In praise of vinyl
01 August 2004
By GRANT SMITHIES, Sunday Star Times

They get covered in dust, scratched, worn out. The sound is worse than CDs, and you have to turn them over. They're bulky, heavy, and you need miles of shelving to store the buggers. Face it, mate, records are, like, sooo 1985.

Yes, yes. We vinyl lovers have heard it all before. But we just smile smugly like recently stroked cats, because we know something vinyl detractors do not.

Namely, that records are sexy to an almost pornographic degree. They look good, smell good, feel good in your hands. They are beautiful artefacts, their big square covers a personal art gallery of arcane cultural references - before you even listen to them.

CDs are a triumph of technology over aesthetics, expediency over art. And they're not even that practical. Is there any lamer invention than the dinky, weak, easily scratched, butt-ugly plastic case most CDs are sold in? It's called a jewel case, though anything less rare and precious would be hard to find. The jewel case has one simple job - to hold a CD safely - and it can't even do that. The front cover's hinges bust off in no time; the tiny lugs in the centre break up, get under the disc and scratch it; the little cover booklet gets ripped and frayed if you slide it out to read it.

Form? Nope. Function? Barely. If a first-year industrial design student drew up this turkey for a class project, they'd be laughed out of the room. No, my friends. CDs may be a necessary evil, at least until the record companies all agree on the next expensive format change, but the serious music lover still needs a turntable. And never more so than right now, with numerous of our best independent labels pressing their wares on to lovely flat doughnuts of groovy black plastic.

Wellington's Capital Recordings has been keeping the nation's vinyl-ophiles cheerful for some time with quality early 12-inch singles from Datsun Stereo, Dub Connection and Jet Jaguar (all still available), and a couple of very tasty recent platters.

Capital's Flash Harry vs The Video Kid EP devotes one side each to the named artists, both of whom put out decidedly average albums last year but excel in the shorter time frame offered by this format. Flash Harry (the Black Seeds' singer, Barnaby Weir) impresses with the generously be-grooved Alright, while The Video Kid (Bret McKenzie, a Black Seeds keyboard player and one half of comedy duo Flight of the Conchords) offers two splendid versions of his wistful electro-folk gem Dawnskate-88 plus the bubbling vocoder funk of DJ'z Girlfriend. Both sides are lifted into the stratosphere by some uncredited, seriously soulful blowing from what we can only assume is the Fat Freddy's horn section.

AdvertisementAdvertisementNewer still is Jump Up! by Wellington duo Definite and Bling (Brent Strathdee and Khalid Mohammed el Sharif). The title track is an infectious latino hip-hop head-nodder built around a thick double bass loop, while the nicely minimal B.L.I.N.G sports slow funk bass and crisp snares. Bling's rapping is solid rather than spectacular throughout, so most DJs will prefer the superb flip-side instrumentals to the vocal tracks.

Drop a handful of nails into a blender and hit the pulse button rhythmically with your finger while also tapping the on-off switch on your hoover with your foot, and you, my friend, have the makings of a drum'n'bass record. Or so the genre's many detractors would have us believe. It's all bollocks, of course.

Flutes, dive-bombing synths, skilfully diced and reconstituted hip-hop samples, stampeding drums, murderous basslines, swirling dub effects, complex arrangements - Christ-church D'n'B kingpin Mosus and Concord Dawn's Kiljoy have found a place for all these things on dance-floor destroyer I Like it Ruff, released across two 12-inch singles on Auckland's Subtronix label and currently getting major play worldwide.

Even more delightful to my ears is the new Hope Remixes 10-inch vinyl single from Fat Freddy's Drop, a limited edition platter (via Rhythmethod Distribution) that slid quietly into the shops a few weeks back just as the band returned from a triumphant European tour.

A revelation to those who still think house music is uniformly blunt and brainless, these sparse, jazzy house cuts (by New York producers MKL and Herman Soy Sos Pearl) speed up and re-orchestrate the Wellington collective's original slow, dub-drenched cut (available on a separate 10-inch) without losing any of its smouldering soul atmosphere.

No wonder the track is getting thrashed like a slow nag in New York, London, Paris, Munich and soon, if you have a turntable, in your house too.

There's also a spanking new vinyl remix EP from ex-Hallelujah Picasso Peter McLennan, now recording solo as Dub Asylum, in which tracks from his recent She Dubs Me, She Dubs Me Not album are given a good studio slapping by four local production teams. Best track? The hypnotically grinding Rob Warner/Josh Webb mix of What the Funk, featuring ex-Auckland resident Sandy Mill (last seen in London recording vocals for Basement Jaxx), with the speaker cone-cracking bass'n'breakbeat Shumacher/Substaxmix of Scratch N Sniff coming a close second.

Why did McLennan opt for a vinyl only release in these obsessively digital times?

"Because you can't burn it or download it, and if you want DJs to play your music, it has to be on vinyl," he says.

"And turntables are available from all good stereo shops. People can head into town, buy a copy of my EP, then buy a turntable on the way home."