Slambook-With Riddle and Shears (1995)
Artist: Slambook
Format: CD
Cat: LIP 003
Year of Release: 1995
Country and Year of Edition: US 1995
Sell Price: $4.32
Sell Date: 12/31/23
Condition: VG+/VG+
Discogs Last Sold 1/27/23 NM/VG+ $1.99
Low: $1.00
Median: $1.99
Average: $2.44
High: $4.32
Current low price: $4.33
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 5
Have/Want: 5/0
Where Sold: Denton, Manchester, UK
Time It Took To Sell: 11 years
Where and When Bought: either Tony Dinoff gave it to me or I bought it used somewhere on St. Marks, I can't remember, either is plausible
Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B
Sad To See It Go: No
It's been a bit since I've run into Slambook's leader Tony Dinoff out and about. I saw his band around NYC in the first half of the 90's. They did a math rock/indie rock hybrid and would play with other NYC bands I was friendly with at the time like Hippopotamus. This one was recorded in Hartford, CT which wasn't so shocking since they reminded me of something that might've come from Western MA.
It was kind of interesting to give this a few listens since I don't think I've heard it since the band was active. It got me thinking how bands that were doing this stuff seemed eternal at the time, but this recording sounds of it's mid 90's era. That seems strange on some level since for the most part the instrumentation is guitar/bass/drums with vocals.
I had a bit of a panic that I had erroneously put Tony in the band frontman role in my 90's memory banks, but a quick scour of the web finds a 1996 CMJ review by Franklin Bruno that lauds his Adrian Belew style vocal. I thought it was a little more non-descript, but hell he's a good guy and Bruno an established performer in his own right so who am I to take away a friendly person's anointed comparison? I goes a little overboard with "imagine Cream after a Seam show" although I suddenly can hear some Jack Bruce in the vocal.
At 35 minutes the band calls this an EP to the point of putting that on the bottom right of the cover. Maybe because it is padded out with some snippety type of tracks that Pavement made popular a few years earlier. I'm still of the mind that 35 is indeed an LP even on a CD. To me it is the 27-28 minute mark where a short LP (not a mini-LP) is defined. Others think you have to have 32 minutes in there, but nobody calls Reign In Blood an EP at 28:55.
It's all about genre and presentation.
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