Flea Market Finds

I paid just 50 bucks for these 9 albums

Aug 17, 2024

Ever since I rediscovered the joy of owning and listening to physical records, I’m constantly looking for used CDs at flea markets and in second hand stores, but also online.

Here are some casual write-ups on 9 albums that I managed to pick up over the past weeks, for just 50 bucks in total.

Don’t think of these as traditional ‘record reviews’; they’re just personal reflections on why these albums deserve a spot in my collection.

Roxy Music – Avalon (1982)

I grew up on this record. As huge Roxy fans, my parents owned many of their albums. This one had just come out when we moved into our new house in a small North German beach town, where I would go on to spend most of my childhood and youth. It soundtracked many house parties and family reunions in those years.

Avalon was Roxy Music’s final album before the group dissolved. Recorded at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, this is dreamy, proto-balearic art rock with some of Bryan Ferry’s best songwriting and brilliant production from Rhett Davies. I don’t know many albums that simply sound as good.

The perfect record for sitting on the terrace on a tropical summer evening, sleeves and shoes very much optional.

Price: €4.10 ($4.50)

Kate Bush – The Sensual World (1989)

Macie Stewart

recommended this in her newsletter a while ago. While I do love Kate, I’d never bothered to give this one a close listen. But this misunderstood, underrated record has really grown on me. While it might be lacking huge hit singles, it does showcase Kate’s more sophisticated songwriting, strong folk influences and collaborative approach.

Among the featured musicians you’ll find the mysterious voices of Trio Bulgarka, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, chamber jazz bassist Eberhard Weber, and avant-garde string ensemble Balanescu Quartet. I don’t think it’s overloaded though; each element sits exactly where it makes sense.

I could do without some of the prog-rock guitar noodling though.

Price: €4.50 ($4.95)

Laurie Anderson – Big Science (1982)

Two of my favourite contemporary musicians – percussionist/composer Bex Burch and cellist/composer Mabe Fratti – have recently declared their love for Laurie Anderson. With a new album slated for later this month, and a new single with ANOHNI out now, I was quite happy to find her major label debut Big Science for a reasonable price.

Mostly known for the surprise UK chart hit “O Superman”, it has aged surprisingly well as a body of work. A weirdly accessible collection of songs born from spoken-word stage performances, infused with Anderson’s trademark intelligent humour, unusual instrumentation, vocoder experiments and musical ideas borrowed from classical minimalism and art rock.

A reader pointed out on Notes that when Anderson played Seattle this March, as the final encore, she led the entire audience in Tai Chi to the tune of Lou Reed’s ambient music. She’s the real deal.

Price: €6.00 ($6.60)

Talking Heads – Remain in Light (1980)

My favourite Talking Heads record, from a period in which every single one of their albums truly broke ground. Remain in Light saw them exploring repetitive funk grooves and afrobeat polyrhythms.

Shortly before the recordings, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth had vacationed in the Bahamas. They jammed with Sly & Robbie at Compass Point and even bought an apartment in Chris Blackwell’s famed studio-resort complex. All the while, Brian Eno and David Byrne started working on their duo project My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, to be released the following year, listening to nothing but Fela, Parliament and Jamaican dub. You can hear all of these influences in this incredibly catchy, danceable and fun record.

This is a desert island disc for one of my favorite hip-hop producers, El-P of Run The Jewels – which makes sense: The tracks are based on loops edited from extensive studio jams. (The Talking Heads might have adapted that approach from Miles Davis and Teo Macero; the Beastie Boys would famously adapt it for Check Your Head.)

Price: €6.00 ($6.60)

Björk – Telegram (1996)

Telegram is the weird, dark twin of 1995’s classic Post. It puts a closure to the first period of Björk’s solo work – Debut, Post and Telegram form a trilogy inspired by 1990s beat science and club culture, centered around the London/UK experimental electronic underground.

Essentially a collection of remixes and versions, Telegram does not have Post’s coherence and crossover appeal. Björk has been quoted saying that she wanted to make a rawer, more uncompromising version of Post, pushing its tracks “further over the edge”; a record for herself, really.

These blown-out mixes partly came from close collaborators like Tricky, Howie B, Mark Bell of LFO and Graham Massey of 808 State, but she also reached out to other producers whose work she admired, like Dillinja and Mika Vainio. The album contains an unreleased track with experimental percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie called “My Spine”, and a gorgeous string arrangement for “Hyper-Ballad”, courtesy of the Brodsky Quartet.

The stunning booklet photos by Nobuyoshi Araki deserve a special mention.

Price: €4.00 ($4.40)

Sisters of Mercy – Floodland (1987)

I owned this album on vinyl in my teens, and I still vividly recall not just every note of the music, but also the texture of the lacquered cover, the fold-out inner sleeve and its special scent. I like to imagine that Andrew Eldritch instructed the record company to have some patchouli oil sprayed on each copy.

This is the perfect goth rock record, on a quality level with Closer and Pornography. “Dominion/Mother Russia”, “Lucretia My Reflection” and “This Corrosion” are the big hits here, with the latter essentially being the lead single and a nine-minute diss track against fellow goth rockers The Mission, the group founded by two former Sisters, Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams.

With Floodland, Eldritch showed the world he didn’t need anyone’s help to create his opus magnum, writing all the songs and playing all instruments on the album himself.

Nerdy fact: His drum machine Doktor Avalanche had previously been a Boss DR55 ‘Doctor Rhythm’ (hence the nickname) and a Roland TR-808, but by the Floodland recordings, he’d bought an Akai S900 sampler and a Yamaha RX5 midi drum machine for the booming snare and kick sounds.

Price: €4.00 ($4.40)

Grace Jones – Nightclubbing (1981)

Another Compass Point classic and arguably the high point of Jones’ infallible Bahamas trilogy released between 1980 and 1982, with the studio backing band of Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Wally Badarou, Mikey Chung and Barry Reynolds in their absolute prime. This set was compiled from the same sessions as her previous album Warm Leatherette, again consisting of cover versions and a handful of original compositions.

An exciting fusion of dub riddims, funky slap-bass, angular guitars and colourful synthesizer work, Nightclubbing brought together Island vibes and a downtown attitude. From the opening rimshots of “Walking In The Rain” to the mourning synths of “I’ve Done It Again”, everything about this album just screams ‘classic’, rebranding Jones from disco queen to art pop icon in the process. 10/10.

Price: €4.00 ($4.40)

OMD – Architecture & Morality (1981)

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) were part of the early Factory era – often forgotten though wildly successful at the time. The Liverpudlian group’s third album defined that era’s electronic synth pop just as much as early Human League, New Order or Depeche Mode. This record sold over four million copies. That iconic Peter Saville cover didn’t hurt either.

Architecture & Morality is a collection of shimmering synth pop pearls like “Souvenir” or “Joan of Arc”, but it also features the more serene sounds of the floating eight-minute track “Sealand” – a Neu! reference, openly showing their appreciation for so-called ‘krautrock’. I do hear a Kraftwerk and a Berlin School influence here as well – interestingly, the backing tracks were mostly created from manipulated choral samples and the analogue sounds of a Mellotron.

Price: €8.50 ($9.35)

Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth (1980)

Young Marble Giants existed from 1978 to 1981 and consisted of brothers Philip and Stuart Moxham plus singer Alison Statton. Though they only recorded one album, the trio from Cardiff, Wales, influenced many succeeding bands with their sparse, minimalist take on post-punk.

It speaks volumes that almost a decade later, the late German indie legend Kristof Schreuf named his band Kolossale Jugend – a direct translation of the album title. Kurt Cobain was a fan as well, and the Giants’ influence lingers on: I got inspired to look for this record because it seems to have been the main inspiration for perila’s and Pavel Milyakov’s pmxper album from last year.

There’s really no other album that sounds like Colossal Youth. When I first heard it, I literally thought these were just demos or someone had muted all the drum parts. Over time, I’ve learned to love the record, especially Statton’s vulnerable vocals that forestalled indie cool.

I’ve actually managed to cop a two-disc remastered edition. The bonus disc includes all of the bands’ non-album material.

Price: €9.00 ($9.90)

Total: €50.10 ($55.00)

Media Diet

Listening: ØKSE – s/t (2024)

Last week, I visited the twelvth and final edition of A L’Arme, a festival for avant-garde and experimental music in Berlin. Among many memorable moments, what stood out to me was the Friday opening gig of Scandinavian-American quartet ØKSE (Danish for ‘axe’), consisting of Mette Rasmussen (saxophone), Savannah Jones (drums), Petter Eldh (bass) and Val Jeanty (turntablist).

Their debut album, just released on the Backwoodz label, fuses free jazz, experimental hip-hop and electronic music, and features four of the best MCs around: Elucid, billy woods, maassai and Cavalier. Wild improvisations and manipulated sounds float over energetic, loose drums and organic double-bass loops. This is both my favourite jazz record and my favourite hip-hop record of the year so far.

Reading: Sheila Heti – How Should a Person Be? (2012)

The breakthrough of Canadian writer Sheila Heti, this much-lauded novel follows an experimental approach to form, mixing play dialogue with regular novel chapters and poetry segments.

It’s not really about anything. Well, art and friendship, maybe. Kept me glued to the pages though. It’s brilliantly written, with a very distinct voice. Occasionally despised the narrator, but always loved the writer.

Watching: Aki Kaurismäki – Fallen Leaves (2023)

A romantic love story set in Finland’s lower working class. Fallen Leaves is a typical Kaurismäki movie, with weird but lovable characters, minimal cast and deadpan dialogues. Brief and on point, it seems to be the distilled essence of four decades of the veteran Finnish director’s filmmaking.