rrr-500

various artists

rrrecords

1998 LP (locked-grooves)

play | buy

reviews

“Drop the needle somewhere, listen 'til you get tired...”— La Folia

“When was the last time you bought a compilation with 500 tracks by 500 artists?”—Brainwashed

La Folia

Unsure if the title is the catalog number or the subtitle or both, I highly recommend RRR-500: Various 500 Lock-Grooves by 500 Artists (RRRecords RRR-500, 1999). I don't even try to figure who did which groove, though the 500 artists, um, tracks, um, loop, are listed inside, and include the famous with the unknown: Jad Fair, Sonic Youth, Contrastate, MSBR, Lull, Karen Finley, and even the Teletubbies and United Negro College Fund (I assume, from a commercial). Some are music, some are random or electronic noises, some have spoken word, but all are interesting, not that I've yet listened to more than 150 of the locks. They're bunched in fours, should you care to count how many sections of the 150 per side you've passed to find a track you want. Seems silly. Drop the needle somewhere, listen 'til you get tired, do a dozen or so more, and then put the disc on again the next day. —Stephen Koenig

Brainwashed

When was the last time you bought a compilation with 500 tracks by 500 artists? Never right? You can now. This LP features just that ... 500 locked groove tracks, 250 per side. You drop the needle where you want, listen to the locked groove until you're sick of it, then drop the needle somewhere else. It's a pain in the ass but it's fun too. Some of the more familiar names among the 500 artists: Aube, Zoviet France, Otomo Yoshide, Terry Riley, Project Dark, the Haters, Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore, Masonna, People Like Us, Sonic Youth, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. This is the first time I've reviewed something without actually listening to it all beforehand ... but do you know how long it's going to take to hear all of these tracks? Quite a long time. Someday when I have a lot of free time on my hands I'll sit down and do it and maybe tape them off. Anyways, I dropped the needle randomly several dozen times on both sides for this write-up. What I heard were short (a few seconds apiece) found sound style loops of just about everything you can imagine: whirs, clicks, whistles, buzzes, drones, clankings, bangings, scrapings, industrial noises, electronics, drums/percussion, dialogue bits and undescribeable samples and collages. A lot of really interesting sounds here ... quite a few you can leave repeating for a good length of time. The records comes in a neatly designed b/w double gatefold sleeve with the full list of artists on the inside that comes in a clear bubblewrap sleeve. This is one of those items you own just because it's unique and cool and don't necessarily spin all that often. Art, for cheap, at around $10 ... —Mark Weddle