Now spinning: New / Hamburger double EP by Regurgitator

Inside: Underrated national treasures get vinyl justice. Un-proofed general winging.

Is this a blog or a newsletter? The part of me that believes I am destined to waste my time in futile efforts to fulfil niches that deftly exists in both the territory of “no one wants” and the land of “already done” at the same time, also believes that it doesn’t matter what it is because like everything else I do, it’s actually just me doing whatever the fuck I want with my time. This is made plain by the number of blogs I have enthusiastically written only to carelessly destroy over the last 15 years.

A long day at work moving boxes, chatting with coworkers, while the agents of capitalist mechanism go insane around me, leaves me in need of music. Before bed, I’ll save time to put needle to wax (or lazer to plastic) as I wind down.

Not all the vinyl I have collected in the last 18 months is good - it’s a hit and miss format. Most of the time the bad is the mastering. In recent decades, vinyl has been such an afterthought that it was just ignored by the industry. If vinyl were cut, there wasn’t a lot of energy put into mastering for the format.

The promise of vinyl, for music lovers, is that due to the restrictions of the format, they can’t be pressed too hot, or the needle will be forced to skip: thrown right out of the groove. So it can physically not be victim to the loudness war wherein all music is compressed to the maximum volume so it sounds good at quiet volumes and on the radio. So in theory, all records should sound more dynamic, and more dynamic, less compressed recordings is what we want. Except that they don’t always sound that dynamic or good, or even different.

Regurgitator is a local (Brisbane born) group of pop-rockers that have been kicking it since the early 90s. Their self-titled EP and second EP “New” were released almost 30 years ago in 1995. In a brilliant setting of expectations, you’ll hear three guys experimenting and having fun, which is also what you’ve heard since.

I grabbed the combined double EP (that’s not my exact version but probably same plates) record on a whim this year, and it turned out to be the best produced rock record I’ve ever heard. It was mastered for vinyl in Brisbane by Dom McGlinn, who has since closed up shop and heads digital design at the Tax office. Guy knows how to live apparently, even if he doesn’t know how to respond to linked in messages. Fuck Linked In, by the way. I deleted that crap only to suffer career FOMO and restore it, but now finally having realised the universe has a hard rule about me having actual professional jobs. What am I and what is life? Fuck you.

Er, so the Regurgitator double EP - what a classic. I’ve seen a few floating around since, but you can bet this wasn’t pressed in the thousands. Grab one while you can - this is such a creative collection of tracks. It’s also genreless, with clear influences from hip hop, metal, pop and funk. I love musicians that can do more than one thing. I’m dropped by musicians who can do more than one thing and get away with it - or even creatives that be known and loved for doing a variety of things in their own particular way, like Donald Glover/ Childish Gambino. U2 are (or were) musicians like this - constantly reinventing themselves. So are Regurgitator haven’t necessarily done this over the decades, but they do it from track to track. There’s so much soul in this music, so much heart. You can’t make art this good without figurative balls full of integrity (balls don’t literally contain integrity and please note that it is possible for people without balls to have integrity also, so there may be other biological things that can metaphorically contain or produce integrity). And it’s just so fun.