Amanda Palmer, formerly Dresden Dolls, strums her stuff in antipodean climes. A clear difference from previous works under the name of Dresden Dolls but still an unmistakable sound.
Palmer is totally independent. She produces her own records, writes her own songs and markets herself through whatever medium she is able to. The record companies that tried to make her censor her body are probably spitting globules of regret like baked beans.
Angry lyrics interwoven by sleek musical passages and accompaniment, APGDU is a nice intro to Palmers work if you like your introductions live and hairy. There are no “greatest hit” tracks on the album nor are there any rehashes of studio stuff. Enjoyable.
One more day, is all he asks for in his first track of this album.
Isaak returns to form in this 2002 release.
As already discussed in the previous Isaak album entry, 2 Metre Sessie, my love for Mr Isaak’s music stems from my youth. Back in the day, I had moved from regular visits to HMV to relying on friends and the internet for my music information. So it is probably no wonder that I didn’t come across this album until several years after it was released. And what a shame it was that I did.
Had it been released in the nineties I probably would have given it more attention but by the time I had come across it I was preoccupied with home making and Scandinavian operatic rock. So as a result it sat in my music collection unlistened to for some time.
Isaak’s unmistakable sound reverberates through this album like a stick in a metal bucket. It’s full of good lonesome tunes bemoaning the breakup of undiscussed relationships, extolling the virtues of being in love and being America. American Boy the tenth track on this album featured heavily in Isaak’s television show which, for reasons unknown, was shown too late in the night to be noticed by me. Thus I listen to this album and feel guilty about not being a true fan and staying up until ungodly o’clock to watch his escapades.
I really liked ELO when I was a kid. I suppose the tweeness and the optimism of their tunes lent some colour to my otherwise plodding teens. I can recall listening to them (on cassette of course) while doing my evening newspaper delivery round, whistling and singing away.
The selection of tunes here are what I’d probably pick if someone said: “Do us a compilation of ELO like”. But there are a few tracks I would have added that aren’t on this mix. I often wonder what goes through the head of people who make compilation albums like this. What makes them decide “Oh this is a banging choon, lets ‘ave that one on like” and yet neglect to put a song that is far superior in quality? I will no doubt explore this further when writing the reviews for the numerous Best Of compilation albums that will feature in this project.
Curiously, it wasn’t until recently that I actually found out what lead singer Jeff Lynne looked like.
Somewhere in the mists of the mind exists a world of beardy weirdies playing hurdy gurdies and singing about fauns, elvenfolk and witches.
Somewhere in my record collection, here in fact, that world is recreated in sound.
Omnia class themselves as Pagan Folk and its not difficult to hear why. This is the type of music that has clearly evolved from the unity of Goth and New Age. Or morphed out of some Emo/Tweecore/Folk fusion.
I first came across Omnia while looking for a lesser known band Omniac. I never found more than I already knew about Omniac but instead my ears were treated to harps, traditional percussion and hurdy gurdy backed tunes with bearded weirdies reciting neofolkesque lyrics. A joy to behold!
So if you’re ever thinking of holding one of those happy gatherings in your leafy glade of a living room or back garden, this is the music you will want piped through.
Short of stealing a TARDIS and traversing the wibbly wobbly, time travel is a bit difficult. However, you can mitigate the lack of ornate chez lounges or blue police boxes by slapping on a good old compilation of music from the period to which you want to travel.
And that’s exactly what this album does. It transports the listener to the heady days of the late nineties and early noughties.
There are just as many artists I’ve never heard of on here as there are artists I have. Immediately I am there, mooching about Liverpool in the mid to late nineties wearing my scruffy jeans. Neo-Socialist optimism oozing out of the ground in a pre-911 hedonistic carefree era.
Bands such as Blur, Creed, Manic Street Preachers and Top”We now play at village fetes”loader strumming away in that plastic coated faux indie scene soundscape created in antithesis of the cheezy and garish eighties soundscape.
Not a bad compilation for long journey in the car. Or for when you’re writing one of those gritty dramas about young people flat sharing in the mid 90s early noughties.
Two posts today. Why? Well, I hate to spoil the illusion but I’m not just listening to one album a day, I’m listening to several so at time of writing it is June 2014 but confusingly, the previous and the preceding entries were both written in May 2014. Even more confusingly, there is actually only one post today not two.
Why?
Well, firstly, since I started this project I have swapped over to an Apple Mac meaning that my previous music manager of choice, J River, won’t work unless I fork out a wedge of cash for the Mac version. Which I’m not going to do.
J River and ITunes both sort music differently. J River puts all the albums starting “The” down with the Ts, while, ITunes does as it pleases.
Secondly, although I am now an Apple bastard, I still use a windows laptop. So when I came to write an entry today I thought I’d check the running just to make sure everything is on track.
It’s not.
I seem to have missed a couple of albums which haven’t shown on my Mac. The first beingAeonand the second being this one. There are a few others, but I don’t care about them so in the interest of not having to muck about in the back end of this blog, I’m not going to cover them here and will delete them anyway.
Unless this happens again, or an album I really like is missing from ITunes, I will just stick with the alphabetised ITunes library.
So, Alapalooza. What’s it like? Well, it’s typical Yankovic fare. Spoofing McArthur Park (Jurassic Park), Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Aerosmith. Some amusing moments, some not so.
I can never be entirely sure how I feel about Weird Al. Some of his stuff is very clever, other stuff just feels forced or strained. This is one of those that sit in the middle. It helps if you know the music he’s taking the piss out of I guess.
Stew for the duration of the album and you will experience neoclassicalist dark wave at its full.
This was the first DCD album I ever bought following a night at a very wild goth filled party in Liverpool during the 1990s.
Do you know that album people always say changed their lives? Well this is the one for me. Everything musical I’ve bought or downloaded since I heard this album is a direct result of having listened to this album.
Short of wearing black, moping about and smelling of pachulia; listening to Aion is an experience. You’ve more than likely heard most of the tracks anyway on documentaries or in trailers for films involving some sort of mediaeval jiggery pokery. Tracks that stand out include Fortune Present Gifts Not According to the Book, Saltarello and Black Sun.
Much like Blood Axis’ Absinthe, this album has accompanied me on trips into somnambulistic realms following surgery or late night meditative chats with Shamen. But not with the added unease that Absinthebrings. Aion is one of those Guardian reader type “Coffee Table” albums likeBuena Vista Social Club.
So much so, if you want to be a hipster, get this, then tell everyone how dated it is once they too admit to owning a copy.
I’m sure video will have a fair trial and execution.
This is Buggles’ first album. Famous for its second track, Video Killed the Radio Star, frequently cited as the first popular music video. Of course, anyone that knows anything knows that the first music video was My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock by George Formby, but what do I know eh?
After you listen to VKTRS and replayed the mental image of some tinsel wigged dancer in a tube, you might as well turn this CD off.
Do you remember the 1970s? Do you remember those pristine vinyl records your elders kept lovingly in their sleeves. Tentatively taking the black discs out of their paper sheaves, popping them religiously onto the turntable and carefully lowering the stylus onto the run in?
Do you remember the smell?
Do you remember?
Jean Michel Jarres music takes me back immediately to that time. I can still hear the hum from the badly earthed amplifier, the smell of the vinyl and the visualisations of the mind where I’m transported from the chintz filled sitting room to the far off reaches of outer space.
You know the type of outer space I mean don’t you? The kind that resembles cosmic Mathmos lava lamps. Nebulae, misty clouds of cosmic matter, blipping and blopping (yes they are actual verbs). The kind of outer space that wouldn’t be amiss from a remake of Barbarella or some science programme with Jonny Ball. The kind of Roger Dean outer space with weird aquatic astral creatures and bloopiness.
Aero, is a kind of “Best of” revisited. Nice if you want to relive the cardigan wearing, garish carpeted childhood of the 1970s. Nicer still if you just want to pop some acid with your hipster friend while staring at their Mathmos glooping and shlooping about on the table.
It’s kind of thought provoking that this music evolved into Air.
Lots of long sustained chords with an eerie apocalyptic feel to it. The kind of music that might play when hell breaks loose and you’ve taken something you shouldn’t have.
More than likely, if you’re over 25, you’ll probably be familiar with The Buggles. You’re probably also aware of Trevor Horn and his production skills. If you’re a Yes fan, you’ll probably also know of Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn’s brief stint as members of the progressive rock supergroup.
If not, you’ll probably go “meh” and skip over this entry. Adventures in Modern Recording is the Buggles’ “difficult” second album. I have the 2010 remastered re-release. Two tracks from which stand out, I Am a Camera, which is a reworking of Into the Lens from the Yes album Drama, and We Can Fly From Here which was later reworked by Yes and appears on their album Fly From Here.
As with all second albums, it’s nothing groundbreaking. It’s a nice to have if you’re a Yes fan or you happen to be curious about The Buggles having just heard Video Killed the Radio Star.
This is a really good album. I really wish the UK made more out of our European cousins music. There are some really good bands over there and had I been aware of Ayreon in 1996, I would probably have bought this album then.
Think hair. Lots of hair. Think synth. Lots of synth. Think rock guitar. Lots of rock guitar. Add a sprinkling of Jeff Wayne and you have Ayreon.
The album is like a compendium of short stories with each song telling a tale about some weirdness involving time travellers, computer zombies or fantasy worlds where books can kill. If you like Jeff Wayne, prog or your songs to tell stories, then this is one artist you cannot afford to ignore in your life. The best song, in my opinion, is Abbey of Synn which has a catchy tune and a chorus that will lay ear worm eggs in your mind.
This is the third HMHB album in my collection and their tenth album. Released in 2005, it features the 2010 Radio 6 fan favourite. Joy Division Oven Gloves. Without trying to sound like a hipster, I was listening to this album before 85% of the people who came to discover HMHB because of that song.
So there.
Ner…
Some of my all time favourite HMHB tracks appear on this album including Asparagus Next Left, Restless Legs and Letters Sent.
As with all HMHB, brilliantly observed and cutting.
This is the second album alphabetically that I have from Half Man Half Biscuit. Released in 1993 , ACD is a typical HMHB album. Sardonic wit, cutting observational humour and wry stabs at those members of society that tend to annoy.
I remember hearing about HMHB when I was in my early teens and thinking that they were an inspired band. By the time I managed to get most of their albums, they had already been going for several years. I’m sure that had the internet been available when I was 14 I would have been able to find their albums a bit better than I did back then.
Nigel Blackwell, the lead singer, has a very typical Scouse sense of humour. The kind of “I’m alright because I’m not like you” kind of attitude that hard-nosed meat heads in dodgy Scouse boozers might have. The kind of looking down your nose at a society that thinks it’s better than you because they have trips to a caravan in the Peak District yet you can only afford a day trip to Rhyl. The kind of funny, quick-witted individual who would probably have yards of yarns to spin, none of which are probably true but may, just may, have a soupcon of truth in them .
This is the second album alphabetically that I have from The Gathering. It is one of those filler albums. The ones that bands or record labels release to maintain interest in their music between albums. Accessories is a compilation of live, rare and b side songs.
Songs from Mandylion like Strange Machines, Amity and In Motion are joined by covers of Dead Can Dance (In Power We Trust the Love Advocated) and instrumental and orchestral versions of other classic Gathering songs.
I suppose it is one of my favourite albums by the Gathering, purely because it showcases most of their better songs. Spread over two discs, the playtime runs to just over 2 hours 25 minutes and is a good introduction to the band if you couldn’t face A Noise Severe.
Absolute Beginners is one of those films you’ve either seen or not. But nearly everyone knows the title tune as performed by David Bowie.
I saw the film many years ago, some time in the mid-nineties when it was already old. The young plastic surgery free Patsy Kensit looking very tasty, the fresh faced Eddie O’Connell acting his socks off and even a bit part for good old Lionel “Give us a Clue” Blair. All mixed together by jazz and soul with a light dressing of British humour. It was no wonder it was a flop.
With artists such as Sade, The Style Council and even British stalwald Ray Davies popping up, the soundtrack is a rather good old toe tapper.
Whenever I listen to it I’m immediately transported back to my vane efforts to restylise myself as an independent batchelor in my crumby bedsit in the Wavertree suburbs of Liverpool.
I didn’t grow a soul patch. Nor did I start poncing around in berets and lounge about looking moody. So I guess I got off lightly.
Absinthe: La Folie Verte – Blood Axis & Les Joyaux de la Princesse
In days gone by, I would scour the usenet binary newsgroups looking for delicious audible morsels to shove in my ears and seem highbrow and cultured. People like my friend Nick seem to do it without blinking. They’d find a band nobody had heard of, proclaim them as the best thing ever, and bang on about how other people just don’t understand their message. Then, as the band becomes popular, they deny ever having liked them in the first place or proclaim that they’re not as good as they were when the drummer used Zillon drumsticks or whatever.
Hipsters I believe the youth of today call such people.
Knobheads, as we used to call them back in the day.
Oh but how things change.
I came across Blood Axis and Les Joyaux de la Princesse (LJDP) on usenet and immediately fell for their mix of poetry and atmospheric melodies carved from old wax cylinders and gramophone records. Genius.
Kind of like what Ibizan DJs do, but with 78s. And with atmosphere. And culture.
Absinthe is a brilliant work of art. It’s trippy, dark and very atmospheric. I’ve used that word a lot in this post. Atmosphere. Yes. If ever you wanted to know what atmosphere was, you should listen to this. I recall having it on my MP3 player when I was in hospital and thinking “If I listen to this when I’m tripping off my tits on painkiller/morphine I’ll have a right royal time!”
Yeah. I did. I was immediately transported to a Paris of dirty opium dens, unclean absinthe shops and moody Gauloises cigarette smoking in the 18th/19th century. I highly recommend listening to this alone, in a dark damp uncarpeted room during a rain storm. With only a rag for a curtain, a rickety table and an old wooden chair for company.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone is still actually reading these entries as I persevere to listen to my album collection in alphabetical order. But do you know? Part of me like to think that long forgotten LJ flisters might still be reading or random people might be coming across these posts many years into the future on WordPress. I also like to think that this is kind of a historical record and in a far off distant future scores of academics and philosophers are debating not only what I meant by vampiresses with comedy inflatable breasts but also why did I have such a massive cock collection of music and were people actually interested in this and if so why?
Ritual purposes.
Simple.
Anyway, as I plunge on through the “A”s missing out only a couple of two track EPs as they don’t really count as full albums (If you’re really interested they are “Abandoner” by some bloke out of Porcupine Tree and “Absence and Plenum” by Lux Interna who none of you will have heard of anyway. I was also wearing my khaki short sleeved shirt and there are 7 cards in the card holder on the mantelpiece) we arrive at an unusual choice.
I’d never heard of Santana until they appeared on a soundtrack for a film I liked. So as I liked one of their tracks I did my usual thing of downloading their entire back catalogue. Yes. It was getting a bit silly doing that. Anyway, Abraxas contains Black Magic Woman and Oye Como Va which always makes me feel like I should be in some seedy Spanish restaurant in the 1980s. Surrounded by bullet ridden corpses having just survived a Spanish Mafia attack by hiding behind the fake plastic plant in the corner.
Back in the good old late nineties, Scandinavian metal and rock bands started to experiment with their sound. Whilst the likes of Nightwish and Within Temptation experimented with female operatics, Therion went the whole hog and opted for a full choir.
Curiously it works.
A’arab Zaraq Lucid Dreaming is an early release for the band and the style they later became synonymous for is still on the carpenters bench at this stage so to speak.
I first came across Therion on a “goth rock” compilation album which, is as goth as Metallica. But still, the sound they create is unique and unusual, both aspects that float my boat so it comes as no surprise that I downloaded their back catalogue based on the listening of one song.
Sadly my brain is now becoming close to full with music and my consumption of music has changed dramatically so it takes exceptional musicianship to make me listen to the album in its entirety. Unfortunately, this album isn’t too exceptional.
Every so often I come across a band in my library and I think “How the hell did I ever get this?”
Twilight Garden are one of those bands.
They are a curious cross of Depeche Mode, the Cure and maybe a tiny bit of Bauhaus. Lots of echoey guitar, forlorn vocals and the kind of production that makes it sound like they’re recording in some disused quarry. In the rain. After a group of smack head punks from the 80’s have been and daubed the walls with political slogans.
Perhaps they recorded in the foot tunnel depicted in their album cover?
Possibly one of the best compilations I have in my library. The Metal Tribue To Abba compilation never fails to raise a smile on faces as a group of (mostly) European metal bands rip into some of Abba’s popular pop songs with the power of a force ten gale. And it works.
Starting with Summer Night City performed by choral metal group Therion the listener is carried through Thank you for the Music, Voulez-Vouz and Chiquitita by bands whose names probably won’t be familiar to people inside the UK. Really, this is a treat. I urge anybody with even the slightest penchant for chugga-chugga guitars, thrash drums and chicks in latex with long hair and comedy inflatable breasts to find and listen to this album.
A Thousand Roads is a film by Chris Eyre released in 2005. This is the soundtrack for it.
I’m very fond of soundtracks and there are many in my collection. Mostly they are of films that I have seen but this is one of 2 film soundtracks of films I’ve not seen.
I’m also very fond of Lisa Gerrard’s music including Dead Can Dance (but more about them in a later post).
So there’s two things: Lisa Gerrard and Soundtracks. What more could I want? Well there is a third thing. World music. I first got into World Music as a teenager when I was taken on a school trip to see the Gamelan at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool. Initially I was resistant but an hour into the performance I began to recognise repetitions, subtleties and changes in rhythm which none of my classmates seemed to appreciate. On the back of that experience I embraced World Music and, over the years, have collected some interesting music (again, more of that in a later post).
A Thousand Roads is a lovely mix of etherical wailing, tribal chants and haunting synths. A rare treat for travellers and explorers of the musical soundscape.
I first came across Renaissance in 2002 when I used to subscribe to Last.fm’s radio service.
In case you didn’t know, Last.fm supposedly checks what you listen to and then finds artists you might like and plays samples of their music mixed in with yours.
The song that kept being played was Northern Lights. It was one of those songs that made me think “Here! I’ve heard this before!”. It was more than probable that I had.
Keen to find out more, I spent a week downloading their catalogue and rapidly falling in love with their music. Bewildered by the fact that I hadn’t actually heard of them before that day.
They’re a mix of folk and prog. Prog folk? Maybe. Kind of like Fairport Convention meets Yes.
No..that’s not it.
It’s similar. But not.
Anyway, make your own mind up and, as usual, I would be interested to hear what you think about them too.
There is a certain sound that conjures up memories of the 1990’s. Granted, I spent most of the 1990s in a haze of solitude and unemployment. Indeed, I did not really venture much further musically than the compilation album Shine 9. Instead I spent most of the 90s listening to Mike Oldfield, Yes, Triumvirat and whatever I happened upon on my cassette tapes. Those were the days. Days of sitting round, doing nothing. Wasting time.
I suspect that The Divine Comedy’s greatest hits, this album, appears in my music library due to Gay Jamie who no doubt put it on one of his many MP3 CDs he wrote for me back in the early noughties.
The Divine Comedy are that sound. The sound of the nineties. I’d not listened to this album before I began this project and, apart from a couple of tunes I’d heard on the radio or in other compilations, I’m not all that familiar nor enamoured with the band or their work. I was also surprised by the fact that they wrote the theme tune to Father Ted. So that was a surprise when it started playing midway through the listen.
Anyway, I think I’ll just keep the tracks I like off this album and bin the rest.
Album 40 was A Saucerful of Pinkone of the many Floyd tribute albums. This, however, is the real deal. The second Floyd album and the first without Syd Barratt, although he did write the track Jugband Blues, which features on this album.
It shows as early Floyd. Bizarre lyrics, lots of moog and weirdness. Just my cup of tea.
It’s also interesting to contrast albums from this era of Floyd to later eras such as A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
See, if it was this, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Ummagumma that was my introduction to Floyd, I would have gotten into them a lot earlier. It’s so far away from The Wall it’s practically down the garden path, across the road and under the tree in the neighbouring field. Right up my street.
Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under – Amanda Palmer
ACD – Half Man Half Biscuit
Accessories – The Gathering
Abraxas by Santana
A Metal Tribute to Abba – Various Artists
Stegzy's Music Project 