In Praise of the Compact Disc
So the Ballad music family is extending and our friend Nestor music fan/musician/man about town (sorry Nestor) writes here, defending the not-so-cool-now compact disc.
From what I can tell, vinyl is making a bit of a comeback after is was rumored somewhere by someone to be a ‘redundant format’, and this is to be celebrated. There is something special about being able to feel the weight of the music you are about purchase, whether it be a feather light 7″ single or a hefty triple gate fold concept album.
However, what if, after you tenderly carry your new wax disc home and place it ceremonially on your hallowed vintage record player, you find that is just doesn’t do anything for you? Or that is wasn’t quite what you expected? What then? You could take it be to the record shop you bought it from, but to me that feels like taking worn underwear back to wherever you purchased it with the complaint that it is too tight, the record is soiled, it has lost it mystery/majesty. Or you could keep it, but slightly separate from your ‘proper’ record collection because no matter how hard you try, you just can’t find a way to really understand it.
In essence, successful vinyl buying requires prior research. Yes, you could spend hours cruising the internet reading about what everyone else is listening to and how it’s all so great, but I’ve never felt particularly clean after an afternoon of wading through other people’s tastes. It’s like borrowing someone’s skin for the day and finding out the hard way that they didn’t give it a good wash before handing it over and having nothing tangible to show for it, just a list of names and handful of songs borrowed from some blogs.
It is here that I believe the CD comes into its own. Some people seem so eager to condemn the compact disc as a ‘throwaway’ form of media, they claim that it lacks any real commitment to ‘the music’. But that’s just it. It is a completely commitment-free way of finding and exploring music that you might otherwise never hear. Buy a few CDs that you like the look of, have a listen, take back the ones you don’t like and explore further the ones you do, enabling you to delve into vinyl territory fully prepared and brimming with confidence that it’s going to be everything you want it to be, and quite possibly more.
For example, last week I spoiled myself and bought Cut and Run by (purely because of the and name), Uhrfasudhasdd by Haino Keiji/Yoshida Tatsuya (because of the unpronounceable title and its country of origin - Japan almost always equals win) and The Dark Age of Love by This Immortal Coil (I’d read about it somewhere and noted down the name). Upon concluding a week’s analysis I can safely say that the first two albums scare the life out of me. Child Abuse have given my ears nightmares with their nauseating blend of industrial thrash metal, high frequency feedback and subcutaneous snarling, while Uhrfasudhasdd has pushed my boundaries of music to the limit with its 16 tracks of live glitch/free jazz/noise/gabba insanity. Both of them are utterly brilliant and are records that I would almost certainly have never known existed otherwise. Conversely, the This Immortal Coil album is unfortunately not what I was expecting; something that sounds great on paper but doesn’t quite convey itself on record. But I’m not too disappointed, it’s just a CD after all.
Nestor likes this band right here.
