stuartjewkes

Good haul this month: Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting In A Room Ashtray Navigations - The Love That Whirrs Birchville Cat Motel - Curved Surface Destrover (3CD) Eyes Like Saucers - Still Living In The Desert (and Mostly Inside My Own Head) Fred Frith and Jean-Pierre Drouet - Improvisations Hella - Hold Your Horse Is Holder Czukay - Canaxis Jack Wright - The Indeterminate Existence Keiji Haino - Vol. 2 (with Loren Mazzacane Connors) Sparks - No. 1 In Heaven Keiji Haino / My Cat Is An Alien - Cosmic Debris Vol III

Hasn't stopped me unfortunately! Piles of CDs dotted around the living room now...

I went from listening to mostly leftfield rock music (Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Super Furry Animals, Holy Bible era Manics, Talking Heads) as well as a lot of 60s pop (Beatles etc) in uni to further extremes. I had listened to a lot of metal as a kid, real metal, heavy stuff. After a while I started to get bored with the usual bands that play the same set night after night and reform 20 years later to play the same set again. I started to branch out into more extreme music and sounds. Then I discovered the best band in the world, The Fall. Rough, uncompromising, shifting and intelligent. Relevant. I picked up Napalm Death's Scum and a few Discharge albums. From this point, a lot of what I'd heard before had started to sound trite and a little dull. I became interested in sound and texture performances which led to noise records and psych wig outs. Simultaniously I'd been picking up on some folk music and some blues, Leadbelly being a firm favourite. Combine the noise and Leadbelly with the maverik spirit of Mark E Smith, and you inevitably get into jazz areas. I borrowed Kind Of Blue and thought it was ok, if a little bland in places. Someone recommended I pick up A Love Supreme, In A Silent Way and The Black Saint And Lady Sinner. From there, I got a taste for free due to its parallels to noise and jam music and my collecting started to increase. So to sum up: Presidents of the USA - Presidents of the USA Nirvana - Insesticide Entombed - To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak The Truth NOFX - So Long and Thanks For All The Shoes Pulp - Different Class Ben Folds Five - st Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - Barafundle Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible Super Furry Animals - Guerilla Libertines - Up The Bracket The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour, Perverted By Language, The Peel Session Box Napalm Death - Scum Discharge - Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing and Why? Leadbelly - Midnight Special Robert Johnson - Complete Coltrane - A Love Supreme Mingus - Black Saint Sun Ra - Lanquidity and many others Anthony Braxton and on and on and on I now listen to a bit of everything all the time. The variety keeps it fresh. Edit: I missed out my current explorations of classical music. Started with some performances at the local college of music and then went on to a complete collection of Beethoven. Then I started grabbing classical vinyl as I saw it cheap in the wilds. Chopin, Bach, Berlioz, etc. Then I heard Messiaen and Carter on the proms and I've sinse picked up a selection of their items. This lead to Stravinsky in a round-a-bout way. I'm working on that now. Doom Metal has become a fascination as well. Few can bliss you out or zone you in like Sunn0))), or if your tastes are a little more desolate and saddistic, a bit of Khanate lets you roll in all the shit you want.

A CD doesn't really 'spin': it's a cold and mercyless laser that count holes...and it isn't John Lennon, so do yourself a favour and get the LP. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill a CD. Exactly: four thousands, according to experts. Now diggin: John Renbourn - Faro Annie - Transatlantic I'd love to turnnnnnnnn..... etc

I don't download illegally, or at least I try not to. I do get quite annoyed at the collectors market, however, where it is seen as ethical to buy a second hand copy of something for an incredibly stupid and inflated price where nothing goes to the artist, and yet a download of the same thing is frowned upon. At the end of the day, however, if I wanted to download music exclusively for free for the rest of my life, I would be able to find a new legal download every day without a problem. It's all about where your priorities lie really. Netlabels put out huge amounts of quality stuff every day, it's more about if you are open minded enough to try it. Sounds a bit muddled in retrospect, but I think that's about right.

Robert Wyatt - Comicopera One of my albums of 2007 for sure. I've already worn the vinyl a little from constant playing.

I do think that some Jazz albums work far better as stereo. I couldn't imagine The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady in anything but stereo and the Coltrane Village Vangard box (in my opinion) benefits from the stereo seperation. It's sometimes ideal, when listening to solos closely, to have one person in te left, the other in the right. All my opinion obviously.

Today I picked up: Oscar Peterson Trio - A Jazz Portrait of Frank Sinatra (Mono) (what a strange idea for a portrait series...) Kronos Quartet Plays Sculthorpe, Sallinen, Glass, Nancarrow, Hendrix Vladimir Ashkenazy - Chopin's Etudes Op. 10 and 25 Hans Rosbaud and Bernard Haitink- Stravinsky's Firebird Suite and Petrouchka Some interesting stuff hopefully. I love Chopin and unbelieveably don't own the complete studies so look forward to delving in to that. I like Oscar Peterson and he perfectly fits some of my switch-off moods, and couldn't resist his readings of songs that are rarely anything to do with Sinatra in any concrete way. I have never heard the Kronos Quartet but noted the presence of a Finnish composer that my friend will find of great interest, and the Hendrix thing sounds fun. As for the Stravinsky, I have the Firebird in a Stokowski CD box set but the sounds is far from ideal and I think it might be worth having several versions of this. I've never heard Petrouchka so I look forward to that too.

I've been interested, on an intellectual level, by mono recordings for a little while now. I've not got around to it yet but I think I'll be picking up the 2cd reissue of Piper at the Gates of Dawn with both the stereo and mono versions of the album out of interest. I'd also like to hear the mono Sgt Peppers. I'm 24 so quite a bit post-mono, but still interested by the phenomenon. I'd quite like to get some Dylan mono stuff too. As for jazz, I'm not too bothered. I did just pick up a mono Oscar Peterson Trio album today so maybe I'l give it a loud and close listen and post my impressions. On a side note, my favourite band of all time, The Fall, just released a new album that featured only 1 stereo mix. The rest is in pummeling mono but unfortunately, in my opinion, could have done with a few more stereo tracks for the dynamic benefits. As a band they use repetition repetition repetition repetition repetition repetition and the slightest variation can be quite powerful as a result. When they record in mono some of the subtlety seems to disappear.

Yes please, I specialise in fucked up recordings.

Just got my first Cage in the form of Thirty Pieces for Five Orchestras, my last track in an eMusic batch. I'll post my impressions when I've given it a listen.

This month, thanks to a forced increase of £2 and 10 tracks: Messiaen - L'Ascension Anthony Braxton - ABCD Cecil Taylor - 3 Phasis Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes Hanggai - Introducing Hanggai McCoy Tyner - Sahara Elliot Carter - various chamber music John Cage - 30 Pieces for 5 Orchestras Looks like I get a 10 track booster on Sunday for free due to the increased cost so don't know what I'll get with that. Maybe some more Braxton

The Fall - This Nation's Saving Grace Still the best band in the world.

Neil Young - Time Fades Away in excellent condition. Incredibly pleased considering I stumbled across it in the wild and I've been looking for it for about 2-3 years.

Sorry to hear that. I'm 'Mosaiced out' but will also try to scrape the pennies together for this gem. Thanks mate, I'm sure it'll be sorted soon enough. What I didn't initally notice with this is that it is for pre-order to be released at the end of this month and a list price of £35.99. Did this set never get a release in the UK before? That would explan the £90 price tag on the one copy I've seen in a shop early this year. Even if I miss the cheap deal I'll be able to part with £35.99 without too many tears in the near future.

I can't believe the price of that! I need to convince the missus that it's a good idea for me to buy that even though I have been made redundant.

Just spun Riley and Tippett's album In Focus for the first time and it was frankly superb. I will be listening to it during my job hunt many times over the coming weeks. Looking forward to the Riley and Byard album I picked up at the same time but I'm off out shortly and don't want to cut my first spin short.

Can't wait for that bad boy! I don't own a Mosaic as I've never had enough cash to splash out £80 for 6 cds but in this case I will make an exception. Oh boy...you gonna dig the Mosaic Braxton Arista box! There's also some live recordings from that era of Braxton with Holland that are well worth checking out.

Searched high and low for a thread on Riley and this is all I found. I'm shocked! The man is stunning. I've just struck it lucky with the following on vinyl, £8 for the pair: Riley and Tippett - In Focus Riley and Byard - Live at the Royal Festival Hall Nearly at the end of In Focus and I'm blown away. It is incredibly musical and not as abstract as I assumed it would be. There are even a few jolly moments thrown in.

Whoops - this is La Transfiguration. Anyway, the link should work through Sunday morning. I'm about to listen myself. It looks like a handful of very good Messiaen recordings have been added to eMusic. If they haven't been listed in the thread I'll add some a bit later. Yes please, I'll be picking up anything Messiaen related from my eMusic this month.

I've been buying up a fair few of the above mentioned albums on vinyl over the last few years as I can usually find something in good sound for a few quid. Prime examples have been Bob Dylan's Another Side Of..., Captain Beefheart's first album, etc etc. My record collection tends to keep its value in the main part though as I tend to have expensive tastes. Lots of Krautrock and experimental exotica.

I also saw L'Accension on TV from the Proms and was immediately blown away. I had never heard of Messiaen before and had tuned in for the Saint-Saene piece later in the program. I popped to the shops this weekend hoping to find a recording of the piece but it seems that many other people had the same idea and the only version available was in a £60 box set well out of my budget. I ended up going for a double CD performance of Turangalila and Quatuor pour la fin du temps that was going cheap and I'm now about half way through Turangalila. It is mystifying and massively varied. This is probably the most excited I have been about a classical composer. I usually listen to my classical collection with a detached interest but this stuff really strikes me emotionally. Thanks for a fascinating thread 7/4!

After having enjoyed a live LP and Duke Ellington Songbook for a while I decided to pop for the Proper Box of OP and I am finding it most enjoyable. Less impressive and exhausting than Art Tatum, who I probably prefer, but very easy to listen to. I love the duo stuff and will probably make myself a few playlists of the different trios etc.

I agree Oxfam should IMO be more careful, their generally non expert staff price by the book and take too little regard of the condition of the LPs. Countless times I've seen way over priced LPs in relatively poor condition. It's a real pity as this does them nor their customers or indeed their donors any favours. Having said that I have bought plenty LPs from them in excellent condition. A few years ago when prices were more reasonable I would buy anything that looked interesting regardless of condition. I'd often get 20-30 records at a time, usually costing me about £20-£35. Sometimes you'd get lucky and walk away with 15 or more good albums, other times you get two. Anything that didn't make the grade would go either back to the same shop as donations or to another charity shop. I'm certain they made more money from me this way than trying to sell Pentangle records that look like someone ice-skated on for £15 each.

The BBC Proms is doing a Stockhausen day on 02 August which looks pretty good, should be able to stream it from the website after the fact.