Live At The BBC

My last post was about the 25th anniversary deluxe box set pressing of Cave In's 'Jupiter', for which I went out of my way to acquire a clear vinyl copy. As I mentioned, Relapse always (and have for years) make 100 copies of every release on clear vinyl which are not for sale to the public. They are only for friends of the band and label. And especially these days, when Relapse use my least favourite pressing plant for everything they put out, the clear is the only colour that I find acceptable to own. Well anyway, I ended up picking up a few Relapse releases on clear vinyl from the same person, and I will put these up in my next few posts.

About a year ago, Relapse put out a Cave In 12" of songs recorded live at the BBC's Maida Vale studio over here in London back in 2022. I used to try to collect every version of every Cave In record, but given the way record pressing works these days, I have given that up, and now only want one copy of any new Cave In record. So I knew that the only colour I would entertain buying for this record would be the clear vinyl version.

On reflection, I would say that this record is for diehard Cave In fans only. In all honesty it is largely pointless, as it features four songs from the last album ('Heavy Pendulum') and the band is so tight that the songs all sound pretty much identical to the album versions. OK, so the songs may have been played live, but I can't really tell the difference, which means I have basically just bought 4 songs that I already have again on a different plastic disc. Still, at least I have the raret version.

Relapse also released a similar Coalesce 12" last year, although the songs are much older, having been recorded when the band were over here on tour in 2009. Recorded at the same BBC Maida Vale studio, this 12" also features four songs that were all on either their 'Ox' LP or the accompanying 'Ox EP' (both released in 2009)... and just like Cave In, the band is so tight that these 'live' songs sound exactly the same as the album versions.

This record is somehow patterned, although I have no idea how it is done, but it looks really cool. It barely shows in the photo above, so I decided to try to take a photo to show it. It wasn't easy to capture, but here we go:

I can't even work out which side of the record this pattern is on. I think it is on the back, although when I flip the record over it isn't visible at all, which makes me wonder whether it is somehow on the front.

Anyway, there we have it - two nice looking but largely pointless records from two of the three mid/late 90s 'C' bands (the other being Converge of course). If nothing else, this reminded me of just how good Coalease were / are. I always thought that they were by far the best 'C' band, and this brought me right back to spinning them regularly as it had been a while. More to follow on that note in the next post...