Nineteen Sides of Vinyl: One Saturday in Phoenix

Saturday. Dog park, farmers market, repotting plants in the heat, a record shop run that got out of hand, a freezer pizza festooned with balcony herbs and nineteen sides of vinyl spanning 1972 to 2026. The tubes of the Fisher 400 glowing all day… and night… as Marty held the room together with the carpet.

TONIGHT’S MENU

AMUSE-BOUCHE

Voïvod — Symphonique

Recorded June 4, 2025 at the Grand Théâtre in Québec City. New on release day — arrived as a static bomb, crackling like a Tesla coil in the Phoenix heat. The Humminguru record cleaner will sort it before round two.

PHASE 1: APPETIZERS

Megadeth — Countdown to Extinction
Megadeth — Youthanasia

Dave Mustaine is a legitimate legend — in real life and, perhaps more emphatically, in his own mind. Both 2026 reissues arrived as static bombs and got spa’d. The 2LP treatment suits them — more vinyl real estate, better dynamics, Mustaine’s riffs landing with the weight they were always meant to carry.

The self-mythology is part of the package at this point, and honestly it’s earned. Countdown and Youthanasia back to back as appetizers is a statement — melodic without going soft, teeth still in, Friedman’s precision doing things on guitar that most people in thrash didn’t know were available.

The Black Crowes — Amorica

Driving home from a sub-par Thai supper, “Hard Time” came on the radio. One impulsive detour to the record shop later, I’m face to face with that iconic American flag bikini muff. This joint was sealed… the universe provides.

PHASE 2: MAIN COURSE

Boards of Canada — Inferno

New BoC release day… thirteen years since Tomorrow’s Harvest. Light me on fire. I saved the hexagonal flexi-disc for last.

Kraftwerk — Kraftwerk 1 & 2

The same ad hoc record store side quest that brought Amorica unveiled these holy grails. High on the “expensive wall” and bathed in heavenly beams of kosmische light, I instantly threw down my credit card and gave these beauties ride back to my place. Side 4 of Kraftwerk 2 is exceptionally beautiful — pastoral electronics, Conny Plank’s warmth, music that Ralf Hütter has spent decades trying to erase from the official narrative. Let the sounds free Ralf. Re-release the pre-Autobahn albums.

PHASE 3: DESSERT

David Bowie — Outside (Excerpts from Outside)

ORIGINAL: 1995 | RSD 2026, AIR STUDIOS HALF-SPEED CUT, CRYSTAL CLEAR VINYL, LIMITED TO 7,500 COPIES

Bowie and Eno mapping their own inferno. Half-speed cut at George Martin’s AIR Studios London using the 2021 Eno-approved remasters. Out of print for over a decade — finally done properly. After Boards of Canada’s Dante descent, almost a thematic continuation.

WHAT THE MUSIC REFUSES TO FORGET

There’s a particular kind of ear that gravitates toward harmony that won’t resolve cleanly — toward the dissonant interval, the unexpected movement, the riff that goes somewhere other than where physics seems to want it to go. A Saturday like this one self-organizes around that gravity without you planning it that way.

Piggy — Denis D’Amour — was operating in the space where metal and 20th century classical vocabulary intersect. The dissonant intervals and rhythmic displacement rooted in Stravinsky, Bartók, Messiaen, filtered through a completely singular metal sensibility. Symphonique makes that explicit by putting the Quebec Symphony Orchestra behind it, but the DNA was always there. The orchestrator caught the Rite of Spring quote buried in “Pre-Ignition” and honored it rather than smoothing it over. That kind of fidelity to a composer’s subtext is unusual.

Then there’s the Kraftwerk situation. What was spinning on the Vertigo Swirl pressing was music of extraordinary beauty — pastoral electronics, flutes, Conny Plank’s intuitive production — that Ralf Hütter has spent decades trying to suppress. The man-machine mythology he constructed around himself required that Kraftwerk begin with Autobahn, that the earlier work be an embarrassment rather than a foundation. The UK Vertigo pressings exist anyway. The music doesn’t care about the official narrative. Side 4 is exceptional whether Ralf acknowledges it or not.

Boards of Canada broke thirteen years of silence with a record that feels immediately like them yet noticeably different — more surgical, more percussive, Indian influences woven through. Inferno as title is explicit; reviewers note the horror arc, the Dante descent through the artwork. Dropping the needle on something genuinely new from a band that’s been quiet for over a decade requires a specific kind of patience. Worth the wait. Worth the silence before the needle lands.

Bowie and Eno made Outside in 1995 and nobody quite knew what to do with it. A noir dystopian murder mystery with Reeves Gabrels unhinged underneath, Nathan Adler narrating through the chaos. It sounds more prescient every year. As dessert after an evening that moved from thrash metal to Scottish electronic music to suppressed kosmische brilliance, it arrived as the only possible conclusion.

Some sessions just know where they’re going even if I’m barely involved.

The Records

Voïvod — Symphonique (2LP live with Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, 2026)

Megadeth — Countdown to Extinction (2026 2LP reissue; originally 1992)

Megadeth — Youthanasia (2026 2LP reissue; originally 1994)

The Black Crowes — Amorica (2015 repress, sealed; originally 1994)

Boards of Canada — Inferno (3LP deluxe with flexi disc, 2026)

Kraftwerk — Kraftwerk 1 & 2 (UK Vertigo swirl pressing; originally 1970/1971)

David Bowie — Outside (Excerpts from Outside) (RSD 2026, Air Studios half-speed cut, crystal clear vinyl, limited to 7,500 copies; originally 1995)

The System

Fisher 400 tube receiver (1963) → Klipsch Heresy IV → Rega Planar 6 / ND5 MM cartridge