A Mole Playlist: Contrary January

Well it has been hasn’t it? Grim, chilly, all self-denial and sobriety; the B-word and T-word boring and scaring us in equal measure. Now it’s snowing! And my first collection of chunes for 2019 is ready to listen to.

I've been doing monthly playlists since July. I've compiled them for a few years, one here and one there when the mood seized me, a way of trying to manhandle a gargantuan, messy, five-figure iPod/iTunes collection while keeping abreast of the avalanche of marvellous new gear that's released every week. For a while there was a period where we felt ourselves in suspended animation as crate-digging hovered between trawling the record shops for The New Hot Shit, hurling cash over the counter for a record on which only one of the tracks was 'the one' and taking risks on things you might not like by the time you got home, and developing systems to keep track of the glut of new, easily-missed releases online. (As record shop after record shop closed we feared the worst, but what followed, of course, was a well-documented vinyl resurgence the likes of which no-one could have predicted.)

And just like my 13 year old self, I get to draw the artwork for each one.

So. Strictly not a mix - more like the kind of radio set we used to do on our pirate radio stations, all gusto, 3am chips and endless tea - this is a two-C90-tape (or three ish hour!) collection of loosely-assembled new discoveries, electronic soothers, 4-to-the-floors - and a minor bangathon in the middle. 

There's Bicep, Fourtet, Leon Vynehall, Bawrut, UNKLE, Planningtorock, Thundercat, Max Cooper, Clouds, Fontaines D.C., Orbital, slowthai, Cid Rim - and a heavy contingent of women: Kelly Moran, Holly Walker, Róisín Murphy, Karen O, Junior, Ninna Lundberg, Otha, Julia Jacklin. And more, because there's always more!

There'll be another one in February, and I know that because I've already started it!

👉Listen on iTunes 👉 OR, if you haven’t got Apple Music, you can listen to this one *here* on Mixcloud 

The Vinyl Results Are In

'VINYL SALES AT A 20-YEAR HIGH'

We suspected this already but this morning’s BBC article confirms that record sales are higher than they’ve been for the last 20 years. This is good news!

We knew our (that's me and Leigh, as Factoryroad and our record label Blunt Force Trauma) own vinyl sales were up but, as record buyers all our lives (that’s going way beyond 20 years, FYI) we’ve seen its glory days and the weird and difficult days in the 2000s when music buying seemed to become a messy, confusing maze of dead ends, closing record shops and an off-gassing slagheap of discarded CDs floating in a toxic sea of legal and illegal digital. We seem to be through that now and the places we can go to listen to, test out, buy and sell music are clearly defined – the wheat having been cut from the chaff of endless streaming and music-nicking sites in the form of confident, creative independent record labels (whatever it is, always buy it from there first!) – stores stores such as Boomkat, Piccadilly and Juno; Spotify – albeit controversial, still a place to audition your new records, just as you would stand in a record shop listening to a copy before buying – and Discogs, where that long-sought missing record can be found with a little diligence.

Added to the recent story about the pressing plants being overwhelmed with business, something we’re pleased about but feeling the sharp end of at the minute as we wait for our own new vinyl to be finished, this all makes for a rosy-cheeked industry. One that I'm proud to be involved in, albeit in a small way.

At long last. For a minute there, we all got a bit confused.

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Illustration by Graham Robson!

His Master's Voice

Today the news of HMV entering the hands of the administrators broke. It IS a shame, of course it is, for the founders of the business (although no longer with us) and the 4000+ staff who are possibly about to lose their jobs.

But this is clearly a business that could not compete with the likes of Amazon. Either because they failed to see the future of music and film buying or because they did, but didn't make the necessary changes and plans to enable the company to absorb them. And because Amazon will eat everything in its path, skilfully dodging taxes en route.

A shame. But use it, or lose it. Our source of power comes from our wallets and purses. If you choose carefully who to spend your money with, you have the power to affect who stays in business and who doesn't. There's a reason the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury's own such an enormous chunk of the British grocery-buying public's budget.

So if you have a local record shop, patronise it. Even if you have to order in what you want and wait a little bit. The Record Store Day website will find your nearest record shop for you.If you have to order online, order music direct from record labels - Ninja Tune are an excellent example of this, along with online stores such as Bleep, Boomkat and Juno. For harder-to-find stuff, there's, predictably, Hard To Find in Birmingham (shop and online), Music Stack and the deeply impressive Discogs, where you can bash that long-sought record into their search engine and find copies wherever they lie - and buy one!

I'm sure at this point my record-buying friends will be only too pleased to suggest further outlets which circumnavigate the behemoths.

Books don't have to come from Amazon either - The Green Door Bookshop is a beautiful little outlet for children's books - and good grief, while we still have Waterstone's, bloody well use it (their website states robustly that their taxes are all paid within the UK). If you're in London, you're spoilt for choice - one of our favourites is Bookseller Crow in Crystal Palace - physical and virtual - and the charming little chain Daunt Books is now online too.

Elsewhere localbookshops.co.uk will find your local book shop for you via a search for the book you're after, or via your postcode (a search for independant book shops in my area found eight). There's always the British High Street legend WH Smith (also online) - we may not pay that much attention to it, but we'll all be mourning when that's gone too. Use them. Their selection of stuff may be patchy and mainstream, but have you actually tried asking them to order you something? They can do it for you, again if you're able to exercise a little patience.

These gems are out there - use them. I saw a meme going round just before Christmas encouraging people to shop ''elsewhere', and while I applauded its sentiment, I got mad about its Christmas-centric message. Why not all year? Why not for all your stuff? I could write blog after blog on where to shop - the likes of Etsy, Folksy, artists' own shops, museum shops, Big Cartel shops and all manner of tiny 'long-tail'* businesses deserve your money far more than Amazon, and always offer more diverse, changeable but unique range of goodies.

Maybe I will write blog after blog, and share the love. After all, we're a nation of shopkeepers aren't we?

(Image created in homage to HMV, for our record label Blunt Force Trauma in 2005.)

*products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals, or exceeds, the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, but only if the store or distribution channel is large enough.

Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/long-tail.asp#ixzz2I2gUoKa5

The Factory Shop

Working in Factory Road, where factory sales with stacks of ripped boxes of tights, socks and legwarmers are a regular occurrence, we thought it only right to open up the forecourt ourselves and get our merch out on sale.

Who's the 'we'? Well, I've had a shop for a long time, on my exhibition site writeofftheworld.net, but this is a proper stand-alone store which will eventually be reachable from the new inkymole.com site and my other site, factoryroad.net, which I run with my partner in crime.

It's not quite 'bring a binliner and fill it for a fiver', like the tights warehouse across the street, but there are lovely things to be had, with more to come.

Try it out! I'd appreciate your feedback, and reports of any glitches, before it gets properly hooked into the national grid and the queues at the tills are massive.

click: The Factory Shop