Stegzy's Music Project

A commentary on Stegzy's album collection

Mar 11

Ghosts from the Darkside III – Various Artists [#520]

by stegzy

R-708447-1150309381.jpegCompilations, it seems, are like buses. You wait for ages then two come along at once.

Ghosts from the Darkside III (I’ve no idea what happened to Ghosts from the Darkside I) is pretty much the same as Ghosts from the Darkside II, darkwave/goth music somewhat difficult to ingest aurally driving to and from work.

This time Tristania, Clan of Xymox and L’Âme Immortelle join the dark pageant but again, the rest of the acts I’d never heard of, nor did I find any affinity with.

Unfortunately, this eagerness to embrace the dark resulted in me getting quite a few albums and fan compilations like this and, advanced warning here, very soon we will see examples of other Gothic compilations on the music project.

1-01 –Flesh Field Animal 5:34
1-02 –Funker Vogt The Journey 5:52
1-03 –Terminal Choice The Saviour 6:46
1-04 –In Strict Confidence The Truth Inside Me 5:05
1-05 –Yendri Bodyless 5:49
1-06 –Diary Of Dreams Winter Souls 5:45
1-07 –Clan Of Xymox Crucified 6:00
1-08 –Sanguis Et Cinis Phantom 4:57
1-09 –Illuminate Energie 4:58
1-10 –Umbra Et Imago Mea Culpa 4:47
1-11 –Samsas Traum Für Immer 5:23
1-12 –Mondsucht Verlies Der Ewigkeit 4:28
1-13 –Mantus (2) Feuer 7:08
1-14 –Exovedate Truly 2:30
1-15 –Ophelia’s Dream Quando Corpus Morietur 3:09
2-01 –L’Âme Immortelle The Immortal Part 4:53
2-02 –Claire Voyant Love The Giver (Eskil Simonsson Of Covenant)

Remix – Eskil Simonsson

 5:28
2-03 –Love Like Blood Bleeding 6:02
2-04 –The Garden Of Delight Chaos AD 5:09
2-05 –Tristania Beyond The Veil 6:39
2-06 –Grabesmond Totgeboren 3:45
2-07 –Stillste Stund Drei Sind Eins 4:28
2-08 –Cinema Strange Lindsay’s Trachea 5:17
2-09 –S.P.O.C.K Klingon 2000 (Radio Mix) 3:49
2-10 –Klirrfaktor Dekadenz 4:10
2-11 –Cleaner Anti-Arctic (Hard Vox Version) 5:38
2-12 –Absurd Minds Fairy Stories 5:12
2-13 –Hocico Spit As An Offence (Suicide Commando Remix)

Remix – Suicide Commando

 5:25
2-14 –Siechtum Gesellschaft Mord 3:36
2-15 –Dulce Liquido Illusión Hecha Mentira

2000 Clan of Xymox gothic Industrial Rock Tristania Various Artists

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Mar 10

Ghosts from the Darkside II [#519]

by stegzy

R-570247-1150308479.jpeg
A compilation of highlights of Goth, Darkwave and Dark Electro bands.

During my exploration of usenet newsgroups, specifically the goth-industrial binary group, I happened upon a whole treasure trove of gothic compilations (as you will hear about a few weeks later on in this project). In an effort to grow my “repertoire” with goth music I would download compilations as a way to find new bands.

Ghosts from the Darkside II is pretty hard going. I’d heard of a few of the bands featuring on this album through other explorations, such as Inkubus Sukkubus, Black Tape for a Blue Girl and Blutengel so it was natural for me to give it a go. However, I’d not really heard of any of the songs in the compilation either. There are quite a few German bands in this compilation so I suspect this is an album aimed at people who attend Wave Gothik Treffen.

After several listens I’m still not enamoured with the album. Perhaps it’s because I’m older now and I’ve reached “Full of Goth” or perhaps it’s because I just don’t like what I’ve heard.

Tracklist

1-1 –Swartalf Invocation 4:03
1-2 –Non Compos Mentis Without Bloodshed 6:10
1-3 –Ikon (4) Fatal Attraction 3:17
1-4 –In Extremo Ai Vis Lo Lop 4:02
1-5 –Morthem Vlade Art Beyond Sorrow 5:19
1-6 –WeltenBrand The Fall Of Trisona 6:35
1-7 –Diary Of Dreams Drop Dead 7:11
1-8 –Nekromantik Girlstickboy 4:05
1-9 –Blutengel Beauty Of Suffering 6:13
1-10 –Fiction 8 Second Skin 3:32
1-11 –Girls Under Glass New World Order 4:20
1-12 –Das Zeichen In The Garden 3:58
1-13 –Theatre Of Loneliness Holocaust 4:16
1-14 –black tape for a blue girl Given 4:20
1-15 –Hagalaz’ Runedance When The Trees Were Silenced 2:45
2-1 –Exovedate Ego Sum Mons 4:30
2-2 –Untoten Gothik Years 5:54
2-3 –Chaos God Judgement Day 5:36
2-4 –The Dust Of Basement God’s Own Fairytales 5:28
2-5 –The Second Sight Answer 3:29
2-6 –Die Form Spiral 2 4:12
2-7 –Vespertina De Profundis 4:20
2-8 –Inkubus Sukkubus Starchild 4:44
2-9 –Sanguis Et Cinis Nicht Mein Schicksal 5:33
2-10 –The New Creatures My Child Queen 4:53
2-11 –This Burning Effigy Exquisite 4:58
2-12 –Hexedene Only Human (Original Mix) 4:30
2-13 –Attrition The Thin Veil 6:12
2-14 –Louisa John-Krol Alexandria 5:30
2-15 –Summoning Angbands Schmieden 3:28

1999 Black Tape for a Blue Girl compilations gothic Inkubus Sukkubus Various Artists

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Mar 9

Ghostbusters OST – Various Artists [#518]

by stegzy

Ghostbusters soundtrack - various artistsThis is the soundtrack to the classic 1980s blockbusting movie Ghostbusters.

As a regular downloader from the alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.soundtrack newsgroup in the late noughties, I would frequently smugly mark for download the soundtracks for movies I’d always wanted but had been unable to obtain from crappy HMV or Virgin Megastores. One such prize was todays album.

I remember my brother taking me to see Ghostbusters in the Lime Street Odeon in Liverpool. I remember queuing up (in the cold) for hours before the doors opened so that we would be some of the first in the theatre and be able to get the best seats. I remember being excited to rent the video when it became available, and I still remember the anticipation and thrill of being able to video record it off the telly when it was eventually shown over Christmas for the first time on network television.

I also remember the disappointment at being unable to find the soundtrack on CD, a dissipating disappointment when I located it on Usenet.

Classic 80s soundtrack for a classic 80s film. Not sure why they feel the need to “reboot” it.

 

1984 compilations Soundtracks Various Artists

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Mar 8

Ghost Riders in the Sky – Various Artists [#517]

by stegzy

Ghost Riders in the Sky - Various ArtistsOne of the more quirky “albums” in my collection is this compilation, a collection of recordings of the same song by a variety of artists.

Ghost Riders in the Sky has been credited as one of the top 100 Western songs of all time and has been recorded by a whole host of performers since its first recording in 1948. Artists such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and even death metal bands have recorded their own interpretation of the song.

This unofficial “not-available-in-the-shops” compilation was uploaded to Usenet newsgroups in the late noughties and contains versions by:

Boston Pops
Elvis Presley
Ennio Morricone
Frankie Laine
Lawrence Welk
Patrick Normand
Peggy Lee
Roy Clark
Roy Clark & Chet Atkins
Roy Rogers & Sons of the Pioneers
Shadows
Slim Whitman
Spike Jones
The Spotnicks
Tom Jones
Ventures
Wingy Manone and his Go-Group

Seventeen versions of the same song. My wife deserves a medal for helping me listen to them all.

compilations Various Artists

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Mar 7

Get Rhythm – Ry Cooder [#516]

by stegzy

Get Rhythm - Ry CooderBack in the very early nineties possibly very late eighties, I became obsessed with late night radio shows. Frequently, much to my mothers chagrin, I would lie in bed with my headphones on, listening to the broadcasts from a variety of radio stations.

There was something haunting, maybe spiritual or even mystical about listening to the radio in the late hours of the night. The fact that I was one of a handful of listeners that would experience something special broadcast over the airwaves that few others would hear because they slept or were unaware. Indeed, much of my knowledge of the world and, to some extent humour, was developed by being one of the privileged few.

One late night DJ that I was fond of was on Manchester’s Key 103 radio station and went by the name of James H Reeve. The content and humour between the records he played was priceless and I was often afraid of falling asleep and missing something. So often I would try and steal at least another 90 minutes of airtime by using my hifi’s tape-deck to record the show as I fell asleep.

As it happened, on the last night I did this I managed to record some comedy gold and a priceless mix of music which, I hope, I still have on a cassette tucked away in my box of memories. One of the songs on this cassette, which naturally, I listened to over and over again through to my early thirties, was Ry Cooder’s cover of Johnny Cash’s Get Rhythm, the title track to today’s album.

I love that song. It’s so positive, happy and always has me dancing at my steering wheel. Of course the rest of the album doesn’t really compare in the great scheme of things and I don’t really know any other songs by Cooder. But I appreciate his contribution to music and his reunion of the Buena Vista Social Club. I’ll also remember always how this song, the cassette it was recorded on, with the 90 minutes of late night radio show broadcast that I played over and over again to a point where I still almost remember the content word for word, saw me through my GCSEs, my A Levels and kept me company across at least two decades of commuting in one form or another.

1987 Ry Cooder

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Mar 4

Get Behind Me Satan – The White Stripes [#515]

by stegzy

Get_Behind_Me_SatanLo-fi brother and sister double act Meg and Jack White’s White Stripes’ fifth studio album.

By this stage of their career, the main stream successes of previous albums such as Elephant and White Blood Cells had started to wane. Get Behind Me Satan reeks of a late night dash home to hurriedly try to recreate something that has previously taken time and care to produce.

I liked White Blood Cells  having been introduced to the band through one of Joel Veitch’s early animations on B3ta.com and I was fairly fond of Elephant even though Former-Mrs-Gnomepants played it to death. But something was missing by the time Get Behind Me came along. Mass production does something to quality regardless of what people say. Please don’t misunderstand me, the White Stripes quality and vibe is still there, it’s just not as honed as the previous albums. Maybe it’s the little flecks of glitter that have fallen off or maybe it’s like when an amateur athlete gets close to their goal and the cramps kick in.

Indeed, by their next album, Icky Thump, I’d given up. And so, it seems, did Meg.

 

2005 White Stripes (The)

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Mar 3

Genius of America – The Tubes [#514]

by stegzy

The_Tubes_Genius_of_America Fee Waybill and the guys regroup and return following a ten year hiatus and departure from  Capitol Records with their first album on the Critique label.

Despite filling the years between 1986 and 1994 with The Tubes on my Walkman, I didn’t come across this album until much later. Thing is, HMV were never any good at stocking records for non-mainstream bands, even though the Tubes were fairly mainstream at the height of their career. Trips to the HMV in Church Street, Liverpool, during my youth would see me flipping through the Ts..TUs…TUB…Oh bugger..TUBEWAY ARMY…no Tubes.

“Never heard of them mate” was the mantra from the shop staff.

And yet, it seems, The Tubes were more influential than we know with some members of the band having sessioned with Chris Isaak , and with Richard “Hazard” Marx producing today’s album.

To say Genius of America takes off from where Love Bomb ended is incorrect. Stylistically, the album is Tubesesque but it’s a far cry from Remote Control and Completion Backward Principle. Indeed, it’s almost as if the band have had a style transplant during their hiatus, because unlike other bands that have split and reformed, there is a recognisable difference in sound.

I’m still waiting for it to grow on me.

Unfortunately, I am unable to back up my conjecture with my usual inclusion of a sample Youtube video for this album. It seems that the copyright police have cleared it of any of the tracks from this release. So instead, here is one of the band’s classic songs.

1996 Rock Tubes (The)

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Mar 2

Geek Freak Stadium – Ban Jyang [#513]

by stegzy

51bsuZeDOoLWay back in the early days of internet and Windows Millenium, I obtained a compilation CD from an innovative music website known as Peoplesound. The idea behind Peoplesound was years ahead of its time, crowd funded/supported bands could sell their EPs, demos and albums via the site and hipsters everywhere could potentially discover artists years before anyone else. I claim that privilege with Mull Historical Society and Sugarplum Fairies. Another band I had hoped would blossom into something else was Ban Jyang.

Loud, brash and similar sounding to Rage Against the Machine, Ban Jyang had three albums to buy. Of course £10 an album was a lot of money to fritter away on music, so I bided my time until I could afford to buy them.

Unfortunately during this time, the band imploded. Folding in on itself, they vanished from Peoplesound. Previous searches had revealed a website but this had been hacked and warning messages appeared whenever it was visited. Eventually that too disappeared and along with it the “free to download” back catalogue of the band.

So more than “they were an artist who sound like Rage Against the Machine”, I am unable to tell you but remnants of their work remain on the internet. For instance you can still buy this album via Amazon and their MySpace page is still live (https://myspace.com/banjyang/music/albums).

Geek Freak Stadium is a live compilation of “hits” from their other albums Weirdo Side Effects and Religious Love Hater, possibly recorded at a gig they probably did sometime somewhere. It sounds like it’s really popular but then I suspect they just added a cheering audience backing track in the studio.

compilations Live Peoplesound Rock

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Mar 1

Gazeuse! – Gong [#512]

by stegzy

Gong_-_Gazeuse!In true prog fashion, flying teapot hippy group Gong, split and became two entities; Daevid Allen’s Gong (the one responsible for all the pot head pixies) and Pierre Moerlan’s Gong a jazz rock based band.

Gazeuse! is the band’s first album and is very clearly jazz orientated. Unfortunately, due to a “jazz embargo” imposed on Gnomepants Cottage by jazz loathing Mrs Gnomepants, I am unable to bring you much of a detailed  entry today. The only statement I can make is, if jazz is your thing or maybe you liked the theme tunes to late seventies chat shows like Wogan, Russell Harty or Parkinson, this will really float your boat. I’m not that much of a jazz fan, but I occasionally like to dip my toes into the murky cheese sauce that Pierre Moerlan’s Gong produced.

1976 Gong Jazz Progressive Rock

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Feb 29

Gather in the Mushrooms – Various Artists [#511]

by stegzy

Gather in the mushroomsGather in the Mushrooms  is a compilation album featuring tracks by acid folk bands from 1968-1974.

As a prog fan, it is only natural that I have a penchant for music often classed as acid folk, which, one could argue, is a shared root for the mighty tree of progressive rock in the forest of alternative adult music.

This album was kindly “donated” to me by a dear ex-work colleague with whom we share similar tastes in music and interests in media and popular culture. When I saw the artist listing I was further excited to see artists such as Sallyangie (Sally Oldfield, Mike Oldfield‘s sister, with whom he began his career), Pentangle, Magnet and Spirogyra, all of whom have connection within this music project.

Hauntology at its best, Gather in the Mushrooms provides a soundtrack for a period when Canterbury was just begining to burgeon and fills the minds eye with images of green home county villages populated with beautiful long haired tie-dye be-dressed lady hippies like in some Avengers/Hammer Horror/sci-fi TV/Film that was never made. Beautiful tracks like Sandy Denny’s pre-Fairport Milk and Honey, Trader Horne’s post-Fairport Morning Way and the largely forgotten Forest’s Graveyard not only provide a powerful aural illustration for the genre but create a fitting tribute to a time that existed for a few but was appreciated by many.

This has largely become my third most favourite compilation of the past decade.

Read the rest of this entry »

2008 Acid Folk compilations Mike Oldfield neofolk Spirogyra Various Artists

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Feb 26

Garlands – Cocteau Twins [#510]

by stegzy

CocteauTwins-Garlands-smallWhen I said I liked the Cocteau Twins I should have clarified that I liked a couple of tracks. It’s just that when you mention you like a band you often get inundated with advice about which albums you “should” like.

This is one such case. Apparently I “should” like this album because I’m a “fan”. I can actually understand that because a lot of the album sounds like early Dead Can Dance and there are occasions where you can detect the seeds of early goth, shoegazing and dream pop and it is easy to suggest a recommendation based on hearing other bands of similar sound.

This is the Cocteau Twins’ first album but really, it gets to a point where all Cocteau Twins stuff sounds the same. Indecipherable caterwauling from Liz Fraser droning guitar wibbles from one of the blokes and synthetic moodscaping from the other. If I was held captive in a car driving somewhere late at night in the post rain wetness while perhaps bleeding to death or coming down with a fever, this would probably be ok to listen to.

 

1982 4AD Cocteau Twins Dream Pop gothic

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Feb 25

Garden of Dilmun – Seventh Harmonic [#509]

by stegzy

garden-of-dilmun-1It seems almost as if there was an explosion of artists heavily influenced by Dead Can Dance and Ordo Equituum Solis. Seventh Harmonic are an all female band featuring Ann-Mari Thun of Arcana and Caroline Jago of Sol Invictus fame.

Seventh Harmonic’s Garden of Dilmun was sold to me through well placed adverts on social media and email bombardment promising me that the band were the next best thing since Dead Can Dance. It also came highly praised by a reviewer on music site Heathen Harvest. The samples I heard on Youtube did sound promising and, being a wannabe hipster, I parted with my cash and waited for the the album to arrive from abroad.  It arrived and sat, still in its shrink wrap, on my desk for a period of months and two house moves before being listened to on a particularly gloomy day when heading into Banbury.

And no, it’s nothing like Dead Can Dance. It’s dark, I’ll give it that. Aurally invoking mental images of cavernous halls and cathedrals bedecked with banners, filled with etherial mist, knights of yore twatting each other with swords and Vikings rowing across placid lakes to give a monastery a good old sacking. I like it a lot.

Unfortunately, in my recent years I’ve found that listening to music is a luxury afforded only on a Saturday afternoon or maybe when the wife is away if I can be arsed. And so, Garden of Dilmun became one of the last albums I bought in CD format. My existing music library groaning under the weight of the gigabytes that it is formed of and thus spawned the Music Project. It’s many year mission to listen to every album in it, at least once, thin out those albums that don’t appeal and celebrate those that bring joy.

 

2011 NeoClassical Seventh Harmonic

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Feb 24

Galore – Kirsty MacColl [#508]

by stegzy

KirstygaloreThere was a fleeting moment when I thought relatives of Kirsty MacColl lived in my street when I was growing up. Instead it turned out Andrea McCann wasn’t related, but just happened that she looked a little bit like her. If you squinted.

This is another relationship legacy album, inherited when my previous wife and I split the MP3 library. I’ve never really been a fan of MacColl but I’ve always know who she was and enjoyed Christmas when she would grace my screens with the Pogues. Indeed, my knowledge of her sound is not limited to that song and, this album being MacColl’s best of album, this album features many of her top hits that were present in the charts during my childhood.

As a time machine, this album works, transporting me back to a time of paper rounds, Saturday’s working in Halfords and Christmases visiting Flannagan’s Apple for the  Guinness.

And so we reach G. A world of compilations and best ofs (eg Greatest Hits) and Gothic music by far the largest group of albums alphabetically. Sorry if you’re expecting me to get to L by Christmas….

1995 best of compilations Kirsty Maccoll Virgin

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Feb 23

Future Days – Can [#507]

by stegzy

Can_-_Future_DaysCan came into my life in the early noughties when a colleague gave me a copy of their Tago Mago album. I was suitably impressed but more of that when we get to T. Future Days features more chilled out Can rhythms melded with Susuki’s bizarre mumblings and Michael Karoli’s stand out lone-guitar performance. Kind of like lounge avant garde.

Future Days is Can’s fifth studio album. Vastly different from Tago Mago and yet not too far away from their fourth album, Ege Bamyasi. It’s surprising how little I’ve listened to this album, no really it is. Especially when I went through my revisit Can phase only last year.

1973 Avant Garde Can

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Feb 22

Fur and Gold – Bat For Lashes [#506]

by stegzy

FurandgoldcoverMiddle class wank mag, The Guide which is usually given away in Saturday’s Guardian, once said that Fur and Gold was the album must have for the noughties coffee table and that if you were to be taken seriously by your painfully middle class Land Rover dinner party guests you should put this album on the surround sound system and look hautily at ones guests when they contemptuously deny all knowledge of its existence. And thus the hipster was born.

I “bought” this album purely because I liked the track What’s a Girl to Do? and because I kind of had a warm tingle whenever I thought of lead singer Natasha Khan. However, the rest of the album was a disappointment so I’m glad I only “bought” this album because of course downloading music for free, pretty much like uploading music videos to Youtube, home taping and bootlegging, killed what was left of the music industry.

Which might account for the reason why nobody’s heard of the band since.

2006 Bat for Lashes Dream Pop

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Feb 19

Funeral Music for Perez Prado – Nurse With Wound [#505]

by stegzy

Screen Shot 2016-02-13 at 12.35.31Avant Garde shite I downloaded in an effort to out weird hipsters.

Really, I never listen to this album in its entirety unless I’m trying to weird someone out or I’m trying to write an article about it. On it’s 6th listen it still hasn’t improved. Why do I keep this shit?

The way the percussive rhythm blends into each section seamlessly or the way the percussive rhythm lowers the active mind into a focused trance, rhythmically it is enjoyable. This alone is probably, on reflection, the main reason I keep the album. For those moments waiting to go into surgery or those moments when you’ve been given three months to live and a tab of LSD.

Yeah. Maybe that’s why.

2001 Avant Garde Industrial Nurse With Wound

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Feb 18

Frustration Plantation – Rasputina [#504]

by stegzy

Frustration_Plantation Internet faves Rasputina saw their hauntological  American Great Depression era Old South sound into this their fourth studio release.

Considering my most favourite Rasputina release is their live album A Radical Recital which features several tracks from this album, you’d think I liked Frustration Plantation equally. I do and I don’t. I like the clarity that the studio versions bring to the table but I like the gritty, close knit communal feel of the live album which you don’t get from studio albums.

2004 Rasputina

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Feb 17

From Wishes to Eternity – Nightwish [#503]

by stegzy

Nightwish_from_wishes_to_eternity1Scandinavian rock valkyries again, this time with a live set featuring Nightwish’s pre-breakup line-up and Tarja Turunen.

The album is a live recording of a concert performed in Tempere in 2000 and was originally released as a limited CD run and released in DVD format with footage of the actual gig. It features a number of my favourite tracks from across the Nightwish catalogue.
I was never at the gig. Nor am I likely to want to go to a Nightwish gig these days. But, like with all live albums, I can play it really loud while standing in the garden in the dark and pretend I’m at the gig whenever I like.

2000 compilations gothic Live Nightwish

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Feb 16

From the Sea to the Land Beyond – British Sea Power [#502]

by stegzy

Sea-to-the-land-beyondRegular music project visitors, British Sea Power, return today with their 2013 release, From the Sea to the Land Beyond.

The album is actually a soundtrack for Penny Woolcock’s film  From the Sea to the Land Beyond shown originally on BBC 4. The film is a showreel of archive footage from the BFI showing coastal life and activities through the ages accompanied by the unique salt encrusted rusty sound of British Sea Power.

Reworking their own material to provide haunting instrumentals, British Sea Power did an amazing job. I like to play guess the original song when listening to this album. For example Track 2 and the overarching theme throughout the album, Remarkable Diving Feat is a reworking of Waving Flags from Do You Like Rock Music 

This is by far my most favourite album/soundtrack of the decade. You could listen to this album while watching any archive cine or super 8 material and not feel it was out of place. It really works.

2013 British Sea Power Soundtracks

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Feb 15

From the Dark Side of the Moon – Mary Fahl [#501]

by stegzy

Darksideofmoon_albumNo, I’d never heard of Mary Fahl until I came across this album either. Mary Fahl is an American singer song writer and in 2007 I obtained an unofficial advance of today’s album which is a song-for-song reimagining of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

Mrs Gnomepants Mk1 used to say that cover versions are only valid cover versions if the artist doing the covering makes the cover their own. It’s only really recently that I’ve began to appreciate this statement fully.

I’ve always been fond of cover versions, my love of tribute artists like Iron Horse, Beatallica, Polka Floyd and Weird Al proof of this, so when it came to my first listen of  Mary Fahl I was already full of expectations. Imagine my joy when Mrs Gnomepants Mk 1 came into the room where I was listening to it and said that she really enjoyed this version of her favourite Pink Floyd album. That kind of sealed it for me.

If you’re a big fan of Floyd’s Dark Side, then you might enjoy this too. Fahl has certainly put a lot of effort into producing the album and it’s remarkable how a female voice can change the dynamic of the sound  originally made by Roger Waters. Fahl’s Dark Side has garnered a little bit of a cult following amongst some nerdy types which only adds to the enjoyment.

Then as a kind of postscript to this entry, while searching Youtube for examples of Fahl’s work, I came across her collaboration/guest appearance with Renaissance’s Annie Haslam. Again, highlighting how the music and artists I like are all connected somehow.

2007 2011 Mary Fahl Pink Floyd Progressive Rock

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Feb 12

From Oblivion – Pink Floyd [#500]

by stegzy

Screen Shot 2016-02-06 at 10.39.49Bootlegs bootlegs bootlegs. They killed live music you know.

From Oblivion is a compilation of bootleg recordings of gigs by Pink Floyd. Only this isn’t. The album in my collection is labeled From Oblivion but looking at track listings around the internet, we have the correct track listing for the first 4 tracks then completely gaga for the rest which appear to be bootlegs from the Dark Side of the Moon tour.

Still. Good music. And, whenever I feel like I want to go to a Pink Floyd concert, I can bob this on the stereo, go and stand in the far side of the room, turn the lights off and charge myself £80 for the privilege.

 

1991 Live Pink Floyd

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Feb 11

From Gehenna to Here – Fields of the Nephilim [#499]

by stegzy

From Gehenna to Here Another appearance from Carl McCoy and his dust ridden forsaken cowboys, Fields of the Nephilim. This time with another compilation of songs from their catalogue. I’m not sure if it’s the lack of production or what, but to me this sounds more like recording of a tribute act than actual Nephilim songs. In the recording I have, McCoy sounds like he’s singer from a slightly higher register than usual.

Not going to say much more than that as I’ve already covered a lot in previous entries regarding these guys.

2001 Fields of the Nephilim

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Feb 10

Friends of Mr Cairo – Jon & Vangelis [#498]

by stegzy

TheFriendsOfMrCairo2FrontBThis was another of the first CDs I bought for my first CD player and I played it over and over and over.

Chris Rose, a boy at my school, was also a fan of the album and we would spend free periods in sixth form discussing the album, the film Maltese Falcon and Dashiell Hammett. We fostered a good friendship through the two years we were in sixth form together solely based on him seeing the albums title written on one of my cassettes while I was reading the book Maltese Falcon listening to the album on my Walkman.

The song from which the album takes its title, Friends of Mr Cairo, is a tribute and nod to the film noir genre made famous by the likes of actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, Mr Cairo being a character played by Peter Lorre in the film Maltese Falcon.

This is Jon and Vangelis’ “difficult” but popular second album.

1981 jon & vangelis Jon Anderson Vangelis

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Feb 9

Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand [#497]

by stegzy

Franz-FerdinandEvery so often during this music project I come across albums by bands I have heard of but can’t remember for the life of me what their song was that I liked or why I even have them in the collection in the first place.

I could lie and say I had always thought Franz Ferdinand was the geezer what got shot and started World War I. When of course I knew that there is also a popular music troupe with the same name and this is their first album. But until I came to write this entry, I couldn’t remember the name of their popular song.

The album Franz Ferdinand is a mystery to me. It sounds like nearly every popular music  band’s album of the time, a sound I like to call Angry Indie. Similarly, I have no idea what the appeal is for these guys. Unremarkable, carbon copy of other “indie” bands.

Ok, analogy time. It’s like drinking real ale and thinking that you can detect the hard graft, dedication and attention to detail that the independent brewer puts into their craft when all the while you’re drinking  mass produced slops rebranded by a major brewer like Scottish Newcastle.

2004 Franz Ferdinand Indie

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Feb 8

Fragile Army – Polyphonic Spree [#496]

by stegzy

TFArmyCoverI’d heard of Polyphonic Spree in rumours, whispers and the occasional collaboration with other artists like Yoko Ono and  I wanted to hear more. So, during the Great Internet Download Free-for-All of 2007-2010 I was able to obtain a copy of Fragile Army.
I’ve always liked the concept of an ever increasing band, the community of music and the celebration of creativity fostered by bands like Polyphonic Spree and British folk band Bellowhead. Added to this, the open airiness and audible joy that emanated from what I’d heard of Polyphonic Spree’s music (notably You and I with Yoko Ono and Love My Way). However my joy was short lived as I started to realise that Polyphonic Spree was run like some sort of sinister cult like the Moonies or Hari Krishna led by a quasi-David Koresh figure. Furthermore, the sound becomes repetative, too similar and tracks become difficult to distinguish from.

That’s why my interest in Polyphonic Spree seems to tail off towards the middle of the album. Shame really.

2007 Polyphonic Spree

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