Monday 24 August 2015

Spectres / Lorelle Meets The Obsolete - Record Store Day Is Dying [7"]

Back from my summer break now, and this split 7" by SPECTRES and LORELLE MEETS THE OBSOLETE was one of the last things i bought before my holiday started. There's been a lot of fuzz about this RECORD STORE DAY IS DYING release. The statement by the labels (about RSD having turned into a big circus with useless reissues for crazy prices, only feeding the greed of the major labels and resulting in indie labels getting into trouble and having to wait for months before their new releases can be pressed) and RSD's reaction to that, caused many discussions online and beyond. Personally i think these two labels absolutely have a point, although there's still a lot of excellent stuff coming out on the majors for RSD each year (not just reissues, let alone useless reissues) and the waiting times for vinyl pressing affect any record company, during the whole year - simply because all major companies have dismantled and sold their own plants years ago. So everyone's depending on the same independent pressing plants these days. The demand for vinyl during the past years has grown so tremendously that there is by far not enough capacity worldwide to get things pressed in time, throughout the year. Obviously, RSD is causing a peak in the production. This increased demand, just for the record, had already started quite some time before the first RSD took place and to my opinion the RSD organisation is taking way too much credit for the returned interest in the format we all love so dearly.
Anyway, this 7" is being released one copy per day until RSD 2016, with a stamp of the date on it, distributed in various ways. Mine was obtained via the most boring way: simply by being the first who clicked the webshop link that Sonic Cathedral put on their Facebook page, that 16th of July.
Both bands cover one of eachother's songs (Lorelle's Sealed Scene being renamed to Stealed Scene here) and they do it in an equally cool way. Even if it had been a "regular" RSD release without the fuzz around it, it would've been one of the musically most interesting releases of RSD 2015. Especially Spectres have been one of the revelations of this year as far as i'm concerned, and i'm happy i managed to get hold of a copy of this single. Unfortunately i can't make it to their show in Den Haag next month, but i'd urge anyone to go and see them. And i surely hope they'll return to the Netherlands not too long after that, so i can finally see them on stage myself as well.

Label: Sonic Cathedral / Howling Owl Records
Cat.nr.: SCR 086 / HOWL 038
Year of release: 2015

SIDE A:
01. SPECTRES - Stealed Scene

SIDE B:
01. LORELLE MEETS THE OBSOLETE - The Sky Of All Places