GP's music picks

[Gaijin Punch]

I have both SAW's on vinyl. The 2nd one I got super cheap, but it is not w/o caveat. It said side 4 had a scratch that would make the needle jump. It doesn't, but it is scratched. There is significant popping. Going to get a cleaner set when I go home and see if that doesn't help. It was 2300 yen, so I'm not too bothered. The first one doesn't go for too much, all things considered, and it has Xtal on it which is heavenly.

The other releases I got are:
SMM : Opiate
The Tower of Light (never heard of it but liked it)
Luisine: The Waiting Room
and the latest Comm Truise, but the purple version was out. I might get the black one or try my luck on discogs.

[Greatsaintlouis]

I think Wave 1 on purple vinyl sold out just a day or two after the preorders went up--by the time I decided to give it a stab, it was gone. I'd suggest jumping on the black vinyl sooner rather than later if you really want it, since his stuff generally doesn't stay in print for long. His full length, Galactic Melt has had one (possibly two) represses so far after the original climbed into the $100 range. I'm still kicking myself for not getting on the Fairlight EP while I had the chance, though I didn't make the same mistake twice and got the Cyanide Sisters EP as soon as it went on sale. I like vinyl releases in general, but if you really want to make me buy something, press it in a cool color.

That's a fantastic list of releases you got--both SMM Opiate and its predecessor from a few years back, SMM Context, are great compilations. If you like The Tower of Light, you should check out the other releases on that label, felte sounds. Most of their releases tend towards a similar darker, processed guitar sound, but Billow Observatory is pure ambient the whole way through. I also recommend the self-titled release by ERAAS. My musical knowledge and vocabulary aren't developed enough to really put a name to that style of sound yet, but I think you'll enjoy it if you have any love for the shoegaze genre. Here's the label's Bandcamp for all the lossless file goodness; they also sell physical albums there and sometimes carry stock when the Ghostly Store is sold out (or vice versa). Not sure how their shipping costs stack up, though.

Looking around online, I see that the first SAW had a repress last year and can be found for a fairly reasonable price; looking on Discogs it seems that the second one had a repress in 2012 and that version can be had for a reasonable price. Richard D. James Album and I Care Because You Do also got represses that year, so Drukqs is the odd man out. I really wish I understood Warp's logic behind how and when they do represses; they're almost like a Japanese company in the way they seem allergic to repressing some of these in-demand albums that fetch such high prices on the secondary market.

On another note, Record Store Day is coming up, and I am incredibly excited to try and snag this release, which promises to be a masterpiece of modern classical music which will be talked about for generations to come.

[Gaijin Punch]

Cheers, I will check those out, and I guess jump on the black vinyl of the new Com Truise. Might as well, eh?

And now out of the left field files:
Akira Soundtrack Vinyl Release at Bleep. Has the US cover (blech, sort of) and is a repress of the original vinyl (7 tracks)... guess they couldn't be bothered to do the full thing, unfortunately. No release date, and the date made me think it might be April Fools. However...

Geinoh Yamashirogumi: Ecophony Rinne at Bleep which is available. Apparently the original vinyl is a bitch to find. Only one I found was this one for the price of $404.99. I'll go for the repress at Bleep!

Actually, here's one on Ebay for $888.88. Domestic copies w/ spine seem to run about 15,000 yen. So yeah, repress.

[Gaijin Punch]

And as luck would have it, I got the last one of Ecophony Rinne.

[Greatsaintlouis]

Oh good, at first I thought you had meant you got the last Akira instead.

Looking online, there's not much info on the repress; this is the best I could find: http://www.factmag.com/2014/03/21/akira ... -on-vinyl/

Seems like it was released at the end of last month and most places have completely sold out of it, though Bleep said on their Twitter that they're trying to get more. Otherwise, it's annoyingly absent from other online sources--Amazon.jp, Tower, and Disk Union all come up empty. There's always the secondary market, I guess.

[CTN]

At least one reissue is on ebay right now. New with a hefty 90$ pricetag.
TBH I like the cover of the original release better.

[Gaijin Punch]

Yeah, Bleep's site is kind of hard to read. I didn't think "Unavailable" meant "Out of Stock" but apparently it does. I got the last Ecophony Rinne.

I'd wait for another pressing... surely they can't sell out immediately and not do another.

TBH I like the cover of the original release better.

The original Japanese release? W/ the simple white cover? I'd agree. To boot, there are many other official graphics that would have worked WAY better. The American one so.... American.

The Blu Ray DVD cover I especially like


Or this...

[Greatsaintlouis]

Come on you cunts, let's have some Aphex acid!

[Greatsaintlouis]

Akira's back, folks--don't miss it again. I guess I don't dislike the cover of this release that much--I'm actually not much of a fan of the earlier ones, to be honest.

And y'all got 6 days left to get in on the Caustic Window release on Kickstarter I posted above.

[Gaijin Punch]

They got more of Ecophony Rinne too. Not as good as Ecophony Gaia but worth getting, IMHO.

[Gaijin Punch]

Best 500 yen I've spent in a while, and as an unemployed man, these are the deals I need to find. I know... I'm an asshole sometimes.

[Greatsaintlouis]

Damn you, that's an amazing find! I love Sakura--where'd you come across those? And what's that center one? I don't recognize the cover.

[Gaijin Punch]

Yahoo Japan. The middle one is unknown to me. Sounds kind of 90's... not bad, but not something that will get a lot of repeats.

[Greatsaintlouis]

Eh, even if it's a complete throwaway, you got a screaming deal for the other two.

So here's a question for all of you vinyl collectors in Japan: what do you do to keep your prized records safe during the summer? My apartment is really poorly insulated (even by Japanese standards) and turns into an oven during the day when I'm not home; we don't run the aircon much since it just leaks right out the sliding glass doors, either. Is there anything special you do to protect against the heat and humidity (do records warp, etc.?), or are they pretty safe as long as they're not stored in direct sunlight?

[Gaijin Punch]

I just cross my fingers. Thus far, they're fine. I still have some records from the 90's.

[CIT Seven Force]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPZ0-ApKQp4

[Gaijin Punch]

Not bad!

[Greatsaintlouis]

So today I was taking what's probably my last stroll around Disk Union, looking for any more Japan-exclusive releases on my list that I just have to have, and I stumble across a copy of "Symphonic Suite AKIRA" for just a little over a thousand yen. The album has come up a lot recently, both in discussion on here (finally snagged one of those copies on Bleep, which is waiting for me back in the US) and elsewhere with yet another vinyl release (possibly unofficial as well). So I decide that I might as well buy this copy, since I don't have a digital copy and the price wasn't too terrible.

I get home, fire up EAC on my computer and am getting ready to pop the disc in to rip it, when I notice the catalog number on the spine: SM-070. And there's a big SM logo on the front of the disc. I don't see anything else about the record company--Sony Music?--on the packaging, so I look it up on Discogs, with more than a little apprehension. Discogs confirms, to my irritation, than SM indeed stands for SonMay, the Taiwanese label that produced unofficial reproductions of anime-related music before EverAnime flooded the market with their garbage.

I hadn't paid attention, and bought a goddamn Taiwanese bootleg.

Depending on how it sounds I may as well keep it, since I'm lazy/running out of time to go racing around for stuff like this. I'm hoping the audio quality won't be too bad. The quality of the entire presentation is much better than those EverAnime releases, which looked like bootlegs even if you had no clue--bad silkscreening on the disc, ugly photocopied manuals, and they couldn't even go to the trouble of getting a nice solid jewel case. I'm disappointed I didn't catch this error sooner, and also that Disk Union apparently doesn't check for or label boots.

[Gaijin Punch]

Ugh. Guess I should check mine. Did their release have the obi? I would assume not. :-/

[Greatsaintlouis]

I don't know. Mine didn't come with one, but that doesn't mean anything (I usually try to save a few hundred yen buying obi-less releases when I can, anyways). No mention of it for the entry on Discogs, either.

I listened to the rip I made the whole way through the other night, and the sound quality seemed decent enough. Wasn't using my nice headphones, but there didn't seem to be any bad sibilance, extreme compression, or any of those other fun artifacts that turn up in poorly-sourced boots.

[Gaijin Punch]

GSL: In case you don't check the main forum.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3184

[Greatsaintlouis]

Been off for a few days, but I just saw your link. Unfortunately, there's some bad news...

[Gaijin Punch]

Yoink

[Greatsaintlouis]

Venturing back into the world of gainful employment means now I'll have the resources to start buying all those records I have on my backlog (though I guess I need to start paying for my health insurance as well, which takes some of the wind out of my sails).

If 2014 wasn't full of enough Richard D. James goodness, he kicks off the new year with an upcoming EP, Computer Controlled Acoustic Instrumentals pt. 2. Shades of "Selected Ambient Works" in the name?

Also of interest is that there seems to have been a recent repressing of a lot of Aphex vinyl. No Drukqs or SAW II, but Richard D. James Album, I Care Because You Do, Windowlicker, Come To Daddy, and the first SAW all have vinyl in stock at Bleep.

[Gaijin Punch]

The new Michna is great. Enjoying it. My next two are Syro and the new Computer Controlled Acoustic Instrumentals 2. I got a small backlog of my own!