This Is A Cave In

Back in September last year, Hydrahead Records announced that it was going to close down. For a lot of people, me included, it was a shock and a bit of a sad moment. I somehow latched onto the label in it's very early days and I bought everything they released religiously. Well, up to about 2005 or so, and then I lost interest. A lot of the stuff they released these last few years just wasn't grabbing my attention. Plus, with the label growing in popularity, it was impossible to get any of the records. They would sell out at insane speeds. So I lost touch and kinda gave up. But I was still very sad to hear that they felt there was no option but to close their doors and shut up shop.

Well, this announcement seemed to generate a lot of sympathy, love and support from people wanting to help. And given that the label's problems seem to be mainly financial, this meant people buying shit. To help, the label put lots of stuff up for sale. The highlight was a lot containing a test press of every record they had released, which was up for $3,333. I did some quick maths and thought that this was a good deal, so decided to buy it, only to then realise that someone else had already bought it. Ah well. So instead I bought two Cave In tests.

The first is a test for the 'Anomolies Volume One' 12". This comes in a plain white sleeve and is numbered out of 30 copies.

The second is the 'Planets Of Old' 12" that came out about three years ago. This one comes in a sleeve with a robot on the front. Hydrahead must have made up loads of these sleeves and used them for every test press over a four year period or so.

I like how the back cover shows some Hydrahead hippy stuffing test pressings into the robot sleeve. Funny.

OK, so these are pretty low down the chart of cool Cave In 12"s, but I guess that's why they were available. I did stumble across some ebay auctions for Cave In LPs last week, including 'Jupiter'. I emailed the seller to see if we could work out a deal for the lot. By the time I had sent my message, someone else had bought them all. They must have spent about $1500 in one go. Damn.