Front Line Assembled

About 4 years ago I posted about my quest to acquire all of Front Line Assembly's back catalogue on CD. I continued to buy CDs from Discogs and eBay until only one CD single eluded me. For about 2 years I have searched for a copy of  "No Limit" but as this CD is 33 years old, it can be difficult to come by at a reasonable price. Having finally won an auction last week, my collection is now complete.

The music in this CD mixes samples of speech and effects from films with driving Yamaha DX7 basslines and Bill's indiscernible lyrics. The mixes are far too long and the sample of a man repeatedly screaming for the final 5 minutes of "Lethal Compound" is a very real test of your resolve. However, if you're in the mood for some late eighties industrial music "No Limit" fits the bill.

One aspect of record collecting that I find rewarding is when I get to delete an eBay saved search or remove something from my Discogs wantlist. So I'm quite content tonight. This is both because I finally own the CD but also because I can stick two fingers up to the guy who has been repeatedly listing this CD at inflated prices on eBay for about 3 years. Sometimes you just need to stick it out to stick it to the scalpers.

What, rot? What rot!

Not a new "One record at at time" post but a another random bank holiday ramble full of rot.

When CDs were becoming 'mainstream' in the late eighties I felt very smug with my Sony CDP-M35 player and I took every opportunity to remind my teenage friends that I was part of the digital music revolution (I'd saved up very hard for my CD player you understand).

During this period, one ill informed cynic informed me that I wouldn't be so smug in twenty years time when all of my CDs had become subject to "oxidisation" and I was left with a pile of dust. How I laughed at her folly! How I scorned the fact that every time she played her cassettes or records she took a little bit of life out of them. CDs were indestructible and she was wrong. Well sort of.

I posted ten years ago (gulp) about the issue of bronzing or 'CD rot' and I wondered how much damage would be done to my collection. Well, as it turns out there has never been too much damage and last week I discovered what is only the second casualty in a collection of over 2500. Well, in truth I have two copies of this CD and they have both bronzed, so that makes three. But still, it remains at a tolerable level.

All three of my bronzed discs were pressed at PDO in the UK, so there was obviously something wrong at this plant in 1991. I have recently thrown out a blu-ray of a-ha "Ending on a high note" as it was subject to the manufacturing issues that affected a French production plant. This disc became unreadable as the resin used to bind the layers of the disc oxidised. I wonder if the same thing is happening here. I'm going to keep an eye on PDO manufactured discs from now on that's for sure.

My ripping victory

I have been downloading and ripping MP3's since about 1998; so I've accumulated quite a few. Looking through my library recently I decided it was time for a clear out and an upgrade. Any file that was below 256 Kbps was deemed unsuitable and a replacement sought. The majority of the time this simply meant re-ripping CDs at 320 Kbps, but I soon found some CDs wouldn't rip. No matter how many times I cleaned the disc, cleaned the laser and screamed at the screen, some CDs just weren't playing ball. In a vain attempt to overcome the situation I even bought another copy of one particularly frustrating disc, a-ha's "Minor Earth Major Sky", but the new copy was even worse than the original.

Nope, it wasn't copy protection, it wasn't scratches, it wasn't bronzing. At first I found this quite mysterious as I had ripped all of these CDs previously. But it soon occurred to me that this was some years ago using different PCs and different operating systems. The majority of my MP3s were created on a desktop machine with an internal optical drive running Windows XP. Windows 10 on a modern laptop just couldn't get the job done.

My old 'copy protection workaround' of using an optical output from a traditional CD player was so laborious that it was impractical for the number of CDs I was looking at. Google searches weren't really turning up any useful information and I became increasingly frustrated. I gave up.

Fast forward about 3 years and I found a solitary forum post that seemed to describe the exact issue I was having. The poster had identified the one thing all of these discs had in common. Three dirty letters: WEA. It seems discs manufactured by WEA are different, and not in a good way. Most solutions for difficult to rip CDs centre around using old optical drives. It seems more recent hardware just can't cope with some discs, and for my laptop, as with many others, this meant WEA discs.

Today, most people seem to have abandoned optical drives and CDs (one colleague recently said: "Who buys CDs in this day and age?"). Not being 'most people' means there are bargains for the rest of us. I was able to find an old Sony USB optical drive on eBay for just a few pounds.

As soon as the new drive arrived I plugged it in, threw in a copy of Madonna's "Music" and watched it spit the disc out like it was poison. Next I tried David Gray's "White Ladder" and Windows Media Player crashed as soon as the drive span up. When I tried my nemesis "Minor Earth Major Sky" the drive disappeared from explorer and Windows crashed without so much as spinning up the disc.

In order to eliminate the laptop as the source of the issue I plugged the drive into my work laptop. As the disc began to spin I noticed the laptop was not only reading the disc, it was actually playing the audio! With lightning speed I hit "Rip CD" and crossed everything. Immediately Windows put up the shutters. My work machine is obviously configured not to allow ripping. Foiled again.

Recently I was working on my laptop whilst simultaneously trying to keep one of my children entertained. In desperation I picked up an old netbook I had lying around the office and gave it to her. It took a minute or to for the light bulb moment to happen but when it did, it triggered intense negotiations to retrieve the netbook and convince a two year old that Peppa Pig wasn't as important as ripping CDs.

In hope rather than expectation I plugged in the optical drive and fired up Media Player. With trembling hands I placed HARD-Fi's "Starts of CCTV" into the drawer and pushed it closed. Yes,it read the disc and started to play it; but I'd been this close before. However, when I clicked "Rip CD" this time... it did. Not only did it rip this CD but it also devoured David Gray, breezed through Madonna, didn't even pause on ripping New Order and Prince was a push over. This just left 'the big one', the most difficult to rip of them all: "Minor Earth Major Sky". At first the CD span but didn't play and then the first track ripped but it then returned an error and the drive dropped off the list of available devices. Damn you Morten Harkett.

Yes, repeating the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is insanity; but I decided to restart, plug the drive back in and try again. I was not going to be beaten by an eighteen year old CD. And I'm pleased to say that I wasn't beaten, second time around the CD ripped without so much as a murmur of protest.

So, I have finally ripped all of the discs that were giving me trouble and am now about half way through ripping my CD collection. So if you will excuse me I'm about to pull box number 12 off the shelf and get stuck in.

Oh, and if you know of anyone who would like to buy a copy of aha's "Minor Earth Major Sky" do let me know.

Watch your bass bins I'm tellin' ya

Recently I wanted to wanted to rip some CDs that had pesky copy protection. In the past I achieved this by taking a digital optical signal from a CD player into my PC; easy. However, 2018 found me bereft of any kind of CD player, a situation that I found surprising and a little alarming. I began to reminisce about all of the CD players I have known over the years and felt a desire to own another. Thus, I set out to find a cheap but reliable CD player with a optical output.

I managed to buy a fairly run of the mill Sony CDP-XE370 (missing the remote control) on eBay for the princely sum of £10. It arrived after 2 days and works fine - in fact, it's quite a nice sounding machine. The internet suggests this model harks back to 2001 and is capable of playing MP3 data - a good find it would seem.

Inspired by this success, I have resolved to build a Hi-Fi separates system for another part of the house solely from eBay. I have a tiny budget (I have challenged myself to not go into 3 figures) but absolutely no time limit.

Barn fresh and bashed up

To start to my 'cheapo separates challenge' I have cheated a little. I remembered that there was a pair of Jamo speakers in the loft that would get the ball rolling. Whilst a pair of vintage D115 cabinets aren't exactly the top of the food chain when it comes to speakers, they would suffice for my needs. However, when I pulled the speakers down into the light of day it appeared that 3 of the 6 cones had become bashed in over the years. Vintage Hi-Fi was obviously going to come with some maintenance obligations.

I have a distant memory of squashing the cones on my father's Acoustic Research speakers sometime in the late 70's. Surprisingly I don't remember getting a whack around the head or him being particularly angry. I do however remember him pushing a pin into the tweeters in an attempt to pull out the dent. This strategy did pull out the dent, but it also left an ugly hole in a very expensive and beautiful speaker. Thus, when I found these speakers I went straight to Google for solutions and not the sewing kit.

The first suggested remedy was to place a cardboard tube (say the inside of a kitchen or toilet roll) over the dent and suck the dent out. Needless to say, I didn't try this. Second option was to stick adhesive tape to the cone and pull the dent out. This method involves rubbing a pencil over the tape to ensure it has sufficient adhesion to the cone and then pull the dent out. With no pencil to hand I grabbed one of the many crayons lying around the office (the children play in there you understand, I am allowed to handle sharp objects) and got to work. Much to my surprise the first pull resulted in a 50% improvement and with a little careful application I was able to pull the whole of the first dent out. The much thinner, paper cone of the mid speaker did suffer some surface damage from the tape, but the dent was also fully removed. The second speaker responded well to treatment and after about 20 minutes work all of the dents were pulled out.

Repaired and ready: the first part of the cheapo separates challenge

Now 20 years in the loft haven't done much for the looks of these speakers and some cleaning and minor repairs were required. I managed to find a permanent black marker in the same shade of black as the cabinets and touched up all of the blemishes that exposed the underlying fibreboard. I then pulled the plastic exhausts and had a good clean inside. All of the wiring and solders seemed good and once the dust covers were back on, these old Danish warriors (these are vintage speakers predating the switch to production in China) were beginning to look serviceable.

The only test that remains is to actually play something through them. I will be interested to see how they sound - not having listened to them for 20 years (I am making an assumption that they will work as there isn't much to go wrong with them).

Front by front

Front Line Assembly had initially come to my attention in 1993 through a compilation called "Hot Wired Montertrux". I was already a fan of similar "Industrial" bands so it was no wonder that the sound of "Provision" (presented in it's '12" Version') caught my ear. I managed to locate a copy of "Caustic Grip" in my local Virgin Megastore and enjoyed it. However, following this first flush of success, I never saw a FLA release on the shelves again. As a consequence, my initial interest withered on the vine: back in the day it was very hard to follow a band if you couldn't physically buy their records.

A few years passed until one day I happened upon a copy of "Artificial Soldier" in a record store. Suddenly my interest in Canada's second best band was rekindled. I then acquired the majority of the FLA back catalogue as mp3 files (we will gloss over how I acquired these recordings) and albums such as "Implode" and "Epitaph" really caught my ear. I soon found I had developed a desire to correctly tag and complete my new FLA mp3 collection (it still boggles my mind how lazy some people are in tagging their mp3s). In the past I have commented on how difficult it has been to walk the minefield of Gary Numan's back catalogue and that without a literary guide I would have floundered. Well, the same can be said of the monster that is the FLA recording history. Without the excellent www.mindphaser.com I would have been in a real mess. The information contained in Mindphaser allowed me to identify which files I was missing and catalogue them correctly

However, as time has worn on I have become dissatisfied with fantastic albums such as "Rewind" being represented by 128 kbps mp3 files in my music collection. I wanted to listen to CDs of these albums and to rip 320 kbps files. In buying CDs I would be able to listen to better quality rips but also be sure I was tagging the correct versions of songs.

Having resolved to amass the FLA back catalogue on CD, it dawned on me that I had created quite a challenge. As I suggested earlier, getting my hands on FLA releases has always been difficult and the majority of their CDs aren't being pressed any more. Thus, I had to begin by scouring eBay and managed to score some bargains. Encouraged by this early success I searched Discogs and acquired a number of singles and a few of the more elusive discs; but at a price. I've even had a few second hand bargains from Amazon. At present I only have a handful of albums left to find, but as the number of easy wins mount, scarce early albums such as "State of Mind" and "The Initial Command" seem to become evermore elusive.

It's been fun trying to score these FLA CDs and completing the collection on a shoestring budget is definitely an achievable goal. As an avid Pet Shop Boys collector I have reached a certain point many people must hit where I have 'most' things and only rarities that belong in the 'serious money' bracket elude me. I've never paid a four figure sum for a record and don't intend on starting now. Thus collecting FLA CDs fulfils my desire to hoard collect music and ensures my children still have food on the table.