Gypsy Giant's Despair LP Deluxe Edition

I'm always going on about how I am out of touch with new bands. I can't help being old and I can't help not having as much time as I would like to listen to music. However, as bad as I am at keeping up these days, there are still times when I'm proud to remain one step ahead of the crowd and get in early. Here's one of these increasingly rare examples.

Back in August 2009 I got the debut 7" by a band called GYPSY and I liked it alot. At some point in the last couple of years there was mention of an upcoming LP. Then one day in early January this year I got an email from Six Feet Under Records announcing that the Gypsy LP was available for pre-order. I didn't hesitate for a second. Even better, it mentioned that there was a deluxe edition of 50 copies available, so I wasted no time in adding one to my cart and checking the fuck out quicksmart. Four months later it landed on my doorstep.

First observation - the artwork is a bit 'different'. There is no writing anywhere other than on the spine of the jacket, and the rest of the gatefold jacket is taken up by photos of a young girl surrounded by / playing with a bunch of dreamcatchers.

This 'deluxe edition' is out of 75 copies (although only 50 were sold to nobodies like me, the remaining 25 were distributed amongst the label and band). There are two things that differentiate this version to the regular version. Firstly, the vinyl colour - this version is on pink vinyl (other colours are lavendar and white).

Interestingly, the other differentiator is that this version also comes with one of the dreamcatchers used for the photoshoot. Quite a gimmick I'm sure you will agree. At first I thought that this was pointless, but now I think it's kinda cool just because it's something different. Not an easy item to store though, as I can't really put it in the record sleeve. File under mildly irritating.

My assessment of the LP to date is like this - Day 1, listen to it twice, find it a bit dull and samey & struggle to get through the damn thing. Day 2, listen to it two more times, still find it a bit samey, not particularly excited by it. Day 3, start to find a couple of the songs catchy, and end up playing it about 5 times. Go to bed looking forward to the morning when I can listen to it again. That's where I'm at so far.

So yeah, this is already showing signs of being a real grower. This to me sounds a lot like a beefed up Jawbreaker. Kind of like the vocals from Jawbreaker over Quicksand or Handsome guitars. Check this song (esp the riff that starts 13 seconds in) and I'm sure you'll see what I mean.

Barfight!

I've said it many times before, and I'll say it again... the only thing in life that I seem to have good luck with is records. Here's another recent example...

A few weeks ago I got home from some kind of evening out to find an email in my inbox from Six Feet Under Records. The email had been sent to everyone on their mailing list, and was announcing a super limited 12" re-press of the Barfight 7". SFU had pressed up 105 copies of this record as a one sided, clear vinyl 12" with silkscreened covers. The record was strictly for SFU mailing list customers, and you could only buy one. The email had arrived like an hour or more before I had got to it, so I figured I would have missed the chance to pick it up. But fortunately the record was still in the store. So I bought one. I then sent the link to a friend and advised him to buy one. Immediately he got back to tell me the link was to a blank page. So I clicked the link again myself to find that there was nothing there. Which of course meant that all 105 copies had been purchased. So I must have got one of the last few copies. If I had waited 5 minutes, I would have missed it. Which is, I'm sure you will agree, pretty damn lucky.

The only thing I wasn't into was how the cover is covered in some sticky brown shit. Then I read the SFU discography where it says "covers are silkscreened, stamped and sprayed with real blood". Nice.

For anyone who isn't familiar with this record, I thought I'd post up a pic of the original 7" on Malfunction Records for comparison purposes:

Whilst ordering, I did my usual trick of thinking that I should order some more records in order to justify the shipping charges. So I pre-ordered the latest SFU releases. In the past when I have pre-ordered from SFU, I have usually got the most common versions of things. But this time I did pretty well.

Dealing with them in alphabetical order, the first record is a 7" by a band called AS WE LET GO. I got one of the rarest colour, which is out of 104 copies and is described as "Coke Bottle Blue"... although, come on, did you ever see a Coke bottle that looked anything like this?

Since the band is Japanese, more than half of the 104 copies on this colour went to Japan. The band sounds very similar to early Blacklisted to me. Interestingly, the band sings in English and the dude doesn't sound in any way Japanese. I would seriously NEVER have guessed that this band wasn't from the States. I even went to the their myspace to check that they were really Japanese... haha! I'm into this 7". Definitely worth checking out if you are into stuff like this.

The next record, which is my favourite of the lot, is a 7" from a band called GYPSY. This has people in it from Blacklisted, Cold World and Let Down, but Gypsy sounds nothing like any of those bands. The SFU site compares them to Jawbreaker, Seaweed, which isn't far wrong, but this really reminds me of a band and I can't think of who it is, but it's bugging me a lot.

There are 50 copies on black/white mixed vinyl, and 100 copies on Black/Grey mixed vinyl. I'm pretty sure mine is one of the white/black ones, although if I flip it over it kinda looks more like grey/black:

The final record is a 7" by STREETWALKERS. Dunno how to describe this band. Reminds me of Some Kind Of Hate. I guess for most people that's a bad thing, but I like it. 204 copies on white vinyl.

The best thing about these records is that they all came with a download code so I could put them straight on my ipod without having to mess about ripping them. There's nothing better than buying records and not actually having to waste time playing them!

The Prodigal Son Brings... Records

Following on from the Search post, here are the other records I received as a part of the same trade deal. I'm putting them as a separate post as it somehow didn't feel right adding them to the end of the Search post.

This one's a funny one, but I saw a copy of the Mind Eraser 'The Prodigal Son Brings Death' 7" a few months ago on this particular colour of vinyl, and it made me wonder if I owned it. In my head I had three copies and this wasn't one of them. So I checked, and I was correct - I owned three colours, but not this particular colour. And I couldn't think why that was the case, given that I thought I owned pretty much everything from Youngblood. Well anyway, I then saw one for sale on ebay, and bid and won it. But somehow forgot to pay for it. And then I started negotiating a trade with the person who was selling it, so he just threw it in as a part of the trade deal, which was nice as it saved me some hard cash.

I'm not sure how to refer to this colour. It looks kinda brown, but when held up to the light it's more like gold with black swirls. Whatever. Anyway, it's a colour I didn't have, so I'm happy. Here's my updated lot of this one:

Now, I was happy with the trade right there. But dude was under the impression he still owed me more to make it an even trade. So to keep him happy in feeling that the trade was even, I happily accepted the offer of yet more versions of a couple of LPs I already own. Just because... well, you know. The first of the two is this clear & white vinyl version of the last Blacklisted LP, 'When People Grow, People Go'. I was into this LP when it came out a couple of years ago, and at the time I picked up the rarest colour, which just so happened to be the one that loooked the worst (benig a blue and pink swirl). I always thought that this white & clear version looked visually the most interesting, so figured I woud take one if it was being offered:

The second LP I got was this purple vinyl copy of the Gypsy LP:

It's funny how when I fist picked up the Gypsy LP when it was released in 2012 and a local shop had a couple of the colours, but I said back then that I didn't need more than one of this one. And now here I am adding a 4th copy to my collection, leaving only one that I don't have. You probably don't need to have special powers to predict how this story is going to turn out...

Count Your Blessings

My favourite record of 2012 was the Gypsy 'Giant's Despair' LP. So when Dave from Six Feet Under Records put a notice up on instagram a couple of months ago to say that he needed to raise some money, and invited offers for SFU Records rarities, there was only one record I was interested in. A Gypsy LP test press. Et voilà!

I think (but am not 100% sure) that the baby on the cover is Dave's daughter. And according to the SFU Discography, there are only 16 of these tests. I had to look this up because, rather surprisingly in this day and age, this is not numbered. And just like the regular version of the LP, there is no text anywhere on the cover. The only way to tell what this record this is is to check the labels.

The back of the sleeve is plain. It doesn't make for a great photo, but I figured you'd want to see it regardless.

I'm pretty stoked to have this test, especially as it's on colour vinyl and has a special sleeve. In theory I should be happy, right? But the thing is that when this LP came out, I figured that one copy was enough, whereas now that I have picked up a test, a part of me wants the other colours too. #neversatisfied

Current 'Peace Love' 7"

I picked this 7" up from Six Feet Under Records at the same time that I got the Gypsy LP, but it took me a couple of weeks to get around to listening to it as I was too addicted to the Gypsy LP to bother listening to anything else.

The funniest thing was that when I opened my package and this was in there I thought at first I had been sent a free 7" as I had no memory whatsoever of ordering it. But then I checked my paypal receipt and found that I had paid for it after all. I then spent a few minutes trying to figure out WHY I had ordered it. I mean, it didn't seem to have any kind of stand out feature. Nothing out of the ordinary to make me think 'god damn, I MUST order this one'. Well, I gave it a chance and in the end I'm glad I picked this up.

The front cover is interesting, although I can't look at this without thinking of Amy Winehouse. I think white is the most limited colour available too, out of 101 copies.

Talk about value for money. This 7" has nearly as many songs as an album and feels as long as one too.

I have found myself enjoying this and going back to it, although it's really hard to describe what it sounds like. The label's description says "sonically appealing to fans of everything from Burn to Quicksand to Bane to Modern Life Is War" which I would say is not far wrong, in that if you like most stuff then you'll no doubt find something you like here. One song even really sounds a lot like The Suicide File, which was one of my favourite bands of the last ten years. Dunno what else to say really, but I'd definitely buy an album if one came out.

Gypsy Hardcore

There are some records that you have no intention of collecting, but you kind of end up doing so. I can feel that this LP is now falling into that category. I just picked up this copy of the Gypsy 'Giant's Despair' LP on white vinyl. There were 680 copies on white, which is the most common colour that was made. However, only 35 came with a 'This Is Hardcore' stamp on the dust sleeve. So that makes this record both the most common and rarest version of this LP at the same time.

I started out with a pink vinyl pre-order copy and then picked up a test press, and now with this I have 3 copies. It's kinda pushing me towards trying to grab the other two colours too, although I'm not sure if I want to. I guess time will tell...

Unconditionally Dependent

Picking up Gypsy LPs seems to be a pretty regular thing for me these days. The last copy was the purple copy back in May. At the end of that post, I said this:

...here I am adding a 4th copy to my collection, leaving only one that I don't have. You probably don't need to have special powers to predict how this story is going to turn out...

The final copy I was missing was the teal vinyl version, which was the rarest colour after the pink vinyl 'delux' version. There were 108 copies of this one.

So that's that. Job done. So you know what happens next right? Yup, it's family photo time!

Shown in the picture are:

Pink vinyl (/75), Lavendar vinyl (/208), Teal vinyl (/108)
Pink vinyl test press (/16), White vinyl (/600, 35 of which have the 'This Is Hardcore' Stamp)

Technically I could also add a regular white copy to the collection without the TIH stamp, but I'm not going to go that far. So that's that. Gypsy LP collection done. Sleep well.

Your Favorite Trainwreck LP

Probably about two or so years ago I got some email from someone in the States asking me to review a split 7" featuring a band called Your Favorite Trainwreck. It did peak my interest a bit because the email said it featured the vocalists from Farside & Gameface, two bands that I enjoyed a lot when they were active. I think the email may have linked me to an mp3 or something. Dude seemed to have missed the point of what my blog was. I said I would feature the record if he actually sent me a record. He never did. A couple of years later and a full length has just dropped. I wasn't sure whether to bother with it, but after checking a couple of songs online and finding them better than I expected, I figured it was worth picking up.

I got this from RevHQ. It's not on Revelation, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was as bits of the packaging look just like Rev releases, such as the 'color vinyl' sticker and the Revelation logo on the back of the sleeve.

As much as I like this record, I think this is a poor example of a gatefold sleeve. Pictures of some random crap. I'm getting a massive deja-vu vibe from this but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is that this reminds me of.

After being initially unimpressed with this LP, I have since found myself playing it every day for the past week or two. Popeye from Farside takes lead vocal duties on a couple of songs, and the way I see it, his voice is/was Farside. So these songs may as well be Farside songs in my book. And given that Farside are one of my all time favourite bands, this is not a bad thing. Jeff Caudill also has a great voice, and the songs that he leads on are also good, and again, because of the vocal, just make me think of the later Gameface stuff. Ok, so there are a couple of songs that have keyboards in, and although these irritated me at first, I now barely notice. And as was the case with the Gypsy LP a couple of months ago, I can feel this LP still growing on me with every listen. At this rate it may well make my best of the year list, if I do one. It's just a shame about the record cover though, which is (by anyone's standards) pretty damn awful. Still, once I file it away I'll never have to see it again, so it's not too much of an issue.

War Hungry Bad Seed

ANother record I was given by Joey from 6131 Records, and this one was a surprise and totally caught me off guard.

Released in 2009, this is a split 7" between War Hungry and Bad Seed. This copy appears to be the most common version, out of 600 copies.

War Hungry I had previously heard. I picked up their album a long time ago, and I loved it from the word go. Back when this came out it would have been amazing, but hearing it all these eyars later and being very familiar with the LP, the War Hungry side is a slight letdown as it contains 2 songs from the album. Ah well.

The flipside of this is one song by Bad Seed, and it blew my mind. About 5 seconds in I was like 'Whoa! WHo the hell is this band?' and typing their name into discogs.

Turns out that Bad Seed were from Wilkes Berre, PA and existed from 2008-2010. In that time they put out a demo (which ended up being put out as a 7" by european label Control Records), a four song 7" on 6131, and this split 7". And that's it. They had 3 dudes in who were also in Title Fight, and someone else who was in Stick Together and Gypsy. To me this sounds like the hardcore Cold World stuff (i.e. without any of the hiphop influence) and I am desperate to hear more. How the hell did I miss out on this band for so many years? And why are their records seeminly relatively expensive to buy? I ghuess they few people who know about / remember this band realise how good they are. And even though I am late as fuck to the party here, I'm stoked to have heard this band now.

2012 Wrap Up

Now that 2012 is over, it's time to take a few minutes to reflect. It was a pretty good year for music and a good year for records. So just for fun and posterity, here are my top 5 lists.

(Note - there are a lot of links here. Each record title links to the original post on this blog, whereas the record label name links to the label's site in case you want to buy some records of your own)

Top 5 7"s of 2012

1. NO TOLERANCE 'No Remorse, No Tolerance' (Youngblood Records) - I saw this band play live this year, which really cemented them as one of my favourite bands. This 7" kills everything.

2. GIVE 7" trilogy - ok, so I'm cheating a bit, but the three Give 7"s are on constant rotation for me and it's impossible to pick one over the other two, so I'm choosing all three. Sue me.
'I Am Love' (Triple B Records)
'Flowerhead' (Youngblood Records)
'Petal Pushing' (Painkiller Records)

3. ROT IN HELL 'Termini Terrae' (Dark Empire Records) - just sneaking in at the end of the year, this marks a very welcome return for Rot In Hell with four 'next level' songs.

4. UNHOLY MAJESTY 'S/T' (A389 Records) - a 7" by a newer UK Holy Terror band, this 7" notched up a LOT of plays this year. Apparently there's an LP coming in 2013. Can't wait.

5. POWER TRIP 'S/T' (Lockin' Out Records) - if you'd have told me when I bought this that it would make my top 5, I would have said you were insane. But this one grows on me every time I play it & I'm pretty much playing this daily now, especially in the gym.

Top 5 LPs of 2012

1. GYPSY 'Giant's Despair' (Six Feet Under Records) - I was really looking forward to this LP, and it hit the spot immediately. I've played this loads this year and I show no signs of tiring of it. I only wish it were longer.

2. YOUR FAVORITE TRAINWRECK 'S/T' (Fortunate Son Records) - featuring Popeye from Farside and Jeff from Gameface, this was a slowburn at first but then I got hooked on a couple of songs, and now I know pretty much every word to it. Great record.

3. FIRE & ICE 'Not Of This Earth' (Reaper Records) - I was excited for this LP and it didn't disappoint at all. Great mosh inducing hardcore.

4. BOSTON STRANGLER 'S/T' (Fun With Smack Records) - THE most hyped record of the year (and decade), this did not disappoint at all. Love this.

5. DINOSAUR JR 'I Bet On Sky' (Jagjaguwar Records) - a new Dinosaur Jr album, and as usual it delivered. Great artwork too.

My Top 5 Pickups of 2012

1. The 'Ultimate Test Press Score' - I bought 13 test pressings from one person in one go, including five Revelation tests. This lot was sent in not 1, Not 2, but 3 separate packages.

2. UNITY 7" on blue - the first Wishingwell Records release, a killer record, and a long time want of mine. Done.

3. REASON TO BELIEVE LP Test Press - one of my all time favourite bands and albums, I was stoked to scoop a test press.

4. NO WARNING 'Suffer Survive' LP Test Press - I didn't listen to this album for years, but when I did listen I loved it. And fortunately, someone I knew just happened to be offloading a test press so I jumped all over it.

5. CAVE IN 'Jupiter' LP on clear - I've always loved Cave In, and this is the record of theirs I have played the most. The super rare clear vinyl copy appeared on eBay and I just had to take it.

Well, that pretty much sums up 2012 for me. Big thanks for anyone who continues to read this thing, and bigger thanks to those who comment. It's all about fun and communication, people. Here's to 2013...