Another visit to Cardiff means a visit to my two favorite record store haunts, Spillers and Kellys! Definitely go and read "A Tale of Two Welsh Record Stores" on Letters From Somnolescent from last year for my first experiences with both, but if you just want to hear me chat about some albums (and why would you not?), I've got just that here.
Musical exploits
First stop: Sister Ray in London
Okay, quick detour actually, before we get to Cardiff. These trips, by necessity, always start with me and Caby by ourselves in London, and feeling adventurous, I wanted to buy music from a shop there first. There's only a million options, but London's also a big place, and Sister Ray in Soho was within walking distance. We're not slobs, but we did feel a little out of place at first walking around this artsy shopping area in comfy clothes.
Sister Ray's was alright. It's mostly a narrow little sliver of a shop, and like most of them, is mostly dedicated to vinyl (which I have a strict rule against on these trips due to their fragility and size). The CD selection was quite nice also, though, and here came the first four discs of many. Not a lot else to say, we were in and out pretty quick and I don't remember it being terribly remarkable. Just a nice store.
(If I've reviewed anything on this page on my main site, I'll link it somewhere next to the record itself.)
My Bloody Valentine - EPs: 1988-1991 (2012)
One on my radar proper that I was quite excited to get into the collection, this is a compilation of all the EPs My Bloody Valentine released leading up to Isn't Anything and Loveless. Includes some other rare/unreleased stuff, and while it is louder than the original releases, it's still pretty dynamic and sounds great. I will eventually pick up the Loveless remaster also, since I had a torrent of that as a teenager, but with how little I really listen to Loveless, it just hasn't been a priority.
The Breeders - Last Splash (1993)
I've been huge into the strikingly airless, poppily gross Pod since high school, but its MTV-ready followup (you know "Cannonball"?) Last Splash escaped me until about a decade later. Also a really good record, and also a lot weirder than you might anticipate. This one introduced The Breeders' classic lineup, and as a unit and not just a Kim Deal solo project, I'm hard-pressed to disagree.
Eels - Novocaine for the Soul (1996)
I've gotten into the habit of picking up CD singles on these trips because I find them neat and they're usually going for dirt cheap. I did give the full Beautiful Freak record a go, taken as I was with the creepy trip-hop thing going on on "Novocaine", but honestly, I found it a little too depressing to really want to revisit. "Novocaine", though, deserves to be on the car mix forever.
Pretenders - Pretenders (1980)
My mom is really not a Chrissie Hynde fan, but I have to admit, I was taken with them and her since I was a kid and heard "Tattooed Love Boys" on Guitar Hero II, which comes from this album. This is normally the type of music I take on vinyl, but the CD is your typical early 80s CD pressing and sounds plenty good for now. Spiky, punky, a little ballad-y at times, but mostly a good, angular dig into a batch of cool tunes from a fine lineup that should've been together for longer.
Next stop: Kellys
I went a little mad with the Kellys pickups this time, but they're all so affordable! And in fairness to me, most of these, I have actually listened to, and others still (namely Mad Season, New Adventures, and Remy Zero) became some of my favorites of the entire year. I can remember listening to Deluxe on YouTube on Caby's computer with the disc within reach because she didn't yet own a disc drive. On subsequent trips, I'd use the DVD player in the lounge to listen to CDs.
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| Brendan Benson - The Alternative to Love | Blakroc - Blakroc | Puddle of Mudd - Come Clean | Bush - Deconstructed |
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| Better Than Ezra - Deluxe | Bush - Golden State | Superdrag - In the Valley of Dying Stars | Matchbox Twenty - Mad Season |
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| The Breeders - Mountain Battles | R.E.M. - New Adventures in Hi-Fi | Remy Zero - Remy Zero | Grandaddy - Under the Western Freeway |
Detour: The Conet Project
As if I don't spend enough money on these trips, I opted to go hog wild and drop £200 on a boxset through the mail. I've had my eye on this one for forever, as a found sound enthusiast and indie rock historian type, but finding a physical copy tends to be annoying and pricey. It's officially called Recordings of Shortwave Number Stations, under a banner called The Conet Project, but Conet is shorter and no other releases came out under that umbrella, so the two tend to be synonymous. It's not music—it's airchecks of encoded, uncrackable military broadcasts read out by disembodied, synthesized voices.
If you're curious, I wrote about getting it at the time on the journal, and if you want an actual runthrough of the entire boxset, extra disc, goodies and all, check out "3-9-7-1-5: Exploring the Expanded Conet Project Boxset" on Letters. Seriously, it's strange but hugely fascinating stuff. It's not a set I'd recommend to anyone else, but I'm thrilled to have it.
Final stop: Spillers' pickups
And we come back around to Spillers! Their prices are definitely pricey, but I really hope they stick around, so I'm happy to patron their shop and buy things a couple things towards that end. A lot of their stock are new, remastered copies of catalog albums or outright new releases (so not what I usually pick up), but they are my source for Welsh-language stuff and I'll usually pick up one or two remastered discs per trip to see how they turned out if they're something I was already after. Here's those!
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| Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral | The Stooges - The Stooges | Kyuss - Welcome to Sky Valley |
Also, Caby got a copy of Kill the Wolf by Matt Berry. Always proud of her for picking up music she likes since she tends to be shy about her music taste :3