#19 - Buying Random CDs That Are Good

June 29th, 2008

Back when everyone bought CDs, my favorite thing to do was browsing through the selection at used CD shops. I did this for years, and found a ton of music by combing through the other people’s discards. I was never a collector — I was in this only for the music. It was a good way to kill an hour, and I got to be one of these flipper guys, rapidly scanning the racks of CDs as fast as possible… “Alanis, Pulp Fiction. Oh wow, there’s a David Bowie cluster here. I hope I finally see ‘Low’…” The CD flipping continues. “Outside.” Flip! “Heros.” Flip! “Earthlings.” Damn probably not. Ah there it is!” I grab “Low”. And flip through the rest. There were many commonalities in the selection between stores. Pink Floyd is surprisingly rare, even the usual suspects of their discography. It took me forever to track down “Animals”. It took forever to get the full discography for “The Orb”. But, there’s always copies of that great Blur album with the “Song #2″, which means you’re never far from a physical copy of the awesome “Essex Dogs”.

My favorite thing to do was to was to buy a CD without listening to it, without knowing the artist, and with only a quick glance at the cover. I’ve discovered music that I wouldn’t have discovered any other way with this method. Here are my three favorite random buys.

Journeyman - Mama 6

I have a thing for long songs… songs that go on for ten minutes are more. It started from my listening to Enigma when I was 12, and my tolerance for that sort of thing grew from there. In this one, the songs go on for twenty minutes, which mean they are twice as good as a ten minute song.

Now, you have to know what you’re doing when you produce a ten minute song. It’s a totally different skill as compared to producing the usual four minutes of music. It’s more of a journey that you have to produce, and there has to be an identifiable theme to the whole thing. You can cheat by adding speeches, but it’s only a small cheat. A forgivable cheat. It also works better if there’s an element of symphonic harmony going on. Dance music fits well for this sort of thing. The only tolerable rock and roll song of a considerable length is Guns N Roses’ “Coma”.

This CD was bought on the last day of a clearance sale. $3 I paid for a song that is one of the top ten CDs in my collection. I didn’t know anything about the band or even what type of music it was. It was $3, and it was a random selection. It’s great stuff, and I’m surprised its so hard to track down information about the band. Here’s the shortest song on this album.

Jouneryman - Valves [mp3]

http://www.discogs.com/release/59932

http://www.full-source.com/woob/

Xtatika - Tongue Bath

She seems to be a Korean expat who knows some sort of Korean folk singing, but she’s one of those Koreans who like New York. She’s very angry about something. I bet her cellphone’s a Motorola. There’s not much out there on this band, but that’s the risk, beauty, and the entire point of buying random CDs. The basic structure here are songs with her strong vocals as the central focus, very little post production, an emphasis on slow BPM drumming that sounds like, I don’t know, what jazz would sound like if taiko drums were readily available in the 1930s. There’s also a high dynamic range between the highs and the lows, which is great to hear in performance based CDs. The one song I loved from this one was “Malady”. If you like that one, the rest will be very distinct but similar variations on that theme.

Don’t be scared of the other titles like “Ghost Dance”. It’s good stuff.

The band really changed in their latest release… Live FM says they’re a “Noir-Wave electronica with a slithery backbone of Industrial beats, tight female vocals, and crashing synths.”

Live FM - Xtatika

http://xtatika.com/NEWS.html

Tyranny of the Beat

This was the best CD I’ve ever bought, which is what any music geek would say of the CD that introduced them to Can.

And SPK.

My most memorable moment in listening to this would be that this was my “farming” music (It wasn’t getting high music as you’d expect). I’d bring in a CD player and a few choice CDs and drive a tractor for 10 hours. Now, farming can get very boring. It’s like mowing a lawn in that you’d have to go back and forth over the field, the same thing over and over again. As such, I listened to this CD over and over again, and really got to hear every layer of this CD.

What it is is an introduction to Industrial music from the 70s. So if you’ve heard about Caberet Voltaire and that’s about as far as the knowledge goes, this would be a great CD to track down.

I didn’t like “Midget Submarine” though. What the hell? It’s a song with the title of a Devo outtake. I really don’t get the point of that one. And there’s another song to avoid — Candy Man. 天啊！

http://www.discogs.com/release/150152

Entry Filed under: Music