Dire Straits - Communiqué (1979)

 Warner Bros. Records ■ HS 3330

Released June 15, 1979

Produced by Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett

Engineered by Jack Nuber

Mixing Engineered by Gregg Hamm

Mastered by Bobby Hata

Side One:	Side Two:
Once Upon a Time in the West News Where Do You Think You're Going? Communiqué	Lady Writer Angel of Mercy Portobello Belle Single-Handed Sailor Follow Me Home

If I'm going to talk about Dire Straits, which, in this case, I obviously am, the starting point is simple: Mark Knopfler is, stylistically, my favourite guitarist, bar none. Like many, I spent part of high school spewing obvious names for "best guitarist ever", but have long since abandoned this for two simple reasons: first, none of us knows all the guitarists, not even all the guitarists in popular music, nor what performances are comfortable for them versus extreme work, and second, I'm not a player myself, so how could I really judge such a thing? What I can do, though, is establish a sound that I personally like--and, of course, that is not a singular sound in all honesty. I've (more privately) expressed appreciation for the tone Jeff Beck achieved on his peculiar, semi-electronic records from the early '00s. Eric Johnson, too, is noted particularly for his tone. Andy Gill of Gang of Four has a wonderfully clangy, abrasive style, so on and so forth. But, given the option,  I choose Knopfler consistently, because I like the way he plays in-and-of itself, rather than as appropriate for a style, for virtuosity, or because it ends up with clear and pretty sounds--it does those, but is unmistakably a guy playing guitar at the same time.

Diabolical Masquerade - Death's Design (2001)

Avantgarde Music ■ AV 55 LP

Released August 21, 2001

Produced by Blakkheim and Dan Swanö

Edited, Assembled and Mixed by Dan Swanö, Ryan Taylor, Sean C. Bates

Mastered by Peter In De Betou

Side One:	Side Two:
Movements 1-9	Movements 10-20¹

It's difficult to pinpoint the causes behind my original exposure to this release--it stemmed, no doubt, from a combination of my college friend who introduced me to the wider worlds of metal and the metal-based message board I spent a good deal of college hanging around. Dan Swanö's endless appearances and projects (he has 293 credits on Discogs--more than Nicky Hopkins, for the moment!) surrounded his name with an aura of awe, and the release is just peculiar enough to catch my attention readily--in both sound and construction. 

As I've already noted,¹ the work is split into not just 20 movements but 61 individual parts that are pressed as separate tracks. You may also notice that this is listed as an "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack", which it most definitely isn't. There is no movie (Swedish or otherwise--there's a making-of documentary for one of the Final Destination movies, but that's it) with the title Death's Design, and this isn't really a soundtrack, though it does sound a bit like it could be. Then again, Easy Rider taught us that most any songs could be a soundtrack. But the construction and faux-soundtrack status aren't everything: this is also a wildly eccentric, eclectic, and vaguely erratic disc. An Estonian string quartet (though five string players are credited, so something's not right) is involved, as are both Blakkheim's endless instruments and Swanö's (particularly the keyboards).

Depeche Mode - Some Great Reward (1984)

Sire Records ■ 9 25194-1

Released September 24, 1984

Produced by Daniel Miller, Depeche Mode, and Gareth Jones

Additional Engineering by Ben Ward, Stefi Marcus, Colin McMahon

Side One:	Side Two:
Something to Do Lie to Me People Are People It Doesn't Matter Stories of Old	Somebody Master and Servant If You Want Blasphemous Rumours

In high school, I was sent--as we could now do this--"Enjoy the Silence" in trade from someone I knew at the time (previously mentioned as responsible for the purchase of another album on my behalf), but, somewhat oddly, it had little resonance with me. This is odd, of course, because I've had a life-long love of synthesizers and 1980s musical styles--a sort of misaligned nostalgia, I guess you might say. It's that much more odd when one considers how many covers of Mode songs are out there,¹ including plenty by bands I liked at the time. It gets that much more odd when one includes the fact of my rather bizarre--embarrassing, no doubt, if I were anyone but me--love of the Erasure song "Always", established many years prior when I was all of ten or eleven years of age (I only bought I Say I Say I Say last year, despite spending every trip to a used record store in those days looking for it, simply because of that song).  If that means nothing to you: Depeche Mode's original leader was Vince Clarke, who left after Speak and Spell to form, well, Erasure (okay, after a few other bands, but, still...)

Deftones - Deftones (2003)

Maverick ■ 48350-1

Released May 20, 2003

Produced by Terry Date and Deftones

Engineered and Mixed by Terry Date

Additional Engineering by Pete Roberts

Mastered by Tom Baker

Side One:	Side Two:
Hexagram Needles and Pins Minerva Good Morning Beautiful Deathblow When Girls Telephone Boys	Battle-Axe Lucky You Bloody Cape Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event Moana

If you had known me in high school (and at least a person or two who reads here on occasion did), you would find this band's appearance none too surprising. I normally try not to date myself, as it influences opinions about my opinions, but it's difficult to avoid here (as it has been on a few odd other occasions)--in 2000, Deftones' White Pony was released, their prior hit, "My Own Summer" from 1997's Around the Fur having taken them up on the crest of the "nü-metal" wave most typified by Limp Bizkit and Korn,¹ but, as with grunge and various other genres named for reasons of simplification (in the end, often rounding up disparate genres and slapping them under a single umbrella for marketing reasons, though there tends to be something shared), many bands didn't share the overt stylistic leanings of the flag-bearers.

Dear Lions - Dear Lions (2011)

Arctic Rodeo Recordings ■ ARR 033

Released May 25, 2011

Produced by Joe Philips, Adam Rubinstein & Dear Lions

Engineered by Mickey Alexander

Mixed by Daniel Mendez

Mastered by Ed Brooks / RFI

Side One:	Side Two:
Katherine Space Sister	For the Kill Darling Gun

Not long after I picked up the Burning Airlines reissues of Identikit and Mission: Control!, I unsurprisingly found myself on the rather calmly scheduled electronic newsletter for the label responsible for those: Arctic Rodeo Recordings. Early this year, they sent those of us on it notice of a sale on some of the last remaining copies of some of their releases, in bundled and discounted form. I didn't know most of the artists in question--maybe not any, actually. Still, the bundles were attractive, and I had been thoroughly impressed with how ARR did the two releases I owned, so it seemed worthwhile. Eventually, I was left with a massive order from Germany sitting in my arms, straight from my regular mail carrier. While it was largely composed of 12"s, it also contained a handful of 7"s, and one 10": this record.

It was actually pressed in two different colours, mixed yellow and white and mixed blue and white. Each had a contrasting cover (yellow with blue or blue with yellow, as seen above), but I discovered on opening that the cover is actually similar to a number of 7" packages: a single folded sheet with blue on one side and yellow on the other, held together by the clear sleeve it's sitting in. It's a clever idea, and appeals to my sensibility with the option to make it match if I want to (but I like colours, so I kept the contrast). But you can see the white and yellow mix makes for a rather lovely pastel yellow. But I know we're not that interested in the colours (are we?).¹

Deep Purple - Deep Purple in Rock (1970)

Warner Bros. Records ■ WS 1877

Released June, 1970

Produced by Deep Purple

Engineered by Andy Knight, Martin Birch, Philip McDonald

Side One:	Side Two:
Speed King Bloodsucker Child in Time	Flight of the Rat Into the Fire Living Wreck Hard Lovin' Man

Ah, Deep Purple "Mk. II".

Why, out of all the bands that have gone through such monumental lineup changes (Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, etc) they are the only ones that seem to have become firmly labeled with "version" numbers is beyond me. Perhaps it's because the lineup change has such a drastic overall effect on songwriters--we can say "Barrett-era Floyd"¹ and "Peter Green" and "Bob Welch" and so on, to notate the controlling voice's change. I don't know--anything would be just a guess, and it's likely just an indicator of the varying mentalities of fans that Deep Purple's chose that approach.

Still, "Mark II" has its place highest in the echelons of music, particularly for being so thoroughly entrenched in hard rock when it was rapidly morphing into heavy metal (though most of the albums at the time given that have largely sloughed off that title as it has gained higher and higher minimums of power/volume/aggression/speed/etc over the years). Indeed, if the average person can assign anything to the name "Deep Purple", it is probably "Smoke on the Water", their monstrous hit from two albums (and years) farther on, Machine Head. Now, of course, "Highway Star" has gained a measure of fame from its inclusion in Rock Band, so there might be that further connection, but it, too, comes from '72's Machine Head anyway.

Davenport Cabinet - Our Machine (2013)

Evil Ink Records ■ 

Released January 15, 2013

Produced by Travis Stever and Mike Major

Mixed and Mastered by Mike Major

Side One:	Side Two:
Night Climb (Intro) Deterioration Road Simple Worlds Sister Servant These Bodies Our Machine	Black Dirt Burden Drown It All New Savior Dancing on Remains At Sea Father

NOTE: There are two obvious points here I could gloss over, or choose to address, and I've decided on the latter. First: It has been quite a while. I'm working two jobs now, so in the interest of not just rushing through listening, writing, or both, I've been simply letting things slide, and instead working out a schedule that works for the jobs and for my own sanity. I apologize all the same--I'm obviously not even close to succeeding at my original goal of "a record a day," which has effectively become impossible without becoming Robert Christgau in writing style. And Christgau is often too acerbic for my tastes anyway.

Second: This is also why I've chosen to omit the "day numbering" in the title of the entry. I should hope it was not exactly something people looked forward to (at least, as compared to actual content), so I also hope it will not be missed too severely.

I'll admit that part of the reason I ended up delaying at first was that I'd originally hoped to work this album in to its "logical" place, though that has long since passed. I knew it was coming, but could not nail it down in all senses, and I knew quickly it could not arrive in an alphabetically correct place (indeed, we've already seen three records that come after it in the alphabet). It's such a good record though, and I wanted to give it a spot here. Of course, I say that and did not, at the time, have it on vinyl--heck, it wasn't available on vinyl--as it was only announced then to be coming.