Tasting Notes: On A Lifetime of Buying Music
How putting all my records in to storage brought up a trip down memory lane and thinking about how our taste defines us and what we buy.
I’m currently in the process of moving house, and as part of the preparations I’ve moved all my records into a storage unit whilst we wait for a move date.
As a result my house now feels pretty empty, other than a couple of CD’s that turned up in the post yesterday there’s now no physical music formats in my house for the first time in my life.
No matter where I’ve lived I’ve always had my record collection with me, and until I moved into a small room in a flat share years ago I had a pretty sizeable CD collection too. The CDs all got sent to Music Magpie over the course of a weekend spent scanning and boxing everything all up, and other than a handful of bits there’s not much I really miss there.
Moving all my records over the course of the last weekend really got me thinking though - how much do our music collections define who we are? A record collection tells a story, of what we like, of our tastes, of our loves. Without wanting to get too ‘High Fidelity’ I can look back at almost any of my records and remember where I bought it, and more importantly why I bought it.
From the first records I bought as a teenager, mainly old punk singles & LPs and a smattering of mid-90’s Britpop and electronica, the times I spent on a holiday to the USA in 1998 dragging my dad to record shops in Boston & New York to buy Sex Pistols and Underworld rarities, to starting to expand my horizons buying trance and techno 12”s in the smattering of record shops in Cambridge (Streetwise, Rhythm Syndicate, Parrot Records), my move to London and the discovery of the shops in Berwick Street and the surrounding streets and the various branches of Music & Video Exchange around the City - where I ended up working a few years later for a short while - snapping up anything I could find on the Warp or Rephlex labels, the glut of landfill Indie 7”s and bad mashup bootlegs I’d buy whilst I DJ’d an Indie Night in Bishops Stortford, the few decent albums I could order in for myself whilst I worked at HMV and ending up with the selection of dealer-price treats and test pressings I was able to get from my job as a distributor, I don’t think there’s a single record amongst the thousands I can’t remember.
That’s a quick way of looking back through 25 years of buying records, but there’s so much more that represents other periods in life. Getting really into dubstep at uni - there’s a shelf of Tectonic, Kapsize and Hyperdub records. I doubt I’ve listened to them since 2008. That time I got really in to Hip-Hop and a swathe of Def Jux records from El-P, Cannibal Ox & Aesop Rock. I still go back to these records pretty frequently, but I don’t really listen to new Hip-Hop any more. I don’t know why? There’s a big bunch of Planet Mu 7”s that were 50p each in MVE. I’ll have to listen to those again.
It’s funny how my own music tastes move in cycles, but so do the tastes of the general public. Looking back at your old records and seeing the price stickers on stuff that’s worth far more now. I was in a shop the other day and saw a copy of the LFO single for £30. That was a staple of the £1 bins for years - they sold 20,000 copies, it can’t be that rare? As I was moving records on Saturday I found four or five of Aphex Twin’s Analord series, all with price stickers still on - I didn’t pay more than £5 for any of them, you’d be lucky to find one for £50 these days. I was talking to a friend with a big collection of gabber on Saturday night- you couldn’t give those records away ten years ago, and now some of them are worth loads. I bet the expensive jungle records of today were the same.
I remember reading a quote a few years back from James Murphy that summed it up nicely:
“I believe in my taste because it’s my taste, not because it’s better”
We’ve all bought records because someone has told us it’s good, be that a friend, shop staff or a journalist or whoever. We’ve all bought stuff that came out by favourite artists or on favourite labels that turned out to be a bit of a stinker. We’ve all bought stuff because the label has been ‘hype’ for a bit, but the records turned out to be actually a bit shit. But the stuff that stands the test of time - regardless of whether people think it’s ‘cool’ or not, they’re the records that define our taste. There’s loads of records in my collection that aren’t considered ‘cool’ but I love them all the same. Is my taste better than someone else’s? That’s not for me to say - I might think so, they probably won’t agree. It’s my taste at the end of the day, it’s personal to me. It’s not something you can quantify as being better or worse than anyone elses.
Is my taste good? Yes, I consider it so, I feel I’m a good judge of the music I like but could I pass judgement on a heavy metal record or a jazz record? No, because it’s not to my taste. It doesn’t make those records bad.
Some people think James Murphy is a pretentious bore (and they may well be right) but I consider him one of the best songwriters of all time. You may think Underworld just make boorish drinking anthems for lads on 18-30 holidays, I consider them one of the greatest British bands of their generation. I might think a lot of early Jungle sounds like someone kicking a drum kit down the stairs - but you can tell me the nuances in every track and the differences between different producers styles… it’s not a case of who’s right or wrong, but our individual tastes.
My house feels empty without music. I feel lost of what to do of an evening without being able to pick a record out and put it on the turntable. Luckily I’ve got an Alexa and Spotify, but it’s not really the same. Everything is safely away in a storage unit for the time being, but hopefully it won’t be too long before I can start moving records back into my house and discovering all those tracks and moments in my life I soundtracked.
Small Plates
A little bit of news whilst I’m here. In Strict Tempo is finally in print! Kind of… I was invited to contribute a short story for a new After Dark LP released by Industrial Coast. They put together a chart of influences for the record for The Wire Magazine (in my eyes the only print music magazine worth reading) featuring the story. The special edition of the LP (featuring a Stonecirclesampler mixtape) is now sold out, but there’s a handful of the regular LP left at the Industrial Coast website. Needless to say I’m pretty proud of the inclusion, no matter how small. Keep your eyes peeled for further In Strict Tempo print projects coming soon…
You might have seen this weeks header image before - I used it to do a snarky tweet at the expense of Flip Vinyl - a Rough Trade supported version of Music Magpie for records. It was a probably a little bit unfair TBH, most record shops will pay as little for records as they can get away with, Rough Trade’s error was making this public. There’s understandably been a load of backlash online about this, if you’re looking to sell valuable records try your local indie or failing that, Discogs or eBay.
Primitive Painters
On to this weeks new music, playlist at the bottom as usual.
Belong - Realistic IX [kranky]
Post-rock summer continues! I’m not wrong on this, trust me. You’ll all be listening to heavily effected guitars in weird time signatures before you know it. This isn’t quite as weird as some of that stuff, but it’s still bloody good. After Post-rock summer comes Shoegaze Autumn you know…
Seefeel - Hooked Paw [Warp]
The next ‘single’ from the upcoming Seefeel album. One of the problems with Spotify is that you have to release singles in order to tease an album, even if the track wouldn’t ‘traditionally’ have merited a single release. This is a decent track, but it’s not really strong enough to sit alone without the context of a wider album release.
Civilistjavel - VI [FELT]
One of the more interesting artists to surface over the past few years, most people were introduced to Civilistjavel from that run of releases Low Company distributed back when it was the place to go for this kind of stuff. Now sitting prettily on the FELT label, there’s an Eastern ambience to this that sets it apart from his previous releases.
Jabu & Memotone - Oceanside Spider House [Do You Have Peace?]
A couple of laid-back, mesmerising new tracks here from Jabu & Memotone. This is Bristol doing what Bristol does best really. Deep, hazy tunes for summer nights.
Two Shell & Sugababes - Round [Young]
Sugababes in In Strict Tempo? You’re not reading that wrong. This has been floating around for ages, but now finally gets cleared for an additional release. Two Shell are probably the most forward-thinking producers in club music right now, and they’re having a proper laugh whilst they’re doing it.
Jay Glass Dubs - DJ Humble [Extended Techniques]
This came out last year but now appears on DSPs in an expanded edition with new tracks. Worth dropping back into as JGD is one of the best in the game right now, and has been for some time.
Tom Carruthers - Downtown Rithims [L.I.E.S]
This is club music as it should be really. Fun, Bangin’, doesn’t take itself too seriously. You can’t really go much wrong with L.I.E.S anyway they’re on a bit of a roll after the recent Ron Morelli releases too.
As always, thanks for reading and sharing the newsletter. I really appreciate it. Thanks also for all the comments, it’s great to know people are finding new music via IST or are debating topics I mention, even if you don’t always agree with me.