April 27, 2008

Today's Hotness: The Halo Bit, Poole, Johnny Foreigner


>> The truth is that for the indie music fan the Internet provides solutions to most problems. Access to releases, or at least information about releases, is usually never more than a Google search away. That said, one problem that prevails -- and that we already discussed in last week's post about Silkworm -- is the lack of availability for sale proper digital versions of vinyl singles. In most cases when we've ripped vinyl the result has been less than satisfactory. But that problem presumes we own the record we're interested in. Alas, small labels that never really made any money in the first place might not see much point of going to the trouble of getting their releases digitized for sale online. And, alas, there are several instances in which we'd argue that an original mix for a vinyl single is superior to a subsequent mix or recording made available on CD. All of this is a long way of saying we sure wish someone would make available the singles issued by the now-defunct but once-crucial indie Spin-Art. Our own vinyl rips of the label's superlative singles from the Alex Kemp-fronted The Halo Bit ("Stay Away For A While" + 2, SPART 12) and Virginia's Poole ("Mary Shakes Her Hair" + 2, SPART 15) don't sound all that great. Maybe we need to get one of those USB turntables. Anyway, here are the aforementioned jams, as ripped by us, for what it's worth. Do you have a better-quality rip of these singles? Drop us an email, and secure our undying gratitude. Incidentally, the image above is a poorly rendered excerpt from the cover of The Halo Bit's nice full length -- we were too lazy to scan the sleeves for either of the singles tonight.

The Halo Bit -- "Stay Away For A While" -- "Stay Away For A While" b/w "Peggy + Helen" and "Dad's House"
Poole -- "Meredyth On A Monday" -- "Mary Shakes Her Hair" b/w "Meredyth On A Monday" and "Car"
[right click and save as]
[hunt for the singles at MusicStack here and here]

>> We had an inkling based on activity we were seeing in our hit logs and these posts at Death To Music and Keep Hope Inside confirm that Johnny Foreigner's Waited Up Til It Was Light has leaked. Considering promos were being offered a week or so ago -- which we're still crossing our fingers that we might receive -- the development is no surprise. DTM's Tom did the yeoman's work of doing a quick track-by-track assessment, but we've only scanned it, as we want to preserve the rush we'll surely get when we hear the full record for the first time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Was wondering when you were going to mentioned the JoFo leak! The only new track is DJs Get Doubts so listen away to the 15 track demo, the Arcs EP and the radio session version of Lea Room and you can probably still just about manage to get a good idea of what it sounds like.