Condolences on Condolences

So this record was my first mail day of 2016 and in my eyes that gets this year off to a pretty good start on the record front. 

Touche Amore - Condolences // Available - Condolences - 1st Press - Black /1000 

This was self released through Touche Amore's own label, much in the same way the Live at WERS 7'' was. A giveaway sign is the centre label staying the same, with the old familiar noose logo. 

There are two tracks here, a re-recording of the song Condolences that first appeared on 'Parting The Sea...' as a piano led track. On recent tours this song has been played as a full band and it sounds great, I'm glad an official recording was made. 

Secondly is a cover of Available by The National that originally surfaced as a digital only bonus track on the No Sleep benefit comp 'A Comp For Mom'. Again it's nice to see this surface on a physical format. 

As flexi discs are prone to not sounding the best and perishing faster than a normal record (due to being made from a thing flexible vinyl sheet), I added a double to my order so I'd have one to play and one to keep the collection clean. Plus it seemed weird to have a new Touche Amore record come out and only order one. 

This is how it looks from the back, you can see how the grooves almost penetrate through the record. The record has a single moulded groove or something that causes this apparently. More weird though is that this is still available through TA's webstore. 

TA 2010 7"s

Touche Amore a band that I love. I get so nerdy over this band it's almost intolerable. They are the only band I have tried/ am still trying to gather a full collection of everything. With recent news of the 2012/2013 7" box set soon coming out; now would be a nice time to start posting about various selections from my as yet incomplete Touche Amore collection. This was a present bought for me by my wife at Christmas, it truly is the most wonderful time of the year. I got fat and got some awesome records. There will be more on that one in future posts (not the being fat thing, records).

I really like the idea behind this box set, and I like that they are continuing it. Their first four 7" releases, on an exclusive colour in a screened mailer; hand numbered and exclusively for tour.

And here it is. I believe Nick Steinhardt (Touche Amore guitarist and design guy at 23in.) designed the cover, they were all hand screened and numbered. I really like the design here, the four respective labels that released 7"s for the band all get a place on the cover, and the font-type looks awesome here. So many innovative things you can do with a standard mailer!

From the look of things I got number 175/200. The box set was already opened when I got it (so it would be really rude not to take them out, take photos of them, play them once and then just gaze longingly at it forever). Shout out to whoever it was from though, the mailer and records were all in great condition. I have heard some horror stories of this one with people writing on the screened mailers for posting, instead of an outer mailer/ jiffy bag (silly bunch).

First up is the 2008 demo, and Touche Amore's first release; it came out on No Sleep records. By this point it is apparent that the mystery colour is clear for these four 7"s (as is with the new box set from what pressing information I have seen). I'm not too sure on other box sets, but my version of the demo has tiny dashes of black in it. The demo was actually already pressed on clear/100 for the first press; so this variant clears up confusion with new A/B labels (the first press has really nice T/A labels and every pressing after has these A/B ones, I'll post on this a little later). Also, the sleeves are leftovers from the first press, as by the second press the sleeves came on thicker card with slightly revised artwork (again, you'll see all of this in the next few posts).

Next up is the La Dispute split, officially named Searching For a Pulse/ The Worth of the World. This features some great artwork from Nick Steinhardt, and some flawless design work, with a die-cut fold out cover (again, more of this in later posts). The recording quality of the Touche side suffers a little on this release, but god damn if the songs aren't amazing. And the bands' respective vocalists contribute guest spots to each others tracks on this split, super cool idea. 

The split with Make Do and Mend came out as a split release with 6131 Records and Panic Records. Both bands offer two songs each (same as TA/LD) and comes with some really nice fold out artwork (probably the work of Nick, but I'm not 100% on that one). Touche Amore, La Dispute and Make Do and Mend are all part of a group of hardcore bands called The Wave (some inside joke apparently), along with Pianos Become the Teeth and Defeater. It's cool that up to this point these bands are all doing interlinked splits. All of them (the bands and the splits) are fantastic, well worth a listen if you haven't already.

 Finally is the live on WERS 7". I believe this was self-released by the band under the label name Condolences. It still is the only release on the label. This 7'' came in quite limited quantities; to this day only 500 exist. 300 on black, and 200 on clear (for this box set). The recording here is great, and a nice insight to the band's live sound. The centre labels with the Condolences logo on them are a nice touch too. This could easily be my favourite live release. 

This thing seems a real piece of history to me now, although I've only had it a short while. Since releasing this the band have offered up another 4 7"s, and are signed to fucking Deathwish inc. such a great progression. However, this early material is pure gold to me; and the whole hand numbered/ exclusive colour/ screened mailer/ tour only deal just gets me too. I seriously love this band too much. If you're into them at all, get looking forward to quite a few posts. And if anyone can help out on anything I'm missing, check my Deadformat link in the blog description and message me!

 Now I just have to cross my fingers, as the new box set is an email application/ lottery style deal where owners are picked at random instead of being thrown up on a webstore/ being available on tour. Crazy. As I said, fingers crossed!