records

Thought I’d continue with my pointless ramblings begun last week with a post about music.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the new Junip record as mentioned last week. this past weekend it continued to permeate my brain and top albums list with a series of repeat plays under various conditions. It’s proven itself to be a great driving album as long as you aren’t prone to nodding off easily when the music takes on a krautrockesque droning quality. The lyrics are still a bit of a mystery to me but they are slowly revealing themselves to be more than rhythmic and harmonic devices. Either way, I like what I’m hearing.

Elsewhere on my iPod, I listened to a great All Songs Considered podcast featuring Daniel Lanois as a guest dj. I actually listened to it just this evening as I drove home and was thrilled to hear Sly & The Family Stone, Neil Young, Charles Wright, Jimi Hendrix and more. There was some nice discussion about each of the tracks and Lanois’ recent projects: Black Dub and the latest Neil Young release, “Le Noise”. Check it out and be sure to check that podcast out on the regular because it’s well worth your time.

I’m constantly spinning records at home (you can follow along with my tumblr blog here.) Although most of what I have is unremarkable in the way of rarity, most is pretty great in the quality department (in my humble opinion, at least.) Recently, a friend gave me a copy of Spirit’s eponymous first album and man, did that scratchy slab of vinyl blow me away. I’m not really sure how I managed to miss Spirit over all of these years but, aside from their singles, “I’ve Got A Line On You” and “Nature’s Way” which got play on the classic-rock radio of my youth, they just completely evaded my explorations of psychedelic music. I’m working to rectify that oversight.

One more cool thing. A while back, my new favorite record label, Hometapes, linked fans to a “mix-tape” download from the group All Tiny Creatures. Entitled, “An Iris Mixtape”, it was actually a literal tape, produced in a very limited edition and sold at shows, but now available online via the Hometapes store. Check out the sweet packaging and follow the links to download the thing for free if you don’t have a tape player anymore.