TVD Takeover Week | AM

AM concludes his TVD week today with another rummage through his records and a recommendation that really isn't obscure. (At all.)


Thriller was the first album I ever bought (or asked my parents to by me)...I was only 7 or 8 years old. Although I was one among millions who bought that record, it is still one of my favorites. Jackson is at the tip top of his game and Quincy Jones had truly perfected pop production.


I read in Quincy's bio Q that when they turned Thriller in to the record company they sent it back saying that they didn't feel it was done... there was too much going on. So Quincy trimmed the fat and we're left with this masterpiece. This is the inside of the album when you open the double gatefold. I remember thinking as a kid "wow, he has a tiger cub!" Otherworldly.


This year for the first time I had my latest album Future Sons & Daughters pressed to vinyl. It has always been a goal of mine since listening to vinyl was how I was first introduced to music. The sound of vinyl is like no other medium. Full, warm...something special about the highs and something big and cozy about the lows.

Not to mention the visual element which was an exploration in itself. Combining art and song makes so much more sense when the art is BIG. The CD pretty much destroyed that...not to mention digital formats. As a kid I would open up a piece of vinyl like I was entering a magical world.

I hope to inspire that same search with this vinyl version of Future Sons & Daughters. The fans funded this project through Pledge Music which makes it all the more worthwhile. It's good to know there were others that felt the same way I did. We worked really hard to make it the best it could be. Spent a lot of time re-working the artwork, adding the lyrics in a colored sleeve, re-mastering the music at Abbey Road studios, London and pressing it to 180 gram virgin vinyl. The album sounds like it should...finally.

Enter to win a copy of AM's Future Sons & Daughters here.