Music piracy (still) isn't just an internet phenomenon...

It is a while since I have written a post such as this but a news article today put me in mind of it once again. It may not be quite the topic that it was but it certainly hasn't gone away. I first commented on it in these pages almost seven years ago - how time flies! - with this illustration from the 1980s.

The means have changed but perhaps not so much as we might have thought. It still isn't all individuals or organised crime file-sharing by any means.
There is a waiting list, and often then delays to the promised delivery, if you want your latest released pressed on vinyl for legal release. Several acts have told me about this based on their own experiences. That is a reflection of the vitality of music in physical format.

Police in Germany have revealed that, after a two-year investigation, they have busted a huge counterfeit operation involving physical music, both CD and vinyl. The article comes with a stock picture of a collection of vinyl and this is not it.

This one is home-based.

A weekend unconnected.

This is just a quick note:
A computer failure; a local one as it was a malfunction of my main home computer, has seen me off-line since the Easter weekend. I'm back now.
The interesting thing is, however, the amount of time I spent delving into my physical music collection in those few evenings...
Not only did I rediscover much music that I had (at least almost) forgotten I had by listening to it, I made a simultaneous virtue of reordering the shelves that contain it. It is certainly not perfect, and you would most likely not understand the system as it is now. It was a huge game of pelmanism (played with approximately 880 CDs) and it was far more complicated than simply matching identical pairs, although there are four of those as so far discovered.
I'll tell you this; it is now a far better situation than it was last Saturday! What I decide to do next, in the sense of ordering them, is still a mystery and not least to me. The point is that playing music was actually the original aim - the re-organisation just came out of that and finding things that I wanted to play. While that process has yet to visit my collection of vinyl, a great amount of that got played too!
The effect on me, of losing my connection to new music, was salutary. My New Year Resolution 2014 was to listen to at least eight hours of new (to me, at least) music each week and until now I was well up with that. I'll catch up in the next few days but now I have another, which is to rediscover all the recorded music I already have.

Record Store Day 2014 - A Prelude

It is now just a couple of months until Record Store Day 2014, an event that seems to be gathering momentum with each passing year. To set your mind thinking about the changes, in both the music industry and the marketing strategies involved, here is an inner sleeve from forty-six years ago and of which I took a photograph just now.

It is interesting to consider what were the perceived threats back in 1968.
Equally so, what the marketing people would have thought about vinyl in 2014.

The Fall of Glorieta Mountain

I thought I saw you by the side,
Illuminating foreign climes.
A figment, a splinter, a vessel for me.
To wander as freely as I'll ever be.
  
Shrapnel stars puncture brightly,
Wounding skies that stretch so widely.
Other dunes of dust, in shades of rust
Where shadows claim the both of us.
  
Is that an answer or is this an echo?
Are you the answer or are you an echo?
  
These godly skies kindly provide
The perfect scene for our goodbyes.
A providence, so palpable
It sets aflutter, palpiter.

Bleached by the moonlight
Bathed in bone white
Undercover of cobalt and shelter of slate
You appeared immaculate.
  
Is than an answer or is this an echo?
Are you the answer or are you an echo?
  
I know that distance lends enchantment to the view
But I know that I see you and I know you see me too
And so I called out.

See more here:
New Music 2013 - Part 1 - Wash The Sins Not Only The Face

I just felt like some lyrics. Not particularly cheerful but then what did you expect? The album 'Wash The Sins, Not Just The Face' is released  by Matador Records on vinyl, CD and d/l. Let us celebrate the third Monday in January at it is often said, by those that believe this sort of thing, to be the most depressing day of the year.
You can currently listen to the whole album streaming on Pitchfork here.

Bella Union is 15 (Part 1) - EOTR 2012

Once upon a time, decades ago and when all was good in the world, there were record labels (remember those things) that you could rely on. I mean that in the sense that if they were on your list of labels to 'like' you could trust that a new release would be at the very least likeable and most possibly lovable even if totally unheard?
Why would one worry about the Iron Curtain, The Cold War or 'mutually assured destruction' when you have a comforting blanket like that?  Or indeed the anti-war artists nibbling at the mainstream... be it in response to events in Malaya, Korea, Vietnam or simply part of a vision of utopia? 
Well, while we haven't reached our panacea yet though the signs are not as poor as some might believe, at least we've got dependable labels back and that is a damn good start.
One of them, Bella Union, is fifteen now and its teenage birthday party was the Friday of End Of The Road Festival 2012 across all four music stages with bands from the Bella Union family. Like all the best parties it started rather early and finished rather late...

Here, on the Garden Stage at around 1pm, is Mountain Man.

Traffic issues, associated with The Dorset Steam Fair apparently, meant they arrived just in the nick of time and without any kit. They borrowed this guitar, that they had never seen before, and promptly nicknamed it 'The Cadillac' - for its white lacquer and shiny chrome fittings...
Suffice it to say that it was not what they would have chosen.

After this start you just knew that it was going to be a remarkable day.

  

Flitting between the various stages at End of The Road is happily very quick and easy to do so off we go to the tented Tipi Stage.  In this case there is a real problem... I didn't take enough pictures but here is one of the only two that I did.

Hannah Cohen, The Tipi Stage @ EOTR 2012.

Another Bella Union artist and her début album 'Child Bride' is quite something. The thing about Bella Union artists, however, is that they are unfailingly good when performing live.
Bella Union does not however just help new artists on the way by releasing their first album... indeed it only signed this one for her second, 'Time Traveller' (2011), although at 22 she is hardly an old-timer. I saw her live at Truck Festival last year, performing with a band, and am now of the opinion that she is better live as a solo artist as here for the band tended to overwhelm the purposefully-fragile beauty of her song-writing and never more so would it be true than of the brand new songs that she essayed last Friday. This really is Alessi in Wonderland and (the prospect of) album #3 is a reason to continue living.
  

Alessi's Ark (Alessi Laurent Marke)  on the Tipi Stage @ 15:05 Friday, August 31.
  

This next artist however, although only recently added to the Bella Union rôster, released his first solo album when I was just a toddler! That, and the next two, have recently been re-released on Bella Union and to go with it he has returned to live touring. He is one of the legendary American songwriters and, as it happens, also a gifted raconteur between those songs.

Van Dyke Parks - Garden Stage @ EOTR 2012, about 17:15 on Friday.

  

This of course just a part of the party and then only those bits of it that, being unable to be in more than one place at a time, I chose to see! Part 2 of that which I saw of the party will follow tomorrow.

Not writing much but still listening...

OK. You are probably thinking that after three three-day festivals in six weeks I would, or perhaps should, be posting almost every day. Well. Let's just say it rarely works out quite like that.
It is not that I don't have plenty to write about; quite the opposite as I have heard so much live music that it takes a while for me to think about it all what it meant to me, and how it relates together or doesn't.  I've also been listening to more than a little new music too in the last two months - often just tracks posted as tasters on the internet etc. and while that might further complicate matters in terms of quantity it sometimes provides help in terms of inter-relation. A few of these things will have cropped up as un-linked items on the 'I've Just Listened To...' section on the side-bar, which I have recently moved to near the top as part of an ongoing rearrangement.
I hope to start to get my thoughts on the summer now gone and forthcoming releases trickling out soon but I shall be busy a couple of weekends.
  
Just a little later:
For the several people who have ended up here looking for 'music for Autumn' and/or 'music for Fall' (something I posted about at the start of summer last year) try this.

I love my house but were it to become detached from its terrace and dragged into the woods I think it might look much like this. I could live with that.
  
You can currently stream the whole album on Stereogum. It is released on vinyl and CD on October 17, 2011 by, as if I needed to say so, Bella Union.

Leyland Kirby - The CD trilogy - Sadly, The Future Is Not What It Was

For the last six weeks or so you have witnessed my quest, ultimately successful, to obtain the trilogy of double-vinyl 12s released by Leyland Kirby. Whatever the reason - curiosity or incredulity come to mind - a large number of people have found themselves here as a result. If vinyl is simply not your thing I can understand that, and if you were unable to partake I sympathize, but a more readily available and more easily handled alternative is now available:

It has the same content as the vinyl releases, but on three CDs instead, and the same track listing and notes too (absolutely none at all) but new artwork. It is available as follows:

LEYLAND KIRBY - Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was (Deluxe Triple CD Edition)
Label: History Always Favours The Winners
3CD // £15.99 [approx. €17.60 and US$ 26.50] plus the appropriate shipping charges.
Released: Oct 2009
Catalogue Number: HAFTW001CD

While Amazon.co.uk list it, it is described as unavailable so they may as well not bother. It is however available from independent retailer Boomkat Records, Manchester, UK and they will ship internationally. The link to this item, including a review etc., is here:
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=236773

I'm listening to the whole lot, rather over four hours of it, from end-to-end for the first time and I can see a misty but near-full moon out of my skylight window. Perfect for Halloween and, were there wolves in Somerset, I expect that I would be able to hear them howling in the distance as I write...

There are, actually, but Longleat is just a little bit too far away and that puts me in mind of a very sad story from earlier this week: nineteen-year-old Taylor Mitchell, a promising (and award-nominated) Canadian folk singer-songwriter, was hiking in Cape Breton National Park, Nova Scotia, when she was attacked, fatally, by two coyotes; a shy animal not known as a species aggressive towards humans.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6895020.ece

Note added 3 November:

It is also available on mp3 from Boomkat for £8.99 (€10, US$14.75) but I don't actually know if that facility is available internationally.

Oral or aural - Ritalin or Hjaltalín?

If Ritalin were a band it would of course have its detractors. In fact it is a drug, capable of addiction and a variety of other side-effects, that is increasingly used to treat ADD and other such disorders, most commonly in children. That it not to say that it doesn't have an important rôle to play or that, very possibly, better treatments will be developed from it.

Hjaltalín, while not clinically trialled, is about as good as any homeopathic therapy ever could be. You don't need a prescription, certainly shouldn't swallow even one of them, and it is available as a totally legal download. It might however do exactly the job it is supposed to...

Band members slightly variable, typically seven to nine, always both male and female.

The UK and Iceland may have fallen out about fishing, and much more recently banking, but when it comes to music it is unthinkable. Sigur Rós (Latitude 2008) clones they most obviously are not; nor really quite like any of the many others you can probably call to mind.
Aurally narcotic the album 'Sleepdrunk Seasons' might be and they are confirmed as appearing at Latitude 2009.

DRM in 2008 - the first skirmishes...

I mentioned this not so long ago and while it has long been obvious that the recording industry and its consumers were in no way in agreement about DRM 2008 looks like the year which it will become a real issue.
That will be much to the detriment of the former because they apparently thought they could continue to run rough-shod over their consumers (and often their artists as well) as they had arguably done for decades. The former, rather predictably I think, responded by deciding that they too could play the game and now artists are starting to consider doing without the very same. As a service industry - for that is what major labels, in particular, now are - and one with a rather poor recent record for spotting trends in artists, or even more tellingly technology, it is surely vulnerable for it risks simultaneously losing the confidence of both its suppliers and consumers.

Today, in the UK at least, some guidelines for consultation and further discussion were published by the government and they make quite interesting reading. Here is the BBC news post about these proposals and I' m quite sure these will only make the whole thing a much hotter potato still! It is a matter that certainly needs to be properly addressed sooner rather than later; don't expect any easy consensus this year however.
The longer it goes on, one near certainty is the greater will be the damage to the traditional music industry in the long term and some predict that, within a decade, the CD will be defunct. It is quite plausible, and wholly so were it not for the persistence of vinyl; far fewer have said that in a decade there will also be no longer be any 'major labels' and that is something that, while I'm not one to place bets, for cash or favours or anything else, I think that I would regard as the least surprising result.

My first purchase of a genuine 2007 release...

Almost all UK new releases come out on a Monday and as Monday 1st January 2007 was a Bank Holiday in the UK this just added to the general sense of awfulness that Christmas "pop music" brings; it being all too fresh on the mind. It is therefore hardly surprising that this was a week that was another absolute non-starter for UK new releases. Buying a genuine 2007 new release this week was not actually as easy as it may seem!

I have had one in particular on my list for some while however - and it was a result of my searches across both genres and labels. My first 2007 album (well strictly it is an EP, but who is to quibble when it is this good) is Station Life by Anne Bacheley, a French singer-songwriter born in 1977 and then variously resident in Caen, Vannes, Paris, Cambridge and Nantes, but now settled in Poitiers.
While not actually her first release, the Mixtape Babies EP of 2004 probably has a claim to that, this is her first real solo release that has everything: a screen printed sleeve, booklet and everything else one might want - in short all that might lead you to think that she has been snapped up by a major label.In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Station Life, for all the glory of its packaging and the truly minimalist cover art (also by the artist), was actually released on the tiny French Indie label MIMIKAKI on 01/01/2007 and it is limited to just 133 copies.

I haven't yet mentioned the best thing about it - the music.
This varies widely; from the slightly stabby acoustic guitar and tambourine of opener 'Good Luck Dear' to the beautiful warm vocal and flute-laden 'Lost Weekend', plus everything and more in between. 'Elastic Girl' starts as an almost normal guitar and drums track (it is none the worse for that), then temporarily metamorphoses part way through as if in a dream, only to return slightly changed as a result.
For those of you that might worry about such things, or even the small matter of language, this EP is actually all sung in English but the really important thing is that it all works - absolutely!

All copies of Station Life are individually numbered and, for as long as they remain available, this 6-track CD costs just €10 (port payé dans la UE) and it is an unmissable bargain.

BUY IT WHILE YOU CAN!