Integrity Glow In The Dark Halloween records

Most of you probably either know about these records already. And if you don't then you're probably not interested. So I'm gonna keep this short...

In the run up to Halloween (which is a day I couldn't give a flying f*ck about), Organized Crime Records put up a pre-order for a special Integrity Halloween package. The contents were a secret. The idea was that if you liked Integrity then you just hand over some money to the label and you should theoretically receive something that you will like. Well, I thought about it for a few days, then paid the money... and then received an email telling me that the special package was all sold out. I then got a refund.

A couple of weeks later dudes started posting pictures of what they received and I was pretty gutted. The package contained some glow in the dark Integrity records. Damn it. There were only about 70 or 75 made, so I figured that I would have no intention but to turn to ebay at some point. But then, out of the blue, I got an email from a nice chap who I had met once before in real (non internet) life, telling me that he had got he package but wasn't actually too fussed about it, and telling me I could have it if I wanted. We tried to arrange a trade, but unfortunately I couldn't help him with anything he wanted, so in the end he just sold me the records for the same price he paid. Very generous indeed.

So here it is - the Integrity Halloween 2010 package. A mailer, t-shirt and two glow int he dark records:

And yes, they really do glow in the dark. It's not easy to get photos seeing as when you turn the lights off, the camera can't pick anything up. But after playing about I finally got a result. Here's the before, with the lights on:

And here's the after, with the lights off:

Cool huh?

Give 'Boots Of Faith' 7"

One of my favourite current bands right now is Give. They're one of those bands (everyone has their own) that, for some reason, you are instantly attracted to, and you find to be a bit different and a bit special. Sure, Give make good music (if you've never heard them, they sound a hella lot like Swiz), but there's something more to it than that. There's something about this band that I am really into that I can't necessarily describe. Something that made me like them before I had even heard any of their music. I thought about it a little, and it pretty much comes down to two things:

1. I like the artwork present on their records. Their first release was a 12" EP (which I still don't own), but when I first saw it I found the cover interesting and it made me want to hear the band. Here's the artwork from the 12":

Definitely interesting, isn't it?

2. Just like the artwork above, my initial impression of the band was (and still is) that they don't easily fit into any box that you may want to put them in. Again, this makes them interesting. It kinda suggests that they haven't gone about trying to sound like a particular band because it will make them popular. They're just doing what they're doing. Seems to me that this is pretty rare (and refreshing) these days.

Anyway, like I said, it's not easy to describe what I mean here. But suffice to say, this band has something a little different about them, and it excites me.

All of this guff is of course just a big pre-amble to me showing you a record that I acquired recently. The record in question is one of two 7"s that Give released towards the end of last year. The title of the record is 'Boots Of Faith', and it was released by Deranged Records. I decided that I wanted this record, but then I looked into placing an order from the label to get a colour copy, and realised that the shipping would cost me about two month's pay, so I subsequently decided that I didn't want it after all. What I did next was what I do best - I moaned about it. This time, I moaned to Doug about it in an email, and not long after he found a copy in a local record store and very kindly sent it to me in the mail. Perhaps I should moan more often (although I'm not sure that is technically possible, seeing as moan is pretty much all I do)?

I don't know how limited the purple vinyl is, but it's a nice colour as you can see. And if you want one, the label still has it listed in the store, although it'll cost you two bucks more than the black one, and you'll probably need to remortgage your house to pay the shipping (if you don't have a house then I suggest buying one, then remortgaging ASAP).

The other thing that I really like about this 7" is that it matches the 7" recently release by React! Records. Despite both records being released by different labels, it's as if they are part of a series - both have the same layouts, have big holes in the centre of the records, and contain two songs. Check these photos of the two side by side to see what I mean:

Nice huh?

Integrity / Creepout Test

What better way to start 2011 than with a good old (new) Integrity test press?

Towards the end of 2009, Integrity went to Japan to play 4 shows. A Japanese label called Jukebox Records made a tour only 7". It's a split with a band called Creepout. I picked up a copy of this record last year (see my post HERE), although there were actually 3 different versions made by the label and I don't have either of the other two (see HERE for a pic of the three - Note, this is not my picture). There were 3 versions, but only 340 copies made in total... which, compared to the number of people who buy Integrity records, is probably not enough. So our friends at A389 Records decided to repress it so that everyone can get one. It was launched via a pre-order back at the end of October. Mine didn't show up yet. But I did manage to snag a test press of it which turned up a week or so ago. Apparently the Japanese version didn't have a test press made at all, so that makes this a little more special. Integrity / Creepout split 7" test press, number 4 of 10.

What I like about this cover is that this is the exact same art as for the regular version of the record - except, what is blue here is red on the regular version. I like it when tests have sleeves which is a subtle variation of the regular artwork for the record. I'm not so much a fan of when tests are housed in sleeves with random cartoon characters or some other stuff that has nothing to do with the record itself.

If you want you can download the Integrity songs legally & for free by going to the Holy Terror website. Enjoy!

2010 - A Year In Review

Now that 2010 has passed, in the tradition of year-ends and new year starts, it's time to look back at the past twelve months and make a few observations. So welcome to my stupid review of 2010. I've decided to follow a similar format as last year, but with a bit more analysis thrown in. Well, what can I say? I've been off work for a couple of weeks and need to get back into the swing of pissing about with Excel...

To start things off, here's the summary of what I added to my collection this year, by month and format:

Strictly speaking, the monthly analysis is slightly off, since the numbers are from blog posts. And most of the time I have been behind with the blog. So this is more of an analysis of what I blogged about rather than strictly what I acquired in each month.

Here's the same information presented graphically:

As you can see, the total number of records acquired each month follows a relatively static pattern. Most months I acquired somewhere round 17-20 records, although the monthly average was 23 overall due to a couple of months which were way higher. There were four months that vary significantly from the trend:

1. March - only 11 records acquired. I have no idea why March was so sparse to be honest. I can't really explain this.

2. April - the huge spike is driven by one package of 16 LPs I bought from someone. Without that it wouldn't have been such an irregularity.

3. August - this was a month when I moved into my new apartment and after spending a lot of money on useless junk like legal fees and stamp duty I decided that I wanted to buy some records to make me feel better.

4. December - due to me having more money because it's a short month, I bought a few more records than I otherwise would have. Plus a couple of big orders placed ages ago (like my React! order) finally turned up. Oh, and I made a bit of an effort to catch up my blog backlog.

I also threw the format breakdown into a nice pie chart:

Once again (as last year), I ended up acquiring more 7"s than LPs. I find this slightly odd because I have always preferred LPs to 7"s. But I guess it's because 7"s are cheaper and generally more 'collectible' (i.e. there are usually more variations made of 7"s than LPs). And somehow I ended up adding 5 10"s to my collection, even though I HATE 10"s. But three of the five were Integrity records, so at least it's explainable.

Now, speaking of comparisons with last year, I have also shown the number of records acquired by month against the same information from last year. The results are quite interesting:

What this shows is that the two lines roughly follow the same gradient. They are ALMOST two parallel lines. The big anomaly is April last year, which was a day that I went to someone's house to buy a large chunk of their collection, acquiring nearly 90 records in one day. Without that, the two lines would run almost side by side.

The monthly analysis is also interesting. The patterns of both years are the same from July to December. I don't think there's an explanation for this. I think it's just coincidence. But interesting to see.

Anyway, enough analysis. The nerd-o-meter is going off the scale. Now on to the lists of my favourite things from 2010...

(Please note that each of the items in the list is linked to the posts I made. Click the record name to read the post about it. I also added links to all the record label sites in case you want to go buy them yourself)

My Top 5 7"s of 2010

1. Pale Creation 7" (A389 Records). Trust me, this 7" crushes everything else you have ever heard.

2. Times Together 7" (Just Another Day Records). A great record in the style of Uniform Choice by a current UK band. Great stuff!

3. Integrity 'We Are The End' 7" (Magic Bullet Records). The best Integrity jam for a long, long time. And a great looking record to boot!

4. Frontier(s) 7" (No Sleep Records). A late entry, but this band is great if (like me) you loved Falling Forward and the first Elliott 7". Can't wait to see them play in a month's time.

5. Mindset 'Time & Pressure' 7" (React! Records). A great straight edge 7". They don't make them like this anymore (very often).

My Top 5 LPs of 2010

1. Ceremony 'Rohnert Park' LP (Bridge Nine Records). I can't convey how good this LP is in words. Very surprising to say the least. I never rated Ceremony before this record but this record is truly fantastic.

2. Get The Most 'Together' LP (React! Records). I wasn't overly impressed with the 7"s, but like a lot of bands, GTM really came into their own with their debut LP. It still gets better every time I play it.

3. Integrity 'The Blackest Curse' LP (Deathwish Inc). A great album, and one that was the soundtrack for my early morning bike rides to work in Summer.

4. Nails 'Unsilent Death' LP (Six Feet Under Records). I don't even know how to describe this band's sound. Death metal grind? Who cares though. This LP rages from start to finish.

5. Pelican 'What We All Come To Need' 2xLP (Southern Lord). This was the other soundtrack for my summer bike rides to and from work. A great opening and a really strange yet beautiful ending too.

My Top 5 Scores of 2010

(i.e. good stuff I got in 2010 that came out before 2010)

1. Reason To Believe 7" on Green - I traded this one with Tru Pray. I can't describe how much I love this record, and to score a copy numbered out of 50 was like a nerd's dream come true.

2. Uniform Choice 'Screaming For Change' LP on colour vinyl x 2 I bought these with money from a big sale. This had been on my wants list since at least 1996.

3. Coalesce lot - I bought a couple of Coalesce records on eBay and then the seller offered me three more, all at a very reasonable price. Plus Sean Ingram from Coalesce commented. Cool.

4. Isis LP Trade - I traded a couple of Isis LPs from a member of the band. We exchanged a few emails and it was overall a cool and memorable experience.

5. Bane Give Blood LP Test - I bought this on eBay and spent a tonne of cash on it. More money than I have ever spent before. Worth it though. Outside of the band, I don't know anyone else who has one. Not even Tre.

Closing Comments
Overall, 2010 was an interesting year. However, in putting together this review I have realised that I bought pitifully few new releases this year. I don't think I could have even stretched myself to a top 10 if I had wanted to. So my resolution is to buy more new stuff. I don't want to be old and totally out of touch. I mean, I can't help the old bit, but the out of touch bit I can certainly work on. So come on, 2011... let's see what you've got!

Frontier(s) LP & 7"

As usual I'm a little slow on new releases, but at least this one came out in 2010 so I'm not THAT far behind! Anyway, the band is called FRONTIER(S). The main reason I was interested in picking these records up is that this band features some dude called Chris Higdon, who used to be in two bands from 10-15 years ago, called ELLIOTT and FALLING FORWARD. Both were great bands, although I have to admit that Elliott lost their way a little with their third album. Anyway, I have no idea what this dude has been doing for the past few years since Elliott called it a day, but I guess it doesn't matter. The point is that he is back and playing music again. Frontier(s) features Chris's trademark vocal over music that I would say is the exact midpoint between Falling Forward and Elliott. It's faster and noisier than Elliott, but the guitars aren't as 'hard' as some of the heavier Falling Forward moments. A crap description I know. But this is good. If you ever heard or liked either of those two bands then you'll like this for sure.

I picked up both of their releases recently, which is a little late since both came out in the summer of 2010. First up, their LP, entitled 'There Will Be No Miracles Here'. I got one of the white vinyl copies. Always nice when the vinyl colour goes nicely with the artwork:

The second record is a 7" entitled 'The Plains'. This features two songs, neither of which are on the LP. The packaging is very nice on this one. It's not often I have seen a shrink wrapped 7". But this one was:

The sleeve is a tri-fold affair, with all the text 'pressed' (the opposite of embossed) into the card. Must have cost quite a bit to make these things! Also, the dust sleeve glued into the sleeve, and is made of brown paper, which is slightly different and therefore cool. The only sucky thing is that I ordered a white one and got sent a back one in error.

I've only owned these records for a little over a week, but I can't stop playing them. This is really good stuff, especially since I haven't listened to anything of this style for a long time. This might even make my best of 2010 list if I do one...

Negative Appraoch 2010 7"s

If, like me, you still didn't manage to get around to acquiring a Negative Approach 7" yet, then Touch & Go Records have come to the rescue with a 2010 reissue. What I like about this is that the cover has been updated / altered, so that it now shows a cartoon version of the original. Some people thought this was a horrible idea when it was first announced a few months ago, but I think it's really cool. I mean, it's the same yet different. A new twist on an old classic. The labels haven't been updated though, and are the same as the original release, although are now printed in blue ink rather than black (or red).

Not sure if the the insert is the same or not though, since I don't own an original to compare it to.

Also, Taang! Records have also just released a Negative Approach 7", entitled 'Friends Of No One'. This features another cartoon sleeve, and contains six songs that were recorded in 1984 but only discovered on a tape in a basement in 2010.

I got a Taang! flyer, which is interesting because it suggests that some classic records are going to be reissued in the near future:

Yes, that's right - a Negative Approach box set is on the cards. Maybe if I'm lucky each one will come with an original 7" inside. If only!

Hoover LP on Green

Some records remind me of Christmas. This is one such example. The first Hoover LP, 'The Lurid Traversal Of Route 7'. The only reason that this reminds me of Christmas is because I bought this album over the holiday period in 1993. I even remember where I bought it from - some little record store in an indoor market type place in Southend on sea.

Anyway, 16 or so years later this thing has been reissued as part of Dischord's reissue series. I think there are 300 on green vinyl. The perfect colour to match the cover:

Pelican Wooden Box

Question - how stoked would you be if your girlfriend bought you a Pelican box set for Christmas? Probably nearly as stoked as I was I imagine.

This thing was put together by Viva Hate Records to mark Pelican's ten year anniversary. For the hefty price tag, you get one wooden (!) box containing all of Pelican's records to date, and an exclusive Florian Bertmer t-shirt:

The box itself is made of wood. As you can see, it has the band name debossed into the top.

Inside is literally every record that Pelican have released over the past ten years.

The record titles are carved into the inside of the box lid:

Each box is also numbered out of 500. The first 150 are on white vinyl, with the remaining 350 sets being on black vinyl.

What I like about this is the sense of neatness and order. All the records have similar layouts. Like the spines, for example:

Also, all the records have had all the text removed from the covers. So each cover is a picture only. And each is a different colour and has the same border size around the picture. It's little touches like this that makes it seem like a set. As an example, here's a picture of the box set version (left) next to the regular version of the last album:

Take that idea and repeat it seven times and this is what you get:

I got one of the white ones. Given that three of the albums are double LPs, there's a total of ten records in the box:

The back of each sleeve is also laid out in a similar way, adding to the feel of consistency:

Also, each LP sleeve has a coloured inside. And each one is a different colour. Here's what I mean:

Overall, this is a really beautiful piece of art. The only slight problem is that it gives me a dilemma - where the hell am I going to keep this thing?

Movielife LP on White

Did I ever by any chance mention that I collect Revelation Records vinyl? No? Really? Well, I do. I remember when I was poor back in about 2000 and they announced that they were going to be repressing some of their older records on colour vinyl, and I was like "Noooooooo!!!!" because I knew it was going to cost money. These days I'm not so poor, but i still don't like it when they repress something because it just makes me feel like they are taking a step closer to becoming one of those labels that ends up with 50 colours of every single release, making their records (and my whole collection) worthless and undesirable in the process.

The latest repress is the Movielife LP that came out in about 2000. What was weird about this originally was that there was a boat load of colour vinyl copies. Most Revelation releases had a colour vinyl limited to 200-300 or so copies at the time, but the Movielife LP came on blue and there were a whopping 750 of those suckers pressed. But now, here we are ten years later and there's two new colours available. The first repress out of the gates a white vinyl version which is limited to 309 copies:

The second colour is red and is out of 503 copies. I'd like to be able to show you what it looks like, but unfortunately I can't because I don't have one. This is because, even though Revelation made this thing, they don't have any to sell. The reason being that the red vinyl was made as an exclusive for Hot Topic , so all the red copies got sent there. "What's Hot Topic?" you may ask. Well, I wasn't sure of that either until I went to their website a couple of days ago. In their own words; "Hot Topic specializes in music and pop culture based fashion". That probably gives you a flavour of what they are about, but I don't think I can even begin to explain how bad this operation looks, so I'll just advise you have a look yourself. What I don't get though is why Revelation would pander to these people. Why make an exclusive version of one of your releases for a joke company like this to sell? Very disappointing. Even worse, after having someone convincing Revelation to make an exclusive red vinyl Movielife LP for them, Hot Topic don't even advertise that the red vinyl they have is exclusive to them. Fucking amateurs. Anyway, I'm gonna have to find one on eBay I guess. I'm not giving my money and support to this shite. Or maybe if I'm lucky some other Revelation nut like Geoff has had the sense to hoard a couple of spare red ones and they'll just send me one over :o)