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A question as old as time. 

Beautiful. It looks a lot like the "Out of the Sky" by Salt Creek.

https://www.discogs.com/release/23293706-Salt-Creek-Out-Of-The-Sky

@drds89 thanks for the heads up. So I hope mine will arrive soon as well. It was a long wait for sure. I wouldn't have thought the variant to come out THIS amazing though:

Goodness gracious, Bliss Fields: Slowly, Forever from Acrobat Unstable showed up today! 11 months from order date, but it made it. Almost through with side B and no issues, sounds decent for clear with splatter.
 
edit: 20% off use "SLOWLYFOREVER" on orders. Also, love the search tag "cough syrup" on bandcamp 🤣

Please stop this deluxe nonsense, we are in a recession, inflation is fucked up, and what do you do??
"let's add 4 alt versions of already known songs and an etched d-sideto make a 2xlp and a slipcase for 40+ bucks"
 
Please labels stop doing this shit.

No physical release yet, but I figured you guys might like it anyway. New band from Germany, first couple songs are fantastic. Very cool 90s shoegaze vibe, especially early Slowdive comes to mind.
 

I'm happy to report some progress. A friend had wisely advised me to make sure I had everything in hand (artwork, masters, possibly my own lacquer, money) before contacting the pressing company. I decided it was finally time to look at getting lacquers cut -- even though I was worried about getting a lacquer cut and nowhere to press it -- and finally talked to my mastering guy (Alex DeTurk, who is really great) and asked who he'd recommend to cut a lacquer and he referred me to Scott Hull at Masterdisk. This really broke the log jam.
 
Scott Hull is not cheap, but he's quite well known and Masterdisk has some of the best gear in the world. His secret weapon is his studio manager, Mickie Steier, who is super nice and friendly and who directly introduced me to 3 different contacts at three different pressing companies. She first mentioned Vinyl De Paris, saying they had done some 'beautiful test pressings.' She also said Microforum in Canada was good. And lastly, she connected me to someone at Gotta Groove. Mickie's introduction cleared away a lot of the suspicion I might otherwise have encountered by contacting these companies directly because they know she works at Masterdisk and that she's serious. It also reassured me to have her recommendation because Masterdisk knows what they are doing.
 
I contacted all 3 companies and learned that Gotta Groove currently has a 10-month turnaround time. Microforum estimated  26 to 28 weeks for turnaround (although I think they'll let you pay a rush fee to reduce this considerably) and VDP said their turnaround time was 14 weeks. I decided to go with VDP and have sent off my artwork. Unfortunately, everyone in Paris goes on vacation in August, so this will slow things down by 4 weeks, but I should receive my vinyl around November if all goes well. I've received my test lacquer from Scott Hull and I played it and I'm PUMPED.
 
My experience with Scott & Mickie at Masterdisk has been really encouraging, and VDP has been very helpful, too. They answer all my questions clearly and promptly, and I'm impressed with their attention to detail so far.

I'm also using these companies for the last 3 years and can confirm that it's chipper to buy records outside of US, England, Australia through them. Also I'm living in the fucking Russia and still buy records despite of sanctions on payment and sanctions on shipping. Process became little bit longer and risky (pay with cryptocurrency) but have no other choice for the moment.
 
The only issue I had with mail forwarders is that they cut my Turnover vinyl while opening the shop's package (you can ask them to remove it to reduce the weight of the parcel). But they returned me money for it.
 

I'll try to keep this short, so let's go.
 
About a year ago I was fed up with intl shipping prices and the new EU tax law, that you have to pay tax (it's 27% here in Hungary) on everything you order, it is especially disgsuting that the amount is calculated on the item + shipping total, so basically a 20-dollar record with the least awful scenario of a 20-dollar shipping would end up in my hands  for a whopping $50,8 which came to the point that collecting is becoming unsustainable. This is when I dug into mail forwarding services, and after about 5-6 shipments without any issues I can confidently say that it's a game changer.
 
Disclaimer: please look into it yourself with your country details etc.
 
So the process is I'm using ship7.com who has a warehouse in Delaware (tax free US state), I ship my records there mostly for free or cheap media mail, I have up to 60 days free period (after that it has a small fee)to wait for multiple packages and then I ship them out to Hungary together for way cheaper than it would be  directly from the labels/stores would be, not to mention you can get US indie exclusives, get stuff from stores that only ship to the US etc.. (Also, this is up to how rulefollower you are you can play with declared value, but then again it might be risky, so it's on you to do it or not, but alone saving on shipping is huge, saving on tax is enermous). Obviously inserting a middleman is always a risk, as you have no help from the place you bought the record anymore after if arrives to the warehouse, but I was at a point of either this risk or selling off my collection. the rant stops now, here are some pictures of my last 10-record (teamed up with a friend for HIL, that's why only 9 records pictured) shipment and a sheet about the savings.
 




 
  

Got my copy of goodness from bull moose. Punch is very off center, sounds like a Fischer Price album. Very disappointed. 

New song “Buckley” out. First song I’ve truly loved from this album since it actually has some drive to it.
 
 

Good Nature is a great vibe album and I’ll die on that hill.  I could never fully get into Altogether though.  I don’t think it’s as heinous as a lot of people make it out to be, but it was definitely the tipping point that made me realize I can’t confidently PO anything this band puts out anymore.

Hey folks, I wanted to raise some awareness about a Discogs scam that almost got me.
 
Earlier this week I was about to buy the Bad Religion box set from a seller on Discogs who looked legit. Almost 300 items sold, high percentage of positive feedback, and appeared to be located in the UK. Price was below average but not so amazing that it was too good to believe. Figured the guy was just looking for a quick sale.
 
DM'd the guy with a few questions about condition and shipping and he got back to me quickly.  In hindsight, I should have asked for pictures too.
 
Anyway, I put my order through and go to pay.  I get an error. I try again and again over the course of an hour then I get a message from the seller saying "hey, is something wrong with the order?". I told him I was having issues with the Discogs payment at checkout and he gives me an email address to send payment direct via PayPal.
 
Not proud of myself but I almost did it. I actually tried to send the payment through but thank fuck it was flagged by PayPal security as a high dollar value international transfer and didn't go through. I go into PayPal's support chat to figure out what's up. Meanwhile I keep getting messages from the Discogs guy asking where the payment is.
 
PayPal confirmed that they flagged the transfer and asked me to confirm I wanted to send the money.  At the time I said yes and they said I was now clear to send at my discretion. This is when it dawned on me that there was no option to send the money Goods and Services - only Friends and Family. Red flag goes up and I messaged the Discogs dude that I am not going to send almost $900 CAD as Friends and Family - we need to figure something else out.
 
I wake up the next morning and my order is cancelled. Discogs guy is no longer responding to my messages.
 
At first I'm bummed that I missed a good deal and I'm mad that the Discogs checkout screwed me over. Then I think about it a little more and start Googling the same type of scenario. 
 
I'm pretty sure it's this scam:
https://www.discogs.com/forum/thread/951380?page=1&message_id=9630935
 
People's accounts are being hacked, items are posted for sale, their payment settings deliberately disabled, and then the scammer messages for a Friends and Family PayPal transfer. The other reason I think this is what happened to me is because PayPal customer support told me the guy's name tied to the PayPal account. I googled it afterwards and it's a Ukrainian name.
 
So now I think I dodged an expensive bullet but wanted to share my near miss with others.
 
Be smart about paying for stuff and maybe change your Discogs password. Stay safe out there.
 

Economy shipping from Japan can take 2-3 months. In other words, faster than the average pre-order. Totally worth it.

Thanks for the heads-up! For some reason I didn't consider checking IG, I don't follow them on any platform. That clears it up however, and it makes me hope it won't take too long now!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CfEqxAkL4Ah/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
 
Their Instagram is the best place for answers on delays.
 

Go away noob.
 
No one gives a solitary shit. 
 

Ok I’m going to make this a big event this year. Spreadsheet is getting ridiculous with how long these waits are. Average must be creeping up to like 8 months. Apparently I have $1,795.51 of pre-orders out there. I could be earning interest in that lol.
 
Will try to go backwards and get average price per/record per year, average wait time, etc.

The timing of this is really hilarious

I don't know anything about this except my ears told me I needed to buy it. Also, I've spent way too much money on damn records this week.
https://www.nightofthepalemoon.com/product/grot-hymns-of-the-woodland

Wait, if this is the guy from Nothing, then shouldn't this just be room noise? 

Signed copies are $810 on the merch table lol
(Not my pic) 
 

 

The sound in that video makes me so uncomfortable.

Flight 13 (Germany) came through with the package today. Ordered on Oct 12th though. IIRC this is the longest I've ever waited for a record to arrived and it's not even a pre-order. 🤷‍♂️
edit: just checked Discogs, if ordering from the EU is feasible for you, there are a couple of sealed copies online from several dealers which are all more or less about the original price.