Noise

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  • Surface Noise

    Photo by Travis Yewell on Unsplash

    When someone complained about the surface noise that came with listening to music on vinyl, the late BBC disc jockey John Peel (a notable lover of the format), was said to have replied, “Mate, life has surface noise.”

    It’s hard to argue with Peel’s assessment of life in this mortal coil. Who among us wouldn’t wish that things were different, though?

    I’ve come to a point of frustration with my record collection where even new records have an amount of surface noise (crackling, pops) that are hard to ignore. It’s especially irking when you pay so much these days for any music pressed to vinyl. I’ve tried various methods to reduce the noise:

    • A new stylus
    • An anti-static brush
    • A Big Fudge record cleaning set
    • A Milty Anti-static gun
    • A Spin Clean record cleaning set
    • Homemade cleaning solution recommended by several sites

    Nothing has made a substantial impact. I still have newer records that sound like they’ve been gathering dust in the attic for years. I even have some older records that won’t play. Here’s video of one of my favorite records with the needle skating across it.1

    Independent records labels, in particular, have gone all in on vinyl. I get countless emails from various labels touting their latest releases on wax. I just received an email from Polyvinyl Records today about new vinyl variants of albums by the band Alvvays. These are in edition to several variants that are already offered by Polyvinyl and at places like Newbury Comics. You can hardly blame the artists and the labels for milking this cow for all it’s worth when opportunities for compensation from making music are drying up.

    Despite being sympathetic to the plight of the recording industry, vinyl is a market that I’m becoming less likely to participate in.2

    1. I couldn’t replace this record, even if I wanted to. It’s long out of print, like many vinyl releases. ↩︎
    2. This especially holds true in a world where so much music is available for little cost in the hi-res streaming format. ↩︎

  • I’ll write a hymn again.

  • High Beams

    Brothers Evan and Quinn Seurkamp, who primarily make up the Ohio band The Laughing Chimes, call upon the hauntings of the Appalachian foothills of their native state as inspiration for their gothic jangly post-punk. There is a wistfulness appropriate to the rust belt and its faded glory that pervades their album Whispers in the Speech Machine.

    “High Beams” is one of the catchier, more upbeat tracks on the album. The vocals call to mind Peter Murphy and the keyboards add some sparkle. One can imagine this is what Bauhaus might have sounded like after indulging in some Special-K.

    The Laughing Chimes – High Beams (YouTube)

  • Bandcamp Playlists

    Bandcamp is finally adding a feature that I, and other like-minded enjoyers of music have been wanting for some time. The new ability to create playlists feels like in most ways it aligns with the ethics of the service, which is a good thing, but the focus may be a bit too heavy in that area.1 Bandcamp describes the feature as, “Like digital mixtapes.” There isn’t much need to describe how it works, everyone is familiar with the concept of playlists and this feature appears to do exactly what it says on the tin.

    The new playlist feature from Bandcamp
    The new playlist feature from Bandcamp
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  • At The Apartment

    In June, I hope to see long-time indie pop favorites Tennis on their farewell tour. The husband and wife duo of Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore are calling it quits after an impressive run.

    The pair made this statement regarding the end of their time as Tennis:

    It became clear that we had said everything we wanted to say and achieved everything we wanted to achieve with our band … We are ready to pursue other creative projects and to make space in our lives for new things.

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  • Vinyl Me? No Thanks.

    Just as I’m starting to get back into vinyl records, one of the format’s proponents, a popular record club called Vinyl Me, Please is shutting down.

    Since launching in 2012, Vinyl Me, Please has offered boutique, collectible record pressings to a subscriber base paying as much as $654 a year for the highest-tier membership, as The Denver Post’s John Wenzel reported last month. The article traces the period of instability back to the firing, in March 2024, of three senior staff, whom the board of directors allege had conspired to divert company funds to build a pressing plant. Cameron Schaefer, the company’s former chief executive, said he believed that he and the two others had been fired to save on severance.

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  • Mitsune

    Featuring a heavy dose of Nippon by way of Berlin, Germany, Mitsune brings their blend of traditional folk sounds with a proggy psychedelic flair to KEXP. The songs center around the shamisen playing of Shiomi Kawaguchi and Youka Snell but have the rhythm backing of bass and drums. Colorful traditional costumes enhance the power of the music in what is almost as much of a visual as audio delight.

    I’ve been coming back to this video quite a bit. I’m not sure anything could be farther from the Byzantine chants that will accompany the Pascha celebration at my Orthodox Church tonight, but I’m enjoying the thought of the contrast.

    Mitsune – Live on KEXP (YouTube)

  • Everything Old Is New Again

    I was delighted to find out yesterday that one of my favorite EPs from 30 years ago, long out of print, was available on Bandcamp. I loved Peter from Eric’s Trip, but even when it was current, it was hard to obtain. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I ripped my friend’s copy to burn on a CD, a practice I was totally against, but felt I had no other choice. Now the band’s Rick White is releasing his archive through the indie music service.

    It turns out I’m not the only one with nostalgia for the fuzzed out lofi from these Canadians. The album My Anti-Aircraft Friend by LA outfit Julie earned an 8.1 score in Pitchfork’s review with nothing less than a full validation of the Eric’s Trip sound. Though the reviewer, Matthew Schnipper, writes quite a bit about Sonic Youth, those of us who were around in the 90s know of more immediate reference points.1

    Compare the second song from My Anti-Aircraft Friend. “Tenebrist” with the Eric’s Trip song “Sunlight” from their debut album Love Tara. The post-classic nasal drip vocals with guitar effects ripped from grunge and lurching dynamics that could put you in a neck brace all match here.

    It’s gratifying to see the nostalgia for 90s inspired sounds in the same way that we saw a reverence for 80s music a little over a decade ago.

    Eric’s Trip – Peter

    Rick White Archive | Bandcamp

    1. To be fair, Eric’s Trip was named after the Sonic Youth song from Daydream Nation. ↩︎

  • Studio – West Coast

    The record label Ghostly International just reissued West Coast, the 2006 album by Studio, a collaboration between two musical auteurs from Gothenburg, Sweden. Ghostly spent months hyping the release, and it has garnered critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, which labeled it a best new reissue. Bandcamp selected West Coast as their album of the day near the end of January.

    Louis Pattison’s review for Bandcamp Daily focuses on the balearic influences that feature prominently on West Coast but what struck me most was the sense that this album fit right in with much of the disco (dance) punk revival that permeated the musical landscape in the aughts. Even the heavy reggae vibes coming from the slow staccato guitars on the expansive (almost 16-minutes long) “Out There” wouldn’t sound out of place in some of the first wave experiments in dance punk.

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  • Headlights Pointed At The Dawn

    For this Friday Night Video, we’re going back a way, to the mid-nineties. Smashing Pumpkins had released Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness a fittingly grandiose title for an ambitious and widely varied double-album. At the time, I heard the first single, the “rat in cage” song, and I thought this latest effort wasn’t for me. I actually went out and sold my Smashing Pumpkins CDs, which I had been collecting since shortly after the release of their debut, Gish.

    It wasn’t until later that I found out there were some strong tracks on the third official record from the band. “1979” is a well-loved classic. Even Pavement covered the song, and they had their own song with the lyrics, “I don’t understand what they mean, and I could really give a f**k,” in reference to SP.

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