Record #11 : "Magpahi" by Magpahi

(a scan of the record will appear here, but the scanner has been Put Away in the guest bedroom, and there's a guest in it, sleeping. I wanted to gt this up tonight though because I'm offline for the weekend. Apologies.)

Right, well, a little preamble. The thing about 7 inch singles is that they have 2 sides, A and B. I've made the decision in writing this blog to focus on side A and ignore B. There are some great songs on the b-sides of these singles, but I'm not currently concerned with them. Today's offering is an ep, of 6 tracks, 3 per side. I've put a video of the first 3 up, but my comments concern all of them. If you like the 3 in the video, you'll like the other 3. plus, it's still available and not terribly expensive - consider yourselves encouraged to purchase.
Anyway this another one from my folky-nothing pile of records, and it's on Bird Records which seems to be another offshoot of the mighty Twisted Nerve-Finders Keepers collective. What I do know is that they specialise in whispy fey sounding folk, usually sung by pretty girls who like books and are usually shown in a pastoral idyll, or at least a back garden, in their publicity shots. This is very lovely wheezy lo-fi stuff, and therein lies the problem - I'm not sure how audible this is on the video, but there are a couple of cricks and pops on the record, and some distortion of her high notes. My equipment (record playing equipment, stop sniggering at the back there, you) is a bit cobbled together but I've played it on a few different systems and it's definitely on the record itsself. I've also not had it very long, and it was like that when I bought it new. In other words, it weren't me guv. I've no idea though if it's a problem with the pressing or if it's just that it was recorded onto a tape recorder made of whimsy through a microphone made of beard - it's very much a bedroom job and very charming it is too.
What I should've done, clearly, is emailed the record label setting out my concerns in a slightly more professional manner and taken it from there. I didn't though, and now it's too late. I'm not unduly exercised about it though, because it's minor and has become part of the record for me.
I'm not going to claim that distortion and pops make the record sound better, merely that they don't irritate the way a skipping cd, or indeed a skipping record do. The idea that noise in the quiet bits of vinyl is inevitable is nonsense within a realistic time-frame, so long as you look after them, just like a cd, or an ipod. After years you will start to get a bit of crackle in the run in and out grooves, but they'll withstand a hell of a lot and still play. It's not that they sound better, they just become part of your life, picking up noise along the way.
This is what people are talking about when they talk about liking the crackle of vinyl, not losing all the subtleties in a blizzard of sonic snow. Noone likes that. Well, someone probably does, but he's an idiot.