This is half-pie.

Last year I ripped all my CDs. And I posted about it here and here. The (friendly) advice received was that I was doing it wrong (or at least, not to a sufficient bit rate if I was insisting on not ripping to FLAC). So I started from scratch. And now I’m finally there and I can pack the CDs into the ceiling space and never think about them again.

As before, I’ve found the need to take photos of a small proportion of CDs whose cover art doesn’t seem to be widely available. Given that most of the cover art I do use comes from the net in one way or another, I thought it best to give back: and so the following are roughly 200×200 pixel thumbnails linking to each roughly 1000×1000 original.

Abbasalutely: A Flying Nun Tribute to the Music of Abba —oh how we laughed at the irony of it all as we purchased this CD, secretly pleased with the chance to reconnect with the music of our primary school years. Of course now, we just buy the 66-song Thank You For The Music from iTunes. For the kids, right? Just for the kids.

Baddiel & Skinner & Lightning Seeds: Three Lions —arriving in the UK in time for Euro ’96 I got this song the first time around. Not that it helped the English team very much: “30 years of hurt” is now “45 years of hurt” and counting.

Björk and David Arnold: Play Dead —following on from her Debut, this is a lovely piece of sixties-inspired film theme music co-written with Jah Wobble (and so with a lovely big slow beat behind it).

Black Grape: England’s Irie —and this was Black Grape’s Euro ’96 single, done with Keith Allen and Joe Strummer. That summer every man and their dog were doing football songs¹ but you have to like the vocal layers of Ryder’s casual‘s chant of “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough” with Keith Allen’s² “We live in a land of crass hypocrisy / We’re gonna win the National Lottery”. Yes!

Black Grape: Fat Neck —Not one of their best.

Black Grape: In the Name of the Father —this is more like it: the woozy dance drug-thuggery of the Happy Mondays tightened up: “Well I don’t do what you do / and you don’t do what I do / but you should do”. Er. no thanks, Shaun.

Black Grape: Kelly’s Heroes —I love this cover. And if I knew more, I’d be able to tell you what pose Shaun is aping through those bilious Central Station Design colours.

Black Grape: Reverend Black Grape —This is a brilliant single. “There’s nothing more sinister / as Ministers in dresses” is another great throwaway line—Shaun would not appear to be a fan of the Catholic Church—but I can’t really make any sense of the rest of the lyrics. Luckily the music carries it all the way home.

The Blue Hearts: Train Train —I first heard this track in 1990 as the theme song to a Japanese tv programme. Not that I remember anything of the TV show, but I really liked the tune. Apparently The Blue Hearts were Japan’s answer to the Clash, and the song certainly sounded punky enough for me to insist on it getting into the playlist of Radio One in Dunedin when I came back from Japan.

Bluespeak: Late Last Night —Auckland jazz-lounge featuring the multi-talented Greg Johnson, the standout track being about an obsessive women who makes sculptures out of fingernails.

Christine Anu with Paul Kelly: Last Train —Another of those singles you like the sound of, so you buy. And then never get around to listening to because it’s not part of an album that you also own.

Cinematic: Cinematic —Christchurch janglepop band, and former crew of our leader at the Wellingtonista, James.

Grant Lee Buffalo: Mockingbird —So memorable I’m having to play the song just so I know what it sounds like. At one point I had the album this single came from, but it’s long sold in the face of declining listening interest on my part. [Later: actually, it wasn’t bad, was it.]

The House of Love: Babe Rainbow —These guys were alt-MoR, now that I think about it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but maybe that’s why their albums remain lower on my playlist many of their contemporaries. I need to revisit them.

The House of Love: Untitled [Butterfly] —this was their first on the major label they went to after Creation. It’s actually pretty good (as I skim through it to reacquaint myself).

The House of Love: Untitled [A Spy In The House of Love] —If I remember rightly, this is an album of outtakes and lost tracks assembled from some abortive studio sessions between the previous two albums. It’s not as good as either, though it has its moments.

James: Laid [Single] —Probably James’ best known track (even more than Sit Down³) it is now more tragically known as that song in American Pie.

James: Seven [Single] —Just as with the previous James single, this is the confusingly named single from which the album takes its name.

The Jesus and Mary Chain: Blues From a Gun —another single I brought home from Japan, this one is one of those fiddly three inch CDs. And I just happen to have lost the adapter that would let me rip it. Bother. Because this has a nice cover of My Girl on it.

JPS Experience: Precious —in which former art-pop Flying Nun types go all crunchy indie-dance-ish and start affecting Thames Valley accents. This was a weird, but quite listenable transition.

Jules Issa: Dangerous Game —a declaration of intent from the Deep Grooves people. who went on to produce a rather awesome album of groovy tracks from many New Zealand artists.

Keeping the Faith: A Creation Dance Compilation —the change triggered by Andy Weatherall’s radical reworking of a jingle jangly Primal Scream b-side into a monster dancefloor hit was cemented in with this, an actual dance music compilation from Creation Records. There are a great number of awesome tracks on here. And I’ve burgled the intro to the Farley remix of Loaded herein for my ringtone.

Kenickie: Millionaire Sweeper —London, oh London! There I was, working a boring job in the photocopier room of Britain’s largest architectural firm. The highlight of my week was walking around the corner to the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street and seeing what the cheap new release singles were. And this is one: second string brit-pop; but lovely all the same.

Morrissey:Everyday is Like Sunday —I would rate this single as one of the best things ever released by Our Moz. It has four beautiful songs on it, products of that wonderful immediate post-Smiths era⁴ when he worked with Vini Reilly from my long-time faves The Durutti Column.

Morrissey: Suedehead —Not as good as the previous, when considered as an EP. The standout b-side for me is I Know Very Well How I Got My Name, a typically epically titled yet mostly acoustic and whiny Moz song⁵.

Morrissey: You’re The One For Me Fatty —surprise! Another Morrissey single!

The Mutton Birds: The Heater —Continuing the theme of human-appliance interaction which started with that Front Lawn song about the bloke marrying his washing machine.

New Order: Round And Round —Not sure why this was in the pile to have a photo taken. It’s another of those cursed 3” discs, so I haven’t managed to rip it yet. There’s yet another football song on here, of a sort: apparently it was a theme song the band did for a TV program on football, hosted by Tony Wilson.

One Dove: White Love —Contains an unbelievable 10 minute version, all squalling quitar, sweet vocals and Weatherall beats. Just brilliant, it used to be one of those listening-with-headphones-in-the-dark type songs for me.

The Shangri-Las —When I was a kid I’d fossick through my Mum’s collection of 7“s, bought (I think) mainly during her years in London in the early sixties. Thinking about it now, I bet some of them are collectable! Anyway, I always loved The Shangri-Las Leader of the Pack; hence this, which is another of those 3” discs awaiting ripping. It was one of a series issued in the eighties, each containing four of the best known songs of some sixties pop group. I really should have bought a few more.

I hope that’s the last time I have to do this job, fun though it it to listen to all these old tracks.

¹ I also have the one Primal Scream did with Irvine Welsh and The Barmy Army; the latter being mostly those members of Tackhead responsible for one of the best Football songs ever written.

² Who co-wrote both New Order’s World in Motion, a rather crappy song for the 1990 World Cup, and the amusing but appalling Vindaloo. He has form, does Mr Allen.

³ Whose best version, the rattlier, more acoustic original, may be found on Youtube here.

⁴ Viva Hate, the album, is a bit uneven. But I will use this footnote to announce that I once had a copy of the mis-printed Viva Hate called Education In Reverse, apparently its original title and the name on the first pressings in Australasia. Naturally I took it to London and sold it for profit (along with my lovely green vinyl 12” of The Cure’s A Forest). Sad, eh.

⁵ This song gives rise to one of the Holy Grail collectables for Durutti Column fans: an outtake called “I Know Very Well How I Got My Note Wrong” in which Vini epically flubs a note and both him and Moz get the giggles. In the roaring days of Napster I procured a copy of this song, since lost of course (and nowadays too low a bitrate). Luckily Youtube does provide.

Following on from our earlier experiences, we’ve continued to add to our little collection of board games; and I’m now a regular tyre-kicker at the Wargames Supply shop not far from work. It’s a pretty nerdy¹ shop (I once thought some besuited chaps were re-enacting an episode of the IT Crowd in there—EIFFEL TOWER!—but no, they REALLY WERE playing a role-playing game in public!) but the staff are nice and there’s a great range of board games.

Anyway, I’ve picked up a couple new ones from there in the last few months, and they’ve both met with success.

The first is one called Buccaneer, which I got for the kids. We all like it.

In this game you are of course, a Pirate/Buccaneer/Seeräuber (depending on which edition of this game you find – there are three different named versions) attacking ships as they come into port. Yes, you’re a land-based pirate.

But in order to take a ship (here represented by a lovely card) you have to assemble as many crew as the ship requires (in the case above, three). Each player has five pieces representing crew members, each with a different value. You crew up by choosing a crew member from some other player, stacking one of your crew members on top of one of their crew members or stacked crew members. Around the table in turn players stack up crews, taking the stacks of others too, until they have a large enough crew in one of their own stacks to take the ship that’s in play.

But! There’s a slight twist: the ship taken, you now have to pay off your pirate crew. And paying out those couple of captains that you forgot were at the bottom of the stack has just wiped out your profits…!

And so, after all the ships have been taken, you count up the gold (there’s a few bonuses as well) and see who has won.

Rosa (7) in particular likes this game—the pirate aspect is a winner—but Bella (10) is a bit of a fan too, and can beat her parents on a regular basis. It also, like many of these German style games, doesn’t take a heck of a long time to play. So WIN all round.

The next game I have developed something of an obsession with. It’s Race For The Galaxy, a card game. You’re trying to build a galactic civilisation out of cards (surely doomed to failure, right?); each card representing one of those science fictional ideas like colony ships; lost alien artefacts of power; space marines; planets with different kinds of export and import requirements etc etc; but also more prosaic and possibly more-likely-to-exist-in-the-future ones like interstellar banks and export duties.

You have a hand of cards; you build by placing cards from your hand into your tableau in front of you. Placement carries a cost (in discards); different types of cards can only be placed in different game phases. There are five phases: Explore, Develop; Settle; Trade; Consume, and Produce; cards in your tableau affect your actions positively or negatively in each phase… well I could go on, but suffice to say that the rules are complex, at least in the first few plays (something that has been known to put more than a few people off it) but it is completely worth persisting with, in my opinion.

Despite this complexity Rebecca and I can cut out a game in about half an hour now. The nice thing is that we’re evenly matched as well (though I’ve had to forgo the extra practice I could have gotten on one of the several online versions of the game, so that we stay evenly matched²) which makes the whole thing pretty interesting.

The complexity also ensures that there are a number of winning strategies that can be followed. Victory can be had by placing lots of cards really quickly; by setting up an economy that generates lots of cash; by taking lots of planets using military; by strategic placement of the six-cost development meta-cards (e.g., you might be able to place an Alien Tech Institute card, which gives you two and in some cases three points for every Alien card in your tableau, thus making explicit the value to your civilisation of specialisation in that particular technology or cultural idea). Or by any combination of these and more.

So not only is the outcome uncertain, the strategies we both use are unpredictable as well. I like this level of variation a lot.

It’s also a game that lends itself well to analysis. Having noted some people on Board Game Geek who have been tracking all their games played, scores, and Start Planets (the initial card in your tableau is a randomly-chosen-out-of-a-special-series planet that sometimes informs the sort of strategies you should pursue) I’ve been tracking mine using a Google Spreadsheet and graphing the results. There’ll be an excuse for tedious analysis once I build up the number of my games.

And finally, there’s also a solitaire variant where the mechanical opponent is tracked via means of a scorecard. I find this version very hard to defeat, though I don’t play it very often.

I’ve not come across a game before that’s so thoughtfully put together, and so replayable³. I’m pretty sure I’ll be playing this for years; others have clocked up thousands of plays. And if the base game starts to pale, there’s the three expansions⁴.

Definitely the find of the year for me.

¹ Pot / Kettle, etc etc.

² I’m assuming that I would get better than Rebecca and stay ahead of her if I was to practise more – and that might not be true. She’s too damned smart on puzzles and games.

³ This chap writes far better than I on why the game works so well.

⁴ The first of which has the solo variant.

We passed through Auckland in the weekend; and Saturday night was also when Hooky & Son were performing Joy Divison’s Unknown Pleasures album at The Powerstation. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to go; but even though I cannot deny Peter Hook’s right to make money off the songs he co-wrote 30 years ago the whole thing felt a bit wrong to me.

So I made a conscious decision not to go, and instead we watched (again) the better part of the Ian Curtis biopic, Control.

It’s a pretty good film, possibly one of the better music biopics you’ll ever see. You know how it ends, of course, and all through it you’re willing the people around Curtis to just wake up and see what’s going on, and get him some help.

It never came. Not in a form that would have helped, anyway.

I listened to the music again a couple days later. It’s incredible how personal some of the lyrics are. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to mist up a bit when next you hear Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Or worse, Atrocity Exhibition:

Asylums with doors open wide /
Where people had paid to see inside /
For entertainment they watch his body twist /
Behind his eyes he says, I still exist …

When I was at high school I naively thought there was some sort of cachet to liking a band whose lead singer had hung himself. You could automatically make parents fret with a revelation like that. And later, I had a poster of him that I would semi-ironically burn candles in front of. I was hardly the only one to do these things, but it seems now to have been terribly misguided.

The music remains, however: sparse and dark, full of a strange energy.

Ian Curtis (15 July 1956 – 18 May 1980)

“… so you say.”

I’ve been reading a lot of comics lately. The Wellington City Library carries a huge range of graphic novels and collections, and it’s been good to catch up with old favourites like Ennis, Moore, and Ellis after a good ten years away from the medium.

But if all I was reading was superhero stuff I’d have to say that I haven’t missed that much. Luckily though, there are unexpected delights out there, away from the increasingly tedious bods in tights.

When I was in the library the other day a new title caught my eye: Phonogram: Rue Britannia. The cover seemed familiar; and yes, it is: a remix of an old Pulp album cover.

The story: it’s brilliant.

So, what if music itself were a thing of magic?

You know this makes sense. We all have songs that do things to us, emotionally and physically, that seem magical (like my first ever listen to Primal Scream’s Loaded)¹. So, if you’re a Phonomancer that’s the magic that you use.

David Kohl is a Phonomancer. Britannia, the goddess that made him, died with Britpop years earlier. David’s current existence centres around himself and misusing his powers to pick up girls in bars, until THE Goddess finds him, curses him (with PMS!), and sends him off to find out what’s happening to dead Britannia, who is apparently being “interfered” with.

The writing is packed with brit-pop-culture references – but hopefully not enough to weigh down the experience for readers not immersed in those times. The black & white artwork is beautiful and spare; not a line out of place but capable of displaying great emotion and humanity. And also lots of hot punk chicks.

Perhaps one of my favourite parts of the story is about Beth, a former(?) obsessive Manics fan part of whom remains trapped in the era holding out for the return of Richey Manic. There’s a lovely sub-plot there about growing up and letting go that is really quite beautiful.

As one who spent a good proportion of my disposable income in the 1990s on obscure and not so obscure British music² this book pushes all my buttons. It’s the best comic book I’ve read in years. But I must remember, as Emily Aster, another phonomancer in David’s coven, says: “Nostalgia is an emotion for people with no future”.

Even so, I’m off to the comics shop tomorrow to see if I can find a copy of Rue Britannia and the followup collection for myself.

And the rest of you: please form a orderly queue behind me.

• Read the first part here.
• And a much better review of the book may be found here.

¹ Hell, for me sometimes even the right chord change can bring on a numinous moment (like that change in Ride’s Moonlight Medicine–one of only two good songs on their album Carnival of Light–that I was trying to explain the goodness of to Bella at the weekend).

² A confession: I also was at Knebworth for those Oasis concerts. Which means I actually do, sadly, feature in this very comic book.

I’m still ripping my CDs and occasionally finding inadequate cover art for them. After the comments to the last lot of album covers I posted I’ve been going back through all the CDs I’ve already done and re-doing them at 320kbps. Just, you know, because that’s so much fun.

As before, the following are roughly 200×200 pixel thumbnail linking to the roughly 1000×1000 original.

Deconstructed: An Acoustic Album —You know how, after the whole family goes to the Warehouse, crap just seems to appear in the car. This is one of those.

Vic Reeves & The Wonder Stuff: Dizzy —Sadly, it took the addition of Vic Reeves to the line-up for the Wonder Stuff to get their first UK Number 1. This is actually a pretty cool song all the same, a cover of some ancient ditty.

We Know Where You Live: Draped —Detect a theme here? We Know Where You Live was a post-breakup splinter of the Wonder Stuff, back in the mid ’90s. Before the Super Furry Animals, it was The Wonder Stuff that was the target of my obsessive completism…

3Ds: Fishtales / Swarthy Songs For Swabs —Perhaps unsurprisingly there seem to be few decent quality pix of these 3Ds covers.

3Ds: Hellzapoppin —Outer Space!

3Ds: The Venus Trail —Spooky!

The Phoenix Foundation: Horse Power —And the covers that are available for this, the first album from these guys, are all of the American reissue… and nowhere near as cool as the original New Zealand version.

Voice Of The Beehive: Monsters And Angels —This band used to be one of my little guilty secrets. Maybe not so much the album this single came from (I’ve since sold it) – I think it got the SAW treatment – but their earlier one I still listen to.

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra: National Bank Series —This from 2004, a CD picked up while I was working at the National Bank; on it Tchaikovsky Sleeping Beauty and Piano Concerto No. 1. (They were a lot classier in those days.)

New York Philharmonic/Zubin Mehta; Montserrat Caballé & Peter Wimberger: Excerpts from Der Ring des Nibelungen —Bombastic. But sometimes, oh so good. I first heard this music in Boorman’s Excalibur), and it’s stayed with me ever since.

Therapy: Nowhere (Sabres Of Paradise Remixes) —Punk Metal, as remixed by Weatherall et. al. Another (attempted) completist purchase.

Passion Fish: Soundtrack —Years and years ago we saw this at the Film Festival. Can’t remember much of the film, but the music made an impression. A compilation of Zydeco / Cajun tracks.

Peaches: So This Is Love —Another of those “Warehouse” purchases – it’s a whole lot of covers performed by NZ female artists flogged as a Valentines Day album a few years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it. Though maybe I should.

Suede: So Young —Back when Suede were supposed to be the next Smiths (how old am I to still wish for “the next Smiths”?) I started in collecting all their EPs as they came out.

Suede: Stay Together —And here’s another; but also one of those rare things in modern times: a non-album single. Just like the Smiths, in fact.

Ruia & Ranea: Waiata Of Bob Marley —Thanks to my high school buddy Jeff, I’m left with Bob tunes etched in my head. These are versions in Te Reo, and the only Bob in my collection, currently (this is an unfortunate omission).

William Orbit: Water From A Vine Leaf —An early appearance of Beth Orton; and a very lovely track it is too.

Punks Not Dad: We Are The Dads —The debut album from my other favourite Welsh band, as mentioned a year or so ago, and of course I can’t resist mentioning here the video for their awesome song, In Me Shed.

That might be the last of these though – I’m nearly done with the ripping. Phewf!

In the mail this week, an interesting envelope arrived from my (ex-) bank, the National Bank.

It was thick, and rustled slightly.

“It’s nice to know some things in life are free”?

Intriguing.

But what could the bank be sending me?

Blah blah blah. Just a letter for some new product. The usual sort of thing.

But wait! What’s that behind the letter? There’s something else in here!

Hey, maybe it’s the free thing they talked about on the envelope!

Errr, no.

Just a little bag stuck to a piece of card, helpfully labelled “Air”.

And I feel like I’ve been trolled.

(I leave it up to the reader to decide whether I paid any subsequent attention to the actual content of the letter.)

And still, here I am ripping my stuff.

Sometimes, bands put out bonus DVDs with a few videos on them – like Coldplay’s X&Y Australian Tour Edition from a few years ago. There are several audio tracks on here that I don’t otherwise have – and so the question becomes how to rip these so I can listen to them in the usual manner¹.

I’d done this several years ago, but had noticed that the result seemed slightly slowed down, something that probably related to the different sampling frequency of the source material. The DVD audio seemed to be sampled at 48,000Hz, but regular CD audio is at 44,100Hz (I think), and so if any part of the lengthy chain of transcoders is assuming it’s dealing with CD audio then there’s a problem.

I think I’ve sorted it now. I’m sure there’s a better way, but here’s what I did on my Mac:

• Mac The Ripper – this can be used to separate (demux) the video and audio. At the end of this process you should have a large .pcm file containing all the audio tracks as well as a video file you can discard.
• Audacity – import the PCM file as “raw data”, making sure you set the sampling frequency to 48,000Hz in the appropriate import dialog.

At this point you’ll have to select each song separately out of the one long audio file and “Export Selected…” in Audacity. It’s a bit of an interesting exercise if you haven’t done it before (I’m sure Audacity has better ways of doing this too, though I haven’t delved that far as yet). You can export as MP3 / WAV etc etc – I did two exports, one to Apple’s lossless WAV equivalent AIFF for archival purposes, and another to 320kbps MP3.

I’m glad I only have to do this once.

Later: So much for knowing what I was doing. The next one I tried, the DVD version of the Super Furry Animals Rings Around The World turned out to have a variety of audio encodings resistant to the above. I’ve ripped it once before, several years ago, but to a less than adequate quality. Unfortunately I can’t remember how I did it. Back to the drawing board!

¹ The question as to whether or not it’s actually worth the bother I’ll leave aside for now.

As mentioned, I’ve been ripping all my CDs to some sort of quality level that means I won’t have to do it again for a while (sadly, I don’t quite have enough disk space for FLAC, but that’s another story).

One slightly annoying issue is that some CDs have hidden tracks that can be almost impossible to rip. I’m talking here about those tracks that are hidden before the start of track one on the CDs hosting them. In order to hear one you need to scrub backwards past the beginning of track one using your old CD player, and eventually you’ll find it. They’re in what’s known as the “pre-gap“, a space that supposedly should be 2 seconds long, but in which it was discovered whole tracks could be placed.

Most software based music players will not detect these tracks, so you can’t find them with iTunes and the like. Therefore it’s quite possible you may even own CDs with these tracks and not know it – here’s a list.

Mine (that I know of) is the Super Furry Animals album “Guerrilla“; the hidden track is called “The Citizen’s Band”, a little ode to CB radio whose melody borrows heavily from an earlier song. So not the Eldorado of hidden tracks, but then not getting it would be an affront to my completist sensibility around SFA, my long-term favourite band.

Cutting to the chase: it turns out that it is possible to get these tracks. Special software is required:

• Windows: Exact Audio Copy – instructions here
• MacOSX: XLD – instructions here
• Linux (& MacOSX MacPorts): CDParanoia – commandline fun for all!

One additional problem: not all hardware can actually extract these tracks correctly. My two Macs, though both with different optical drives, eventually extracted what seemed to be full sized files, spewing lots of disk errors as they did so, but the files actually turned out to be silent. This is apparently quite common, and you may have to try lots of machines before finding one that works.

I found one eventually, though not at home… and now I have the track ripped and safe in its new place of repose. Clearly, my life is complete. For now.

So I’ve been listening to Kristin Hersh / Throwing Muses for 21 years now. It’s been a long journey for everyone, and I’ll admit I haven’t bought anything of hers for a while now. I still follow her on Twitter though; and it was here I learnt of her new album, Crooked.

It’s a book, a beautiful little hardback book with a code inside to download the album itself.

The object-collector inside of me, the one I’ve tried to suppress in the last few years as the sheer weight of all our material possessions have started to oppress me, awoke. Kristin in her Twitter feed linked to a British Amazon-variant selling Crooked with free international postage; the object was paid for and duly arrived last week.

It is lovely.

As befitting the velvet flower photos inside, the thing even smells nice. And unlike all my CDs, which are destined to be moved into a box in the ceiling shortly, this book will remain in the bookshelf for repeat viewing.

What’s also really nice about all this is the exploration of new and different ways to distribute music. In a post-CD era, how can an artist accrue more income? Kristin has been exploring ways to directly connect with her fans for about a decade now, long before “social media” was invented, all in a low key way that looks like it has created a sustainable income for her family. I like what she’s doing, a lot.

And the music: it’s good. All the instruments played by the artist; the songs have an angular beauty that on repeated listens is digging deeper inside my head.

Here’s a video for the title track of the album, a glorious rolling rhythmic track; Kristin’s voice older now, whether richer through experience or weary with it I’m not always sure.

Crooked in the studio from kristin hersh on Vimeo.

And in keeping with the ethos of the artist, the video is credited to her boys. How wonderful is that?

At the moment though, the song that is most snagged in my head is Flooding, an incredibly haunting song of breakup and loss. I’ve embedded a down-sampled version here (all tracks are Creative Commons licensed, which means I can share this here without fear of RIAA attack-dogs):

Somehow along the way this purchase has become participation, and that actually makes me feel pretty good.

I’ve been busy ripping all my CDs so that we can store them away for good. They just fill up shelf and draw space and just don’t get used, as all the music I actually listen to is now in digital format.

But the more CDs I do, the more a sneaking suspicion grows that I should have been ripping them at 320kbps rather than the 190kbps (with high quality VBR enabled so they come out somewhere between 205 and 220kbps).

That aside, the other problem is obtaining the cover art. With higher quality displays in portable music devices, and user interfaces like Coverflow in iTunes, decent cover art is becoming pretty important. I reckon that anything less than 300 pixels wide is just not good enough.

I’ve been using Marc Liyanage’s Album Artwork Assistant to find cover art; it searches Amazon and Google for the images. If that’s not sufficient you can use a web search hone your search down a bit. Once you’ve chosen the image it will copy it to the album of your choice.

I’ve picked up lots of good cover art this way. But there’s a few CDs that are either too obscure to have decent, or indeed any cover art. I spent a happy afternoon photographing some of these a while back, and I present the results here for Google to find. Hopefully then they’ll be useful for someone else.

With each of these I’ve have a roughly 200×200 pixel thumbnail linking to the 1000×1000 original.

Angylion Hardd: Adennydd Mawr… (Angels With Big Wings…) —At the end of a Super Furry Animals Gig in a tent in a park in Cardiff in 1997 (The Fall as support!), we were stumbling around in the dark when a chap pressed this into our hands. It’s a compilation CD for Welsh label Ankst, and I’m looking forward to listening to it again.

Beth Orton: Best Bit EP —This is a rather lovely CD of songs she did with Terry Callier – very soul-y but still Orton. It includes a nice version of “Dolphins”, a track that Billy Bragg had covered earlier.

Curve: BlackerThreeTracker CD2 —Somewhat embarrassing now, but I used to really like these guys. In 1992.

Kylie Minogue: Confide in Me CD2 —I surprised myself by actually buying this. I told myself, at the time, it was because of the St Etienne cover (“Nothing Can Stop Us”) on the b-side, but in truth I actually quite liked the single.

Deepgrooves: Deepgrooves —The “seminal” early ’90s compilation that really changed what we all thought was possible from New Zealand music. For some reason there were no hi-res versions of this cover available anywhere.

Therapy?: Die Laughing —There’s nothing unusual about the music – it’s mostly album stuff – but the packaging is great. Like one of those cheesy greeting cards, it lets rip with a maniacal laugh when you open it up.

Curve: Die Like A Dog —Another Curve EP; this one was a bonus pack-in with their first album. Not sure if I’ll ever listen to it, but you never know.

Mazzy Star: Fade Into You —This song. It chills and burns, at the same time. I don’t have another thing by Mazzy Star, save this.

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (NZSO Chamber Orchestra) —Back when I used to work for the National Bank, once upon a time, we all got given this CD. Light classical, but not to be sneezed at.

The Fall: Why are People Grudgeful? —I used to have a lot more of the Fall, but over time its somehow evaporated. It’s a great single: four ace songs, one of them a cover of “Lost in Music”. Imagine that.

Jan Hellriegel: It’s My Sin —I feel bad saying this, but the only reason this is still in my CD collection is that I have a hard time bringing myself to sell NZ music.

Billy Bragg: Live In Canada —This was a bonus CD with Don’t Try This At Home – four much loved older songs performed, uh, live.

Daily Telegraph/Timeout: The Main Stage Festivals Sampler 1997 —Sadly, possession of this CD means that I cannot claim never to have purchased a copy of The Daily Telegraph. That aside, it’s a handy CD containing a few tracks that I like without having to buy whole albums of now irrelevant stuff. We never did get to any of these festivals though.

Jay Clarkson/Breathing Cage: Misericord —The album that emerged some years after Jay Clarkson and Breathing Cage won the Rheineck Rock Award and a rather large recording grant. It didn’t light many fires when it came out, but I’ve always liked it.

Goldenhorse: Riverhead —A classic New Zealand pop album which occasionally reminds me a little too much of The Sundays and Harriet Wheeler. Still.

I like this, the older cover for this album, whereas all the covers currently available on the internet have the reissue version with a generic band photo instead.

The Independent: A Taste Of Ireland —For some reason, in the late ’90s all the English broadsheets were giving away CDs. Only mindless and anal geekery can explain my need to photo “cover art” for this, and then put it online here. I am weird.

Beth Orton: She Cries Your Name —The haunting first single. It’s still a bloody spooky song. After William Orbit’s Water From A Vine Leaf I was well pleased at the time to discover Ms Orton now had some shiny new solo recordings.

Flying Nun: The Sound Is Out There —This was a mid-nineties freebie compilation that may have been a pack-in with Flying Nun albums sold at the time. I can’t really remember.

Delta Lady: Swamp Fever —“Delta Lady”, like “Secret Knowledge”, was another pseudonym for Kris Needs and Wonder Schneider, part of the loosely connected scene around Andrew Weatherall and the Sabres of Paradise. After obsessing for some years about Weatherall and his remixes I became inclined to buy almost anything connected to him. Which, thankfully for my bank balance, wasn’t that much here in Wellington.

Björk: The Best Remixes… etc —I can’t bring myself to type out the whole title. But there’s more Sabres stuff on here.

The Ukrainians: Pizni Iz The Smiths —As the title says – it’s the Smiths, but in a Ukrainian folk music style. Weird, but had some mid-90s indie cred due to the presence of some guy from the Wedding Present.

Grant McLennan: Watershed —I feel a little bereft as I look at this. A random memory surfaces: Grant McLennan in concert at Sammy’s, in Dunedin during the very early 90s, some sort of solo acoustic tour with Dave Dobbyn in support. Dave appeared to be completely trashed (those dark years before Dave became the undisputed, uh, national treasure he is now) and he was being comically disruptive and making Grant crack up.
… round and round, up and down, through the streets of your town…

Kitchens of Distinction: When In Heaven —Nice swirly shoegazy type stuff with actual tunes.

Stand by – I may have some more later.