Record Store Day releases.

As  I said in my previous post, I am gonna post about some of the releases I got for myself on RSD.

As mentioned there were a lot of records released for this day and the two biggest releases for me were these two:

These are two split singles by Mastodon. The pink one is with The Flaming Lips, where both bands perform their own versions of the same Flaming Lips song "A Spoonfull Weighs A Ton". The other one is a split with Feist. On this one Feist performs a Mastodon song in her own version and Mastodon performs one of hers. Since the style of music is so different between these two it's very fun and interesting to hear the different takes on these songs. Both songs taken from two of the best albums last year.

Record store day.

I was on such a good roll with my posts but then I stopped for some time. And during this time we have had the biggest day of the year for independent record stores, such as The Garden.

It was celebrated on the 21st of April and it was a busy and vdry funny day in the store lots of people to talk to and sell some vinyl to.

This day there are also lots of special releases and we had about 100 of these in stock for that day. I got a few of them myself, I'll make a separate post about those.

So all in all, a great day a couple of weeks ago.

Mastodon - The Hunter

Mastodon - The Hunter
I just realised that I haven't really written anything about one of (if not THE best) best albums of last year.

It was released in September last year and I feared that I wasn't gonna listen to the album too much as it was released around the same time as Opeth's "Heritage". "The Hunter" was usually my first choice of record to listen to for a long time, and I do still put it on the record player quite frequently. At the moment I'm playing the copy on the picture, the double vinyl edition pressed on 45RPM for beter sound quality. I also got the regular vinyl edition as well as the special edition CD.

If you're not already into Mastodon this record is a perfect introduction to the band as it blends and mix from the entire back catalogue of the band. There are raw punk metal songs that easily could've fit on the bands debut "Remission", there are progressive metal numbers that would have made a good addition to the quality material that made "Leviathan" one of the best albums of the -00s, the melodic riffs that made "Blood Mountain" a beauty to listen to are there as well and last but not least the progressive rock that made "Crack The Skye" the bands true masterpiece are without a doubt featured as well.

This might make the album sound as unfocused and all over the place, but somehow Mastodon manage to keep everything together and "The Hunter" really feels like an album with a clear idea from start to finish.

Creation Records

I found this post that should have been posted almost a year ago, but for some reason wasn't... Here it goes:
My favorite type of movies is probably music documentaries. I don't think I've had a better -movie-watching-experience than watching for example the Beatles anthology series or, more or less, any episode from VH1's Classic album series. Another example is "A Headbanger's Journey" about the history of metal music. The men behind that movie has recently been busy with a documentary about Rush. This documentary has been available for some time but I still haven't had the chance to watch it.



In June we see the release of a new Foo Fighters documentary as well, "Back And Forth". Lots to look forward too.



So what does this have to do with Creation Records, as the title says?

A new documentary about the legendary record label was released recently(?) titled "Upside Down: The Creation Records Story". This label has released A LOT of classic records within the indie rock genre. My favourite band from the label is probably My Bloody Valentine, and in addition to them there is so much quality there. You just have to take a quick look at the cover of the blu-ray and see that there are quite a few brilliant bands on the label (MBV is not even featured!). I ordered a copy of this from play.com today so it will hopefully end up in the mail some time next week, I can't wait!

Alabama Shakes - Boys & Girls

Yesterday at the store a customer was browsing through the news section and picked up this album, asking me if it was any good. As I hadn't heard it I offered to play some of it from Spotify. I randomly put on this song:




The customer is probably not a soul fan and gave up pretty fast. I was hooked almost instantly though. I played the record through once in the store and I had no choice but to take the vinyl home with me.

I've been listening a lot to good old soul music lately and this "southern soul" record was a great find at the moment. I've been listening through it a couple times now and it's a really beautiful peice.

Also, the record makes me want to listen to my Drive-By Truckers albums.... "Southern Rock Opera" is up next then...

Skogen Brinner - Fasornas Berg EP

It's not often I get a new(!) cassette. I've bought old metal and punk demos on cassette earlier, and still do every now and then. Yesterday I received two new cassettes. One from my new favourite band Skogen Brinner. An EP called "Fasornas Berg", brilliant Sabbathy-riff based rock. A big plus is that they sing in Swedish! The second one is from the punks in Massgrav. Both tapes are numbered and limited to 100 copies. Both sold out the day of the release.

Meshuggah - Koloss

I wrote about two anticipated releases back in January and now I have both of them!

Meshuggah is another one of those unique bands that play music that you can't really put a label on except Meshuggah music. They've been around for about twenty years and haven't changed much. For me they have gotten better and better over the years. They are better over an entire record now than they were 10-15 years ago. "Destroy, Erase, Improve" and "Chaosphere" might have some of the best songs in the band's career but they aren't as good as the records after "Catch 33".
"Koloss" falls in the same category and after one listen it sounds really promising. I'm lucky that the Mars Volta vinyl won't come out until May, this give me more time to really get in to "Koloss".