45worlds - Magic Marmalade

Magic Marmalade

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3719 Points / Moderator / Joined 30 Jun 2014 /

England / Kent

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Collection 4422

Wishlist 157

Half record collector... half druid... complete unit.

More human than human.

Comments (Vinyl Albums) View All 1071 »

Member	Item		Review/Comment
Magic Marmalade 15th Nov 2024		Vinyl Album The Hawkins - The Aftermath	If it has a different barcode, it needs a separate entry.
Magic Marmalade 15th Nov 2024		Vinyl Album Jakob Mind - The One Who Got Away	If the blue version has a different barcode, it needs a new entry.
Magic Marmalade 28th Oct 2024		Vinyl Album Black Widow - Sacrifice	Review Found a super-tatty copy of this in the charity shop, with misprinted labels (matrix - A1 / B1), and while I didn't want to look to close at what was going on on the cover art (yikes!), I assumed it was going to be some kind of Black Sabbath-y proto metal affair... ...Actually, consistent with the date of release, this has more of a bleed-over into the seventies-sixties psychedelia, proto-prog / folk thing happening instead. Only the themes (the whole cult / occult / devilry) of the songs and the surprisingly excellent vocal style really have anything to do with any kind of heavy metal. Rather, this has more in common, to my ears, to Gabriel era Genesis, underscored by a more sedate, even tender at times folk feel, as far as the overall sound is concerned... as one of the two most prominent elements in this is the extensive use of various organs... which gives it that psychedelic going into prog style.... ...The other most prominent element, which is actually a point of distinction for this, is the drumming - very jazzy, lots of fills and punctuation, as opposed to flat rhythms. That said. the opening track of side two does wrong foot you, with a more gentle, sweeping affair, with strings, that sounds like it's about to go all "Moody Blues" of a sudden, before it settles back down into it's established style. Quite a good album actually... except maybe the organ and drums, being so prominent do largely overwhelm anything else in the music, even the vocal at times. And although this does, at the same time, give the sound a sense of scale, it is mostly an artificial one, as I think this is more intimately recorded, arranged and produced than would otherwise have been the case without those two instruments. So you could probably get a later remaster on a CD which might have attempted to "pull the sound elements apart" a little, in order to give the vocal and other instruments a more separated sound, I'm not sure there's enough here the the music could bare it, and the sound, as it is here, has a character of it's time, and consistent with the subject matter, that may be somewhat lost through such an exercise. It's a CBS disc, so as always, and excellent pressing, and any issues you may have sound wise, are as mentioned, before the getting to press stage... not a pressing issue. If you can find a copy in good condition (unlike my scratched, and snowy sounding one!) and appreciate an album of this kind with this kind of audio aesthetic and character, it's well worth getting this issue. ✔︎ Helpful Review?
Magic Marmalade 1st Sep 2024		Vinyl Album Blondie - Parallel Lines	I question the bootleg status of this, if it came from the official factory, albeit "unofficially" pressed... (Snuck out the back door by cheeky employee etc.) ...As bootleg seems to imply an entirely separate entity replicating official issues for reasons of profit, and thereby stealing from the copyright holder / label of origin, the profits which would otherwise would have been rightfully theirs. If this is extremely rare, where only a couple or a handful exist, this would seem to lend credence to the idea that it was a one time -off the books sneaky press by insider, for their own use, as opposed to a boot, as any bootleg enterprise isn't going to make only a couple, or even a few if there's no possibility of any wedge at the end of it, due to lack of numbers, surely?
Magic Marmalade 10th Jul 2024		Vinyl Album Suede - Coming Up	Review Late to the party... I never really got into Suede at the time, although of course, they were a presence in popular culture, with singles pervading the airwaves and all, which I was aware of... especially those from this album, which actually caused me to deliberately avoid them on the principle that it sounded like a band who had sold out, and "gone commercial"... (For all their protestations at the time that they should not be categorized under the same banner as other bands who the popular media dubbed: "Britpop", it is strange that they should have produced this... perhaps one of the most Britpop / commercial albums of them all!) ...These sounding like overtly pop, punchy, commercial tunes you can 'um. And even the cover reflects greatly the character of the album as a whole... Gone the dark, dingy photography of more serious artists, in it's place a lurid, energy drink fuelled neon-ette "buy me!" cover enclosing a slab of brief, high energy pop stabs and jabs. But it was during the interims between lockdowns in the pandemic that I was on a "buy it and rip it" spree of all those old albums on CD that I'd missed first time around, that I had a tune pop up on my MP3 player form this, that acted as the better gateway track for the album: By The Sea, is a different flavour altogether... an absolutely stunning masterpiece in fact, of scale, and sweep, with an incredible melancholic tone that really grabbed me by the pretzels and has since become one of the signature tunes of lockdown for me... ...And also Picnic By The Motorway, which has a woozy, destitute, hallucinogenic quality (especially in the vocal effect) made me listen to the other single tracks again, before giving the whole album a thorough listen through - a couple of times in fact. I've now come to appreciate the album as a whole, and find, quite to my astonishment, that I really love it - it's quite a short album, wisely, as too much of that hyper energetic feel would have been wearing, especially without those two deeper cuts as interludes. And so, it's a well judged, well balanced album too. And so, happening on Amazon a couple of weeks ago, to find this on sale for £14, I grabbed it up, and found this lovely 180g Clear vinyl plays with even greater scale and sweep on a proper system (through big boy speakers) than an MP3 can of course deliver, which unlocks the full audio potential. The only minor gripe with this pressing - And the Bluetones: Expecting To Fly album I also got on this label: Demon, is how quiet the music is pressed on them - you have to turn the volume way up with this label's pressings it seems... but that's Ok I suppose, as the vinyl itself is silent, and clean sounding, so no amplified pops and crackles etc. [As stated on both albums - Demon is a BBC company! - who knew!?!] I may have to delve into other Suede albums now, especially in search of anything that can match By The Sea, for sheer wow factor. ✔︎ Helpful Review?