I ♥ Porn

So I saw the Dwarves play a couple of years ago and it helped remind me just how good they are. I hadn't been interested in them for a long time, but the live show made me want to check out if there were many records that I had missed over the years. Well, yup, there were a few. But there was one I wanted more than the others, because it has what may possibly be THE most offensive front cover of all time.

As a cool bonus, the label packaged it in a brown paper bag. Because back before the internet when you actually had to venture outside of your house to buy sketchy porn, that's how they used to package it... er, apparently.

So here's the cover of the record. I've made the photo nice and big so you can really drink it in for a few minutes.

The cover model is a lady called Malice McMunn. She seems to be the go to 'punk' model. Her day job (that she probably performs at night) is stripper, so she's probably comfortable taking her clothes off. And in case you were looking at other things in the photo, you may not have noticed that she has a dildo in the shape of a crucifix in one hand, and a Dwarves LP in the other. Otherwise known as the perfect ingredients for a top night at home.

The record itself is a split pink and yellow vinyl etched disc. This is the first press of 250, and the most limited version.

The record contains a live recording of some songs that were performed on some Estonian radio station. So it's a kind of compilation of hits from different eras. There are also two songs performed by fans tagged on the end, which was an opportunity the band offered as some kind of competition. Kinda cool if you were the winning fans I guess.

After the first pressing they changed the cover of this to something a little less 'in your face'. I'm tempted to pick one up although it's not quite as interesting as this version, so don't get yourself too excited.

A Game That No One Wins

When I picked up the Stages Of Faith LP a couple of weeks ago, I also picked up the debut full length by another UK band at the same time. The band is called GAME and the album is called 'No One Wins'.

Even though it was released by Quality Control HQ, I opted to buy the US pressing which is on Beach Impediment Records. The UK pressing is on red vinyl, which undoubtedly suits the artwork better. But the US white vinyl is more limited. So I went with the limited pressing rather than the one which looks best. I think this is just the way that I have learnt to play the game. It's about buying what is available while you have the chance, rather than buying what you want, right?

Game features Ola on vocals. She owns / runs Quality Control HQ and is also plays guitar in Arms Race. She's Polish, and half of these songs are sung in her native tongue, which somehow makes them sound heavier and crazier, if impossible to sing along to.

My opinion of this one has been a bit up and down. I played a song online and loved it, but then when the record turned up I played it and thought it was too 'noisy' and it was too much. But then I put it on in the gym and it seemed like the perfect soundtrack. Overall it's fast, noisy, hectic and angry hardcore punk which, if anything, sounds to me like Japanese stuff. I bet this band smokes live. Hopefully I will somehow get to see them at some point.

Title Fight Blues

Today's post is a story about confusion, forgetfulness, good friends and good fortune all coming together. It's quite interesting, if you can be bothered to read it...

So Title Fight released a 7" called 'Spring Songs' on Revelation back in 2013 (I seriously cannot believe it was six years ago!!!). It initially came out on two different orange vinyl variants. Then a year or so later, it got repressed on blue vinyl. Now, this was around the time that I lost a bunch of records in the mail and then gave up with Revelation's endless colour repress game. So I missed out on the blue vinyl completely. But earlier this year, following on from my visit to RevHQ last summer, I got the Rev bug again and decided that I wanted to fill in some of the holes I had missed over the past three years. So I picked up a few bits, including a blue vinyl Title Fight 7". It looks like this:

I bought this copy in about March this year from RevHQ. It comes with a green paper insert (the relevance of which will become apparent shortly).

Well anyway, recently I was tidying some records up off the floor, and I went to put this 7" in a box... at which point I discovered that I did actually have a blue vinyl copy of this 7" in my collection after all. I have absolutely zero memory of buying it, although I did manage to find it on this blog post. According to the Rev discography, 2014 was the date of the first time that this was pressed on blue vinyl, so I am assuming that this copy I picked up and forgot about is from the first blue vinyl pressing. It comes with a pink paper insert. So at this point I had two blue vinyl copies, shown together in this photo:

I also knew that there had been other pressings on blue vinyl, although I had no idea how many, nor how many were different colour variants. There seemed to have been so many that I had lost track (and interest). But all of a sudden I had a strange desire to try to collect the set, which meant that I needed to try to figure it all out.

Then I had a stroke of good fortune. I can't remember how the subject came up, but Nico mentioned that he had some doubles, and agreed to send them to me. We didn't even try o work out which ones I had and which I needed. He just sent me a parcel, and inside were three different 7"s. He was also good enough to label them, so I knew which order they were pressed in. All three have a pink insert. Here they are in order:

By total coincidence, none of these three matched the two I already had. One was a close vinyl colour, but it had a different colour insert, which showed that it was a different pressing. So all of a sudden I had 5 different versions, and 5 different shades of blue. Nico has been monitoring the pressings of this record much more closely than I, and he tells me that I have a complete set. If this is the case then I am pretty happy, as it could have taken much longer to figure out what I was missing and then track them down.

To finish, here's a couple of photos showing all five copies together...

This first photo shows the three that Nico sent me on the top row, with the two I already had on the bottom:

And finally, this photo shows all 5 variants in the order that they were pressed... or at least, I think it does, although I may have got confused as this isn't exactly easy to keep track of.

The Rev discography now says that this has been repressed on red vinyl, so I'll probably be adding another copy to my box at some point.

Tørsö

I have been pretty bad at this blog this year. Not as bad as last year, but I have been pretty ineffective at keeping up. I mean, I bought a couple of Tørsö records back in the first three months of the year, but somehow here I am only getting around to posting them in October.

I first heard of Tørsö because they signed to Revelation. Obviously, I am duty bound to check out any band that Rev signs. I listened online and was quite into it. I can't remember exactly when Rev released the new 7", but in advance of that I picked up the band's debut full length, 'Sono Pronta A Morire' (which translates as 'I'm Ready To Die'). It was released by an Italian label, and they still had some of the 200 copies that were pressed on flourescent yellow vinyl.

I think I picked this up in January. I even took the photos of it back then, but didn't post it because I thought I would wait until I had the 7" to post at the same time. Anyway, I didn't quite get into this LP, due mainly to the sound quality, as it just sounds a bit flat to me.

I'm not sure exactly when it was, but I think it was during March, that I picked up the 'Build And Break' 7" that Rev put out. Naturally I scooped both colours. According to Rev's pressing info, there were 300 on opaque (which is really clear) pink vinyl, and 880 on opaque green vinyl.

Again, I think I took photos of these 7"s months ago, but the reason I didn't make the post was because the photos came out badly. The colour was washed out, so I tried again with the same result. Then Summer happened and I had other records and those seemed easier and more interesting to deal with. I figured I would get to these records eventually, and I suppose I was right.

Around the time that I was planning to write this post, a few weeks back a second pressing of the 7" was announced, so I ordered one of those too. There are 770 copies on opaque yellow vinyl. Seems an apt colour for a Rev release.

I took a pic showing all three copies together, which if anything is interesting because it shows that the pink is definitely clear, not opaque.

This 7" is much stronger than the LP, and I would urge anyone who hasn't heard this band to check this record out. The song 'Grab A Shovel' is my favourite and well worth one minute and fifty nine seconds of your time.

I don't have much else to say. But I'm kinda puzzled as to how this year seems to have passed quicker than any other I can remember. Seems only a couple of weeks ago I was ordering the LP, yet somehow it was nine months ago. Crazy.

Stages In Faith

Remember the days when this blog was almost up to date and would feature new releases that were hot off the press? Yeah, me neither. But every once in a while when the planets align, I somehow manage to get something new and get it up here pretty quickly.

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Quality Control HQ telling me about their newest release by a band called STAGES IN FAITH. I'd seen the name about a bit recently, but for some reason on this occasion I decided that I would check them out. I think I'd read something at some point that described their sound and made it sound like something that I would be interested in. So I clicked the link and listened to the album streaming on bandcamp, and then about ten minutes into it I was ordering a copy.

This is right up my street as it sounds like it has just time warped in straight from the 90s. The first song reminds me a lot like the first Farside 7". Other songs remind me of an older UK band Understand, and the more recent UK band Fade. All bands that I love, and enjoy singing along to all these years later (although Fade was pretty recent so that last bit doesn't quite fit).

Well, the first time I played this I thought that the sound was a bit 'fuzzy'. It kinda sounded like it had been recorded under water or somrthing, and it slightly bummed me out. But a couple of plays later and I wasn't hearing that anymore and started to really enjoy the songs. Right now this is my daily addiction. I'm listening twice a day and trying to stop there as I'm already worried I'm going to overplay and get bored of it.

There are two colours of this LP available. I picked up the 'cream' which is the more limited of the two, but it also comes on purple. As I type this both colours are still available here, in case you may be interested.

It's also pretty cool that this band is from the UK. It means I might actually get to see them play at some point...

More Gameface

So it's funny how things work sometimes. You don't pick up any records by a certain band for years, then a few come along at once. After picking up two Gameface LP test pressings, another couple of records nice Gameface records ended up coming my way.

First up is a test press of the band's debut LP 'Good' which originally came out on Network Sound records in 1993. Sadly I didn't manage to score an original test press, but instead this is a test of the reissue put out by a label called Smartpunk in 2015. They pressed it on color vinyl for the first time, but I was trying to avoid repressings so didn't pick one up. I wasn't even overly fussed about this test press, until I saw the cover that is, and then I really wanted it.

Pretty cool huh?

This next photo shows the test cover next to the original, regular cover.

I figure I have pretty much zero chance of ever getting a test press of the original first pressing of this LP, so this reissue is an acceptable substitute.

The next record is a much more recent release. The 'IOU1' 7" was put out this year by Revelation for Record Store Day. There were 545 copies made on yellow vinyl, and approximately none of them came to the UK. However, 40 copies made their way to Japan, and were sold with a special sleeve. They were then sold in one store in Japan, so pretty much impossible to get for anyone in the UK. So I was pretty stoked to get one.

In the photos of this that were floating around on instagram it looked like this 7" came with an obi-strip. Howeever, after receiving this in real life it turns out that the obi-strip isn't really an obi-strip at all. It's more just a flap:

See what I mean?

The 'flap' is attached to a back cover which is basically a complete replica of the normal back cover, except for the fact that this one has a white space in the bottom right corner.

The white space looks like it is designed for a number to be written, but it's completely blank. So now I'm wondering whether any of them were numbered, or none. I haven't actually seen a photo of one anywhere so I don't know. If anyone knows please let me know.