February 1, 2026
A Matter of Time - Laufey
I don't buy as many new CDs, but I've been listening to this album a lot since it came out last year, so I decided to get it. My brother is a Laufey fan and I heard him play some songs from her, which is how I started listening.
All of the tracks on this are really good. My favorites are Forget-Me-Not, Sabotage, and Too Little Too Late.
I also found a CD player at TJ Maxx to replace my broken one. I like that this one doesn't skip and it's quieter. My old one made a lot of noise when it spun the CDs and skipped often. I wish you could see more of the CD with the transparency, but it's not a major issue. It just would look cool. I'm sure there are better CD players, but I mostly listen to CDs in the car, so I don't need anything too fancy for the portable player.
Weird CDs (featuring Trent Reznor projects)
DualDisc
Have you ever heard of DualDiscs? They’re completely obsolete. Basically, one side has the regular CD and the other side has a DVD with bonus content. Record companies made a bunch of these in 2005 to try to combat piracy, but that didn’t work so well and the CDs didn’t work so well either. They’re thicker than regular CDs and a lot of players won’t play them. These didn’t last much longer than 2005.
Anyways, here’s Nine Inch Nail’s 2005 album, With Teeth, on DualDisc. My car player surprisingly does play these, though I was a bit confused about how to insert the disc when I first encountered one.
The bonus content is just… like, it’s content. There’s a list of all the Nine Inch Nails releases that you can click through if you want to. It’s, uh, a list you can easily find on Google, so that’s very exclusive and worth the money. Then there’s one piece of actual content within this filler, which is the music video for The Hand That Feeds. That’s not just something you can find on YouTube, y’know? Gotta stand up, pull the case off the shelf, insert the DVD into the hard drive, and select the music video from the menu. I’m glad Interscope Records made it easy.
I’d take screenshots of the 2000s graphics on the disc menu, but the valuable content is piracy protected and doesn’t allow me to screenshot. Just picture a glitchy looping background with plain arrows that you click to get to the next list. Very high tech.
I’m sorry, I’ll try to be less sarcastic about the DualDisc. It’s a fun novelty item, but there’s a reason it’s obsolete.
Blu-Ray Audio CD
Fun fact: Blu-Ray CDs exist.
Here’s one of the Social Network soundtrack. It has a 5.1 surround mix and a stereo mix. It’s exactly what it sounds like: blu-ray disc quality but with audio and not visual.
I don’t see these often when I’m CD shopping, and I honestly don’t find them practical to use, because you have to play them in a blu-ray player and not a regular CD player. So when I want to listen to the Social Network soundtrack, I have to go out of my way to listen to it on the TV.
That being said, it does sound nice and it’s a cool collector’s item to have for a great movie.
Also I found this one for $5 and it goes for over $200 online, so I needed to brag. B)
(Man, if I can’t show off the actual cool stuff I found from 10 years of digging through “Susan Boyle - I Dreamed A Dream” and “Michael Buble - Christmas” and “WOW Christian Hits 2008”, then why even have a blog?)
Hidden Track CDs
Sometimes you’re listening to a CD, and while you’re enjoying the album, the player starts counting down as if it is cursed by an entity threatening to harm you. This seems concerning, but never fear! It’s just a hidden track. The strange behavior usually lasts a couple minutes before the song plays, sometimes using the pregap between tracks to countdown, sometimes requiring you to rewind to before the first track, or sometimes ticking through 99 empty tracks before playing.
This Nine Inch Nails EP does the latter. The hidden songs are on track 98 and 99 and tracks 7-97 are each a second or two of silence. These tracks aren’t listed on the outside of the album, so they’re just a fun surprise.
Enhanced CD
Some CDs have cool bonus content. Here’s a promotional disc with singles from David Bowie’s Earthling album (which Trent Reznor produced one of the songs on so that’s where he comes in).
This was given out by GQ magazine in a 1997 issue and it contains cool digital content that you can access by downloading AT&T WorldNet Service Software onto Windows 3.1. The content did not open on my Macbook Air. And I will not be installing a Windows 3.1 emulator just to view the Earthling in the City digital content that is probably just a couple grainy photos of David Bowie that already exist online.
Super Audio CD
A format that I don’t currently own. Sorry. No NIN example for this one.
Audiophiles like to collect these, because they’re the highest audio quality on a physical format. I’d like to grab one sometime if I happen across one that I like, but it’s not something I specifically look for when shopping. I’ll select high audio quality when it’s available, but I also like musicals, which has taught me to appreciate the scraps of distorted smushed audio that someone filmed on a 1998 camcorder in the theater and it rotted on a video tape for years before being ripped to YouTube.
The Gothic Box: A Life Less Lived
I've already had this for a long time, but I wanted to show it off, because it's cool.
This was a compilation album of goth rock music released in 2006. I found mine for a low price at a secondhand store, and it's one of my favorite CD finds.
The presentation of this is amazing. The outer cover is made of leather and it's stitched together like a corset. The inner cover folds open and has a giant drawing of an octopus on it. It comes with 3 CDs with 53 songs, a DVD of music videos, a tracklist page, and a book.
The book is 60 pages and contains a lot of beautiful art, photos of the bands, history and essays on the goth subculture, and a few other fun things like dance tutorials. I happened across this when I was first getting into 80s goth music, and it was a great way to learn about the genre and find more bands. Also I showed my CD set to someone who liked Bauhaus and he scoffed and told me it wasn't real goth, so I know it's good.
My copy does have some damage. It was peeling pretty badly when I got it, and then I carried it around in my car a lot throughout college. For some reason, the previous owner cut the edges of the tracklist? The tracks are still visible, but it's just trimmed a little on the outside. That being said, all the discs and content are in great working condition. (I can't say the same for the Left of the Dial compilation that I bought at the same thrift store. One of the discs and the booklet were missing and the other discs glitched, and it broke my heart to have to return it.)
Anyways, I love this thing and I've played it too many times, so I wanted to dedicate a blog post to it. Maybe one day I'll find a working Left of the Dial compilation. That one remains a holy grail.
January 25, 2026:
Star Wars - Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by John Williams
I got this at an anime convention swap meet. It's fun to start at the free table and see how much you can trade up for at swap meets. I started with a disposible cup and a picture of Shinji printed onto a piece of paper, and I ended up with a whole set of Princess Jellyfish books, a plushie, Death Note Vol. 5, a perler bead Omori, and this Star Wars CD. I ended up with a Sanrio bookmark too, but I didn't have a place to keep it at home, so I put it back on the free table for the next person.
The Phantom Menace is my least favorite of the George Lucas Star Wars movies, but the soundtrack is gorgeous, so I was happy to pick it up. This is the US 1999 copy (SK 61816) and it comes with a free horrible poster in case you want to leave your CD case empty and hang a tiny creased poster on your wall. The random character pngs pasted over each other with copious amounts of digital background glow effect loops around to being so bad it's good.
When I was trying to test my CD, I noticed my portable player that I've had since 2003 is no longer able to read discs. I thought it was an issue with the CD, but it won't read anything. I have other CD players though, so it's ok. Oh well, really excited to hang my awesome Phantom Menace poster!