This little lot left the studio today, a raft of Hip Hop, Trip Hop, Turntablism and other assorted breaks and beats that I can live without for the moment. I’ve not had a good sort out since the mid noughties and it really is time. I said last year in the Record Collector piece that I had spent 40 years building up a collection and was planning on spending the next 40 dismantling it. Well not quite but boiling it down to essentials is the main thing for me now, I have too much, some of it hasn’t aged well and I only have so much space.

It’s a pretty satisfying experience to be rid of this much in one fell swoop too and, again, going through the shelves I’m reminded of several things that I’d forgotten about. Divine Styler’s little known ‘Spiral Walls of Autumnal Light’ album, J-Live‘s second album, Broadway Project‘s first, ‘Compassion’ – all solid records that may have taken a few listens the first time and still contain forgotten treats. Those Lemon Jelly singles with the crazy denim, leather and sack sleeves, hand-painted promo 12″s, and designs for lesser known releases like this Kid Acne cover for Rex Records.

One thing that’s a godsend and will be sadly lacking for future generations of music fans, historians and librarians is the record sleeve. Not just for the obvious large canvas that the cover affords and the packaging opportunities but for the small print and credits on the back. Several times whilst going through records I’ve flipped over a sleeve to discover someone was part of the process that I never realised, little messages that flesh out the release, lyrics and thank-you’s. I kept records where I had a thanks, a cover design was just too nice to part with or, in the case of most of the Finders Keepers releases, the sleeve notes are an education in themselves.
The art of finding samples is all about reading the small print, noting engineers, producers, player, studios, labels and year of issue wherever that is hidden on the recording. Now without sleeves, labels and inners that is being lost – iTunes doesn’t even have a box to add the label to the mp3 info and how many of your files are tagged with the year they were released? What about mixes? All those tracks, sitting together without a tracklist let alone the writer, label and year of issue. We’ll have a situation similar to the taping of mixes off of radio years back where you’ll never know what track 4 was, I suppose Shazam could come into play here.
It does bear thinking about though, not only are we entering a time where music is becoming faceless, it’s also becoming credit-less too. Instead of a quick flip of the sleeve we’ll have to consult the web to find info on tracks in the future, pdf ‘booklets’ with albums is all fine and well but how many of those do you have? People need to tag their files with as much info as possible but I doubt many are going to include the publisher, the engineer, who worked the desk or the equipment used. Should a site like Discogs ever disappear, (surely the no.1 music info resource on the web?), what would we be left with?

The vinyl sort out is still happening, today I found this, a signed Busy Bee LP, love the little message he’s added, modest to a T.

A lot of turntablist records are biting the dust, I’ve got a re-ignited passion for Divine Styler, Cappo and J-Live albums, found some Major Force and Skylab remixes I forgot I had and was surprised at how much or little certain records are worth nowadays. I also found a remix of Tipsy‘s ‘Space Golf’ by Muziq tucked away on a B-side and was reminded how great their first album was/is.

Going through records this last month, having a long overdue, very necessary clear out. One of those ‘do I REALLY need this anymore?’ kind of clear outs rather than just weeding the garden. Having had Serato as my playing out set up of choice since 2006 has meant that I’ve not needed to carry vinyl for a long time (thank god) save for the odd special set. It’s also meant that 12″s or LPs with one decent track can be transferred to digital and dispensed with.

Nothing makes it harder to dispense with vinyl than a nice cover or piece of packaging though and I have bought plenty for exactly that reason with little regard for the music. I found a whole raft of hand-painted promo sleeves which I will scan and put up here at some point, also this rather nice Runaways sleeve by She One.

A good length of time and some hindsight will also clear the unwanted guff though, as is normal when a new strand of music or scene appears, you hoover up all available product, regardless of quality, simply because there’s nothing else to compare it to. Years later the good is easier to distinguish from the bad or just plain average.

Not digging in the collection for a while can yield some surprises too; I was slightly horrified to find a Kylie record in my collection (the one with the Blue Monday/Can’t Get You Out Of My Head mash-up on the B side). But pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of the old Pussyfoot catalogue had stood the test of time – still full of undiscovered treasure and that the Richard X album was a pretty excellent pop record that had outlived the mash up genre that had spawned it. Another surprise was finding a 12″ of the follow up to ‘Play That Beat Mr DJ’ by Whiz Kid that appears to have been signed by him (long since deceased).

Two examples of 7″ splatter vinyl kids story records I found a while back. They play at 78 rpm and were released on the Happy Time label.