Give Pickups

Three gigs in a week. That's a pretty rare occurrence for me, so it's nice to make a run of posts to mark the occasion. Also, as posting about merch seems to be just as popular as any record is, I'll do it again if that's cool? 

12/08/2015 - Give - JT Soar - Nottingham 

My first time seeing Give and my first time at JT Soar, and both were absolutely incredible. The venue is a great little DIY Space not too far out of the city centre. Everyone was cool, easy to find parking, £5 on the door and you're sorted. I traveled alone, but starting up conversation was easy enough and hopefully next time there'll be a familiar face or two? 

Give brought the fun. That's all; it was an incredibly fun show to attend and when they're next close by I'll happily make the journey again. 

Anyway, on to the merch. There wasn't much on the record front. The dude who runs Adagio was doing merch so brought along a decent distro section from which I nearly bought the Moss Icon discography. The only Give album I saw on sale was the new EP through Rev (Sonic Bloom). 

First up I grabbed this Chiller Than Most fanzine. This is a Flowerhead special issue and is an entire zine dedicated to all things Give, Angela Owens is interviewed in here, and she's done some great photography for a lot of great bands so I reckon it'll be a fun little read! 

There's still plenty of room for Wayne's World and TMNT references though. If anyone has a thing for zines, this can be grabbed through the Chiller Than Most bigcartel along with some other cool Give stuff. 

Next up is the shirt I grabbed. This is the pocket print on the front. I love that Give seem to make up shirts exclusively for tour, and this one has dates on the back that I'll get to in a minute. This came in a few colours so I settled on Grey. 

Back Print

I love how it throws around the Sunflower Youth and Flowerheads tag as opposed to slapping the band name all over it. I was talking to a mate about this band, and he's catching them at Leper Fest along with Touche and Ceremony funnily enough! 

And finally, as I have picked up a pin at the other two gigs I've been to this week, it would've been weird not to grab one here as they had them for sale. I've been lurking at these for a little while now on the Give bigcartel so I couldn't resist it when it was right in front of me. 

There we go! I think the next gigs I'm going to are Brand New and Jim Adkins next month, so we'll see what happens? Between then and now, expect pretty much business as usual here. 

Cheers!

Picture Discs Going Confetti

Another quick minute, another Give record that I am playing serious catch up with. I'm so glad I'm not into the variant game on this one, but from an aesthetic point of view, waiting on it with this one kind of paid off. This press is definitely the one for me! 

Give - Singles Going Confetti - Assault Records - 2nd Press - Picture Disc /200 

I love a good picture disc, and this sounds as great as it looks to my ears. I've said before that I don't have the best hearing or the most audiophile setup, but I'm pretty impressed on all counts here. Another great selling point is the quarter fold cover that I dig, but more on that a little later. 

The cover is made of nice thick stock card, and is housed in a poly sleeve. 

Having a picture disc as a second press with such a limited quantity is a brave step I reckon. It's probably not the most financially viable option either as it involves getting new tests made for a short run but I'm definitely glad it happened! 

Back Cover // B-Side

This image is perfect, and the colours work against the record perfectly. I never knew that John had a huge Give logo on his arm either. 

From the tracklisting you can see that this record compiles the five 7'' records (I Am Love // Petal Pushing // Flower Head // Boots Of Faith // Heaven Is Waiting) alongside a bonus track at the end. 

152//200 

All copies were numbered and stamped /200. 

In the background is the back cover, containing all the lyrics. 

Inside the quarterfold. 

Personnel, band name, label name. Not much is left to explanation here. The left text above the crease is song credits and the right contains art/ layout/ photography credits. At this point, this band had a rotating lineup of 8 members. 

Some flyers that came with the order. The 'We Are Love' tour flyer looks great in person and contains that A-Side logo on the other side.

I've been tempted to grab this record many times, and I nearly caved when Different Kitchen got the US press in at Distro a while back, but this copy just works well for me. Anyway, I'm sure had I bought a copy prior, I would've ended up buying it again anyway. 

Givin' It Live

Another quick minute, another Give record. This band have been taking up a decent chunk of my listening hours since some time last year, and since I caught on way later than I should have I've been playing catch up ever since! 

Live records aren't a thing that I normally get too worked up over; I can live with or without them in most cases. However, since all previous Give 7''s were collected on the 'Singles Going Confetti' compilation I thought I'd have to grab this first. When ordering Cursed II, I quickly nabbed this and added it to my cart before checkout. Deathwish have a mad underrated distro by the way, more and more I'm finding some utter gems in there. 

Give - I Am Live - Photobooth Records - 1st Press - Black /200 (Standard Cover)

Photobooth have since put out a 2nd press of this, limited to 45 which is mad. I didn't even know about it until it had long gone. It's a good job I'm not on the variant game with this band. Between all the variants, limited covers and scarce represses it would be a crazy move to start this late in the game. Watch this space mind. 

Back Cover // B-Side 

The layout for this record follows pretty much all the other Give 7''s, with particular reference to the large centre holes that you need a 45 adapter for (unless you want to completely fuck your records). Another cool hit with this from a design perspective is how the gig flyers are merged into the centre labels and the whole thing stays within a black and yellow theme. 

The text is largely based around what was recorded when, and the lineup at the time. The lineup for this band seems to change fairly regularly, with many 'fill in' musicians gracing the limited covers of various 7'' presses. 

These songs were also taken from a scarcely seen 'Live at Asefu's' comp tape. This cassette was released through Crush Records and the other contributing bands were: Clear // Disengage // Free Spirit. No wonder you never see it about! 

Finally this is the insert from the 7''. It's a fantastic piece of art (I think it recently won an award?) advertising the Flowerheads. I believe that is some kind of fanclub for the band, where you send a postcard or letter to the address noted down and possibly get some free stuff in return (it asks for your shirt size?). I'm not sure it would apply to the UK, but it definitely sounds like a great idea! 

Give Me More!

After relentlessly spinning the Give full length over the past month or two, I have decided to further delve into their catalogue and see what I have been missing out on. The easiest thing to find with a quick eBay search was their newest EP, so that's what I ended up with. 

Give - Sonic Bloom - Revelation Records - 1st Press - Yellow /700 

Although it would've made sense to go backwards and discover something from a little ways back, I couldn't resist this artwork. Kinya Masuo did a great job, creating all of this by hand with clay. Another big seller for this was the fact that it came out on Rev, and I'm making a little more of an effort to dig into the history of this incredible label. 

Back Cover // B-Side 

Revelation Records have their logo immortalised in clay, and it looks super neat. Another weird thing is how the barcode is half cropped in the top corner. The one thing I will say though is this fucking record has never been yellow. It's orange. 

Insert 

This is mostly made up of the clay models on the sleeve with a larger Rev logo in the centre. 

Insert 

It was super hard to photograph, hence that nasty flash kicking in the middle. From what I gather this was recorded at the same time as Electric Flower Circus, in the same studio and engineered by the same guy (Don Zientara), even including some of the same songs. The Crucial John clay model definitely cracks me up though... 

Finally, a Rev order form. I love that you can still do this with a record label, although I wouldn't particularly use it being outside of the US. 

Cheers!

Elektrischer Blumen Zirkus

Let's quickly clarify something here. I have a bit of a late pass on this band; not because I didn't hear of them until recently, but more due to just not being that in to them until recently. Well, that is not strictly true, as I was into it in a way. I really dug the artwork throughout the releases; I liked the way that they fired out a bunch of 7''s on various labels. I really like that despite being affiliated with loads of cool labels, they decided to self release their debut full length (well, that's pretty much the story). I just couldn't get into their music until recently. I knew it was going to happen, and now it has so I'm probably going to be playing catch up a little bit this year. 

Give - Electric Flower Circus - Adagio830 - 1st Press - Black /400 

In truth, I wanted a US press of this way more, as I thought the art was a little cooler and the whole 'self released' copy appealed to me as opposed to the Euro release. However, this looks pretty great in person. As an added upside, the vibrant colours against the flat black background kind of makes for a pretty clear photograph so we can see a little more of what is going on here. 

There was also a green variant /100, but it's a pretty murky colour and although I'm a sucker for a limited colour way, black won it for me this time around (also meaning I could grab it from distro for cheap!). 

Back Cover // B-Side

From a design perspective, this is pretty neat. The centre label matches the colours of the back cover (and insert) titles. Nothing too fancy really, just a nice touch.

All the small print is stuff like band personnel, guest musicians, recording/ mastering/ artwork/ photography credits. There's also a mailing address to write to the band too. It kind of reminds me of early Alkaline Trio releases, I'm sure they left their mailing address on the back of the first few records too. The photography is great on this record too, more on that in a second though. 

Insert 

Angela Owens handled the photography throughout this LP. Funnily enough, she also did the photo shoot for the US Press of this record too. I mean, both records look very different from one another and it's just cool to see a few common themes running though. 

Insert 

As all of the info is on the back sleeve of the record; this side of the insert is used solely for lyrics and a few more live photographs of the band. As far as I can see, there are no thanks on this LP. It's all good though. It's a little different for what I've been getting into lately, and Give certainly stand on their own as far as their sonic output is concerned. However, I'm falling for this band pretty hard. I'm glad I didn't try forcing it on myself too early, just letting it catch on naturally. I wonder what other great bands my younger ears had dismissed...