Okay, collector types. Feast your hungry eyes on this. Bound to be so rare it’s ridiculous and I can only imagine the silliness of the prices it will fetch on the secondary market. It’s Dale Crover from the Melvins, with 12 solo tracks all of which are under a minute long, split up into six separate records pressed to both sides of a single LP, hand-pressed to clear vinyl. Even Joyful Noise Recordings, which helmed the project, seems to admit that the technology involved produced a pretty rough sound, but let’s face it, if you’re buying this thing, you’re not buying it because you’re gonna slap it on your turntable and play it until the needle digs through to the other side. You’re buying it to take pictures and brag on social media that you got one of the 127 copies in existence. And I honestly don’t think I could fault you for that, given how gorgeous it actually looks and the clear passion that has gone into making it.

For sale at $100 a pop, they’re already gone.

From the PR wire:

Dale Crover (the Melvins) Releasing 12-Sided Record ‘Skins’ via Joyful Noise Recordings

Watch Instructional Video (on how to play “the most impractical record of all time”)

Dale Crover, best known as the drummer of the Melvins, teamed up with Joyful Noise Recordings to create a 12-sided record called Skins. The first release of its kind, the unique art object was hand made by lathe virtuoso Mike Dixon and is limited to 127 signed copies. Each record features six spindle holes, which correspond to twelve short songs written by Crover (six on side A and six on side B.) Joyful Noise created an instructional video demonstrating how to access each track.

This unique format required Crover to work within a highly constraining framework, creating individual pieces of music that almost mimic haikus. Each piece is less than 30 seconds in length, and these distinct works ultimately became the seed for Crover’s upcoming full-length album, slated for release in 2017.

Because each record was individually cut using 1940s technology (on a 1942 Presto 6N record lathe), these are lo-fi, mono records that will not possess the same fidelity as a modern record. Each of the 127 copies available required more than an hour of work to produce. See below for additional notes on playing the record.

Turntable Setup: Lathe-cut records have more shallow grooves than pressed records, which can make them difficult to play. Adjustments to your standard turntable setup may be required. If the only turntable you own is a Crosley, do not buy this record. Not only will it not play on your setup, but you’ll likely damage the record in the process. Due to the multi-spindle-hole design, we cannot guarantee that this record will be playable on all turntables.

A note about the price: Yes, it would be totally insane to pay $100 for 5 minutes of audio. But music is not all you are buying here. This is one of the most unique records ever made in the history of music. Each of the 127 copies required over an hour of work to make, not to mention the countless hours that were put into the design, composition and recording. If you cannot afford this art object, feel free to wait for Dale’s full-length. But to those who can, you can comfort yourself with the knowledge that in the not-too-distant future, this record will be sold on eBay for a far more obscene amount of money.

TRACK LISTING
01. Slide On Up (0:27)
02. The Short Con (0:26)
03. Our Supreme Leader (0:16)
04. String Bean (0:32)
05. Why Not? (0:11)
06. Prismo (0:15)
07. Trick Dirt (0:29)
08. Chicken Ala King (0:30)
09. Vulnavia (0:30)
10. None No More (0:31)
11. Horse Pills (0:30)
12. Just Walk Around (0:29)

https://www.joyfulnoiserecordings.com/products/skins
https://www.facebook.com/joyfulnoiserecordings

How to Listen to Dale Crover’s Skins

The track “We Let the Hell Come” would wind up as one of the most memorable songs on Scott Kelly‘s 2012 Scott Kelly and the Road Home album, The Forgiven Ghost in Me. Interpreted with subtle, still-minimalist interplay of electric and acoustic guitar and Kelly‘s mournful, gravel-throated wonderings, it was a highlight of the record (review here), engaging with a sweet, sad melody and the persistent strum of Kelly‘s strings. Little in that version would link “We Let the Hell Come” to its prior interpretation — the song having been performed over two years earlier live by Shrinebuilder.

At the very start of the video below, filmed at Skully’s in Columbus, Ohio, as part of the 2010 Scion Rock Fest — Shrinebuilder headlined that venue for the night; YOB, Pelican, Acrassicauda and others also played — the band says that “We Let the Hell Come” will be on the next record. It may well still be, but more than three years later, a follow-up to Shrinebuilder‘s 2009 self-titled debut (review here) has yet to surface, and with the band’s members — Kelly (also in Neurosis), Scott “Wino” Weinrich (also in The Obsessed and Saint Vitus at this point, as well as putting out solo material), Dale Crover (the Melvins) and Al Cisneros (Sleep and Om) — busy with their respective main outfits, it may be that Shrinebuilder was a one-time planetary alignment that we won’t be fortunate enough to see again.

If that’s the case, all the better that clips like this one of “We Let the Hell Come” are out there — the song also showed up on Shrinebuilder‘s Live in Europe 2010 vinyl, which I regret not buying when I had the chance — to give a sampling of what might’ve been or, who knows, might still be when and if there’s a second Shrinebuilder outing. This video was filmed by Chris Kimbrough and I hope you enjoy and have an excellent Wino Wednesday:

Shrinebuilder, “We Let the Hell Come” Live at Scion Rock Fest 2010