Singles, are they still important to you?

[shadowplay]

In the last year or two I've started subscribing to singles clubs. It's a great way to be constantly presented with new material by artists you have never heard of and supporting labels you like.
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Yeah I like a singles club (and I've paid annual subscription to the likes of Vinyl on Demand), going right back to The Rough Trade Singles club which had this seven inch explosion of Joy fromAlison Shaw (of Cranes) and Rudy Tambala (of A.R. Kane) as Inrain.. I really liked the Clawfist one back then too.

I think we both Hoga Nord Subscribers too.

D

[Grey]

I like single songs for mixtapes and suchlike, but I've always bought albums. I think it probably goes back to being a kid when Dad would put a record on - there you go, side one of Thomas Tallis or Philip Glass or whatever, and you were in for the duration. I miss having the time to do that.

Likewise. Though for my era it was Dad's tape collection. Both of these mediums, vinyl and tape, were before track-skipping was really a thing. There were of course record players that could scan the album for the gaps between tracks and let you skip songs, but it didn't really become a thing until CD. I think that growing up with a medium that more-or-less required you to listen to the whole thing start to finish had some effect on my fondness for albums rather than singles. The "cassette single" was also never really a thing in the way the 7" was.

When I was around ~13 and really getting into music, MP3 players were just starting to become affordable and that started a whole new era for me of the "digital mixtape" where I was more focused on creating playlists of songs that I liked and shuffling them all together rather than collecting albums. Hundreds of songs that only had a few albums in common and were otherwise mixed and matched from all sorts of different artists and genres. However when I got older I started to regain an appreciation for albums rather than songs, and I feel like a good album is "worth" more than a good single.

Nowadays between my records and my digital music I only own a few singles, and largely for their collectible nature. I admire albums for their cohesiveness, one song can bring back memories of a specific time or place but an album can take you on a whole journey. Albums that present an overarching theme are my favorite, why the songs are ordered the way they are and how they work off of eachother. It's a bit ironic because i've listened to a lot of albums that feel more like a collection of singles than a real album, and in some ways the concept of an album has become diluted as a result. "Put the popular tracks first, and just throw the rest at the back end."

[sammynb]

I think we both Hoga Nord Subscribers too.

D

Darn straight we are.

[shadowplay]

Albums that present an overarching theme are my favorite, why the songs are ordered the way they are and how they work off of eachother. It's a bit ironic because i've listened to a lot of albums that feel more like a collection of singles than a real album, and in some ways the concept of an album has become diluted as a result. "Put the popular tracks first, and just throw the rest at the back end."

You know that's a major bugbear of mine, track sequencing, it's a bit of lost black art. I think it might be worth paying a DJ or some sort of external consultant to sequence your record if as seems the norm the band has no idea how to do it. I think the fact that these days it's quite popular to spread a single album over four sides creates opportunities that few seem to exploit. For example the recent Golden Filter album STILL/ALONE was essentially two albums in one package, one was more extended and upbeat floor aimed tracks and the other was more low light synthpop.

I like albums, I guess my bulk of listening is albums but so much of what I want to buy and listen to is either 12' or to a lesser extent a seven. I think the ideal world is discrete singles and EP's and albums (and the lost art of the mini album) and I'm generally dismayed with any band who release more than one single off an album.

D

[sammynb]

Other side of the coin, in this age of digital releases and the Ed Sheerans/Coldplay/Biebers of the world, can these arts (I say loosely) actually write and release and album?
So a release that is a journey from one song to the next, beginning to end.
Or are they just merely singles collections of the last 10 or so "singles"?

[shadowplay]

Other side of the coin, in this age of digital releases and the Ed Sheerans/Coldplay/Biebers of the world, can these arts (I say loosely) actually write and release and album?
So a release that is a journey from one song to the next, beginning to end.
Or are they just merely singles collections of the last 10 or so "singles"?

Yeah that's true, it's a bit like miraculous crack filling foam, they expand to fit the available space.

I think a lot of the change can be put down to the relative marginalisation of music in many young peoples lives. When I was a kid my weekly record was everything and then later on so was getting to gigs and clubs, I never had video games or TV in my room, so my bedroom life was records, books, art, watching birds with my binoculars and trying to get girls up there and I played records constantly. These days kids have so much other stuff distracting them that it's easy to see why some treat music in the most passive manner (adults too), while they multi player game or whatever they do.

My kids care about music but they are probably just responding to the home environment and me being around all the time brainwashing them but also because we took them to gigs when they were toddlers and to record shops and just play music constantly. My mate and his two kids came to ours for the whole summer and both kids came quite disinterested in music (background ambiance), despite my friend trying and left enthusiastic (the parents left enthusiastic too). My daughters best friends are all pretty into music but I think a lot of this is that all socialising happens at ours and we're a music house. When we adopted our last kid at four she's never heard (relatively) loud music and certainly never the sort of bass you can feel right though your body, it was amazing to see her so excited by music coming out the big speakas, it made me feel almost born again to see her face.

D

[spacecadet]

I don't know if most bands I follow still release "singles" in the traditional sense. They may release promotional videos or physical EP's, and I watch/buy those when I find out about them.

Japanese artists that I follow do still release physical singles with a main track and a "backing track" (aka "b side"). Often the backing tracks are better than the main single because they don't need to be radio friendly (just as it's always been). Occasionally they also release them with various bonuses, like concert or backstage footage. I do still buy those, especially because in Japan the single is more of an in-between albums thing, so it may be months before there's anything else to buy from that artist.

[FrankRay]

Out of interest, does anyone have any favourite albums singles or EPs for track listing?
I always felt that the first doors album was perfectly sequenced, however you feel about the actual songs. I also love the original dead souls / atmosphere single with two very different moods unified by similar drumming. I guess MBV's EPs were really well put together too.
New albums that flow are rarer maybe, but In Rainbows seems flawless to me.

[Plumerai]

I only care about singles for the b-sides unless it's a dance mix.

Always cool when they do neat stuff with the singles. I have a Sugarcubes/JaMC 12" with a double A side. The version of the song played depends on which groove snagged the needle.

[blacktiger]

So...who still buys and loves singles?

Also what was your last?

I do, though a buy a lot more old ones than new releases. The last one I bought was The Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch EP ('79 New Hormones pressing). The last new release I bought was...Electric Flower Cult by Give. As a 12" EP, I'm not 100% sure that it qualifies, though. If not, I think it was the Cold Heart/Wanting Nothing single by Dag Nasty.