lawp
but what have you bought in the last couple of months?

Recent acquisitions:

• Black Sabbath - 13 (Deluxe Edition)
• Megadeth - Super Collider (Deluxe Edition)
• Dethklok - The Dethalbum
• Dethklok - Dethalbum II (Deluxe Edition)
• Dethklok - Dethalbum III
• The Jam - Direction Reaction Creation (5@CD + Hardback Book Boxset)
• Kirsty MacColl - A New England – The Very Best Of Kirsty MacColl
• Bernie Marsden - Blues ‘N’ Scales: A Snakeman’s Odyssey
• Saxon - Sacrifice (Deluxe Edition)
• Saxon - Heavy Metal Thunder – Live – Eagles Over Wacken
• Phil Lynott - Yellow Pearl – A Collection
• My Chemical Romance - Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
• Penetration - The Best Of Penetration
• Rival Sons - Pressure & Time
• Rival Sons - Head Down
• Sex Pistols - Spunk
• Various Artists - Now That's What I Call Christmas
• Various (inc: The Band of Her Majesty's Royal Marines; Central Band Of The Royal Air Force; The Coldstream Guards Band; Royal Scots Dragoon Guards) - Music For Heroes

sharke

lawp
i buy albums, on vinyl even, more than anything else the last 4 years or so, and they're usually very nice objets with coloured heavyweight vinyl, nice packaging, great smell, etc, and a recent stat said in the uk vinyl sales are the highest for donkey's :-)

 
Goodness me - it can't be easy putting needles on records with hooves. Well done those donkeys. 

donkey's what? :-)

I don't buy that many albums these days, partly because I mainly used to listen to them when driving and I don't do the mileage I used to any more, but also because I can't remember the last one I bought that wasn't a compilation type that I wasn't fed up with after 5 songs. I don't think it's an attention span thing on my part - I'm not on who flits between radio stations for example. Maybe it's a (lack of) quality thing or I read somewhere that modern production/mastering is thought to be a contributing factor to this as everything is mixed to the max and as a result can be fatiguing on the ears.
 
I also used to like the songs being in the "right" order. One of the things that drives me nuts with some mp3 players is the way they insist on sorting the tunes of an album into alpabetical order and then playing them in that order rather than the intended order. Grrrr !!!

Itunes didn't kill the album, but definitely hammered a few nails in the coffin.  The decline of albums in pop music is due to how they are created these days.  The pop music landscape is dominated by producers who charge outrageous amounts per song but virtually guarantee hits.Justin Timberlake's primary producer, Timbaland allegedly charges 500k up to a million for one song. Regardless of the exact cost, producers who crank out platinum albums charge by the track and it leaves a lot of filler.  I find self-produced albums are a lot more even these days.

Old55

paulo
 
I also used to like the songs being in the "right" order. One of the things that drives me nuts with some mp3 players is the way they insist on sorting the tunes of an album into alpabetical order and then playing them in that order rather than the intended order. Grrrr !!!

I name the files--usually "00X" at the beginning--so that they are in the proper order.  I don't know if it will mess with the mp3 format, though, because I've been doing wav files. 

Yeah, putting track numbers is a workaround, it just grates having to do workarounds to solve problems that didn't used to exist until someone "improved" something.

paulo

Old55

paulo
 
I also used to like the songs being in the "right" order. One of the things that drives me nuts with some mp3 players is the way they insist on sorting the tunes of an album into alpabetical order and then playing them in that order rather than the intended order. Grrrr !!!

I name the files--usually "00X" at the beginning--so that they are in the proper order.  I don't know if it will mess with the mp3 format, though, because I've been doing wav files. 

Yeah, putting track numbers is a workaround, it just grates having to do workarounds to solve problems that didn't used to exist until someone "improved" something.

True.  It's a trade-off between the convenience of having a file that you can move or manipulate, or the unchangeable format of an LP.  They both have advantages.  

Starise
 
 I think the concept behind the album is purely marketing. In many cases the band made a few really good songs and some not so good ones with the exclusion of those time honored albums that are regarded as classics.
 

Don't agree with this. One man's 'duff track' is another man's favourite. The thing about 'albums' is that they were/are produced and sequenced carefully to be listened to in running order. After time and repeated listens a track that seemed poor compared to the 'classic' song next to it would start to shine and reveal itself, in context.  Light and shade, tension and release, all come in to it.
 
 

Bristol_Jonesey
I'm more or less on the same page as Strummy here: many of my early double LP purchases were live offerings:
 
The Song Remains the Same
 
Live & Dangerous
 

 
AND, that was, btw, the worst of all the live Led Zeppelin stuff around.
 
There was a series of bootlegs at the time, that took place around California that werer far superior to those Madison Square Garden shows, and the energy was far stronger and harder, than what they did there.
 
I do believe that they recorded those shows to counter the sales of those bootlegs that were massive. There also was at the time the series at the Forum, one of which was called "Bonzo's Birthday Party".

Moshkiae
 
Check out the "Album Cover Book" that was done by Hipgnosis and Roger Dean that apparently has had a couple of updates before Storm passed away. Also wonderful, but just about Roger Dean, is his "Views", that shows a heck of a lot of work of his!
 

The 'Album Cover Album', yes, bought it when it came out, and keep it in good condition still, it's a beautiful book. I have 'Views' too but Roger Dean's work has paled to me over the years, it seems very 2-dimensional and formulaic now, similarly Bruce Pennington's book covers, which I loved in my teens.
 
Someone owes Dean a lot of money for the 'floating islands' in Avatar though..

jamesg1213
...
Someone owes Dean a lot of money for the 'floating islands' in Avatar though..

Cameron is being sued for it.
 
I refuse to see Avatar because of it. I do not support killers, rapists and thiefs of work from our best friends and fellow artists!
 
But this is just like Daevid Allen and Gong and Mike Oldfield, still suing the guy with the color balls that everyone treats like some kind of hero and he got there by ripping people off royally! I guess that's expected in England!

Hi,
 
The only thing I have never been satisfied with is that the LP, created a limitation that I think hurt a lot of music.
 
All of a sudden, a lot of symphonies, were 20x20 (2 sides of an LP), and I seriously doubt that a Beethoven, or Mozart, or anyone else, for hundreds of years, would have written something that exactly 20 minutes or 40 minutes long, so that in the mid 20th century it would fit an ugly thing called "LP".
 
I think that over the years, a lot of these have been cut up and down to the point where we do not know what parts we are missing, and this is criminal to any artist. When you listen to Beethoven's 5th or 9th, and stand aside, there is something missing! The sequencing does not follow as clear as we would imagine it to, and in the 9th, the Choral part is kinda totally out there and not quite a part of it all, unless you create a story with martians and plutonians and idiots.
 
For the things like TFTO, TAAB, CTTE, AHMS, Echoes, and many other pieces, I think that most of those people were already aware of the time limitation and writing something becomes a bit of an exercise in making sure you do it right and can end it in that time.
 
And the really nice thing of the CD, is that the time limitation is gone, and that allows for some freedoms, except Strummy. He only knows 3 minute cuts. Maybe 4!   
 
And this is the important side of it all, and seeing Djam Karet create something that has no time limitations like a Cassette or LP did, pretty much tells you that there are possibilities in music that we are not aware of, and in many cases (like here with "songs"), we are afraid to even listen to them, because our attention span is so commercialized by everything around us!
 
 
 

Moshkiae

...
 But this is just like Daevid Allen and Gong and Mike Oldfield, still suing the guy with the color balls that everyone treats like some kind of hero and he got there by ripping people off royally! I guess that's expected in England!

Who?
...

Maybe I should change that to "the guy with the colored flying balls" ...
 
It's not over the top!
 
What it tells you is that you will not have a chance because you will get ripped off, and might not survive it to continue! If you and I are 50 years old, that might be ok, and we're too old to continue or have energy for it, but if it were your child and he/she just had the life stolen from under them and they have no idea ... you would be saying "over the top" and then ignore the rip off and corruption?
 
Get ce'real!
 
"The City of Lost Children" ... because the parents don't know any better and support the stealing?

You know perfectly well that I'm saying your choice of words is over the top. I agree that Cameron should give Dean his due for the obvious use of his images. Having said that, if Rene Magritte were alive, he might have sued Dean for ripping off 'Castle of the Pyrenees'.
 
As to the rest, I still have no idea what you're talking about.

Comprehension - a thing of the past?

I just don't get it.

Rain
http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/katy-perrys-prism-a-good-example-of-how-albums-dont-work-anymore-1200824933/
 
Personally, I'm an "album" kind of guy - always been. These days, however, albums have become so incredibly long (while our attention span was taking a dramatic dive) that I rarely listen to recent albums. That's not even mentioning poor songwriting and arrangements and how repetitive contemporary music often is.
Couple that with the fact that modern production makes them indigestible anyway, and it's obvious that 80 minutes would be unbearable.
 
I'm glad I got to live in the good old days of LPs, sit back and enjoy those 30-45 minutes journeys...

 
the best albums, to me, where always the ones that fell inside of 40 minutes...
 
10 really good 3 minute songs.
yea.
 
 
of course, i also am greatly influenced by instrumental, and progressive rock, where arrangements and melodies are more important than length of songs...
so i ride the fence on some of my own stuff.
 
 
but when i've put my two previous albums together, i've really spent a LOT of time working out the flow of the album..
with the idea being, if someone was really interested in my stuff, they would be rewarded with a classic 'full-album' listening experience.
 
 
but i gotta say, there are very few professional releases i hear any more these days, that seem to go to the trouble to do that.