Hardcore for Nerds

Modern Vampires of the City - some initial thoughts:

it’s nice to have an album that has such a strong positive reception without it being a ‘new’ band; we’ve had the hyped-up debut stage, the on-mature-reflection thinkpiece’d sophomore stage, and now they’re on their third record in good time. Two of the normally most curmudgeonly people in my Twitter feed (not, admittedly, usually on the topic of music) are big fans of it so far.
I don’t use iTunes and it hasn’t been released on Spotify yet, so while everyone was talking about it I still hadn’t heard it - aside from the singles, and once while part of it was playing in a record store - so, figuring I’d be buying it anyway, I went straight for the vinyl today. The moment of putting the needle down on the start of the record was actually the first time I’d heard the opening song, something which rarely if ever happens in my listening.
I like it, obviously enough, but at the same time I’m only getting into it. What I do like in particular so far is that feels like such a composite record: ‘layered’ would suggests depths that I haven’t uncovered yet - which may or may not be there - but it’s more that it’s a familiar sound mixed with snippets of, seemingly, everything.
Hey, Vampire Weekend are appropriating my culture now! (The end of ‘Unbelievers’, with its pipe-band crescendo - the liner notes credit players of a tuba, trombone, trumpet, accordion and a ‘flistle’, presumably a combination of flute and whistle.)
The stark purity of the black/white design on the record itself - even as merges into misty grey on the front cover - I think complements, and probably has an influence on, the idea of the music being a perfectly balanced amalgam of sounds.
Already I’ve seen it described as a ‘perfect pop record’: that didn’t make much sense to me based on the singles, although they do have a rather striking dissonance about them; through the record as whole, however, is a reminder of how their first record felt - summery, playful and free, yet this time even more lighfooted and airy. I really liked Contra as well, but by comparison it felt much more statement-like.
Vampire Weekend » The Clash, Contra » London Calling (or rather, Give ‘Em Enough Rope), Modern Vampires of the City » Sandinista!?
That minute few seconds of dub echo on ‘Hudson’; the semi-faux-baroque piano closing out the album on ‘Young Lion’ (as a throwback to the first record, surely); everything’s a little weird on this album, but precisely and economically so - and that is perhaps its greatest strength.

vampire weekend mvotc vinyl vinyl photos

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magnifications of the previous image

vinyl

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Vinyl of The Knife’s Shaking the Habitual arrived today. This is side C, ‘Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realised’; 19 minutes of ambient near-silence, or at least it starts out that way. Normally the grooves on a record, insofar as they can be seen at all, form a jumbled, irregular pattern. But for the first few cm (I’ll be metric, since it is a European record after all) of this track are so quiet that it’s almost an unchanging, undeviating spiral. The lines visible aren’t the actual grooves, I should point out, but an interference pattern representative of them (every nine grooves, as far as I can make out). In order to shake the habitual you have to be made aware of its resting state, I suppose.

the knife vinyl shaking the habitual

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Vinyl sales reach 15 year high - The Register

Except that if you adjust for inflation, the current figure is still about 30% below the 1997 level. And that’s inflation in general - vinyl prices for records from big artists/labels seem to have been creeping up a lot lately, and the big sellers presumably make up a large proportion of the total, so I wonder if ‘vinyl inflation’ is possibly a thing currently.

Of course, from a business perspective the overall revenue is probably what matters, and vinyl records are not that important a commodity that they need to be measured in PPP. Still, it’d be interesting to see the figures expressed in actual volume, i.e. the amount of vinyl people are buying and not just how much they’re paying for it.

Other than that, it’s an interesting chart, especially in the symmetry in the period chosen. A sharp drop in 1999-2000 (Napster?), 2001-2002 (the brief recession?), a nadir around 2005-2006, and increasing growth from 2009 on (which was in fact about when I started buying vinyl).

vinyl

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Shaking the Habitual vinyl tracklisting

I don’t know to what extent the order was determined with vinyl specifically in mind (hardly much, since it’s presumably a small minority of the audience) but I think either way this illustrates the structure of the album quite clearly:

A1 A Tooth For An Eye

A2 Full Of Fire

B1 A Cherry On Top

B2 Without You My Life Would Be Boring

B3 Wrap Your Arms Around Me

B4 Crake

C1 Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realized

D1 Raging Lung

D2 Networking

D3 Oryx

E1 Stay Out Here (Shannon Funchess, Emily Roysdon and The Knife)

F1 Fracking Fluid Injection

F2 Ready To Lose

(on their label site it says it’s out of stock, but I just ordered a copy from Boomkat in the UK - for a few euro less, including shipping, at the current exchange rate)

the knife vinyl

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early Vinyl Sunday

no prizes for guessing the record on the turntable

vinyl photography vinyl sunday

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“ Skylanders and playing records both situate themselves as a break from a digital norm – in Skylanders’ case the break is new and thrilling, in vinyl’s case the break is an act of resistance, a return to the authentic. The appeal of each is probably determined by your gut reaction to these narratives – which is why Skylanders is marketed to 8 year olds and vinyl to 38 year olds. In both cases the economics involved in the sale of high-margin goods get sidelined by these tales of emotion and innovation.

—

Vinylanders | Freaky Trigger

In which Tom Ewing picks up on my point about the absence of utilitarian need for vinyl. And connects it with a pretty awesome-looking action figure (which is apparently as ‘figurative’ for action as vinyl might by playable for some). Since I’m 25, that puts me close to the middle of those two age groups.

Another interesting comment:

“In music the locus of respectable nostalgia is shifting, I’d say, from the content of music to its context. Writers who see a loss of music’s forward progression, and lay the blame on the weight of the past and artists’ obsession with it, are themselves often happy to wax lyrical about older formats, networks, and rituals of consumption.”

In my reading of Simon Reynold’s Retromania, one line that stood out for me was his assertion that “Personally, I generally pay for music these days only when it is vintage vinyl from a second-hand store”. I suppose one way to counter the artistic penchant for retrospection is not to give any money to artists who are trying to sell something they have recorded, or something? In taking refuge from technological disruption, the torrent of digital mediocrity, some of us seek the perversity of anachronism - but still we are ensnared by the profit motive. I’m reminded of this essay into the punk vinyl resale scene (which I have studiously avoided):

“With punk rock and roll, as with all: once we were asked solely to consume by institutions that pressed prizes and set prices. Around that we sought self-realization, we fought or avoided fights and we lived and worked and tossed wages at records. Now we’re being asked we desire a place in the relations of production beyond consumption. Working both to live and to pay for the stuff of life meaning something is, by hook or by crook, ceasing to drive a meaningful patch of rock/punk fandom. It’s not that selling and buying are novel as rock acts - starting one’s own label is a seminal tactic of the previous era - it’s just that this formation severs the selling from production, and blurs the production/consumption distinction all the way. Pressing records and getting them sold is a damn bit different from buying records and selling them to others: it’s a difference between use- and exchange-value, I think. A Record Store Day trifle left sealed and sitting in a climate-controlled room until Ebay harkens is not, in fact, a record. Not until it’s opened up and played, I suppose.

I took shit some place for asking after Maggio of Gern Blandsten, remembering the great pains he always took to keep Gern LP prices low ($6.40, I recall?). I hear he sells his records on Ebay and at the WFMU fair, these days. Good on him. Changes in the political economy don’t involve judging but a few persons, and lord knows the singer from Rorschach is not one.

But again I want to ask if the entrance of the fan/collector into the selling end of the marketplace is helping to drive vinyl prices so high. When I joined discogs, I (however feebly) through my hat in with an idea of records as other than what they have always been to me. I continue to doubt my decision, but maybe I just haven’t reeled in enough cash as yet. Maybe then I’ll see how the market actually facilitates a sexy communion of art, security and lifestyle. Maybe.

But if nothing else, we should agree: this is neoliberalism. This is capitalism after the accumulation of raw materials, the exploitation of workers on the clock and the seduction of workers into consumer life were no longer seeming robust enough to gird growth or to fully colonize the spare time, nightmares and desires through which we see and we distinguish ourselves.

This colonization is called privatization. It is an ironic echo of indie rock’s “bedroom” trend from the 90s. It also seems to be, and might be, empowering for a lot of people, just like organizing concerts and pressing zines might have been and might still be. I don’t recall the profit motive, or exchange-value, animating these sorts of commodity-production as they do in some scenarios involving the new sales-punk. He can swagger both ways walking down the street: he’s got more money than you and, until he meets a worthy investor, he has a better record collection than you.

So if this is taken to extremes and prices spike and sales-punks hoard, can they claim an authenticity we cannot? They’ve got the 7”s, after all. They cared enough to do what it took to get them. They cared enough and worked enough to end up on top. How isn’t that like Black Flag? You think their behavior’s a perversion of previous standards? How isn’t that like Black Flag?

There’s revolution in the markets, that’s true. There’s lifestyle revolution, surely (markets can have that heinous concept in form and content.) But the larger earth-shakes necessarily involve revisions of the relationships that comprise making, buying and selling. In particular the salespunk model and the new neoliberalism of record geekery have to ensure that their is a surplus of buyers to underscore their coolness and capital, but also to ensure that vinyl stays “back.”

Why must vinyl be maintained? Not because we all love it and it all stays better (that’s why some indies have fought and continue to fight for it, though.) Sans evidence, I wonder if vinyl is one of the last remaining areas for fat labels to mine their vaults and those of their subsidiaries to pull material for bloated “deluxe reissues,” many of which I of course want to buy or (totally legally) download.

If that’s not true, then vinyl really has a niche magic and for now, it enjoys a substantial audience that is prepared for many more go-rounds of price hikes on new albs. It’s also prepared for the ignominy and degradation of web-commerce waged against better-positioned, better-experienced sellers who can be the nicest folks in the world if they choose.

If this process offends you or costs too much, it seems like there’s always illegal downloading, learning to fall back in love with the compact disc (been thinking a lot about this), or collecting a form of music that is not yet inflated in vinyl form.”

vinyl

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interstate808:

hardcorefornerds:

[….]

I’m just going to post something quick here on why I buy vinyl and tapes all the time: I like them.

I like having them in my life, physical reminders around me that great things are possible. You can’t really forget about them, they sit there on your shelves and you go through them and you pick one out and you think “Oh, I’d like to listen to that now”, and you play it. It sounds a certain way, be it tape or vinyl. Your turn it over half way through. You have to decide what to play next when it’s over. You can’t really lose them or delete them. You have to consider them a part of your life; when you move house, when you tidy up, when you arrange your home. They are a part of your life. This might seem secondary to the music but it’s actually not at all. It makes physical recordings a part of your life the way gigs are a part of your life. I love lots of music I’ve only ever heard digitally and I’m sure I always will. It’s not an either or situation. But physical formats are important to me because they are “real” in a very particular way.

I can’t easily express any emotional or quasi-emotional attachment I have to vinyl listening, I always feel I have to analyse it and pin it on some kind of system. But I am increasingly beginning to appreciate, aside from aesthetic values, the way it physically roots you to the presence and mechanics of playing a recording (which is a form of kinaesthetics I suppose).

What I’m talking about in the original post, however, is the idea of using/valuing vinyl in a way that is separated - either slightly or wholly - from actually playing it, which is much harder I think to understand or relate to; at least from a perspective where its ‘realness’ and/or value derives from that action.

What I also meant to add into the original post was that of course there is no single, prime aspect to using vinyl, it’s always a combination of reasons. I’d imagine that the numbers of people doing so exclusive of the obvious reason - to play it - will always remain fairly rare (there’s a commercial interest in selling them record players, if nothing else) but it’s an interesting idea nonetheless.

vinyl

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» Is the connection between music and artwork disappearing? | The 405

An interesting and extensive article (via hwfm) on music as object, with some curious points of view:

It helps that vinyl is not just the hipster format of choice at the moment, but a shorthand signifier for a cultural sensibility so pervasive it’s even found its way into hideous dating website ads. Constellation Records co-founder Ian Ilavsky has a passing concern that there could be “any number of people buying the vinyl now because it’s the cool thing to do and may never even unwrap it, or they’re buying it as a testament to their fandom and putting it on the shelf without listening to it.”

Obviously the difference between “hipster format of choice” and “shorthand signifier for a cultural sensibility” is in degree rather than kind - i.e., in how pervasive it is. I’ve heard of the unplayed - or unplayable - vinyl thing before, and it always strikes me as extremely odd. But then it would - I have a turntable. From a strictly utilitarian perspective, insofar as one can be applied to culture, it doesn’t make sense to buy something that is unusable in its prime aspect. But then what actually is a (vinyl) record’s prime aspect? Do we consider it:

the music? - yet the music invariably also exists in a more accessible and virtually identical digital form, rendering its acquisition on physical vinyl a superfluous luxury caught up with the other aspects of its use. Serious audiophiles will likely disagree but among vinyl users they probably remain a minority of a minority - likewise, I use the word ‘virtually’ advisedly,
the artwork? - this is where the anecdotal evidence leads, which as a turntable user seems bizarre: I very much like the vinyl artwork, whether it be the size, texture and design of the sleeves, or the look of the record itself (especially coloured ones), but I find it difficult to imagine it being the main or only reason to purchase a grooved slab of vinyl with another, obvious function. I read an interesting response today by James Brooks of Elite Gymnastics to a question about buying music, in which he says:

“when me and josh were doing the artwork for the ruin record, my main concern was wanting to try to create an object that seemed like it would be a reasonable and cool thing for someone to own even if they were like me and weren’t really interested in owning records or cultivating a record collection”

It’s not explicitly stating that he doesn’t expect people to listen to the record, but it does seem to come second to the value of the artwork (here’s my attempt to do it some justice in a single photograph).
its intrinsic/monetary value? - which is what all the above also leads to, whereby people seek an object to purchase to support the artist, or perform some kind of acquisitive action beyond the click of the download. Initially it makes me despair about the distribution of disposable income, where some have the money to spend on an increasingly pricey and, to them, functionally useless object. But that plays on prejudices about the next generation of consumers, who are exploring the unknown desires and pushes of capitalism just as we did before them; and anyway, perverse as it maybe seems, there is both a value and a function to that unwrapped or unused record: it expresses an intent, whether on behalf of the self or the artist, to buy in to the hierarchy of meaning given to objects of art, which technology has broken up and scattered into the free corners of the web.

A final curious thought:

But the last word goes to Ian from Constellation, who thinks that maybe physical albums don’t have to be for everyone: “There are lots of ‘indie artists’ whose music exists almost as a way to brand themselves on YouTube or through other avenues. Lots of music is disposable, singles-driven and all about engaging through video and image. These people should just be making their money from YouTube or other ways of monetising their music. More power to them for not using up valuable physical resources: Please stay on the internet and make the internet your entire cultural sphere. Do us all a favour and don’t clutter up the physical album marketplace with your stuff.”

vinyl dotcapitalism internet elite gymnastics

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markrichardson:

Resurrection.

My Bloody Valentine vinyl

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