u/Girhinomofe

I was gifted this one probably 14-15 years ago, and may still have never come across it on my own otherwise.

It’s a totally unique project by Chris Kirkley (Sahel Sounds), where he traveled around Mali with his ears open to current, local music being played at max volume on crappy flip phones in public spaces. He’d ask the people playing the songs to send him the mp3 along with anything they knew about the artist.

The liner notes reflect everything from stories about the songs by the musicians themselves to a bare bones knowledge of where the song originated and its mp3 track name.

Really no other way these random underground tracks from places like Cote D’Ivoire, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, etc would ever arrive at the general public’s ears— everything from hip hop to Arabian-Indie type tracks.

When I bought this house 20 years ago, there was a small office room I thought would be a cool ‘analog library’: a place for books, and a place to set up a turntable and start listening to records.

The table was a brand new ATLP120, but the speakers and receiver were crusty hand-me-downs from my parents’ attic. Along with the gear, my folks and their best friends pulled their records out of storage for me to have and listen to.

In one of the boxes was a hammered late-70s Warner Brothers pressing of Black Sabbath’s self titled. It was the first record I put through the new system— it crackled and hissed its way into the rainstorm and first punches of “Black Sabbath”, and man… THAT was one instant I wish I could relive; it was just the coolest thing in existence at that moment.

As I got more into the hobby, I hit this early-middle phase where I was infatuated with having NEW pressings of everything, so the old crusty WB Sabbath was jettisoned for some random ‘Earmark’ repress.

Now a couple decades on, I’ve been hoping for a while to honor that first record by replacing the repress for a non-crusty but OG 1970 Vertigo UK version. After a few years of keeping my eyes peeled, the right moment came along and now I feel like this album has come full circle in my library to a copy that I know I’ll hold onto for a very, very long time.

Despite rainy weather last weekend, took a little trip around the southern edge of our state; first a stop near Stafford Forge to go look for the fabled patch of Pygmy pines (one of the only sections of the Pinelands where adult trees barely crack 3 feet in height).

From there, the rest of our time was in Salem and Cumberland counties, exploring the secluded Bayshore beaches and quieter parts of the state.

This time of the year is when horseshoe crabs emerge onto the beaches in this area in the thousands, looking to mate and lay eggs in the sand. Many get stranded upside down during the incoming tide— those with damaged tails or ones who get flipped and filled with sand are really properly stuck, so we helped close to a thousand crabs right themselves and get back to the bay to take another shot next tide cycle. Very rewarding, and a win-win for both the crabs and the migrating shorebirds who feed on their eggs!