Frigid Stars

A lot of my listening this year has been bands from the late 80s or early 90s who had records out on Sub Pop. I set myself a goal to collect the first 200 Sub Pop releases (many of which I already had) and so far it has been an exciting journey, discovering lots of records and bands that I had effectively ignored for decades. As part of this journey I added records to my discogs want list and started listening to songs on youtube for the records that seemed harder to find, and that's how I ended up stumbling across Codeine.

Well, that's not quite true. I was vaguely aware of Codeine because they have a song called 'Cave In', which was covered by the band Cave In, and is the source of the band's name. Given how much I love Cave In (the band) and enjoyed their cover of 'Cave In' (the song), I figured Codeine worth chcking out. So I downloaded the 'Frigid Stars' LP and within a couple of days it became an obsession, with my listening to nothing else for about 3 weeks.

When it came to buying a copy, I was faced with the choice of an original pressing on black vinyl for £80, or a colour vinyl repress for £15. I went with the repress option. If the original press had been on colour, I probably would have shelled out the money. But spending big on black vinyl european pressing with a slightly worn sleeve just didn't make sense to me. I guess I'm finally starting to understand the appeal of the concept of represses after all. And let's be honest, the colour of vinyl for this seems pretty well suited to the artwork.

The word associated with this band's style seems to be 'slowcore'. Whilst I'm not sure I have ever heard that term used previously, it seems kinda apt. The sound is kind of slow yet brooding, and both soft and quiet as well as being heavy and loud. Yup, that sounds like a total clusterfuck description, but I have no other reference points. Turn down the lights, whack this on and lay there. It's somehow incredibly calming, despite being noisy.

Even though this record is now 30 years old, having been originally released in 1993, this is without doubt my second favourite record of the year so far. Who needs new releases when there is an almost infinite supply of old stuff that I have never heard before? Fortunately there are more records in the Codeine catalogue that I can look forward to investigating in the future. But for now I'm happy to keep playing this one on an almost daily basis.