Legendary progressive death metallers Atheist make their comeback with their fourth album, 'Jupiter.' The cover -- reminiscent of their past album covers which feature strong circular elements -- was done by Eliran Kantor.
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FIREBALL MINISTRY Releasing First Full Length Vinyl Record Of Self-Titled Album
“We are very excited to have a release on vinyl—it’s the way nature intended music to be heard,” says front-man Rev. James A. Rota II.
Recorded at Grandmaster in Hollywood, with additional vocals tracked at Dave Grohl’s 606 Studio, Fireball Ministry’s ten-track, collector’s edition LP has a limited run of 1,000 copies and is the band’s second release without a traditional label. The FIREBALL MINISTRY vinyl pressing is currently available for pre-order at www.FireballMinistry.com and includes the full album digital download and bonus video for “Butcher, Faker, Policy Maker.”
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The Decemberists Ready Deluxe Box Set
However, only 2,500 of these boxes will be available. For the box, the band teamed up with the Polaroid film manufacturers the Impossible Project and the photographer Autumn de Wilde. De Wilde took photos of the band's recording sessions in rural Oregon and L.A., and each box will come with a unique photo. The DVD contains Pendarvia, a 30-minute documentary about the making of the album by filmmaker Aaron Rose. The 72-page hardcover book features photos from de Wilde and illustrations from Carson Ellis, and the Giclée print is of an Ellis illustration and signed by Ellis herself.
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Metallica: 'Live At Grimey's' First-Week Sales Revealed
Metallica's new live album 'Live At Grimey's' sold about 3,000 copies in the US in just a three-day sales window (Friday-Sunday). The effort is being sold as a standard CD and as a limited-edition two-disc vinyl set in a gatefold sleeve.
Released on Friday, November 26, "Live At Grimey's" is available only at the approximately 700 independent record stores that support the annual Record Store Day, held each year in April. The set was recorded on June 12, 2008 at the tiny 150-capacity venue The Basement, located below the Grimey's New & Preloved Music record store in Nashville.
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Bright Eyes to Release Album Next Year
On Februrary 15, Bright Eyes is scheduled to release a new album, 'The People's Key,' which will be the band's first album since 2007's 'Cassadaga.' 'The People's Key' was produced by Mogis and features contributions from members of Cursive, the Faint, Now It's Overhead, Autolux, the Mynabirds, and the Berg Sans Nipple.
The band has also announced two tour dates next year, one at New York's Radio City Music Hall on March 9 and one at London's Royal Albert Hall on June 23.
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New record store ready to defy odds
By Sandra Sperounes
Two vinyl records, Led Zeppelin's I and Bruce Springsteen's The Promise, hang on the wall. Unopened boxes of CDs sit on the floor. Clint Anderson quietly prints out labels with band names on them while his friend and business partner, Mike McDonald, stands on a ladder, installing a speaker, at the back of Permanent Records.
It's Monday afternoon, four days before the opening of Edmonton's newest record store, located at 8126 Gateway Blvd. "There's going to be some long nights before we open on Friday," says co-owner Dave Gawdunyk. "There's a lot of receiving (of stock) to do, getting art on the walls, setting up the sections. ..."
Call them crazy -- McDonald's brother-in-law does.
Who opens a record store at a time when album sales are dropping and outlets across North America are shutting their doors?
Read more: Here
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In midtown Sacramento, two stores sell music on vinyl
by Carla Meyer
Two new midtown Sacramento businesses put the "record" back in record store.
Music boutique Phono Select and vintage-album seller Medium Rare emphasize vinyl over MP3s and in-person expertise over user comments.
The stores feature carefully curated LP selections drawn from their music business-savvy proprietors' own collections and aimed at the same diehard music fans who have inspired a surge in vinyl sales over the past few years.
"I think it is just a reaction to everything being so fast-foodish," Phono Select co-owner and longtime professional music buyer Dal Basi, 43, said of the revived interest in vinyl.
"The sound of vinyl is truly warmer than a CD," said Marty DeAnda, 58, an artist manager, record-label owner and proprietor of the baby boomer-centric Medium Rare. And his customers can actually make out the art – and read liner notes – on a 12-inch album cover.
Read more: Here
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Throwback Products We Love: Vinyl Records
By Diane Bullock
The record spins again: Sales are up, bands are pressing new music, and players are back on the shelves.
The LP record. Those clunky, 12-inch discs of vinyl have inspired a god-like worship by audiophiles -- from John Cusak’s character in High Fidelity who organized his music collection not alphabetically, not chronologically, but autobiographically to Stanley Goodspeed in The Rock who shelled out $600 for a Beatles LP, rather than a $13 CD because they “sound better” to the characterization of Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, whose radio station studio and bedroom/home office were clogged, floor to ceiling, with the last ‘real’ records before the impending “death rattle, the last gasp, the last grope” of rock and roll music.
Four decades before Cameron Crowe had Bangs putting a nail in the coffin his record acquiring habit, RCA Victor was introducing the very first commercial vinyl record to the market. But the listening medium didn’t catch on until with the public until Columbia Records pioneered cost effective playback equipment and unveiled the 12-inch Long Play 33 1/3 RPM microgroove polyvinyl chloride record at a New York press conference in 1948.
The vinyl record would be the dominant mass market music medium for the next three-plus decades until the 1980s when cassette tapes started filling the shelves. But vinyl’s major popularity plunge came courtesy of Sony (SNE) and Philips’ (PHG) digitally recorded compact disc which proved far more portable, far less vulnerable to damage and, according to some, provided better fidelity. Vinyl records were officially ushered out of the marketplace by 1991 when the vast majority of copies of U2’s Achtung Baby were purchased on CD and Tower Records stores were holding final clearance sales on all vinyl merchandise, which comprised only 15 percent of total sales.
Read more: Here
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Amoeba has good Friday
Music retailers amp up for Record Store Day
By Christopher Morris
Aisles were teeming with shoppers at Amoeba Music in Hollywood on Friday -- "Black Friday," traditionally the biggest retail day of the year -- as the store joined other indie retailers in pulling out the stops to drive up their pre-Christmas business.
Amoeba was participating in a special pre-holiday promotion, mounted for the first time by the organizers of April's annual Record Store Day, that placed exclusive product (much of it vinyl-only) in indie store racks, hoping to reverse the double-digit downturn in record sales this year.
"There was a real good feel to it," said Amoeba co-owner Karen Pearson. "It was a really great energy … It sure seemed busier."
There was a sense of some urgency in this second Record Store Day event of the year.
Read more: Here
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Jack White defends Third Man Records eBay auctions
Singer dismisses complaints of fan exploitation, saying his decision to sell limited-edition vinyl to the highest bidder cuts out opportunists who profit from secondary sales
Sean Michaels
There is a rebellion brewing among fans of Jack White's label, Third Man Records, over the company's decision to auction limited-edition releases to the highest bidder. After admitting that Third Man was inspired by profiteers who "flipped" the label's releases on eBay, White has waded into the debate, telling critics to "stop all of the whining". "We didn't do anything to you but give you what you want," he wrote. "Don't want them to be expensive? Then guess what? Don't WANT them."
Since 2009, White has been issuing limited-edition records on his Third Man imprint, including releases by the Dead Weather, Conan O'Brien and the White Stripes. Many of these are released in runs of 100 or 300 copies, with tri-colour, glow-in-the-dark or oddly sized vinyl. Although these limited editions often resell for hundreds of pounds, Third Man sold them on a first-come, first-served basis through its Nashville headquarters, "pop-up shops" and a paid members' service, the Vault. With the label's rising profile, and its releases' rising values, Third Man has attracted "flippers", who buy limited records purely sell online.
This week, Third Man Records decided to beat the flippers at their own game,
Read more: Here