I’m not sure what the state of record stores are in other parts of the US/world. I’m not coming across as much new music that has excited me lately. Largely due to shifting musical tastes and a lack of patience to sift through the sheer volume of new crap released. I am seeing lots of edits and white-label releases in the email outs and in stores I’ve been into. Seeing edits/bootlegs of stuff that is still quite readily available is baffling.
I won’t go into the legalities as I know shit about it. There was uproar over the bootlegs of Theo’s Ugly Edit records a few years back. Harvey has re-released some of his Black Cock edits because of the unauthorised boots of the releases. I was in a store recently and most of their stock consisted of edits and represses of disco/house records (of a questionable quality). Flicking through my recent purchases edits make up a small but noticeable number.
Edits aren’t necessarily evil, it’s what dj’s have been doing forever. Showing no regard for the orignal song’s structure and going straight to an interesting part or using two copies of the same record to extend the break. Ableton Live and software are making it easier to reconstruct and offer the chance to do something interesting. I suppose I’m lamenting the lack of what I perceive to be good new music for the ready consumption of old music. I’d like to make an analogy to edits being like fast food, sugar rush and disposable but it’s not always the case. Some great old tunes are being uncovered and being discovered by a new audience.
No disrepect to Greg Wilson btw i was just trying to lively up the post with a picture. He is an amazing dj and it still hurts my head to think of splicing stuff on reel to reel and still using them to this day!
The collectors and geeks out there will appreciate having musical tunnel vision occasionally. It’s my OCD again, I get slightly obsessed by an artist/label/style for a while and it gets all consuming for a period. There’s plenty of interesting music out there, what are people listening too? Doesn’t need to be new and I’m particularly interested about stuff outside the electronic/dance music spectrum…
