Well it got here, it just took me awhile to get my act together and get the pictures taken. Behold!

As much as I would love for this trend to continue, I think it’s unlikely that once a month I’ll get a bonus LP for free, but in the meantime I’m thankful to get Portishead’s eponymous album in addition to the 44 RPM edition of Third.

So here’s the finished pair for May, all ready to hang – two interesting takes on minimalist artwork.

And wholly unrelated to Album Art, I picked up these two gems at 4-Colour 8-Bit last night.

Damn that was a busy month. Pics incoming over the next week or so. This month was another strange random selection, so I’ll post that whole saga as well. The good news is that both records have already been ordered! Yeah, that’s what I said too! More soon.

Sent from iPad.

Aaaaaabsolutely

Faaaaabulous

The record that started it all, from the inimitable duo of Tennant and Lowe.  There’s a time-lapse vhs video somewhere from ninety ninety something of us unpacking a gig to this record, and then there’s me seeing the boys less than a 7 minute walk from my old flat in Newmarket.  There’s the “I can program a computer” line which never fails to make me laugh, there’s the inevitable and inescapable romance of Love Comes Quickly, and there is the king of the heap, my gateway drug to British synthpop when I was a wee’un, West End Girls.  This landmark debut is a piece of history, and for my money, nothing else in 1986 comes close.

Wow, the month is really half over.  Good thing I’m so decisive,  cause uh…it didn’t, y’know take me two weeks to finally come to the conclusion that though Ratatat’s LP3 is an incredible record, it’s not quite album of the year material, despite it’s gorgeous cover art, or the music being forever being linked with my time hiking through France.  Or accepting that Vampire Weekend’s self-titled LP  (my ‘walk into any store and pick it up’ choice as eluded to in my previous post), as much as I love that album to death, still wasn’t the record that wholly rocked my socks all the way to Bristol and back in 2008.

Portishead could have done a million things with Third. They could’ve played it safe, could’ve done the expected, and could’ve played by anybody else’s rules.  Instead they just waited, recorded and released the brilliant record that I don’t think anybody really saw coming.

I first heard the song The Rip, which is still probably my favourite track, when I was doing the washing-up in my flat in Newmarket.  There was some Radiohead thing on the radio, Thom Yorke guesting on BBC Radio 1 or something, and he had a CD-r copy of the single, had asked Portishead for permission, and played it before anybody else had really heard it.  I remember thinking something along the lines of “wow, this may not be the intelligent-make-out-session soundtrack of Dummy, but it’s pure awesome.”  I had a chance to pre-order the box set with all of its goodies, and yeah, when it arrived I was a happy pappy.  Andrea recalls the unboxing ceremony as well as I do I’m sure! It’s only about 15 feet away from me right now, but it’s in an unknown box buried under countless other boxes, so I won’t be able to pop in my ‘P’-shaped USB stick to copy the album onto the MBP, but I’ve been listening to it on my Zune all month…the verdict?  A+…would buy again!  So I found someone on eBay selling a regular-edition vinyl copy, and decided what the heck…also I’m continuing a tradition started last month, but I’ll have more on that when the package arrives.

As for my as-yet-unpurchased pick of 1986 – anybody got any guesses?  I’ve heard The Rolling Stones and Billy Idol, and of course Depeche Mode, but so far nobody’s picked the winner…