In the digital musicscape we all seem to have stumbled into, the norm for album consumption is online streaming, where we judge an album over 1-5 listens (spotify limits grr), then maybe torrenting it, buying it, putting it on the ever-growing wish list or just ditching it altogether. This has its pitfalls: the growers slip through the net, stuff on the wish list stays there for so long you miss the window of when you'll really dig it, we get a bit too cosy in our comfort zones and miss out the excitement of the unusual and unexpected. I've been wondering lately whether it's possible for anybody to get into any music, and while I'm not sure on that one I do know that there's endless horizons of sound out there just waiting to bring me joy in return for a little adventuring. So to the topic - record shopping where I follow my nose to the future of my ears!Risking it has brought me, as you might expect, a real range of experiences. There's awful, bland, weird and great records in my collection which I would never have got by following the fickle streaming method.
The Great
Due to its booming at the height of the compact disc's relevance (vinyl out of fashion, online access still limited), a chance buy from a charity shop CD section often turns up trip-hop. It can be very mediocre - Radiator's Chicken Milk seduced me with its name but not its grooves - but it can also be brilliant, like the album Radar by Earthling.
'I Could Just Die' is the last track off Radar, and has that perfect stoned sensuality that trip-hop does so well. The rest of the album is more hip-hoppy, with rapper/drawler Mau getting clever over upbeat downtempos (music jargon sucks) and some sampled hooks like the slinkyguitar in the track above. Looking at the packaging, I can't put my finger on why I decided to buy it - there are some good song titles like 'I Still Love Albert Einstein', 'Soup or No Soup' and 'By Means Of Beams' and the cover art is quite cool I suppose - I must have been feeling whimsical the day I got it. With a little practice you can get more adept at guessing the style of music via the booklet, there are some 'cuts' credits to Geoff Barrow which is a bit of a giveaway. At the time I was intrigued by songs which had only voice and vibes listed in the credits, or only voice and double bass, which is great because through my deaf buying I've now explored the genre and understand what that means. Accumulating music knowledge is second best after listening.
Another rad risk buy was Pepe Deluxe's recent album Queen of the Wave, which suckered me in much more directly with its packaging: a technicolour promise of 'an esoteric pop opera in three parts' based around a 19th century channelled novel about Atlantis, accompanied by a promise of a composition from the world's largest instrument. I was a bit worried about this not living up to its own hype, but it's very strange and awesome. The narrative arc is clearer than any other concept album I know, and the music is hyperactive psychedelic/mental rock with so much production I'm not sure if it's played by people. A terrifying song called 'The Storm' is one of my favourites, but something a bit more accessibly groovy is the surf Bond theme stylings of 'Hesperus Garden'.
Anyway enough of the great, what you really want is some weird...
The Weird
There are two records I gambled on which may well be the two strangest records in my collection. The first is called Lo Editions: Avant Garde and appears to be some sort of sampler put out by a record label who have gone on to bigger and less strange things. The chap who sold it to me said it was a promo for a club night, which I'd love to believe because - well listen to it...
'Inspect Her Gadget' by Mike Roberts
'Cosmic Rider' by Jon Tye and Kristian Vester
'Finger Painting' by Guido Zen and Valerio Faggioni
Here are three tracks from this nuts club night. 'Inspect Her Gadget' is described in the inlay, accurately, as "Odd electro beats with bizarre vocal ejaculations". All of the songs have these little sentences, which is exactly why I bought it. 'Cosmic Rider' is "The sound of love in outer space",'Finger Painting' a "Rockabilly electronica countdown". Forgive me for listing, but others include:
-The spirit of 1950s space exploration distilled into sound
-Charming song sung by computer
-Chipper tune about the joys of being a clone
-Toothsome Moog elegy
...I think you can see why I invested. As with all samplers there are some great tracks and some less so on Lo Editions, I treasure the really unusual ones but the ones with singing are often silly electro pop. Also, bizarrely, after the album the entire tracklist runs again except each song is cut at 30 seconds.
Onwards, onwards, you call, we want more weird...
Well, you asked for it. Here is Schwabinggrad Ballett's self titled record. I suppose I knew this was going to be a strange one. There are loaves of bread with names of political figures on them in the liner notes. It's German, and has a song titled 'So Sehr Der Gedanke Auch Schmerzt, Will Es Mir Doch Leider So Scheinen, Als Ob Ich Auch In Einer Befreiten Gesellschaft Immer Zu Einer Minderheit Gehoeren Wuerde (as painful as the thought might be I'm afraid that unfortunately, even in a liberated society, I would always belong to a minority)'. There are songs by and dedicated to Bertolt Brecht. By the way, 'So Sehr...' is actually pretty good...
...and quite characteristic of much the Schwabinggrad Ballett. Jaunty, genreless, oddball music. Forcing things into pigeonholes (how cruel) I could say that they fuse folk, punk, jazz free and swinging, and krautrock, sometimes leaning towards only one, like in the heartfelt (in a German way) 'Moderne Welt'...
...but achieving the best results in the melting pot, like the excellent opener 'Under Control':
Unfortunately this video bursts my image of a group of radical musical communists with saxophones and roll-ups and replaces it with the reality that Schwabinggrad Ballett are the worst kind of agitprop artists. It does kind of demonstrate a point though - had I approached this group through internet research, I'd never have got their fascinating album. However, approached with this:
a pretty awesome horse
...I took the risk on them and was rewarded with something quite different to the terrible shit in the video above. It shows how important image and context is with music. Which is the whole point of this article that seems to have turned into an analysis of why I bought strange music.
I'd like to go into the art of buying stuff based on hype and reviews, but this is already quite a long post and what with attention spans of the kids these days I suppose I'd better leave that to another time. To end on a positive and motivational note, remember that buying records in all different ways is fun, and it's no use limiting yourself to one form of transport through the universe of sound...
*blasts off in a space ship of peace love respect and harmony*
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