Labels: Vinyl Rites
Review by: Alex Deller
There came a time when I realised I did not need to physically own a copy of every record ever. It was a wrench, at first. A wrench as I recalled hyperventilating record reviews, blog posts or forum chatter and stayed my crooked, carpal-tunnelled finger while it hovered over the left-hand mouse button, the onscreen cursor quivering anxiously over this pixelated shopping basket or that. In the end, though, I persevered and I overcame. And in the end I like to think I’m a little stronger because of it. Some choices, though, still haunt my conscience. It’ll be 3am, just when you’re turning every decision over and everything seems the bleakest. And I’ll wonder to myself, Christ, did I really fuck up by letting that live flexi disc go out of print while I watched? Could I just have bid a little more on that LP at the last minute rather than gritting my teeth and watching the last few seconds tick down? Did I really do the right thing by leaving that middling thrash 7″ behind in the 50p bin? What if someone I know buys it and I overhear them mentioning what a great score it was? At such times, the only thing you can do is get up out of bed, run yourself a glass of water and take a little bit too much cold medicine. Take some deep breaths, enjoy the feel of the cool floor on your bare feet. Maybe play the MP3s of the one-sided Nazi Dust 12″ and think to yourself, yeah, it’s pretty good and you do suffer and you die and the guitar sounds cool and it’s nice and good and fast and the name will make people gasp because it’s kinda inappropriate to be mentioning Nazis unless you’re telling them to fuck off, but how many times would I actually really spin it if I had a real copy of it?