this isn't a particularly rare vinyl release at all - it's still widely in print and very affordable. it's an album very very widely considered a classic. but it is, I think, the moment when I realised what makes buying music more satisfying of an experience than the lifetime of piracy I'd built up to that point.
it comes with a handful of prints and illustrations that really expand upon the feeling of the album. the record itself isn't even labelled, there's no tracklist, the sides are engraved with their descriptions "nervous, sad, poor" and "bleak, uncertain, beautiful". but most notably of all, each of these releases comes with a penny flattened on train tracks behind the studio it was recorded in. I've heard stories of copies of this album coming with handwritten notes of thanks from the label.
it was the first time I think I realised the love and the immense effort that goes into putting music out independently like this, even long after the recordings are done. I mean, I get that this one's a very special case - a lot of high-effort touches to really drive home the art, and to keep doing them decades after the album released. but I think picking this up is a big reason why I'm still buying vinyl ten years later.
the album still absolutely rips, of course.
Related Recs
Happy 2nd Birthday to what is, without a doubt in my mind, the greatest album ever made.
I found this band back in 2019 when their second ever single, sunglasses, popped into my youtube recommended. It had maybe a few thousand views at the time. That song was revolutionary for me, unlike anything i’d ever heard. I resolved to follow the band like a zealot from there on out. I read every interview, listened to every live bootleg, etc.
Their first record finally came and went in early 2021 with reasonable acclaim. I adored it and spoke about it with fervor upon release. I sent it to anyone and everyone. But there was a small nagging part of me that thought the band had not reached terminal velocity just yet.
I remember being slightly disappointed that a newer live staple “Basketball Shoes” (a 13 minute monster of a song) was noticeably missing from the track list. When I first heard a live recording of it in 2019, I already knew that it was quite possibly the best song ever written. (I looped this recording so many times that every aspect is committed to memory, even the distinct crowd noises.)
AFUT released 2 years ago today, and it was a revelation. A 10 track, hour long, jam packed record of nonstop hits. Anthemic and yet equally frenetic, Ants is nearly impossible to describe. I have to imagine hearing this album is what hearing Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea for the first time must have felt like. Somehow both alien and feeling as though it has always existed, it is impossible to imagine a world, or a time, where this record does not exist.
It is a generational record that words will simply never do justice. Thank you BCNR, Thank you Isaac Wood.
concorde will fly.
Feb 4, 2024
💿
oh fuck yea, you‘ve never heard this album? SO GOOD! like literally inspired Paul Simon’s Graceland. LITA just did the first repressing in years.
May 31, 2024
every time I give this a relisten I’m always shocked by how consistently great it is as an album. Obviously, “The Idiot” gets a tonne of praise and deservedly so, and even though this album helms a lot of Iggy Pop’s most popular singles, I never see people talking about it as an album and what it does brilliantly.
even with “The Idiot”, Iggy Pop was very much performing under David Bowie wing and environment- a lot of dark and brooding electronics and atmosphere which complimented Iggy well but, here he is definitively Iggy Pop.
I think people forget that “punk” music (which Iggy hated the label of) doesn’t necessarily fall into a genre, more so an attitude of performance. This is proved time and time again in this album, as Iggy covers styles of hard rock, blues rock, ballads and soul- all unmistakably polished with a punk edge.
Punk isn’t the music you play, just how you play it (at least I think so), and it’s so obvious that Iggy and the band just had a blast recording and performing this, they don’t take themselves seriously, if anything, poking fun at the restrictions of rock and pop songwriting in the process. Yet, the album never feels like it’s smarter than you, it’s inviting you in to feel the excitement.
Such a blast of a record, if you need a pick-me-up like I did today, give this a whirl!
Nov 4, 2024
Top Recs from @colm
the simplicity of exploring around on Google Earth meets the infinity of local radio from every single pocket of the globe. the thrill of the hunt and the joy of just hanging out. it doesn't get better than this folks
Dec 4, 2024
it's only like 11°C outside in Dublin right now but the sensation of sunlight helps to elevate the cruel existence of Computer Work. so, fuck it! balcony season! allowing the Macbook to experience its true natural habitat of Somewhere That Isn't My Desk has made me a bit more appreciative of its possibilities. last summer I took the idea to its logical end point and brought my cheap usb dj controller out on the balcony with me, recording DJ sets for nobody in particular on my headphones as the sun sets. those days approach once more. now if only I could solve the glare problem
3d ago
Jan 7, 2025