AM The new album

I came  home yesterday to find the boys playing a new vinyl LP. It was AM by the Arctic Monkeys. They've heard it all before, of course, thanks to the internet, but clearly the pleasure of taking the vinyl record out of the square cardboard sleeve and putting first side one and then side two on the turntable is such a brilliant experience that they want to do what I was doing all those years ago when it was T Rex and Focus et al. The very tactile process is clearly more desirable than simply downloading. I probably wouldn't have even noticed the very clever cover design in other formats. AM is Arctic Monkeys but there's fund to be had by trying other suggestions - Against machines, Average mediocre, Aging males, Amateur mature, Atheist Muslim, Alliterative Malapropism, etc, etc.

 

Old Technology 03

Two things came together rather well last week. I managed to track down a copy of a 1985 vinyl record by a German guitar duo called Les Deux Amis playing Focus classics recently and it arrived the day after I brought my son home from Cardiff Uni with his little record player. So last week there I was doing something I haven't done in a while - playing an LP.

It soon came back to me. Carefully remove the piece of plastic from its cardboard cover and paper sleeve, making sure not to touch the surface. Pop the record on the turntable, place the needle and out comes the music.

There's quite a bit of crackle and the listening experience is not as good as CD and mp3 I think. You have no pause button so interruptions are a pain. I do like that thought - when side one finishes I'll make a cuppa. You also feel reluctant to skip tracks for fear of causing damage.

The album itself is very satisfactory. All the early Focus classics are given the classical guitar treatment with a little bit of Bach thrown in for good measure at one point.