Vinyl addiction should be a recognised disability. Then I could get a doctor – warm and wonderfully friendly chap and chapesses that they are – to give me a prescription to keep me from getting withdrawal symptoms. Like methadone, only with artistic validity.
I try to justify all my 33rpm excuses for not paying the electricity bill so here goes on the subject of The Black Heart Processions’ remix album “Blood Bunny Black Rabbit”. You’ve got a band here – and being from San Diego so it is perhaps not entirely unexpected - that were big on atmosphere and not so big on things like hooks and choruses. They decide to satisfy their audience’s between albums appetite with a snack of new material and a side order of remixes. Only, unlike most remix type albums this isn’t really dance floor material. Instead it is a somewhat disjointed sonic collision with little more than the occasional, and somewhat unsettling, vocal interjection to divert your ears from the quasi industrial dodgem cars that get used to shunt the tracks together.
The first side is easily the most interesting with something resembling a stream of distinctly disturbed consciousness running through the five tracks – only “Devotion” would actually warrant being called a song – before the ascent into the inspired madness of Lee “Scratch” Perry as “Freeze” gets deconstructed into an end of night dance floor nightmare.
The second side stumbles though, with the two rather pedestrian remixes barely holding their own against the serial killer minimalism of the Mr Tube remix of “Heaven Below”.
Just had a thought. I they cut off the electricity then I wouldn’t be able to play my 33rm excuses. Better find something else to cut back on.
Serious bit now. The pressing quality was good and there was no indication of who mastered it. Sound quality was acceptable too.