One Two One Two This Is Just A Test

A few weeks back I posted about the new Spirits LP and how I struck out at getting a test. Thanks to Instagram and its group of record collectors I was able to acquire one much sooner than I'd hoped for. I'd commented on one of my pictures and another person's that I was still looking for a test press and out of nowhere I got a message from a fellow (Spirits) collector who told me that one of the labels doing the tape release for the new LP still had one or two tests and were willing to sell. Less than two hours later I'd completed the transaction and a few days later the test press was already on my doorstep, again much sooner than I'd expected. Thanks, dude. I'm very grateful you helped me out. #16 out of 20.

If you follow my blog regularly, you have probably noticed that Spirits always go all out for the packaging for their releases. Of course they did that for the tests as well, which means these come with a special spray-painted cover and inner jacket.

Funny sidenote, I've never seen the use of test pressings explained on the back of a sleeve.

Unrest On The East Coast

To keep things interesting for us collectors, Spirits came up with a little something for a short tour on the east coast a few weeks ago. Special inlay for the picture frame cover, plus the inner sleeve comes with spray-painted art work. If you look closely, you can make out the number on the label underneath the right leg of the X. My copy is #23 out of 50 copies total. Love it.

Unrest

Those who follow my blog will know by know that Spirits is by far my favourite current band. Great music, great lyrics, all around great people. As a collector I hate and love them. I hate (well, not really of course) them because they've put out so much music in such a short time and there are always a million variants. But of course I'm the only one to blame because no one forces me to buy all of those variants. However, it's always easier to project your shortcomings onto others, right?
Love prevails though. I love them because they put so much effort into their releases. Layered covers, origami style covers, hand stamped covers, you name it, they do it. This is another prime example of them going all out with the packaging. The sleeve is basically a picture frame and get four different options as to what the frame shows, depending on how you fold the lyric sheet.

This is by far my favourite hardcore release this year, which probably isn't that much of a surprise, but I just wanted to state it for the record. Osu is such an incredible song. I especially love what Charles did on guitars here. The lyrics are spot on, too, and are much needed - at least for me - in these dark political times.

I have a tour press coming my way, but I still need a test press. I'd contacted the label but I didn't manage to score one. Which is all the more sad (for me) because two friends I had told about the label being open to taking offers on tests got one while I struck out. As glad as I am for them, I'm still bummed. I even had one at my house and then had to mail it to a buddy who I'd teamed up with for the order. Oh well. The hunt is the fun part anyway.


Pre-order edition, which not only looks like a picture frame, but you can actually stand it up like a real picture frame. Check out the close up below. The dust sleeve is stamped, but not numbered.

Close up. #47/65. Additional stamp, too.

Clear and gold splatter out of 100 copies via State Of Mind. Love the look of this record.

200 copies come on silver vinyl. It's not just gray vinyl, it has an actual silver sparkle to it. Also on State Of Mind Records.

The European release of this LP was handled by Useless Pride. 200 copies on purple vinyl.

Last but not least, the standard press on black vinyl out of 400 copies. Also released by Useless Pride.

 

Mere Mortals

The first Great Reversals LP was a release I'd really been looking forward to and I didn't get disappointed. I'd debated for some time if I should order directly from the label and get a nice coloured copy, but since the label is based in the States I decided against it because shipping costs are just too high and I rarely buy new releases directly from US based labels these days. Bummer, but it is what it is. Black vinyl out of 150 copies.

Loosing It

I think I'm loosing it here. This is a limited cover for a promo (!) flexi (!). Not even a proper record, but a flexi. However, since it's by my new favourite band, I caved in quicker than you could say "That's stupid." Apparently the label ran out of covers, so they came up with a new one for the remaining 28 copies. This is #14.

Me. You. Youth Crew 2016

Latest installment of this compilation series. Featured are - surprise, surprise - current bands that play Youth Crew hardcore. The cool thing about this series is that bands from all over the world are featured, not European or American bands only. It's also a collaboration by many different labels from all over the planet. My favourite bands so far are Spirits (of course), Tomar Control and Modern Problems. I'll have to give it a spin a couple of more times. Maybe some of the other bands will grow on me. I'm not sure which variant this is. Officially there are yellow (/95), green (/102) and dark green (/195) as far as colours go, but this copy is neither. It looks like solid green with some yellow marble going on. Could also be a 'dirty' green or a greenish yellow. So I'm chalking this one up as transition colour.

Spirits X Fluff IV

Last of the Spirits batch. Spirits released a flexi disc together with XClusivX fanzine from Berlin. You could buy it separately or you could get it together with the latest edition of the most DIY important zine right now in Germany. Up until now you could only listen to this song online but it hadn't been released on any physical form prior to this flexi.

Spirits also had a second flexi with them. This is a preview of the new LP they will be releasing shortly. The two songs didn't grip me immediately like the songs on the first LP did, but they're growing on me with every round. Can't wait for the new LP.

Spirits X Fluff II

Spirits had another special edition for this year's Fluff Fest with them. A few weeks prior to the festival they had released a split with Die Faster and for this record they also came up with a special sleeve. I really like that they made a reference to the tour poster here with the anatomical heart. At least that's my interpretation.

Back Cover.

Spirits X Fluff

A few weeks ago I went to Fluff Fest and before going there I decided for myself that I didn't want to buy a whole lot of records there because dragging around records at a festival or heading back to the car every so often is not that much fun. Well, I managed to walk past most of the distros there, but who could know that so many bands had records with them, some of which were made particularly for the festival? Suffice to say there'll be more posts on records I got at Fluff Fest than I had expected.

I knew that Spirits were going to have special editions for some of their records, so the first stop on Friday after setting up the tent was to say hello at their merch table and see what they had. I'm really glad that I went there before their set because they sold out of the special covers and pretty much all the LPs after the show in a matter of minutes and didn't have that much vinyl left for the rest of the tour, which had started only two days before. Really happy for them. Humble people that they are they probably didn't expect selling 100+ LPs at one show. My guess is that the vinyl itself is part of the 2nd press and they made these special OBI strips for the festival and numbered them on the back.

Numbering on the back.

Spirits - Die Faster

I apologize in advance because this is going to be another lengthy post about Spirits. At this point it might be justified to call me a fanboy, but I don't really care.

This split is supposed to be a one time press of 500 copies. All copies come on orange vinyl. The differences lie in the covers/prints. Spirits' guitarist Charles is positively crazy, because he hand-folded all 500 sleeves by himself. I included a close-up of the back of the sleeve a little further down. It must have taken forever to do this. The band then had three different wood stamps made and stamped all 500 covers individually. Talk about a DIY work ethic... They really came out great though. The songs are the same as on the split with Tomar Control, so this is basically the US pressing of these songs.

First up is the most common version. Red print out of 300 copies.



The purple print is out of 100.



The dark blue cover is the State Of Mind Records pre-order cover. 50 of these exist.

The orange cover was used by Coin Toss Records for their pre-order sleeve. There are also 50 copies. 

24 copies with the purple sleeve shown above were used for the record release edition, as you can see by the stamp on the back cover. This picture is also a good close-up of Charles' origami skills. 1550 feet of paper were used for the sleeves. Goddamn.

I was also lucky enough to receive a test press with the order I'd put in. I really dig the special sleeve and the message written on the front cover. The sleeve might not look that impressive, but it's a special sleeve nonetheless, which always scores bonus points with me. I like the haptic aspect of the paper that was chosen for this sleeve.

On the back you get a red hand print. I don't know if this is a Turning Point reference, but I sort of want it to be. You can see the texture of the paper a little bit better in this picture.

Can't Get Enough

Seriously, I can't get enough of this record. So when I had the chance to pick up two more variants without having to pay for shipping I went for it. This is the 2nd pressing of Spirits' debut LP. The red one is out of 150, the orange one out of 250. The orange one is actually a bit marbled, which sadly doesn't really show in the picture.

More Discontent

I thought I was done blogging about all the records I'd ordered before travelling during summer. While cleaning up yesterday I went through the crate with record next to my records player. I flipped through it and came up with four copies of Spirits Discontent LP. The thing was, I could only remember buying three copies: the tour press I picked up when I saw them live and the two colours of the regular pressing. I was a little confused when I suddenly pulled out a black copy to be honest. Then I remembered that I'd also ordered a copy of the pre-order variant. Apparently these hadn't sold out and State Of Mind put the remaining copies online sometime mid-July I think. The record must have arrived while I was travelling and when I got home I just put it in the crate and forgot about it. There are 56 copies of the pre-order variant, which comes on black vinyl and without any labels. Someone scratched in 'Spirits' and 'X' respectively 'XX' where the labels usually are though. Kind of weird, but also kind of cool. By the way, this is my frontrunner for Record Of The Year. Such a great record.

Spirits

Last week my wife wrote me a message saying she found this new band that is pretty good and should be right up my alley and we had to go to the show that they were going to play close by. Since my wife has pretty good taste in music and knows what I like, there wasn't much to argue about. The show was in an old textile factory, which is really hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for. I'd been there before when the promoter put on a show for some friends' band, so I knew where I had to go: drive along the old dirt road with no signs, park in the front of this old building and climb up a few flights of stairs - et voilà: a diy hardcore venue. Some young kids are trying to get some shows going in that small town in the middle of nowhere, which is always cool to see and worthy of support.
There were maybe 40 people there, which is not bad for that town on a Thursday night. Spirits were the only band to play that show, which I've never seen at a hardcore show before, but there's always a first time I guess. I hadn't listened to them before, but my wife had told me that they sound like Count Me Out, Carry On and Go It Alone. Well, if you've been following my blog, you'll have noticed that I really, really like these bands.
Long set short, Spirits fucking killed it. Great music that really reminded me of the early 2000s. They also played a Minor Threat and a Battery (!!!) cover. Actually they played three covers, but I didn't recognize the third song… Anyways, if you like any of the aforementioned bands, you should definitely check out Spirits. Another great SXE band from Boston. My wife and I are definitely going to at least one more show on this tour, because Spirits are just that good. They're also probably the most fun band to watch in the sense that they're really having fun on stage and enjoy what they're doing. Plus they're like the nicest people out there, especially their guitarist Charles.
This is the tour variant of the LP that came out like three (?) weeks ago. I'm not sured if the people who pre-ordered this record have already got their copies, but that didn't stop Spirits to have a tour version with them. There are two hundred copies of these. Neither cover nor lyric sheet, which is a big minus, especially the no lyric sheet part, but you get some nice 3D glasses so you can check out the 3D labels, which is kind of cool. The glasses are stamped (Spirits European Tour)  and numbered (my copy is #61/200). You can also use them to look at the 7" (see below).

For a band that has existed only for a few months, Spirits have been quite productive. This is their first release, the s.t. 7"., which came out earlier this year on Coin Toss Records. This is the tour variant on this weird swirly clear/dark grey/haze colour. It looks cool, but is hard to photograph. The cover comes in 3D optic as well. They're also about to release a split 7" on Speedowax Records. Yeah, pretty productive indeed. After listening to these two records at home, I caved in and ordered a few other versions of the 7". And I'll most likely get the other variants of the LP as well in the nearby future. Oh, and the pre-order for the split is supposed to go online in the next couple of days.