Top Shelf Records

Greetings all. I recently downloaded a selection of albums for free from Top Shelf Records, it's their fifth anniversary and to mark the occasion they were offering a bundle of albums and EPs from their label for free. Their website can be found here: http://www.topshelfrecords.org/

I'm part way through perusing the collection from the zip file I downloaded from their site. It's a nice mix, not everything in it is "my thing" but then it wouldn't be a collection would it? I have a varied music taste but it doesn't quite encompass the entire world of musical diversity.

Anyway, so the bands in the bundle. I'll begin with the first and end with the finale. Actually I'll just find them from the folder in some semblence of coherent cohesion. With the alliteration out of the way I'll move onto the bands. In the bundle are:

• Caravels
• Into It. Over It.
• Castevet
• Lion Club
• Stand Up. Get Down.
• The Clippers
• The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die
• Us Against the Archers
• Aeroplane, 1929

It's a very varied bunch. Ugh, no more alliteration, must not use to much rhetoric in these posts. Of the ones that I've listened to my two favourites are Caravels and Stand Up. Get Down. They've got a great sound and energy to them. I also think Us Against the Archers are ok as well. Although in one of their tracks they used a fake clap effect, and it made me cringe. I don't know why but I've discovered I find fake clap effects terribly annoying. However a fake clap track was used in another track from the bundle, this time from a different band, and somehow I was able to tolerate it. It wasn’t quite as garish, slightly more subtle. Mind you it still annoyed me, and I was pleased when the ten seconds of its use were over. So I think this is a conclusion, it may be the first I’ve come to since this blog began back in 2009. I don’t like fake clap sounds. At all.

Cheers,

big_friendly_letters

Followup to "Musical Binges"

This is just a short update on the previous post. In the last entry I discussed the idea of "musical binges", and how I was having an Iron Maiden binge at the time of writing it. Since then the mass listening turned into a full marathon. By this I mean that I listen to all 15 studio albums in just 5 days. I could have done it quicker but I was out one of the evenings preventing me from listening to much.

Anyway the reason I thought this was interesting was the fact that even after listening to all those albums in 5 days of basically listening to nothing else I'm still not bored of Maiden. I realised when the marathon was drawing to close on Friday that this was a sign of just how much I like them. There aren't many bands that I could intensively listen to without getting sick of them after a while. In fact I can't think of any other bands that I could do that for.

Should you wish to, leave me a comment saying what bands you could listen to in a marathon, if you could, and why.

That's all for now, the as promised regular post that actually talks about something is coming. Soon...

Thanks,

big_friendly_letters

Musical Binges

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this particular habit, the listening to one band over and over again in a short period of time. I thought I'd bring it up since I'm having a musical "binge" at the moment. The band that I'm overindulging in (although I would argue this point) is Iron Maiden. I doubt you're surprised since they're my favourite band but there you go. In the last three days I've listened to four of their studio albums all the way through as well as other bits and pieces. As I type this I'm on my fifth. The currently completed albums in this binge are:

• Dance of Death
• Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
• Somewhere in Time
• Piece of Mind

The album I'm playing now is A Matter of Life and Death. Anyway, so I'm enjoying that. But Iron Maiden aren't the only band that I've seen fit to listen to in superabundance. Many times I've done the same with HIM. However there's a problem with this one: last time I couldn't listen to any of their songs for several months. I very much wanted to, but every time I tried starting one I had to turn it off after a few seconds. So there are dangers to this drug, take heed.

The moral of this story? Use music responsibly and in a safe environment...

Cheers,

big_friendly_letters.