Vinyl/CD Review: Nirvana – In Utero Anniversary Editions
Let’s not beat around the bush here: the 20th Anniversary Edition of Nevermind was a gigantic piece of shit.
It was overpriced, it lacked key outtakes and included useless filler. But most importantly, it sounded like complete garbage. In the hands of Bob Ludwig, the album was “remastered” into a compressed, noisy mess. All the dynamic range of the original recordings was stripped out and replaced with loud, distorted noise.
It was a goddamn tragedy.
So as you can probably imagine, I was more than a bit trepidatious when details started to leak out about the In Utero 20th Anniversary Edition. From the second I heard about it, I thought they were going to fuck it up. I thought they were going to overcompress it, fill it with needless bullshit, and charge way too much for it. I thought they were going to go half-assed once more, and just create another needless cash-in at the sake of one of the most important and greatest albums of my generations.
I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong.
Vinyl Review: Nine Inch Nails – Hesitation Marks
Hesitation Marks came out several weeks ago, so I feel that me reviewing it would be kind of pointless by now. Want my quick take? It’s a good record, a nice return for Trent into the world of Nine Inch Nails, and an interesting change of pace. I like that he’s expanding his sound to include more synthpop and electronic elements, and I hope he continues to branch out and away from the industrial sound he’s known for. “Everything” “Copy Of A” and “Came Back Haunted” are great tracks, with the last really showing how Reznor has grown as a songwriter (while wearing his Gary Numan influences on his sleeve).
So yeah, it’s a good album. You should buy it.
You should just be careful about which version you buy.
Vinyl Review: Earthless – Under A Cosmic Sky (Outer Battery Clear Vinyl Edition)
I can be a pretty obsessive collector at times, especially when someone flashes the words “limited edition” in front of me. The second you tell me I might not be able to have it, I want it. Especially if the limited edition in question is a special color or comes in a special package. To me, these are the best kinds of limited editions. They have that aura of exclusivity and rarity that collectors like me salivate over, but they’re not keeping extra songs away from fans who may not have the luck, or economic means, to score the hard-to-find items.
Outer Battery Records, a small label that deals mostly in metal and punk, get this. So when they scored the rights to release a limited edition of Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky, the sophomore album by San Diego psychedelic rockers Earthless, they did it right: it’s identical to the original in every way, the only difference being that it’s on crystal clear translucent vinyl.
Oh, and they also made if fucking RARE.
Vinyl Review: Franz Ferdinand – Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action (Deluxe Passport Edition)
When Franz Ferdinand burst onto the scene in the early-2000s, many critics were eager to group them into the then-hot post-punk revival scene that included bands like The White Stripes, The Hives, The Strokes and The Vines. However, such a comparison was unjust, or at the very least too broad. First of all, the very idea of “post-punk revival” being a genre is in itself vague and inaccurate, because “post-punk” was also a vague and inaccurate genre. The Talking Heads were considered post-punk, so were Blondie, Joy Division and Public Image Ltd. There are some loose common threads there for sure, but what the hell do Joy Division and Blondie have in common? About as much as The White Stripes and Franz Ferdinand do – which is not much at all.
Vinyl Review: The Fog (Blakes Gold Edition)
Death Waltz Recording Company is label that knows what the fuck it’s doing, not only in terms of quality, but in how they treat their customers.
Earlier this year, the label put out a brand new edition of the soundtrack to John Carpenter’s classic film The Fog. Two versions were made available; a standard black edition, and a clear variant with colored splatter. Both were strictly limited.
Death Waltz deals in limited editions all the time, but the demand for this release was unlike anything they did before. When the item pages for the LPs were went live, their site crashed, leaving many who had placed orders in their carts to lose them, and many others not even able to get that far. By the time the mess was all sorted out, all the copies were snagged, leaving an angry bunch of soundtrack fans in its wake.
But like I said, Death Waltz is a label that knows what the fuck it’s doing. So as a response to this, and in an effort to cull eBay scalping/fanboy rage, they’ve gone ahead and done the right thing by making an all-new, just as nifty-looking second pressing of the soundtrack available. Not only that, they’ve seemingly made more than enough to go around, so anyone who wants a copy should be able to get one.
But should they?
Vinyl Review: Re-Animator Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Waxworks Edition)
Cult film soundtrack re-issues are apparently big business now. There are two CD-only labels who deal almost solely in them (La La Land and Intrada) and new vinyl-focused labels with an interest in old horror and sci-fi film scores seem to be popping up everyday. First it was Mondo Tees, then Death Waltz, now it’s Waxworks, who have come out the gate with the score to one of the most beloved cult classics of all-time, 1985 horror/comedy classic Re-Animator.
Game Review: Cloudberry Kingdom
Let me tell you the difference between a challenging game and a frustrating game.
A challenging game may be difficult, it may even make you angry, but if you keep at it long enough, you’ll figure out what it is you have to do in order to beat it, and you’ll do it. When you beat a challenging game, you feel like you’ve out-smarted it, that you learned its weaknesses and powered through them to victory.
A frustrating game is a game that is difficult, but for reasons that aren’t always fair or clearly-defined. A frustrating game will employ trial-and-error mechanics, ensuring that victory can only come from rote memorization. A frustrating game will often control poorly, and sometimes even incorporate its own poor controls into the gameplay. Finally, when you beat a frustrating game, you don’t feel like you accomplished anything, you just feel relieved that you don’t have to play it again.
Rogue Legacy is a challenging game. Spelunky straddles the line between the two. Super Meat Boy goes over the line sometimes, but never enough to make you hate it.
But then there’s Cloudberry Kingdom.
Cloudberry Kingdom isn’t just frustrating, it’s one of the most frustrating games I’ve played in years. It might just be the most frustrating game I’ve ever played that wasn’t just straight-up broken.
It’s an ugly, brutal mess of a game that lacks anything that someone might construe as fun. Not a single thing about the game, from the graphics and music to the gameplay and level design, is with merit or worth praise.
I hate this game.
Instant Finds – Rolling Thunder
Revenge movies are a tricky thing.
On one end of the spectrum you have violent power fantasies like The Crow, Desperado or Machete; unrealistic hyper-violent orgies of death and destruction that paint vigilante justice as a swift and powerful sword of righteousness.
On the other end are movies like I Saw The Devil, Hard Candy and Memento, which suggest that when someone takes the law into their own hands they risk turning into the very monsters that they are after.
And then there’s Rolling Thunder, a 1977 revenge thriller co-written by Paul Schrader, which seems to straddle the line between both sides, suggesting that while vigilante justice may be “right” in some cases, you’re not going to come out a better person having committed it.
Vinyl Review: Daft Punk – Get Lucky 12″ Single
Remixes have always been a part of dance music, but it seems like they matter now more than they ever did before.
It’s always the remix that gets played at the club. It’s the remix that takes a summer festival crowd by storm. It’s the remix that charts at Beatport. If the modern ‘EDM’ scene has proven one thing, it’s that if you want your track to really take off and get that crossover appeal, you better be ready to hand it off to every DJ and producer in the world to let them dismantle and reconstruct it in their own image (especially if that image is “sick dubstep“).
So when Daft Punk announced that they would be handling all the remixes for the singles from Random Access Memories, a lot of people were taken aback. Still, it kind of made sense. For whatever reason, most remixes of Daft Punk tracks tend to fall flat. They always seem to strip away what makes the original tracks unique, and instead just transform them into standard, boring club tunes (Glitch Mob excluded).
But even if Daft Punk had given “Get Lucky” to a thousand producers, DJs and other artists to remix “Get Lucky” to their heart’s content, it’s safe to say that none of them would have taken the track and done what Daft Punk did with it, which is hardly anything at all.
Although that’s not really a bad thing.
Vinyl Review: Maniac Soundtrack (Death Waltz Edition)
It’s weird buying a soundtrack to a movie that you have no plan on actually seeing, isn’t it?
Well, that’s what I did with the soundtrack to Maniac, the latest high-end vinyl only release from Death Waltz Recording Company. And I’m glad I did, because while I have no desire to see the Maniac remake produced and co-written by High Tension director Alexandre Aja and starring Elijah Wood, it sure does have one hell of a fantastic score.