Locked Grooves #2: Steve's Confinement
One of most common preconceptions about working in a record shop is that we all stand around all day listening to records, chatting about baselines, and why I have the best taste in the shop. This is all largely true. With nearly all of us here at Sister Ray are unable to physically be in Soho at the moment, so we thought we'd leave the safe haven of the shop Whats App group, and share with you our current listening….
Breakfast is the constant that keeps me grounded - copious amounts of black coffee to kickstart my confinement, with the latest Stephen Malkmus LP 'Traditional Techniques' gently percolating in the background - on a seemingly huge creative wave at the moment, the Malk is all lovely fuzzy folky jammy here, like an acoustic 'Pig Lib'…I should get dressed….
Strange times call for strange sounds, and it's great to revisit a classic every afternoon, especially a record that really threw me on initial (and to be honest a lot of subsequent) listens - 'No Pussyfooting' by Fripp & Eno. Pre-internet, one of the pleasures of record shopping was buying stuff because it had a cool cover - this does. I'd heard of these two chaps, even had an Eno record at home, but when I got this home from a Brighton second hand record shop, it fried my mind…Eno's tape loops queasily bubbling away combined with Fripp's occasional slashes of shards of guitar, it's certainly not 'ambient' in the traditional sense, but it does have a strangely calming effect with occasional jumps off the sofa. It's genuinely, nicely weird.
One of the side-effects of these current strange times, is dealing with a selection of pasta shapes outside my usual Rigatoni comfort zone (damn you panic buyers!), so a bit of familiarity is needed - the very welcome reissues of the 3 Galaxie 500 records recently have been a reassuring hand on the shoulder during these troubled kitchen times - 'On Fire' is the masterpiece, but debut album 'Today' is still my favourite, a beautiful, hushed yet urgent guitar record.
"Saturday Night cabin fever in a House Nation" - the key line from the great new JARV IS record - the lovely people at Rough Trade Records sent me an upfront copy of Mr Cocker's new record, and it's a) fun b) funky c) great for that precious evening beer.
Anyway, a little insight to my confinement…stay safe & healthy everyone
hope you're good
S