BEEHIVE RECORDS - GREENWICH, LONDON

I don't know what it is about the Cutty Sark but the name alone makes me want to spit blood. I don't give a fuck if it is the last of the tea-clippers. I cheered when it burnt down.

Before you start, no my ranting isn't due to a particularly stale and obvious school trip to see said 'Sark' back in the 80's, I wasn't punched in the back of the head by the school bully as I studied the portals and the poop deck.

It has never sat well with me. The idea of a pointless be-sailed ship in permanent dry-dock suspended animation. It's like a ship in a bottle without the bottle. What was the point? You weren't allowed to play on it, it didn't go anywhere, it had a stupid fucking name.

'Look at that Sark'

'Yes, isn't it Cutty?'

'Oh yes, it's a very Cutty Sark'.

Fuck you.

Luckily, not three minutes away is 'Beehive Records'. Have I ever bought anything from here? No. Does that stop it being a solid stand up record shop? No it does not.

Beehive is an ideal shop if you are just getting into 'the game'. If you have no qualms about owning re-issues then the stock is solid and most of your Kraut, Psyche, 60s Pop, Prog needs will be met at little expense and with comparable ease.

It reminds me of Exotica Records (Portobello Road) circa 1995, before all of the good stuff mysteriously vanished but sadly in this case all of that good stuff, like I say is re-issues. There's a few bits and pieces on the walls and the decor suggests that this might be somewhere to find some truly exciting used stock, but no, not so much.

Even so, I will always stop by if I am in the area, just on the off-chance that the owner has decided to purge his private collection or that some local, newly widowed lady has decided to rid herself of that vinyl weight that hung from her husbands neck for the past fifty years.

Here's to cheery hoping.

In the meantime I will sit grinding my teeth as the Cutty Sark is rebuilt and googling words like 'arson' and 'undetected' whilst dreaming of fun with matches.

WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID? D.O.C RECORDS R.I.P

Well this was always going to happen.

Yet I still feel moved enough to say a few words. When was the last time you came across a genuine second hand record shop on a suburban side-street? Yes I know it wasn't very good and that they had some kind of basement infestation that suggested death behind the walls but it was still a record shop. Still somewhere to go when that clawing urge comes a calling, that nameless day-terror that urges you to sacrifice potentially fruitful day-light hours in favor of the endless and pointless search. Now it is gone.

Hopefully Mr D.O.C's decision to close his doors forever was to do with spiraling rent, internet based competition and downloading rather than a less than the less than luke-warm review I found myself writing after a fruitless visit sometime last year.

Either way, farewell D.O.C Records and god-speed.

....I wonder if they had a closing down sale? Hope I didn't miss anything.

RECORD COLLECTOR - SHEFFIELD (RETURN MATCH)

The down-side to living in a world of convenience that when the wheels fall off every minutes delay or unnecessary wait in line feels like a punch in the face.

My train home to see the folks was delayed by 90 minutes. Not only was it delayed by 90 minutes but it failed to get to it's destination being cancelled about thirty miles outside of my home-town.

It would have been a minor pain in the face if I was traveling alone, I'd have got lost in my ipod and read some ridiculous graphic novel. As it was I was traveling with family: Small child and wife, dead-body heavy suitcase and 'collapsible' stroller.

So what can you do? Well there's nobody to complain to, the staff (what there are left of them in 2011) know well enough to lock themselves in the guard car. That only really leaves one path of recourse.

There is something quite satisfying about punching the living shit out of a train. Yes my knuckles hurt and it was juvenile but that coupled with every swearword I knew and a couple I made up for the occasion seemed to do the trick. I waited until the carriage was empty after the impromptu alighting and steam was vented.

So what have I learned? Next time I need to get a train in the UK, it is more sensible to hijack a helicopter.

What does this have to do with records? Well I thought that I'd take time out to visit Sheffield's ever lovely 'Record Collector' shop in Broom Hill.

Was it worth it? Was a good time had by all? Did I come home sacks a bulging with all sorts of vinyl based wonders.

No.

Oh.

Record Collector has gone a bit shit and here's why:

It's not necessarily the inclusion of a handful of new vinyl (presumably to get them bumped up to 'Record Store Day' status, meaning access to loads of guaranteed to sell and be seen on ebay within days stock) but this does not help. The lines are now blurred, where is the NEW section?

It is that they haven't done a decent used record buy in what feels like a year. The walls are plastered with over-priced or over familiar stock. The racks? More of the same with the same few records that I take up to the counter on every visit in the hope that they are either somehow in better condition than last time I saw them or that my standards have slipped.

Despite the gripe I'm not bitter. It's still a shining beacon in an otherwise barren city. I got my hands dirty (literally) and bought a Father Yod album so I shouldn't moan too much, it's just that the shop has now well and truly fallen from my list of 'Record Shops You absolutely have to visit if you are in a 30 mile Radius', which is a shame as by now I can pretty much fit them all onto the back of a postage stamp.

ZOLA JESUS - STRIDULUM II

I am reviewing this because it's been on my work desk and staring at me for the best part of 5 months. Also because I am not entirely sure that the fawning and in-depth write up I want to give Deftones 'White Pony' would be appreciated by anybody apart from me (Just to say it's in my top 50 albums and if you don't own a copy get over that Nu-metal labeling and treat yourself).

I've had this in and out of the CD player (also on my desk) since around Christmas and it's really grown on me. To be honest I hadn't been sure what to expect. The personnel listing wasn't exactly inspiring: One person (Nika Rosa Danilova) with a keyboard. It could quite easily have fallen flat like a Jamie Lidell gig with a broken sequencer. But it doesn't. Given the lack of other instrumentation it's a surprisingly dense piece. It's brooding, dark, haunting, it's all of those other words that appeared in reviews of the record when it came out in the middle of last year.

The whole album is like an elongated study of This Mortal Coil's version of 'Song to a Siren', and if you ever saw that track used in the trailer for the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre then those visuals add even more credence to that line of thinking. It comes from a very black and pained place, somewhere close to death.

Another thing that undoubtedly every review of this so far will have pointed out is how close her Nika's vocal range is to that of Siouxsie Sioux. At first her delivery was massively grating but like the music that accompanies it, in time you find yourself immersed.

Despite all of this and my repeat listening at work, I am trying to think of circumstances where I might choose this as a soundtrack and I am coming up short. You can't really have sex to it unless that sex involves ropes and potentially knives. I wouldn't want to drive to it, unless my driving culminated with a high-speed and slow motion chase resulting in my untimely and messy crash based death. It's not ironing music unless I am contemplating ironing my hand and or face. You get the picture - It's very emotional, borderline wallowing music or like I said, maybe something you play when you are having knife sex.

So given I don't intend for copious amounts of blood to feature in any love making in which I might partake I will leave this on my desk, safe in the knowledge that it's a suitable accompaniment to putting together elongated and over-styled Power Point presentations.

JAN FRYDERYK CREATIVE SOUND - FAUN

This guy is German. (At least I think he is German)

He's a piano player.

He does not have a Wikipedia entry.

If I could stretch to more than a dozen words in German there would be some clues as to the man's history and background on the rear of the sleeve. Sadly the comprehensive notes, probably outlining the making of the record and the chief protagonist's history are a series of 'k's, 'z's and umlauts.

Given this I shall take my customary tact and make something up...

Jan Fryderyk discovered the world of Jazz after being admitted to Ansbach Military Hospital as a child. He had complained of a chronic stomach pain and on examination doctors removed approximately 4oz of human hair from his stomach and intestinal tract.

Jan Fryderyk had a hair eating problem, unlike most people with this affliction the hair was not in fact his. At weekend Jan would roam from barber shop to barber shop with an eye to scoring a snack and had been doing so since an incident involving a wig on his seventh birthday.

It was whilst he was recovering from the operation that Jan heard some G.Is stationed there playing John Coltrane's 'Blue Trane' and he was hooked.

To this day nobody knows how or why the hair eating problem started. What they do know is that despite a relapse in the early 80s his passion for the jazz piano has all but cured him.

Sound wise, this is obviously piano led, but don't let that put you off. It's not a painful Cecil Taylor excursion into the land of the solo plinkity-plonk. The other players here do a fantastic job of filling in, covering for and adding to Fryderyk's key-happy ways.

I need to single out Alan Skidmore formerly of Kieth Tippet's 'Centipede' here for a special mention. He's an exceptional saxophone player and he has a tidy beard. He does soft, distant and gentle AND 'I'm having a shit-fit' both surprisingly well. I say surprisingly as he's a Brit and despite evidence to the contrary I still firmly believe that 'Jazz' is the realm of the dead (with a few exceptions) American.

Quite who to thank for rest of it I do not know as Peter Giger(Pictured above), Doug Hammond and a guy called Trilok Gurtu all contribute percussion of some type or other. The sheer amount of skin beating gives you some idea of how good this could and does get.

It isn't indispensable by any means but when the repetitive percussion gels with the piano 'Faun' comes alive in a wholly entertaining and mostly enjoyable way.