Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Nardcore

Artist: Various
Title: Nardcore
Release: 1984
Label: Mystic Records

Track List:
1. Ill Repute - President
2. Ill Repute - Sleepwalking II
3. Ill Repute - It's Not Gonna Happen To Me
4. Scared Straight - Skate To Live
5. Scared Straight - Peer Pressure
6. Rat Pack - Tell Me How
7. Rat Pack - W.W. 84
8. Habeas Corpus - Steal You Blind
9. Agression - The Smell
10. Agression - Calling For You
11. Rich Kids on LSD - U.S. Steal
12. Rich Kids on LSD - Lies
13. Rich Kids on LSD - No Respect
14. False Confession - Feline
15. The Rotters - Song of Howard Hughes
16. The Rotters - Men
18. A.F.U. - High on the Hog
19. Stalag 13 - Statistic
20. Stalag 13 - Do It Right

Oxnard, California (and the surrounding area) has had a fantastic hardcore scene for nearly 30 years now. This compilation from 1984 is testament to the early years of Nardcore.

This was reissued on CD at some point by Mystic Records. I downloaded what I'm pretty sure was a rip of the CD and it sounded like shit. Sometimes when record labels repress long out of print records onto CD rather than use the original masters (often because they no longer exist) they will essentially do what I do and make a recording of the record playing and digitize it. When there's no other option doing that isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, sometimes whoever is responsible doesn't even make an attempt to clean up the audio and it's painfully obvious you're hearing a vinyl rip. I'm fairly certain that's what happened with the CD reissue of this compilation. This rip however has been cleaned up substantially.

This was another random find at Entertainmart, a large used DVD, CD, and video game store with a large but mostly meh vinyl selection.

Just a fair warning: the lyrics to "Men" by The Rotters are extremely homophobic and offensive. I'm not sure if they're tongue-in-cheek parody or serious. Either way it's kind of unfortunate that that song is on what is otherwise a stellar compilation.

Download: Nardcore (LAME 3.98r V0) Multiupload

Download: Nardcore (LAME 3.98r V0) Mediafire