Hearth & Horn

The big problem with posting anti-buying-spotify-pro-buying-vinyl is that it always prompts me to just have a sneaky lil look at the artists I'm tracking and, invariably, I find something,

but guys guys guys guys the one artist I actually Collect collect Collect because he has my whole heart is the Caretaker, and there are TWO vinyl reissues out now. One something I only had on CD, and the other one...and I feel guilty about this but not too guilty...was the first record I ever bought, I woke up at 5am and walked to the library to be first in line on the release date, & I chose to get the limited edition purple one and have regretted it ever since. Like, every time I get it out of the packet, my heart sinks. And that record meant so much to me, & I made a bad on the spot decision. Part of my decision to get An Empty Bliss Beyond This World wasn't just being a collector bro, its because it is Supposed to be on vinyl, it sounds vinylesque, and I wanted the sensory experience of seeing it spin as if it was an old record. And coloured vinyl is worse quality, and you bet I love that album intimately enough to know where the scrapes and pops and crackles that are damage are.

I'm astonished that Chanctonbury Rings is still available on vinyl, like proper gobsmacked. It's easily my favourite of the Ghost Box releases (the other one I want to collect is Seance at Hobs Lane by Mount Vernon Arts Lab and maybe a Belbury Poly release, probably The Willows). The paper quality isn't great, but that tends to be true of modern records generally - they aren't designed to fold correctly, and they feel like cereal packet not watercolour paper. Still, as Ghost Box sell an aesthetic as much as they do music, these releases really deserve the tactile quality of something older and forgotten.

Another one I pounced right on - only to find it never went out of stock - is On Vanishing Land, which like Chanctonbury, I feel is a proper sleeper classic, at least for the sorts of things I do.

And a third - which I want and still haven't got, but it's sat right there - well, I will not tell you its name. Perhaps next month.

But one of the greatest pleasures in collecting is collecting stuff that's not all that collectable; I don't like competition or boasting, & rarity stresses me out. I like the delights of Owning Nice Things - without the pressures - and I've got quite good at identifying the unhappiness of FOMO, an unhappiness that wreathes a thing at every stage - if I get it, if I don't, if I missed my chance, if it's there on my shelf, that emotion never leaves it, it's tight and sticky. I don't like owning expensive things, merely lovely ones, and I'm at my happiest when I encounter something both wonderful and worthless.

& tbh that might be the emotion of misgiving I have about my purple Empty Bliss - I made a decision influnenced by status(?)/rarity(?) of the limited edition rather than being more aware of what I wanted. There's only one Caretaker release I chose not to get when it was there, and as I said, there's that feeling of unhappy ambivalence strikes me whenever I think about it, but I know I would be no less unhappy if it was sitting expensively on my shelf.

Thinking about this has prompted me to make an actual Want List & I'm tempted to like...knock off the other handful of cheap ones now. But one very very very exciting thing is I found the other Bombadeal album which was proving [not rare as in collectable, rare as in forgotten] difficult as a free download. I am so obsessed with Bombadeal's Songs From The Wood - folk-hip-hop-mashup is such a stupid concept, and yet it's so perfect for Tom. The rap works - book-Bombadil can't resist speaking in rhyme and wordplay - the interweaving of modern cannabis culture and Bombadil's anti-work dreaminess works - and the daftness works, something in the silliness triggers just the right mood to think about what Bombadil represents, an unabashed joyfulness. The standout track is Water Love

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we might be about to be homeless again? the landlord is on the line for like 4k of repairs because our electric wiring was incorrectly installed and is therefore lethal; landlords are Lunar-Stellar, powerful and unfeeling forces of nature to whom we can only appeal for mercy with a respectful, foolish hope, because what else can you do? But maybe now is the time to get the re-release vinyl of my favourite album: WARRIOR AT THE EDGE OF TIME, which folds out into a massive painting of a knight on the brink of an abyss, and on the other side the SHIELD OF CHAOS.

it sounds exactly like you think it sounds.

complete with spoken word poems to the sound of experimental whooshing and clattering.

I actually sort of own two copies of this record already, it just depends on whether my relatives die in the right order and haven't disowned us. It feels silly to even be considering it, especially because modern record sleeves are just not as nice as historic ones - they do the paper wrong. It's been another sad week, but i can stave off the terrors of the world with owning more objects, perhaps.