10 times the price they paid for them. The thing is that you don't need to have an entrance ticket to enter the shop, so some locals got smart and scored a whole bunch. Luckily when further copies were supplied, the museum shop at least decided to limit them to 1 copy per person. So when a friend of mine (who's actually not even a Bowie fan and certainly not a vinyl collector) visited the exhibition recently, she managed to buy a copy of each release for me.

Unlike many other collectors i'm not keeping these releases sealed for investment. I enjoy looking at them and even playing them at least once or twice. You only live once, you know. Life is too short to not enjoy the records you have standing on the shelves. And with Bowie records, there's simply a lot to enjoy.

Label: Parlophone

Cat.nr.: DBISH 2015

Year of release: 2015

SIDE A:

01. Amsterdam

SIDE B:

01. My Death (live)