2016 — Top Five New Releases Although Vinyl Connection managed a respectable bag of new release during 2016, less than half of them actually made it to these pages during the calendar year. We were onto the new one by post-rock instrumentalists Tortoise back in February and rushed towards the release by local artist All India […]
* ARRIVING AT VINYL CONNECTION THIS YEAR Continuing an end-of-year tradition by sharing ten album covers that made an impression. Electronic music, particularly that made on analogue instruments, remains a favourite genre at Vinyl Connection. There have been a few releases that have made an impression, particularly this fascinating archival release by Suzanne Ciani. The cover art, part […]
Christmas trading at Max Rose Electronics was rarely frantic but usually busy. Which was just as well. Like many small businesses, Max relied on a significant spike in December sales to coast through the hot holiday months of January and February. In those years when I was a part-time sales assistant on Friday nights and […]
…Being Part 2 of the Vinyl Connection end-of-year round-up Could this be the 10 days of Jazz Christmas? Not really, just highlights selected from those jazz discs arriving at VC this year, presented in chronological order. * Solar system huge, supernova-hyped. To these ears, pretty disappointing. As someone 1537 times wittier than me observed, those vocals just evoke Star Trek every time. Visit […]
Want a Christmas album by a New York composer of Jewish heritage that is totally not a turkey? Step this way. John Zorn started recording in 1980 at age 27. Later than Mozart, certainly, yet in the years following he has amassed over one hundred recordings under his own name. And there’s more. He has […]
Top Five Secondhand Record Purchases It is revealing that there was more than enough material in the acquisitions book to produce a Top 50 list of secondhand records entering the Vinyl Connection domain during the past twelve months. We are talking fifty highlights, by-the-by, not gap-fillers, pass-markers and also-rans. So much good music and such […]
On a Crowded House high after the televised concert last weekend, I was going to write about Together Alone. I thought to tell you of how, buying the album on release in 1993, its darker hues spoke strongly to my melancholic side, deep and rich like a chocolate cake made with 70% Lindt and a […]
I joined the Crowded House Fan Club at the age of forty plus. The subscription was motivated—sadly, but not unpredictably—by greed. Frenz of the Enz was an umbrella organisation (if that word can be used for something so quaintly amateur) set up by long-term tour manager cum general factotum Peter Green to meet fans’ insatiable […]
When you think about the world-straddling colossus they became in the latter half of the 70s, it is easy to forget that Pink Floyd started life as just one spray of colour in the kaleidoscope of Swinging London. Like many bands of the 60s, Pink Floyd embraced side projects and commissions. After all, it was […]
Racism, discrimination, a rock manifesto, sex, sport, violence and audio editing. Buy a ticket, this album has it all. Oh, and it’s a soundtrack too. Coming off the recording sessions that produced In A Silent Way (released July, 1969) and Bitches Brew (April, 1970), it was clear that Miles Davis was determined to move his music-making […]
They are one of my favourite groups. The VC collection holds over forty of their albums. Their catalogue holds some two dozen soundtrack albums, recorded between 1977 and 1999. All good reasons for a Film [Soundtrack] Festival piece on Tangerine Dream. Although I might wish to crow about having all the TD OST albums, in fact I have […]
What links Shakespeare, composer John Cage and actor Leslie Nielsen? What, for that matter, do robots, tape loops, and the invention of the micro dress have in common? Still scratching the old cranium? How about this: A connection between electric tonalities, Anne Francis, and monsters from the unconscious mind. Loosely based on The Tempest, Shakespeare’s […]
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