Trip #10: Instant Crush

Art by Daft Punk, SBTRKT, billy woods, Kenny Segal, Gaz Coombes, Childish Gambino, Toro y Moi, London Grammar, HAIM, and an exhibit on How to Blow Up a Pipeline.

Welcome to The Wax Museum, where we showcase vinyl from the past, present, and future worth having in your record collection. Enjoy a new trip right in your inbox every Wednesday!

Your Museum Guide for Wednesday May 10, 2023

• The FUTURE Exhibit (Upcoming Vinyl Releases)

• The PRESENT Exhibit (Tracking 2023 Album of the Year)

• The PAST Exhibit (2013 Hall of Fame Induction)

• The RABBIT HOLE Exhibit (How to Blow Up a Pipeline)

• Exit Through The Gift Shop

🎧 Listen to this Trip on Spotify and Apple.

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The FUTURE Exhibit

Here are the notable new albums and vinyl coming out this Friday, May 12th.

New Albums

• Alison Goldfrapp - The Love Invention | British synth-pop star Alison Goldfrapp is going solo after seven albums with Goldfrapp. The Love Invention is being billed as Alison’s reawakening as a dancefloor priestess. The vinyl is available in green and black vinyl.

• Hans Zimmer - LIVE | The iconic composer releases a two hour set from his 2022 Europe tour featuring new takes on scores from Dune, The Lion King, The Dark Knight, Interstellar, Inception, and much more across 4 LPs.

• Joji - SMITEREENS | YouTube comedian-turned-musician Joji’s introspective third album, released last November, arrives with a bunch of variants to choose from: highlighter yellow, Spotify Exclusive blue, Barnes & Noble black ice, UO forest green, and black.

• Overmono – Good Lies | UK electronica duo Overmono release their anticipated debut album; get the vinyl in clear (ships from UK) and black.

Vinyl Reissues

• Animal Collective - Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished | Released in 2000 and credited to Avey Tare & Panda Bear before known collectively as Animal Collective, this black vinyl reissue features remastered audio and new artwork.

• Daft Punk - Random Access Memories | Daft Punk’s multi Grammy winning smash Random Access Memories turns ten with a special triple vinyl set with 35 minutes of demos and outtakes, a “Lose Yourself To Dance” poster, and 16 page booklet. We dive deeper into RAM in the Hall of Fame section of this newsletter.

• The Format - Interventions and Lullabies (Cyan Blue Vinyl) and Dog Problems (Milky Clear Vinyl) and fun. - Aim and Ignite (Blue Jay Vinyl) | Big day for Nate Ruess fans as some of his old albums get a much needed repress, as first editions of Aim and Ignite for instance were going for $400+.

• Kasey Musgraves - Golden Hour (Cloud Nine Vinyl) | Celebrate the fifth anniversary of Kacey Musgraves' Grammy winning Golden Hour with a glittery, sky-blue vinyl. Unfortunately this comes in a PVC sleeve instead of a normal album jacket; PVC sleeves should be outlawed.

• Miles Davis - Workin' With The Miles Davis Quintet (Original Jazz Classics Series) | The Miles Davis Quintet of the mid-1950s was a Murderers’ Row featuring Davis, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones. The 180-gram vinyl is mastered from the original tapes by the legend Kevin Gray.

• The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? (Yellow Vinyl) | The second and final album by Canadian lo-fi rockers The Unicorns gets a 20th anniversary pressing limited to /2000 units on yellow wax. This album is a real trip that I enjoy returning to every few years.

📋 Full list of vinyl releases, reissues, compilations.

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The PRESENT Exhibit

Behold the 2023 Album of the Year leaderboard. Three new albums get added each week. Standings change throughout the year.

🎧 Full AOTY 2023 Playlist: Spotify | Apple (30 Albums and Counting…)

This week features Gaz Coombes, SBTRKT, billy woods & Kenny Segal.

Gaz Coombes - Turn the Car Around

Get Vinyl: Indie Exclusive Yellow | Black | | Discogs

Very impressive stuff here by English musician Gaz Coombes of Supergrass fame. Turn the Car Around is front to back stone cold bangers featuring a great voice, interesting writing, mint production, and hooks with serious replay value. I’ve heard this album crushes live, so hopefully Gaz makes it over to the states soon.

SBTRKT - The Rat Road

Get Vinyl: Glow in the Dark | Silver | Black (September release date)

Prepare for a head spinning amount of genres and cameos in SBTRKT’s The Rat Road, the previously masked man’s first album in seven years. This is ADHD in album form. With 22 tracks crammed into 51 minutes, there’s tone shifts that’ll give you whiplash. The highs outweigh the lows though; Toro y Moi appears in a sure to be summer regular “DAYS GO BY”, frequent collaborators Sampha and Little Dragon don’t disappoint, and “NO INTENTION” featuring newcomer LEILAH has been on repeat the most for me.

billy woods & Kenny Segal - Maps

Get Vinyl: Black | Discogs

New York rapper billy woods has been on a prolific tear recently, with 11 albums in the last six years (four with Armand Hammer). He teamed up again with L.A. producer Kenny Segal, their first collab since the 2019 underground classic Hiding Places. Maps is a concept album where we follow woods on a tour through Europe and America. Segal’s jazzy beats work well behind woods’ heavy voice and deadpan one-liners. There’s some nice features here including Danny Brown, Aesop Rock, and Sam Herring of Future Islands. This should be a great starting point for new listeners, while old fans will continue to be pleased.

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The PAST Exhibit

Each week we look at a year gone by to find 10 timeless albums that are must-haves in your vinyl collection. We started at 2022, we’re at 2013, and we’re going all the way back to the ‘60s! Yeah baby!

2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | This week is 2013

🎧 Full Essential Vinyl Playlist: Spotify | Apple (100 Records and Counting…)

Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

Get Vinyl: New 4 LP Set (out Friday) | Discogs

Daft Punk's fourth and final album Random Access Memories is a monumental achievement in electronic music, a gorgeous tribute to the golden age of disco, and a bold declaration of the band's artistic vision. Ten years later, the album remains a popular choice for listening parties and dance floors.

I will sum up Random Access Memories by saying it’s a celebration of music by two dudes with a passion and love for making timeless earworms. It may very well go down as one of the greatest electronic albums in history.

Personally I appreciate this album now more than I ever have, and even some songs I would skip over have now become some of my favorites, like “Fragments of Time” as I become more of a yacht rock dad.

Toro y Moi - Anything in Return

Get Vinyl: 10th Anniversary Cherry Cola | Black | Discogs

Toro y Moi aka musician Chaz Bundick performs all instrumentation on his third album Anything in Return. If you want dreamy synths, funky basslines, and soulful vocals, you’ve come to the right place. Singles “So Many Details” and “Rose Quartz” are up there with anything he’s created before or since, and each track reveals new depths and nuances over time.

HAIM - Days Are Gone

Get Vinyl: Black | Discogs

Days Are Gone is the first album by Los Angeles sisters HAIM, produced by Ariel Rechtshaid. It’s tough to debut a better A-side than this, with the first four songs “Falling”, “Forever”, “The Wire”, and “If I Could Change Your Mind” all instant classics.

Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City

Get Vinyl: Black | Discogs

Vampire Weekend’s LP3 Modern Vampires of the City showcased the band's growth as musicians and songwriters with an album full of catchy melodies, complex arrangements, typically clever lyrics, and lush instrumentation. This was also produced by Ariel Rechtshaid, who had one hell of a 2013.

Childish Gambino - Because the Internet

Get Vinyl: Walmart Exclusive Pink Toes | Black | Discogs

Donald Glover’s hip hop alter ego Childish Gambino dropped his second album Because the Internet which was met with both extreme love and hate, much like his debut Camp. The “Internet and what it’s doing to us” concept album is a full hour packed with Gambino’s ambition and creativity. While not properly appreciated in the moment, songs with staying power like “3005”, “Telegraph Ave”, “Sweatpants”, “Crawl”, “Worldstar” and “The Worst Guys” prove Because the Internet is an essential album of the decade.

The roll out for the album was insane. The vinyl came with a 72 page screenplay to be read alongside the album, which you can find here. There was a 25 minute short film directed by Hiro Murai (Atlanta) and featured Flying Lotus, Topanga, Abella Anderson, Trinidad James, Chance the Rapper, and more. The film and album were both created at Chris Bosh's Pacific Palisades mansion that Bino rented out for $45,000 a month.

Disclosure - Settle

Get Vinyl: Black | Discogs

Random Access Memories and Settle were a nice one-two punch that brought dance-pop back to the forefront. Features galore on this album: Sam Smith, London Grammar, Jessie Ware, Nile Rodgers, Mary J. Blige, and AlunaGeorge just to name a few. Additionally, the Settle remix album that followed produced some bangers in its own right.

Melody’s Echo Chamber - Melody’s Echo Chamber

Get Vinyl: Orange with “Untold” album | Black | Discogs

Melody Prochet’s solo debut album, produced by then boyfriend Kevin Parker, is a marriage of psychedelia and dream pop. It could be argued that this is a lost Tame Impala album, as Kevin provides the rhythm section (playing both bass and drums).

Local Natives - Hummingbird

Get Vinyl: 10th Anniversary White | Discogs

Hummingbird is the second studio album by indie rockers Local Natives and produced by The National guitarist Aaron Dessner, who cameos on multiple songs as well. Death and breakups hit Local Natives hard before production, creating perhaps their darkest album.

Just this week, Local Natives announced the 10th anniversary deluxe edition of Hummingbird on double white vinyl with new artwork, as well as their upcoming fifth album Time Will Wait For No One out July 7th with a bunch of variants: orange, canary yellow, white, tan, black.

London Grammar - If You Wait

Get Vinyl: Black | Discogs

Since its release a decade ago, If You Wait established itself as a classic within mainstream music circles and independent scenes alike. Four bonafide hits on this one with “Wasting My Younger Years”, “Hey Now”, “Strong”, and “Nightcall”.

For this year’s Record Store Day, If You Wait was pressed on colored vinyl (gold and black splatter) for the first time; there were only 1500 units, and it sold out in stores and online quickly.

A$AP Rocky - LONG.LIVE.A$AP

Get Vinyl: Translucent Orange | Discogs

“Wild for the Night”. “Fuckin’ Problems”. “Goldie”. The song titles alone should bring the hooks right back into your brain.

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The RABBIT HOLE Exhibit

Get sucked down the pop culture rabbit hole with new recommendations each week.

📺 Videos from all trips can be found here. Shuffle for optimal enjoyment. 🔀

How to Blow Up a Pipeline | A group of young climate activists set out to destroy an oil pipeline in the tense, eco-thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline directed by Daniel Goldhaber and distributed by NEON. You can watch it below in HD for $6.99.

The source material is Andreas Malm’s 2021 non-fiction book of the same name, which argues that property destruction should be considered in the pursuit of environmental justice. This movie is fictionalized, but keeps the book’s theme that an explosive call to action is necessary for a revolution.

The lean film is a tightly edited, beautifully shot take on the heist genre that is influenced by Ocean’s Eleven, Thief, and Reservior Dogs. The MVP of the movie may be the Oneohtrix Point Never-like score that keeps you on the edge of your seat from the jump.

There is a danger to releasing this film; what if someone impressionable follows through with bombing a pipeline? like say, Oops too late, the US government exploded Russia’s Nord Stream underwater oil pipeline last year. News of this broke here on Substack by legend Seymour Hersh, who does an incredible job documenting the stranger-than-fiction account of the climate disaster.

While the film’s characters go to great lengths to attack a West Texas pipeline without causing environmental damage, the Nord Stream sabotage was the largest methane leak in history, spewing hundreds of millions of pounds of methane into the atmosphere and Baltic Sea. This may be the biggest environmental disaster of our lifetime, and it barely makes the news. Each day we feel anger and helplessness at choices made without our consent. How to Blow Up a Pipeline wants us to take control of these emotions and do something about it.

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Exit Through The Gift Shop

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Leave a comment card on your way out, and we’ll see ya next Wax Wednesday!

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