Andy Birtwistle – Salute To Vinyl
11.12.16 by Tim Thornton
In high school I had a boss named Dave (no relation). The volume and intensity of the music he’d make us endure after a shift positively correlated to the difficulty of the day. He’d blast Napalm Death, Mortician, Slayer, Godflesh, etc. over the store stereo until the speakers were about to fall off the shelves. It was the most annoying thing for a little while, especially in the Christmas season. This only lasted a little while, though. Soon I realized that Dave’s method worked infinitely better as a rough day comedown than listening to calm music could ever be. It was punk. Fast forward to maybe six months later, I’m a manager myself, making my after hours crew listen to gabber & Merzbow as they balanced out drawers and priced up the day’s trades.
Now it’s several years later and I don’t work in retail anymore. The summarized description of what I do is that I try to reduce vinyl surface noise on new records. Vinyl surface noise is the only sound on Andy Birtwistle’s “Salute To Vinyl.” Andy tracked down a record with 20 minutes of blank grooves and recorded it. It’s way too noisy! If I let this record through I’d be fired!!!!
It’s perfect. This is the most punk tape I can own. In anyone else’s hands it wouldn’t be nearly as punk. If you worked the drive through at Rally’s, your punkest tape would probably be of customers throwing milkshakes through delivery windows. But this? This is what I need after a long day. I need to turn the treble and bass all the way up, accentuating every tick, every rumble. I actually spent the first ten minutes or so with this tape impossibly loud to try to confirm that it is actually the sound of a real record and not just 40 minutes of a plugin. If it’s a plugin, it’s a good one. It definitely sounds like surface noise. I suggest this tape to anyone who has ever returned a record they thought was too noisy. You need to face your fear. You need the right noise.
Pick up a copy of this C41 from Start Here.