The death of the physical single

Things change. Music has moved on. The days when an artists released their singles as physical discs are almost at an end. And it upsets me greatly.

I have collected records by the Pet Shop Boys for 25 years and their singles have always been important epochs for me. Every release evokes a memory or is associated with a person, a place or a point in time. I still recall the thrill of going into a record store the week after a single was released to buy the Remix 12" ('It's Alright' and 'So Hard' stick out for some reason). Import singles were like some magical exotica with different covers and remixes that always cost far too much. I still marvel at the cover of the 'DJ Culture' 12" and the double sleeve edition of 'Suburbia' is a work of art that I treasure. In short, it isn't just about the music these discs contain; it is also the experience of owning and buying them.

The fact that Neil and Chris had to persuade EMI to release a physical disc of 'Winner' is a stark contrast to the myriad of single formats that were being released  in the late 80's. We are losing an art form and the soulless click of a mouse on iTunes or amazon doesn't feel anything like walking in to Our Price and seeing a display stand bursting with shiny new 12" singles.

Yes, vinyl and CD singles are not totally dead, but they are on the endangered species list. I for one, will miss them more than I ever thought I would.

Into the blue: a loved track

OK. So what happened in 2005 that was so important? Pope John-Paul II died. Tony Blair was returned as Prime Minister. The Live 8 concerts were held. Some wacko surgeons in France performed the first face transplant and we decided to put Saddam Hussein on trial. Strangely none of these events have left a mark on me and never enter my daily life. So if nothing of extreme importance happened to me in this year, why in the name of God did I miss the release of the Heaven 17 album “Before After”?

You may find this a curious statement; so let me explain.

I like music, more specifically I love electronic music and I adore good electronic music above almost anything else. I have ‘loved’ 123 tracks on last.fm and they are all worthy of this accolade. However, few are more admirable than the 124th and latest selection: “Into The Blue” by Heaven 17. Whilst this track was released 7 years ago, I only heard it in the last few weeks and I can't explain why this should be.

Martyn and Glenn. Nobody is sure where Ian is.

Heaven 17 were always The Human League’s weirder half brothers and nobody pretends they sold anything like the same number of records. But then they never really set out to be especially commercial. Heaven 17 seemed to record the music they liked and waited for the rest of the world to catch up. Like many others I never really did catch up and left them behind in the early 90’s – dance music exploded and I got lost in 'The White Room'.

In the new millennium I delved into the electronic music that influenced me and the dance music I had become enamoured with. Yet Heaven 17's more recent work seem to have remain at arms length and “Before After” went un-purchased. It turns out it was my loss.

A recent buying spree (yes, CD’s not mp3s) saw me purchase the missing albums from Heaven 17's back catalogue. Ironically, the album "Before After" consists largely of dance music that sounds ten years out of date for 2005 but is actually pretty damn good when I put my rose tinted spectacles on in 2012. There are many good tracks on this album but I am consistently drawn to “Into the Blue” like a moth to a flame. It's difficult to define what draws us to one song in particular. I'm sure some will listen to the track and wonder why I would become so obsessed by it. I could see why you may think it is a one trick pony and is nothing without Glenn's sampled "doo wap" refrain. But I don't care: it's my new "You Grow More Beautiful". Bliss.

Good but not gold

Some posts are easy; they just seem to write themselves. You get a thought in your head and it simply flows onto the screen. This isn't one of those posts.

Opinions amongst Pet Shop Boys fans regarding the new single `Winner` are divided. Initial reactions labelled the song `worthless chart fodder` and a shameless Olympics cash in. Others have pronounced the song to be ‘soaring’ or even ethereal. Yet almost everyone agrees that it isn’t the sort of track one would normally expect for a ‘first single’ from a new album. Winner is not a dance track and is more akin to ‘Home and Dry’ (I just hope to god the album won’t be like Release).

The first thought I had when listening to the track was ‘This is a shameless tie in for the Olympics’. Like others who have posted on the internet I can already hear it playing during a BBC Olympics montage and I’m not entirely comfortable with that. It’s one thing to find your song used on such occasions but to write a song almost for this purpose seems a bit cheap. Maybe its just coincidence that Neil and Chris wrote this song and decided it would be fun to release it at this time. Who knows?

I like the song but also think that it makes a poor choice as a ‘first single’. At the end of the day the ‘Olympics tie in’ aspect of its release leaves me somewhat repulsed and smacks of a commercialism that I wouldn’t normally associate with PSB.

Chip off the old block

I really don’t know what to make of Hot Chip. When I first heard “And I Was a boy from School” I thought I had found my new electronic music gods (if gods can be quirky geeks). With 2008’s “Made in the dark” I was sure the band had ‘come of age’ and that such a strong album would open doors. I even heard ‘Ready for the floor’ played on mainstream, daytime radio; heady days.

“One Life Stand” was good, but didn’t move them on either artistically or commercially; it sounded less cohesive and left me feeling a tad disappointed. Alexis Taylor’s solo album stunk higher than a kipper left out in the sun and anything labelled “Hot Chip Remix” is best approached with caution (but never as bad as a Caribou remix admittedly).

Thus I feared their latest offering “In Our Heads” could signal Hot Chip’s slide down the league of mediocrity into the relegation slots Simian Mobile Disco are intent on inhabiting. But the opening track “Motion Sickness” soon dispels the fear that the album is a complete loss. Alexis’s reassuring vocal floats over a kind of electronic soul track that is both eclectic and mesmerising (they even manage to throw in some 303 style acid riffs). The house tinged “How Do You Do?” sounds like it has been beamed in from 1988 via a Mylo remix. There is a smattering of duff tracks whose inclusion makes me wonder if their presence is simply to offer a blinding contrast to wonderful songs such as “Flutes” and the truly sublime “Let Me Be Him”. So a mixed bag, but ultimately one worth investing both time and money into.

It seems Hot Chip albums will never be consistent, but the highs far out weigh the lows. It will just take their record companies longer to generate that retrospective “Best of” compilation.

I came across a cache of old photos (well CD's actually)

The sheer volume of music I own means that sometimes I forget what I have. This might sound a bit strange, but it also means when you dig out a dusty CD box you can find a hidden treasure.

Whilst digging through The Beatles back catalogue, I unearthed a CD that I remember buying (for the confusing sum of £12.79) from an MVC store (remember them?) back in the 1990’s. Beck’s “Odelay” was purchased because I liked “Devils Haircut” I think, or maybe I was confused and thought “Loser” was on it; I don’t remember. However, I do remember not taking a liking to the album much and after playing it once or twice it went into storage for 16 years.

I decided to rip “Odelay” onto my hard drive and check it out; I’m glad I did. Maybe I have fallen behind massively (yes, I know I have) but this album sounds really fresh and contemporary to me. The majority of the tracks are interesting in their arrangements but there is also a greater depth to the song writing than the sampled loops and random noises might suggest. Tracks such as “Jackass” and “Hotwax” are surprisingly catchy and stand up to repeated listening. “The New Pollution” “Devils Haircut” were obvious stand out tracks / singles which are complimented by the more experimental sounds of “Where it’s at” and “Derelict”. Unfortunately Beck shifts into a poor pastiche of The Beastie Boys on occasions (“Novocaine” especially), but when you consider the album is produced by The Dust Brothers its no surprise. On the whole I’m really glad I unearthed this CD and recommend you revisit it should you own it.

Simian Mobile Disco do it again

Never has the phrase "Throw the baby out with the dish water" been so aptly displayed than in the recent output of Simian Mobile Disco. 

OK I get the whole 'change of direction' mid career crisis their extensive DJ sets have brought about; but why forget the tunes? The first two albums we full of cutting edge electronica coupled with slightly more pop orientated vocal work that made for a varied and entertaining package. 

This new album 'Unpatterns' is another techno driven dirge that doesn't really go anywhere. Like last years 'Delicacies' offering, this new album lacks the innovation of Underworld and has none of the melody of The Chemical Brothers work. This album's focus is so tightly set on the dance floor that its entertainment value is somewhat limited. Don't get me wrong, I love listening to dance music in all kinds of environments, just not dull boring dance music.

CD Rot

A few weeks ago I wrote about the idea of buying music largely as mp3's rather than in any physical format. I am failing miserably in this endeavour as the ever growing pile of amazon packages my postman is delivering testify. 

 

Now, the idiocy of my expanding CD collection is no longer solely limited to lack of space. I have begun to encounter the first incidence of what I think is CD rot in my collection. On opening up an Eurythmics CD I must have bought sometime in the late 80's, I noticed it had a distinct brown/copper tinge that I do not remember it having. I can find no pictures of the actual CD of this release on the net and am slowly convinced it is succumbing to bronzing. The disc does have a tendency to produce read errors but is also scratched a little so I can't identify if the problem is the scratches or the presumed bronzing. 

Either way the CD is easily replaced and is not especially significant. However, if one day I open up the cupboard and find a few hundred CD's unreadable and brown, I am not going to be impressed. If these discs are bronzing because of a known manufacturing error should the record company not offer us recompense? Faulty workmanship of any other sort would demand redress.

Whilst a blown hard drive may wipe out my music collection, I can at least make multiple copies of my music to offer some sort of safety net. If my CD's rot and become unplayable I am stuffed. This digital collection idea makes increasing sense. Anyway must go. Postman is at the door with a package from amazon.