Asobi Seksu - Hush

Asobi Seksu – Hush

Polyvinyl, 2009

Acquired: Music Staff mail, New, 2009

Price: $0

Oh, the perks of being music director at a college radio station! You see, sometimes to get you to chart an album higher labels will send you free shit. Usually it’s just posters or something, but occasionally you’ll get the record you’re playing on the air on vinyl! This is what I love, and something that every music director should enjoy as a fringe benefit of the job. Granted, getting vinyl in the mail (or, vinyl that you want) is rare, when it does show up it’s pretty exciting, no matter what it is. So, when I saw that Polyvinyl sent me a copy of the latest Asobi Seksu record as a sort of thank you/please chart our album higher gift (note: it is immoral to tweak your charts based on gifts, so just let them send you the free stuff and then you know, be honest), though I hadn’t listened to the record or had any attachment to it beyond the few tracks I heard (and liked) at music staff, I was still excited. And I’m listening to it and I must say, when they say music sounds better on vinyl, music sounds even better on vinyl you got for free. Oh, and this record is really, really pretty. It’s not anything I would ever buy with like, real money, and I doubt I’d waste ratio downloading it on a torrent site. But for a really beautifully packaged (though the cover does look like a poster for a j-horror film) record on heavy 180 gram vinyl, for free, sitting in my collection for me to randomly stumble across someday, this isn’t bad at all. Although, it is what Blonde Redhead would sound like if they were totally boring. It’s also completely disjointed, as the ultra-serious sounding “Gliss” is immediately followed by the really upbeat indie-pop jam “Transparence.” “Transparance” is the best song on the record, and has earned this record’s keep in my collection.