I love Japanese hardcore

Back in April I posted about the events leading up to my purchase of a second hand, home shopping network record player with built-in speakers. Well, since I have no one to talk to about records, really, I thought it would be fun to review one of my records per day for awhile. I'll still do other stuff. There is enough genre overlap in my collection to review older records when newer albums of those bands come out.

About half an hour ago, I thought my record player broke. It was skipping all over the place and probably scratching, too. Having absolutely no technical knowledge of record players, I fiddled a bit, changed the needle, jiggled it around a bit, and got it to play some of my 7's. The 12's were too heavy for the platform, I guess, which was causing the aforementioned skippage.

This first installment will be entirely about my 7" records. Next time, 10's, 12's and on through the collection.

I have a surprising amount of Japanese and Korean hardcore in my record collection, all oweing to a sale at Asian Man Records which caused Karim to buy me a ton of them. Most of these are 12"'s, but I have quite a few 7's (Asian Man and not) that I really enjoy.

My record player does not, unfortunately, have audio output, so you'll have to find these jewels for yourself.

In order, starting with my favorite:

1. The Magnetic Fields: i don't believe you/when i'm not looking, you're not here:

This is my favorite band, obviously, and this is one of my most prized possessions. Both of these tracks were previously unreleased when Merge Records released them on a 7" in 1998. It is, as far as I know, the last pressed Magnetic Fields album on vinyl, and the ninth 7". "I don't believe you" was re-released in 2004 on the theme album, i, and is probably one of the most popular of the band's songs besides "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend" (I never got that, by the way). I'm really not sure how rare this particular press is, but it is definitely my personal favorite.

2. Darlington/High School Dropouts split:

I really only care about the Darlington side of this one. People make fun of me when I say that Darlington is my favorite pop punk. If you've ever listened to Mr. Christy Brigette Darlington, though, you would totally understand why. Meant to be a complete and utter mockery of everything that has come to define what we usually think of as that genre of contemporary, fast paced horse crap with stupid emo lyrics and whiny little boy voices. I promise, I'm not bitter. Goldschlager and Jim Beam, featured here, aren't even the best selection of Darlington songs, but I love owning this 7" because it sounds hilarious. I think it may have been misprinted because it says its a 45 but when I play it at that speed it sounds really low and slow. The clear white wax is also pretty cool to look at. It looks like a ghost when its spinning.


I'm tired of typing. I'll do the rest in the next installment.