It takes a special breed of record nut to operate a vinyl-only label at a time when the format is supposed to be obsolete. Rarer still is the sort with exceptionally good taste like Dominic Martin (of Earworm Records notoriety) whose UK-based Great Pop Supplement label has snuck out an impressive series of high quality artifacts presenting superb music by uniquely talented fringe artists in aesthetically dazzling packages – we're talking multi-fold handmade sleeves, embroidered bags, photo mounted envelopes, nut-bolted balsa wood, stickers, packets of seeds, the works.
So when you buy a GPS record, you don't just get to hear a couple of great songs by a Swedish one-man-band or a Japanese psych unit, you've also got a snazzy conversation piece to impress that friend who thinks they've got everything MV + EE and Jack Rose have ever done.
To mark the label's 50th release milestone, Dom has just issued a red wax split pairing an early demo version of Big City by Spacemen 3 with a fabulously fuzzed-up cover of the Playing With Fire album corker I Believe It courtesy of San Francisco's Wooden Shjips, perhaps the only currently active group who could do it justice. As a neat final touch, it comes housed in a sleeve created by Spacemen percussionist Natty Brooker. I'm getting a buzz just looking at it.
The good news is that instead of the typically miniscule pressings of say 111 or 220 copies which Great Pop Supplement have been known to drop in the past, gps 50 was reportedly issued in an edition of 1000. However, the bad news is that according to Dom, the entire run "literally vanished in an afternoon." But whatever the conventional vinyl vendors didn't stockpile for mailorder purposes was very likely hoovered up speculators hoping to quintuple their investment on eBay. So don't fret, you'll be seeing the single turning up online for months if not years to come.
Links
http://www.greatpopsupplement.com/
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