WTF Album Covers: Leona Anderson Music To Suffer By

by Joe Wallace

I stumbled on this image of the album cover for Leona Anderson’s Music To Suffer By on The Magic Whistle. WTF is going on in this picture? This one’s suitable for framing–at least in MY house where bad album art has a special place of love and reverence.

There’s nothing quite like the joys of an especially wretched piece of album art. The ones so wrong-headed you can’t even begin to describe them are my favorites. Music To Suffer By from Leona Anderson is definitely one of those. Can you hear the discussion between Anderson and the artist? “Well, miz Anderson, the guy with the violin is, you know, gonna KILL you here with that lighter as you’re trying to sing with cobwebs coming out of your mouth. GET IT?”

If YOU get it, please by all means, let ME know what this is trying to say. I think maybe I’m still drunk from a week last Thursday and that’s why I can’t wrap my head around it.

The World’s Largest Record Collection?

Whether or not this is actually THE largest collection or archive of records in the world doesn’t really matter…this is an AMAZING clip. This segment is only one part of a larger documentary by Sean Dunne. The whole thing is available on Vimeo.

Mono Stereo 45 RPM Single On and On/Matter of Confusion

I hear some people of a certain age group (hint–I went to college with some of them in the 90s) moaning about how music today isn’t as good (read post-punk enough or new wavey enough or whatever) as it used to be. To which I reply in two parts. Part One: You’ve become your parents, and Part Two, that’s just complete nonsense when faced with delicious vinyl releases like this 45 from Mono Stereo.

This Swedish four piece has its feel planted firmly in the psychedelia/shoegaze mushroom garden, evoking both a retro 60s vibe (with a nice little nod to Ennio Morricone in the middle eight of A Matter of Confusion, intentional or not) AND a bit of the old Ride/MBV thrown in for good measure.

It’s tough to review a modern ‘gazer band without invoking those previous two names, but the comparison is favorable, and I actually find the B side to be the stronger of the two cuts, though I have to admire the production work of the A-side On And On…sounds to these musician/DJ ears like a quite effective sitar simulation was achieved by pairing a banjo and guitar riff togetether…or maybe that IS a sitar and I’m just going deaf. Either way, it’s an effective intro to the track.

Mono Stereo has created a nice thick wall of sound swirling in just the right way. Kudos to them for not only a great release, but also for putting it out on vinyl as the gods intended.

Get your Mono Stereo on with the Vimeo vid below and tell me you don’t want to hear more…I did. Hook up with Mono Stereo on Facebook and be sure to tell ‘em Turntabling sent you.

And that reminds me…I am all too happy to review vinyl releases. Get in touch about yours via jwallace (at) turntabling (dot net).
Joe Wallace

Making Great Vinyl Records–United Record Pressing on Mastering For Vinyl

United Record Pressing has an interesting section on mastering for vinyl. There is plenty of advice there about the physical limitations of vinyl as a medium and what bands can do to make sure they get good fidelity from the finished product.

My only question about this section–having been written in 1997, is what has changed and updated since that time? Surely not the laws of physics with regard to how hot your master tracks can be before they overload and distort, or when too much treble becomes, er, troublesome. (Treblesome is not a word. But I almost used it here. Heh.)

Fortunately there are more recent discussions on the mastering to vinyl issue. Gearslutz.com has a thread from 2008 and another one here. CustomRecords.com throws its two cents worth in here, so you’ll have plenty to chew on. … Continue Reading

Selling Vinyl Records at CD Baby

Did you know you can sell vinyl records with your CD Baby musician account? I inquired about this many months ago and their policies have, I’m sure, been modified or had some extra details added since then, but the basic rules are thus:

1. You need at least five copies of the record to send to CD Baby for them to sell.

2. Send a CD version of the album so digital clips of the record can be made available to curious soon-to-be vinyl buyers.

3. Send artwork with the following specs to art@cdbaby.com–1000 x 1000 pixel tiff, 300dpi, and no compression.

4. The shipping costs are obviously more for vinyl than with CDs, so make sure you find out what CD Baby’s slice of the pie is–it’s going to be a bit more than the standard $4 per CD.

… Continue Reading