Tag: 12″

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Depeche Mode “101”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Depeche Mode
Album Title: 101
Year released: 1988
Year reissued: 2016
Details: 2 x 180 gram, gatefold, 16-page booklet

The skinny: “Good evening, Pasadena!!!!” I don’t have a lot of live albums in my collection and typically, I’m not a big fan. However, in a case like this, I get away with it because I’ve got a lot of history here. “101”, so named because the recordings are culled from Depeche Mode’s 101st show on their “Music for the masses tour”, was the closest thing the band had to a “best of” compilation around the time that I was just getting into them. I recorded a copy off my friend John’s compact disc and I listened to it pretty non stop for months. I know every nuance, every bit of banter with the audience, and how the live versions differ from the studio versions of these songs. In some cases, I even prefer these live recordings. So yeah, it was an important one to add to my collection and I was especially happy when I saw the 16 page booklet, designed by regular collaborator Anton Corbijn that was included with this reissue.

Standout track: “Everything counts (Live)”

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Depeche Mode “Some great reward”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Depeche Mode
Album Title: Some great reward
Year released: 1985
Year reissued: 2007
Details: remastered, 180 gram, gatefold

The skinny: Back at the end of January, I posted the first in a three-part series that I thought I would have had wrapped up by now. My plan was to do three Top Five Tunes posts on three different eras of Depeche Mode’s storied past but here we are at the beginning go August and only the instalment on their 1980s output has been published to these pages. I’ve been putting off finishing part two (Mode’s top five tunes of the 1990s) for so long that I every time I sit down to it, I find myself rewriting everything I had previously written. It’s getting silly now, though, so I thought I might spin some classic Depeche Mode to get myself in the mood to finish it. “Some great reward” was the first of the synthpop quartet’s albums I purchased with my own money and perhaps not coincidentally, was the first piece of theirs that I purchased for my vinyl collection back in 2013. It’s a 1980s classic that hosts many of their iconic tunes, including two which placed in part one of the aforementioned series. This reissue was a remaster by Rhino Records, pressed on 180 gram vinyl, and includes a write up by producer and founder of Mute Records, Daniel Miller. (I can feel the writing juices starting to flow again…)

Standout track: “Blasphemous rumours”

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Doves “Some cities”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Doves
Album Title: Some cities
Year released: 2004
Year reissued: 2019
Details: double LP, white vinyl, limited edition, numbered 0624

The skinny: Back at the beginning of July, I shared photos of Doves’ first record, “Lost souls” and talked about the excitement of having one of my favourite bands back together and active. The announcement of their reunion in late 2018 was well met and by all accounts, the run of live shows that kicked it all off in 2019 were triumphant and exciting. Of course, that was all followed by the reissue of their first three records on limited edition, coloured vinyl, of which I ordered all of them (I shared photos of their sophomore record, “The last broadcast“, as soon as I received them). And then came the ultimate news of all, the prospect of new material, their first in a decade. They’ve been teasing us with a few new songs over the last month or so, then, they dropped the early September release date on us, and you better believe that I pre-ordered it, a sort of birthday present to myself. Anyway… here’s the final one of last year’s reissues, Doves’ third album, 2004’s “Some cities”. It’s beautiful looking and beautiful sounding, like all their records. Come on September…

Standout track: “Walk in fire”