Opeth - Heritage

No, I can't wait any longer!! It's being released tomorrow but I won't have it on vinyl until earliest Friday I think. When I pre-ordered the album from the official website I was promised a download code of the entire album the day before it's release.

Today I got two e-mails with a download code in each (I ordered two versions so if anyone wants a code just get in touch:)) and I've just added the album to my iPod so now I'll go to bed and listen to Heritage in my headphones for the first time! I'm excited!!

Hidden gems from my dad's old collection.

I owe my huge music interest more or less all to my dad. As a kid I remember looking through his vinyl collection looking for cool records to listen to. So I picked out The Beatles, David Bowie, The Clash, Eagles vinyl etc. etc. from his collection and I've been listening to it for a long time.

Recently I've been going through his collection once again picking out vinyl that I want in my collection and I think I left with about 200 vinyls when I did that. Most recently I took all of his 7" singles as well. There are about 3-400 of them from his collection and I can add about 200 probably that I've bought through the years. I add all of these into two different databases, one is a simple excel form that I simply put in the information of the record: artist, title, record company, year, format, genre. The other one I use is Discogs.

Today I was adding the last batch of singles that I've gotten from my dad, and to my surprise there was one single that is worth quite a lot of money

Mandarines - EP

Mandarines is a Swedish band from the late 70's that I hadn't really heard of until today I listened to this EP and it's actually quite good. Some nice powerpop/punk. The guitarist, Janne Andersson, later came to play with Japop, Ulf Lundell and Gyllene Tider to name a few. 

I searched them on Discogs to add this release to my collection and when I get to the release page I see that there is one copy of this for sale. The price is an unbelievable £115.99! Sometimes the sellers on Discogs can put insane prices on quite random releases so I went to popsike to see what it had sold for on ebay and it's selling for somewhere between 80-150 US dollars! A recent sell on ebay (from february this year) shows an ending price of $142. Insane, to say the least!

"Album of the year" project

The last few years I've listed my favourite albums from the past year. I will do so this year as well but this time I will do it a little differently than before. I always have difficulties ranking the records. Often the number one spot has been quite easily decided but how do I really come to the decision?

I think I mostly base it on the number of times I play a record, the more you like a record, the more you're likely to play it, right?

This year though I'm gonna have a play off with the records of the year. I've put together a grid play off with 64 brackets. Here's an example of how one of these things looks, for those of you who doesn't understand what the hell I'm talking about:

So I'll put two records up against each other and the one I think is better advances to the next stage until at last there is just one album still standing- the album of the year!

First I had the idea of putting up a vote on my blog on each "match up", but for a few reasons it wouldn't work. For once there aren't that many readers here to be honest, and those who would vote would probably be three of four people so it wouldn't be too much of a competition:)

Second of all it's my blog and my opinions so I thought it would be better to have my views on it. Also I'll have help from my girlfriend to decide some of the match ups. I'll have final say though;)

I will put the albums against each other that have been released at the same time of the year so that I've had the chance to listen to both albums an equal amount of times. Which in most cases I haven't, but at least I've had the chance... So first up will by Decemberists against the Delillos album which were both released in January this year.

The criterias I have for an album to be part of this is:
1. That I own it on vinyl.
2. That it is an original release. Not a collection (like Foo Fighters - Medium Rare), not a live album (like Neil Youngs - A Treasure or Mastodon - Live At Aragorn) etc.
3. It qualifies to be among the best 64 records released this year. Apparently I have too many records at the moment. I own a few from the year already and I also have a list of records that will be released this year that I will buy so I have to sort some of them out before this thing starts.

Here are the albums that I've got so far:

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead	Tao Of Dead
Akron/Family	S/T II
Amon Amarth	Surtur Rising
Anna Järvinen	Anna Själv Tredje
Bigbang	Epic Scrap Metal
Black Country Communion	BCC 2
Blackfield	Welcome To My DNA
Bon Iver	Bon Iver
Boris	New Album
Boris	Heavy Rocks
Boris	Attention Please
Bright Eyes	People's Key
Buffalo Tom	Skins
Cave Singers	No Witch
Crowbar	Sever The Wicked Hand
Decemberists	The King Is Dead
Delillos	Trist Å Väre Glad
Drive-By Truckers	Go-Go Boots
Earth	Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light
Explosions In The Sky	Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
Fleet Foxes	Helplessness Blues
Foo Fighters	Wasting Light
Girls	Father, Son And The Holy Ghost
Graveyard	Hisingen Blues
Haunted	Unseen
Iron & Wine	Kiss Each Other Clean
J Mascis	Several Shades Of Why
Jarle Bernhoft	Solidarity Breaks
Jeff Bridges	Jeff Bridges
Kaizers Orchestra	Violeta Violeta Vol.1
Kebnekajse	Idioten
Ljungblut	Over Skyene Skinner Altid Solen
Low	C'mon
Lykke Li	Wounded Rhymes
Manchester Orchestra	Simple Math
Mogwai	Hardcore Will Never Die
My Morning Jacket	Circuital
Okkervil River	I Am Very Far
Panda Bear	Tomboy
Paul Simon	So Beautiful Or So What
PJ Harvey	Let England Shake
REM	Collapse Into Now
Spirits Of The Dead	The Great God Pan
Steve Earle	I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive
Thurston Moore	Demolished Thoughts
TV On The Radio	Nine Types Of Light
Twilight Singers	Dynamite Steps
Urge Overkill	Rock&Roll Submarine
Wino	Adrift
Wobbler	Rites At Dawn
Wolf	Legions Of Bastards

And there are releases from all of these bands that have just been released or are expected later this year that I'll most likely buy:

Opeth

Mastodon Steven Wilson

Sivert Höyem

The Amazing

Björk

Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah

Coldplay

Black Keys

Ryan Adams

Blink-182

Lou Reed and Metallica

St. Vincent

Tom Waits

Wilco

Jayhawks

Are there any records that I'm missing from the year so far, or upcoming releases?

The record Kent wish they could make.

Last Friday we at The Garden released a special album.

For you non-Norwegians (which I guess most of you are), bands like Seigmen and Zeromancer doesn't mean much. I hadn't heard of them before I moved here either. Seigmen is one of the bigger Norwegian bands of the last 20 years or so. They split up in 1999 and has since done a few reunion gigs.

Kim Ljung played bass and did backing vocals in Seigmen, he's also responsible for a lot of the writing. When Seigmen split up he and two other members from the band formed Zeromancer. Kim has also had he's own side project Ljungblut. He has just released his fourth album under this moniker.

This album is entitled "Over Skyene Skinner Alltid Solen". It is released by The Garden together with Pleasuredisc. It has been released on both CD and vinyl. The CD version is a digipack limited to 1 000 copies which are all numbered and signed by Kim Ljung himself. The vinyl is limited to 300 copies and are also numbered and signed by Kim.

Like the title says "The record Kent wish they could make." I hear a lot of Kent on this album and I understand Kim is a fan of the band as well so it isn't too far fetched. Especially the last couple of Kent albums where they have taken a more electronic/synth approach to it- only Kim Ljung perfects the sound. This is the first album since Seigmen's "Metropolis" (released in 1995) that Kim sings in Norwegian and he explained it as he wanted to be closer to the fans, which was also why he wanted to put his signature on every record. This album really has a "naked" sound to as well. A beautiful album, to put it short!

Here's a Spotify link to the album.

Iron Maiden

One year ago I bought the last Iron Maiden album "The Final Frontier". I wrote a blog post in which I mentioned my very small Maiden collection and that it needed to grow.

A year has passed and here's the latest release that I picked up from the store yesterday:

This is a compilation of the band's last 20 years and it's also a follow up to the 2008 compilation "Somewhere Back In Time" which compiled the first ten years.

So, a year ago my Maiden collection consisted of only three vinyls. "Killers", "Piece Of Mind" and "The Final Frontier". Since then the collection has grew considerably and at the moment I've got 31 LPs, 12" singles and 7" singles. I've got at least one copy of every full length album the band has released except for the two albums they recorded with Blaze Bayley in the mid 90s and also Bruce Dickinson's comeback album "Brave New World". These are all quite expensive at around £50 or more, so we'll se when I'll get my hands on those. Iron Maiden is such a fun band to collect since there are so much to collect and luckily some stuff are relatively cheap. So far I'm trying to limit myself to just collecting UK and Japanese versions of the full-lengths. Let's see how long that lasts... The singles I want all copies though;)

Bon Iver

Yesterday I bought this record from our store:

So that's quite random you ask to buy the first Bon Iver album, just like that? Well the reason is simply this:

A few weeks ago I bought the new selftitled Bon Iver album and I've been listeningen to it almost non-stop eversince. What a great album! I have a very special relationship to these types of bands, the very low key singer/songwriter types of bands. A lot of people have been hailing the new Iron & Wine album that came i February for example, but I've yet to find out the brilliance of that album. It's the same thing with the new Fleet Foxes that came earlier this year. There's just something missing for me. I guess you would call this type of music indie pop/rock? It's quite a broad description and these bands that I've mentioned are all a lot different, but I would still put them in the same genre.

So to get back to Bon Iver... When there actually is a band within this genre I like, it's pure magic! This album does not only feature the best song of the year (opening track "Perth"), it's a beautiful journey from start to, almost, finish. The last song "Beth/Rest" sounds like it could have been on the Top Gun soundtrack or something. I don't know if Vernon is serious with this song or if he's being funny, I hope for the latter because in that case- it's hilarious!

So far I've listened to "For Emma..." two times and it's really promising. It's more "a-man-and-his-guitar" kind of music, which I'm not that big a fan of as you're supposed to be I guess. But like I said, when that kidn of music hits me, it hits me hard!

A live version of "Perth" in decent quality:

In the mail yesterday.

Yesterday I received two indie/alternative rock classics in the mail.

Sugar - Copper Blue

This Creation Records release from 1993 is the third album Bob Mould released after his Hüsker Dü split up. After two solo albums he formed Sugar and their debut is classic 90's indie rock. Most people are probably familiar with the biggest hit from the album:

Hüsker Dü - Warehouse: Songs And Stories

This double album proved to be the last release from Hüsker Dü. There is not much trace of the hardcore punk, that the band started out playing, on this record. This also features one of the best-known Hüsker Dü songs, "Could You Be The One".

This is actually the first Hüsker Dü vinyl I've bought so far. So I guess I'll have to get "Candy Apple Grey" and work my way backwards in their discography. Can't wait for their masterpiece "New Day Rising":)