On the Odd Overlap of Old and New Media As Exemplified in "Retribution Gospel Choir 3" (Also, Alliteration!)

I'd first heard of Retribution Gospel Choir in connection with frontman Alan Sparhawk's main band Low; but I didn't really get into them until last year, when they released their EP the revolution on-line for free.  In fact, it's still on-line for free.  Ironic, since it's also for sale on itunes. Why undercut their own revenue with free samples?

Of course, for a tiny, underexposed side-project like RGC, free samples make perfect sense. You can hook new listeners with free samplers. I myself went and got their first 2 albums after downloading the revolution.  The revolution is new-media marketing at its shrewdest, cutting-edge tactics for the new post-music-industrial-complex era.

Which internet-shrewdness I find hilarious, because RGC is just such a retro throwback of a band!  Case in point: RGC just released their 3rd album (imaginatively entitled 3), and as opposed to last year's efficient 4-song 10-minute internet EP, this cut is a sprawling 2-song 40-minute vinyl release, featuring one whole extended guitar jam per side.

Chew on that for a sec: Two 20-minute extended jams, and that's the whole record.  Who does 20-minute, side-filling guitar jams anymore??  That's something that Pink Floyd, Iron Butterfly, Jethro Tull or some other Classic Rock fossil would do, not any band from the 21st century.  Yet here we have it--a pair of un-ironic, non-self-conscious, strait-forward psychedelic guitar jams, participating in the most self-indulgent excesses of the Classic Rock era, released on LP in 2013.

And then just consider the format: one song per side.  As in the side of a record.  An LP.  Made of vinyl.  The length of each guitar jam is limited to 20-odd minutes, because that's how much much music fits on one side of a record.  This ancient medium determined the format of the album.  How much more retro can you get?

And yet this has been the overall trend for years now--with the ubiquity of MP3s, CD sales have decreased, while the surprise is that LP sales have increased.  The more intangible and ephemeral our music-storage becomes, the greater our apparent need for formats we can heft, feel, connect with, touch (those sound-waves are physically etched into the grooves, after all).  When Chaperone Records offers the option of buying 3 on CD, they tease, "Cop it before this 30 year old medium goes the way of the 8-track..." as though we weren't saying that about LPs just 20 years ago!  Whereas CDs once announced the end of vinyl, LPs have had their karmic vengeance.

So here we have an odd phenomenon: RGC is simultaneously at the most cutting edge and most retro of music trends.  They release free internet MP3s and old-school LP dinosaur rock.  Everything old is new again.  There is nothing new under the sun.

3 is a cool album, btw.  Only 2 bucks on amazon if vinyl's not your thing.  (As opposed to 10 bucks on itunes, seriously, screw itunes!)