music | Stegzy's Music Project

House of Yes: Live at the House of Blues – Yes [#594]

by stegzy

When this album was released back in 2000, the internet as we know it today was still in its fledgeling state. Websites were mostly created and owned by actual people rather than by corporations and users actually had to seek out their news rather than have it shown to them if an algorithm deigned to do so. As a result, I was only aware it had been released because I saw it while I was browsing the CD racks in HMV.

Of course, with it being a Live/Best of compilation and I already had most of the songs Live or in compilations, I was reluctant to part with hard earned cash for stuff I already had and instead bought something a little more desirable like Air’s Moon Safari or whatever else was about in those days. However sometime later, probably during the Great Internet Download Free-for-All of the early noughties, I was given a copy of the album by a work colleague and so it joined my collection.

House of Yes is a live double album featuring music from Yes’ earlier career and their album The Ladder. It also features Billy Sherwood on guitar and Igor Khoroshev on keyboards, Sherwood left shortly before the album’s release and Khoroshev had already been booted out of the band by that time due to a sexual harassment controversy.

I can’t say that I don’t like this compilation. There are some good performances on the album the enjoyment of which can be enhanced by the viewing of the DVD of the gig.

2000 Billy Sherwood Chris Squire compilations Eagle Records Jon Anderson Live Memories Progressive Rock Steve Howe Yes

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Hotel Paper – Michelle Branch [#592]

by stegzy

Trying to cash in on the popularity of grumpy skater chick Avril Lavigne, music execs yoink another young lady with attitude into the limelight. That lady was Michelle Branch.

I remember how the American music execs positioned itself to launch Branch to the European side of the pond. This previously unheard of artist started to appear on late-night European chat shows and a couple of her songs popped up here and there as incidental music on TV shows. Even the Guardian newspaper’s Saturday supplement suggested that no middle-class proto-hipster’s coffee table would be complete without a carefully placed copy of the album to wow their less cultured dinner party guests.

I bought it. I liked it. I listened to it in conjunction with the more feisty Lavigne. I watched as almost like a light switch being turned off, Branch seemed to dissolve into the general white noise of music, overshadowed by Lavigne and later, more successful artists.

2003 American Pop Rock Michelle Branch

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Hotel – Moby [#591]

by stegzy

I really want to like Moby. I’ve tried. It just seems that all his music sounds the same. Almost. It also seems that most of the music that Moby writes somehow ends up in a film at some point.

Inspired by Moby’s fascination with hotels and their nature Hotel is Moby’s seventh album following on from 18 and Play. He has said in an interview that this is his least favourite of his albums. Conversely, I find it the most accessible of the artist’s catalogue but saying that I haven’t listened to the album that many times either.

The album comes with two bonus discs, Hotel: Ambient and Hotel: B-Sides. I’ve long since disposed of Ambient and B-Sides went to the recycle bin last year.

2005 Moby

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Home – The Gathering [#589]

by stegzy

Gathering_home During the Great Download Free For All of the mid-noughties when I was ripped from the comedy inflatable bosom of Nightwish and thrown grovelling at the awesome rock prowess of The Gathering, I was self-tasked with the necessity to obtain the band’s entire catalogue.

Fortunately, this was one of those times when such an action was worthwhile. Aside from the band’s first couple of albums, Always and Almost a Dance, which are both truly dreadful and were swiftly deleted from my collection, their other albums just kept on sending tingles.

The Gathering are another example of where the UKs coverage of quality Euro music is lacking. The downright snobbery of the UK music industry in regard to artists from beyond the North Sea frequently turns my stomach. There really are some excellent artists out there but because a minority have the monopoly on what is seen and heard in the UK, it is often the case that without the internet, nothing “non-British” would be available. Indeed, even with impending changes to the accessibility of internet this will only get worse and result in further impedence of the spread of culture from east to west while the spread of culture from west to east will continue unhindered.

Home is The Gathering’s eighth album and the last to feature Anneke van Giersbergen who, in my opinion, made the band. It seems that 2006 was the time of departure for a few female led Eurometal bands (eg Nightwish and Tarja’s departure), but rather than disappear into obscurity, van Giersbergen went on to work with Ayreon and do her own stuff and quite successfully too. Like Mandylion, it has an almost progressive concept album feel to it but the concept album vibe might just be my overactive imagination.

2006 Gathering (The) gothic Industrial Progressive Rock Rock

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High Broad Field – Sieben [#586]

by stegzy

R-3966307-1350801376-8852 Last time we saw neofolk violinist Sieben on the music project was when he was supporting pagan folk band Faun on their live compilation Faun at the Pagan Folk Festival. This time Matt Howden whacks on his Sieben hat and applies his violin skills to his sixth release.

Howden’s style is very distinct. Lots of staccato and wood slapping violin wizardry with tense sustained notes overlain with perfectly pronounced dark lyrics multitracked and layered down with loops. As I’ve said before on the Music Project, Howden’s musical prowess is virtually unknown on the British scene which is a real shame, he really has a great talent which is well known throughout Europe but with little recognition in the UK.

High Broad Field is the preceding album to his Desire Rights and is a very close kin stylistically to the same. Elements from Sex and Wildflowers and Ogham Inside the Night are evident and one can hear aspects of Desire Rights in their infancy throughout the album. Delicious silky music for those who think Nigel Kennedy is a bit shit.

2005 Matt Howden neofolk Sieben Trisol

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Hidden Vagenda – Kimya Dawson [#585]

by stegzy

HiddenVagenda Former Livejournalist, Goddess of lo-fi, mother of tweecore and sometime member of the Mouldy Peaches, Kimya Dawson, released her fourth album Hidden Vagenda in 2004. A time when lo-fi folksy tweecore was grabbing the youth underground via the internet at the time, the youth rejecting corporate created plastic bands in favour of unknown kids in their bedrooms chucking out tunes via the internet.

What a different sound and time that was.

I remember going to see Dawson perform tracks from this album in Liverpool during her European tour. The cosy venue had a sizable crowd for its size but it wasn’t rammed. Instead one could easily reach the bar without battling through a wall of people. Indeed, at the back of the venue, near where the bar was, one could see Dawson furiously knitting while the support acts did their bits. Eventually, when Dawson finally came to the stage to perform her part, there followed 90 minutes of the most enchanting mix of protest song, tragedy and tweecore punk folk. Most of which featured on today’s album.

Some years later Dawson featured on the soundtrack for the hit GenX film, Juno. This was the only time I felt like a true hipster. I had seen Dawson, I had read Dawson, I had heard Dawson, long before all these new “fans” before the mainstream. And by that time the enthusiasm for the genre had started to fade.

2004 Folk Kimya Dawson tweecore

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Hidden Treasures – Dead Can Dance [#584]

by stegzy

Unknown The problem with bootleg albums is that they become addictive. Especially when the band has been around for ages and you’ve come to them late. Following my introduction to Dead Can Dance in the autumn of 1993, I had already collected the majority of their albums on CD by the time the Great Music Download Free For All hit the UK in the mid-noughties. So I would often spend hours late at night scouring the alt.sounds.gothic.mp3 newsgroups looking for new and rare Dead Can Dance material that I was, perhaps, unfamiliar with.

Hidden Treasures is one such catch. Released in 1994, possibly recorded in Italy though some sources differ, the “Unofficial” album has live performances of tracks stretching back through from the band’s Towards the Within stage of life but also features a collection of tracks from much earlier. Thing is, as with all live bootleg recordings, some of the songs are much different than their studio recordings which, I suppose adds to their appeal amongst fans.

1995 bootleg compilations Dead Can Dance NeoClassical

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Hergest Ridge – Mike Oldfield [#582]

by stegzy

Oldfield’s second album takes inspiration from a delightfully picturesque area of Herefordshire where Oldfield was living while attempting to escape the media attention gained from the success of his first album.

Until about 2000, I had only been brave enough to listen to the extract of Hergest Ridge that featured on the Complete Mike Oldfield box set having been advised by an elder sibling that “It isn’t much cop”. Still, as with all things in life, your siblings sagely advice can be similar to the type of sage that sits at the back of one’s parent’s kitchen cupboard in that Sharwoods bottle that dates from the 1970s, out of date and a matter of preferential taste.

To be fair, they were kind of right because even after a delayed listening, Hergest Ridge just doesn’t reach the dizzy heights of Tubular Bells or later works such as Islands or Amarok. It’s a very reflective or poignant work, perhaps one that is for good listening to when reading broadsheet newspapers while ensconced in one’s garret. Sure, it is Oldfield’s “difficult second album” but it shows off the young Oldfield’s developing talent and has some beautiful recurring melodies that also crop up in later works.

1974 Mike Oldfield Virgin

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Heavenly Voices Parts 1 – 3 – Various Artists [#578-580]

by stegzy

A bumper three albums on a Friday with a most peculiar acquisition, Heavenly Voices.

Much like how Looking for Europe does for the Neofolk genre, Heavenly Voices does for the dreampop/ethereal wave genre by way of the artists on the Hyperium record label. Here we have, in effect, three distinctly glorious compilation albums featuring a whole range of talent from artists like Eden’s Sean Bowley and his side project Sunwheel to fully functioning bands like Bel Canto, Black Tape for a Blue Girl and Miranda Sex Garden.

[#578] Part One is possibly the most accessible of the three. A little catawauling here and there but a nice build up towards (and what was my introduction to) Ordo Equituum Solis‘ Playing with the Fire.

Dreamily swimming onwards through Die Form’s Cantique and culminating in Winter Moon Descending by Annabel’s Garden

[#579] Part Two takes a different approach. The songs here have a much more floaty dreamy kind of feel with a slight dash of hauntology. This album was my introduction to the whole Heavenly Voices trilolgy and as a result not only are there many artists who have appeared previously in the Music Project, for example Collection d’Arnell Andréa and Black Tape, but also many who are yet to come. Possibly my most favourite tracks from this album are Sunwheel’s Walk Upon the Grass (which, incidently, I was intending to shoot a music video for but couldn’t find a willing person to film in time! Maybe a later opportunity will arise) The Sea is My Soul by 24 Hours and the haunting 56 in 81 by Eleven Shadows.

11K190SNXWL Finally Part 3 [#580] copies of which are currently changing hands for around £300. Featuring a much more accessible approach to the genre with more familiar artists like Miranda Sex Garden and Bel Canto. Again, this album introduced me to many artists and it is easy to see why people prize it so highly. Emerging from Part 2’s forest of floaty vaginas into a dystopian landscape of industry like a stumbling ninny, the listener finds Part 3 rips up the leafy glades of Part 2 and drills deep concrete foundations of industrial darkwave right into your mind.

Legend has it that there is actually a part four and a part five compilation. Rumours, whispers abound. Sadly the Hyperium label closed shortly after the death of its founder in 2002, but many of the acts continue on in the worlds of Darkwave and etheralwave.

Bel Canto Black Tape for a Blue Girl Collection d'Arnell Andréa compilations dark wave Eden Etheral Wave gothic Miranda Sex Garden Ordo Equitum Solis Sunwheel Various Artists

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Heaven’s Open – Mike Oldfield [#577]

by stegzy

Mike_oldfield_heavens_open_album_cover Long term followers of this blog may remember my joy at Amarok, when that came out I was overjoyed, but when Heaven’s Open came out the following year, I was ecstatic. Here was Oldfield singing pop songs, angry ones at that, and doing a whole side of his multi-instrument magic. Awesome.

Of course, this was in the days before the internet. When music news and gossip was gleaned from NME and Melody Maker, both publications that I avoided because I didn’t want to be seen to be a desparate hipster, and, of course, because I wanted to happily stay in my musical comfort zone with Yes, Mike Oldfield and the Tubes. So I was unable to learn until much later that this was Oldfield’s last album on the Virgin label and a great big “Fuck You” to Richard Branson, although if you listen carefully to the lyrics of the songs, it’s fairly obvious.

With five singles tracks, including the non-hit title track, Heaven’s Open and a massive 20 minute opus much akin to Amarok, the album is totally out of character compared to later and earlier works. Even Oldfield’s temporary rebranding of himself (to Michael rather than Mike) gives the whole album and uneasy feel. However you can hear the development of stylistic motifs from both Islands and Amarok and the birth of riffs and styles that would cross over to Tubular Bells II.

1991 Mike Oldfield Virgin

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Heart Still Beating – Roxy Music [#574]

by stegzy

Roxy_Music-Heart_Still_Beating Bryan Ferry and chums sleaze their way through an hour and 8 minutes of live music recorded in Frejus, France, 1982.

This is Roxy Music’s third live album complete with saxophone fellatio from Andy Mackay and guitar wanking from Phil Manzanera though surprisingly it was not released until 1990.

I think by this time Ferry’s pals had had enough of the whole lounge lizard vibe and were starting to look at future career prospects. Indeed, the album Avalon, the promotional tour from which Heart Still Beating is a recording, was to be the band’s last. Although technically, they did what most successful bands do and they did release several live and best of compilations after. Indeed, Ferry had only just got started and he wanted to stay afloat and even at the grand old age of 71 (at time of press) Ferry still oozes across the stage with his performances like some leery lecherous old granddad who’s got his eye on your twenty-year-old daughter. And not just for the job as his secretary.

Heart Still Beating as an album covers a nice range of Roxy Music’s work while also focusing on their more relatively modern love songs compared to their saxophone riddled earlier works. A good start for those unaware of Roxy Music’s historical bag of tricks and those wanting to see what that old rascal Ferry has to offer.

1990 best of compilations Live Pop Rock Roxy Music Sleazecore

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Heart Shaped World – Chris Isaak [#573]

by stegzy

Heart_shaped_world Trouble all around, says Chris in this his third album.

This was the second Chris Isaak album I added to my collection and was the first that hadn’t been copied from a friend’s CD onto cassette (Thanks, Mike!) and the first I bought having seen Mr Isaak play at my first gig at the Royal Court in Liverpool.

As a single teenager the angst-ridden lyrics meant something to me. Well they seemed to. As with all Chris Isaak, they are songs about either a woman done me bad, oh noes my drinking buddy has died or hey mrs robinson milf I’m a young and virile chap let’s do the jiggy. Though admittedly, they are mostly about cheating on lovers and are a little whiney.

Isaak’s breakthrough album in Europe, with two albums already under his belt; Chris Isaak and Silvertone, the success of Heart Shaped World and his singles, Blue Hotel and Wicked Game meant that releasing his best of compilation, also called Wicked Game, as the next album was a clever marketing trick. Indeed, as Isaak himself, and his music, started to appear more regularly in films and on TV it wasn’t long before his fan base started to grow in the UK and people stopped asking me “Who?” when I said that I liked Chris Isaak.

Sadly people I spoke to still daubed him with the Country & Western brush instead of the American Rock genre I liked to classify his music as. Indeed, as there was a bit of a wait until his next album San Fransisco Days to show how diverse his music skills were.

1988 Chris Isaak Reprise Rock and Roll Rockabilly

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Headlines and Deadlines: The Hits of A-Ha – A-Ha [#572]

by stegzy

Back in the dark days of the mid to late eighties, when it was acceptable to go out wearing lurid colours, leotards and sweat bands, a unique music video was doing the rounds on Saturday morning children’s TV shows and it wasn’t anything to do with Brian Pern.

A woman reads a comic in a steamy cafe when suddenly she sees one of the characters winking at her, next thing she knows she is pulled into the comic and having swoony near smoochies with said comic book guy, curiously looking like A-ha’s lead singer Morten Harket. Iconic. Almost as iconic as the use of plasticine in a music video. As it happened, my middle brother was fond of the band too so, as you can imagine, I was subjected to frequent plays of their music until he too disappeared. Sadly not into a comic world of spanner wielding motorcyclists but to the more sinister South Coast of the UK. Comic book world would definitely have been cooler though.

Headlines and Deadlines was one of the last “multibuy” CDs I bought (5 for £20) at Virgin Megastore. Ah Multibuys, how I miss you. MP3 streaming and downloads just aren’t the same when you pay per track or pay upwards of £8 for a flaky album. Thank goodness for the likes of Music Magpie and Amazon, doing to major record retailers what major record retailers did for independent record shops. For me, listening to the album is like taking a float down memory lane, sitting on a natty couch in a cruddy bedsit. Cheap, nostalic plastic pop.

1991 A-ha best of compilations Pop Rock Warner Bros.

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Harry Roy Collection – Harry Roy and his Orchestra [#569]

by stegzy

harryroyhisband-theregoesthatsongagain Back in the age when the phrase “big band swingers” didn’t raise eyebrows or cause puerile sniggers at the back of the class, the titans of popular music were the orchestra leaders. Ray Noble and Glenn Miller are two of the biggest big band swingers, but possibly the most talented was clarinettist and orchestra leader Harry Roy.

Wildly popular with troops and those who frequented the Mayfair Hotel and the Cafe Anglais Roy was not without controversy though. A number of his songs had quite cheeky and smutty connotations and, even with today’s more liberal ear, one cannot believe that songs like My Girls Pussy or She Had to Go and Lose it at the Astor could get past our more stuffy ancestors.

Still, as I find the whole hauntological era of dance bands fascinating, it’s only right that I curated a selection of Roy’s songs in my album collection.

best of Big Band compilations easy listening Harry Roy Jazz lo-fi Pre-1960

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Happiest Days of My Life – David Galas [#567]

by stegzy

First post in a year and with it, our last visit to a David Galas album (unless he releases another album before I reach Z). Happiest Days is Galas’ difficult second album with anger, gloom and despondency key elements at play.

Smouldering gloomy guitar work coupled with a flavour of the conceptualisation of returning from war; shocked and horrified by the sights witnessed. Dark places. Dark wave. Again, Galas pulls it off. It is a vast difference from Cataclysm and you can hear the developing themes that would later appear in Ghosts of California.

I’d like to thank David Galas for this and all his solo albums to date. Thank you for making such life changing and affirming music at the right time. Your work has been a stretcher bearer for me on many occasions and I guess you’ll never know how much it means to me and others. Please don’t give up on your amazing talent.

2009 dark wave David Galas

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Flying Teapot: Radio Gnome Invisible Part 1 – Gong [#484]

by stegzy

Dave Allen, Steve Hillage and friends float about in a gnome filled teapot with some pot head pixies and a witch.

Back in the nineties when I was experimenting with life, my former acquaintance, Shitbag, introduced me to this album, stating as he did with Pink Floyd’s Animals that the album was rare and not available on CD except to an elite group of music lovers. In fact, he added, the band had floated away with pot head pixies so would never be seen live or in any branch of HMV.

Not only was I able to gather myself a copy of Flying Teapot, but I was also able to gain a copy of the follow-up album, Angel’s Egg using patience and a twenty pound note from the HMV in Church Street Liverpool. I like proving people wrong.

I regret never being able to see Gong live. Flying Teapot is one of those eye opening albums that bring a whole new experience to prog and the band, together with Pink Floyd, held my hand through my musical development into the mid to late nineties. Indeed, whenever I wanted some music to enhance my mood and spiritual yearnings, I’d choose Flying Teapot first, as a result, the album features heavily in my life soundtrack of that time. Which, on reflection, is bizarre when considering the concept behind Flying Teapot draws from Russell’s Teapot idea. Sadly, due to my introduction to darker, goth music, and exploration of new progressive rock, my appreciation of later chapters in the Radio Gnome story was missed. Not helped by frequent cries of “This is a right racket can we turn it off now please”.

Not an album for haters of jazz.

1973 Gong Steve Hillage

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Floating Into the Night – Julee Cruise [#482]

by stegzy

Like a capsule containing music the youth of Twin Peaks might have listened to, Cruise’s Floating Into the Night brings a hauntological sound to the listener’s ears.

I suppose if Twin Peaks wasn’t your thing, you might not appreciate the subtle nuances of Julee Cruise’s first studio release. But as anyone who was alive in the nineties was sucked into the world of David Lynch’s epic about the murder of a middle class high school prom queen in a peaceful backwater American border town, it’s unlikely you have no conception of the eerie world portrayed in the TV series and its accompanying soundscape.

Cruise’s vocals haunt the listener like the whisper on a breeze through a forest of Douglas Fir pine trees and, nearly twenty seven years later, still send chills, shivers and flashes of terror down the listener’s spine. In my opinion, this is Cruise’s best work. Her follow up album, Voice of Love ,still dipping into the Lynch universe didn’t reach the same levels and the magic fades on subsequent later albums such as Art of Being a Girl .

1989 Julee Cruise

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Flesh & Blood – Roxy Music [#481]

by stegzy

In an effort to destroy good music, my eldest brother made me a copy of this on a home taped cassette. If he hadn’t perhaps the music industry would still be around today.

At the time of the cassettes issue, I was in my late teens and my main interest, as for most boys, was girls. Sarah Bamber was the then girl of my dreams but my interest was spurned regularly. So, like all good teen boys, I found solace by moping about listening to music, an activity spearheaded by the music of Chris Isaak and this album.

Songs from the album such as Oh Yeah and Running Wild featured heavily in my life soundtrack of the time. I still remember trying to garner attention by listening to the album sat on the veranda at Keswick Youth Hostel during a walking holiday with the church choir.

As I grew older and I realised that a moody male attitude alone didn’t get you laid. Nor did an interest in an American guitarist (Isaak) or a wrinkly lothario and his band. My appreciation of Flesh and Blood waned and the album became just another in my vast collection. Indeed, Sarah’s interest only piqued when I became unavailable and she later ended up having a brief fling with who she thought was my best friend as a way of getting back at me
for spurning her affections. Oh how I laughed as he drew her into his own world of despair, womanising and mysogyny.

This is Roxy Music’s seventh studio album and was my introduction to Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music and originally featured on the B side of a 90 minute cassette with the A side consisting of a collection of songs by The Tubes. Happily I now own the full album on digital media.

Which is a good thing as since home taping killed music.

1980 Bryan Ferry Roxy Music

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Fallen – Evanescence [#458]

by stegzy

I believe that the popularity of Evanescence can be linked to American music execs attempting to capture the zeitgeist of female fronted goth rock bands and the increasing popularity of big breasted valkyrien symphonic goth metal from Scandinavia. Their popularity was fuelled by their appearance on a variety of slightly emo-esque movies of the time such as Daredevil only to wane and disperse following rumours of Christian rock leanings.

Initially I was just as keen as most other people. I liked the sorrowful My Immortal and I started to admire their most popular Bring Me to Life until analysing the lyrics had me realise that there was something fishy in the belly of this whale and that there was possibly a leaning towards the insidious proliferation of religion in youth culture by conservatives keen on dulling the growth of the darker shades of popular culture in the shadow of Columbine and the implication of such culture in inspiring those involved in the shootings, with the additional moral panic whipped up by the American hyper-conservative based Murdochian press towards goths.

But that’s just my opinion.

The album Fallen is the bands first album (We’ve already seen their second album, Anywhere But Home, on the music project) and serious fans might suggest their only album (the band split and changed its line up before their third album). It’s presence in my music collection solely because I was fond of two tracks at a time when I should have known better.

2003 Evanescence

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Demo Tape – Big Ade & Simon [#360]

by stegzy

I’m not entirely sure who this is by. All I know is that it was given to me by my friend Min back in the 90s. The story behind it is that Big Ade (an associate of Min) and his friend (name possibly Simon) got together in Big Ade’s house and created a musical masterpiece using CueBass on Big Ade’s Atari. The added sting was that Big Ade couldn’t read a note of music.

Sadly I am unable to present the entire album for everyone to hear here, instead I created a music video to accompany this entry. It is also noteworthy that I created an album cover for my own purposes and that I have ripped the album from a cassette so sound quality isn’t great.

Enjoy.

Big Ade

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Deep Forest – Deep Forest [#354]

by stegzy

More tribal influenced music from the anthropological answer to Enigma, Deep Forest.

Perfect seduction music if you’ve got a green living room, giant potted cheese plants and a fetish for prancing about your living room in loin cloths while reliving Ibizan hauntology.

Curly kale.

1992 Deep Forest

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Death to the Pixies – The Pixies [#351]

by stegzy

Sometime in the 1990s I must have been living under a rock or something. It seems that, to everyone else, the greatest band that ever performed were around and releasing records. Of course, living under a rock meant that I was unaware of this. Probably in the same way as I was unaware of many other musical things. See, that’s what it was like in the pre-internet nineties; if you wanted to find out about the latest music you either had to know someone who worked at Our Price or read NME.

I didn’t know anyone that worked at Our Price. I knew someone that had a music shop, but they sold instruments and rented videos on the side. I also didn’t read NME. Paul Sanderson read NME. Mike Reagan read NME. Most other people I knew thought NME was something to do with miners or something.

Then the late nineties came and I was more musically astute. There I am listening to Uncut magazines 4AD compilation upon which is a track called Debaser. Only to me they’re singing about a steam basin. Lyrics have never been my strong point. My then pre-first-wife says to me that this song is by the Pixies and that I should like them.

At some other point in that time, there I am in work, whistling absent mindedly along to Debaser while doing a stock take in the stationery cupboard. Along comes my chum Nick. “I didn’t know you liked the Pixies” he says to me from under his beret and soul patched face. “I don’t” I replied. “Well you should like them“.

It seemed that if I wanted to be accepted in the world, I had to relinquish my grasp of seventies prog and, at that stage, eighties goth and embrace the modern musical age welcomingly by liking The Pixies. So I went to the Virgin Megastore (HMV was and is shit for music like this) and picked myself a copy of the Pixies’ greatest hits.

And this is said album. I know I should like them. But I don’t. I like two songs on their greatest hits, Debaser and Monkey Gone to Heaven. I should like more of their work. I don’t. I am a failure when it comes to being a hipster it seems.

4AD best of compilations Pixies (The)

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Dead Can Dance (1981 – 1998) – Dead Can Dance [#348]

by stegzy

A four volume compilation of various works by the band Dead Can Dance.

Being a bit of a DCD nerd, I couldn’t turn my nose up at this. Sure I have most of the tracks already on other albums but there are some tracks on here that aren’t available on conventional releases.

Radio recordings and rare songs appear here along with the foetal essence of some well known DCD songs. It also came with a DVD of the live Toward the Within concert which will appear here on the music project in a few years time.

Dead Can Dance Lisa Gerrard

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Cure for Pain – Morphine [#332]

by stegzy

By the time I became addicted to Morphine, it was too late. Mark Sandman had died of a heart attack and the band had been dissolved. Such a shame.

Read the rest of this entry »

Morphine

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Crooked – Kristin Hersh [#326]

by stegzy

You might know Hersh as either half-sister to Tanya Donnelly or lead singer of Throwing Muses. However, Kristin Hersh came into my life through the Uncut: 4AD compilation album and her song Your Ghost. I was later to hear her first solo album Hips and Makers from which the song came but was not too impressed.

Years passed but I still enjoyed Your Ghost. Then along came Learn to Sing Like a Star. Wow what a difference! Like a fine wine or a port or single malt whisky, Hersh had matured. So when I saw Crooked I had to get it.

Crooked is Hersh’s eighth studio album and she plays and sings with a rich style and many of the songs on this album can be heard on the previously project featured live album Cats and Mice. Worth a listen.

4AD Kristin Hersh

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Stegzy's Music Project

A commentary on Stegzy's album collection

House of Yes: Live at the House of Blues – Yes [#594]

Hotel Paper – Michelle Branch [#592]

Hotel – Moby [#591]

Home – The Gathering [#589]

High Broad Field – Sieben [#586]

Hidden Vagenda – Kimya Dawson [#585]

Hidden Treasures – Dead Can Dance [#584]

Hergest Ridge – Mike Oldfield [#582]

Heavenly Voices Parts 1 – 3 – Various Artists [#578-580]

Heaven’s Open – Mike Oldfield [#577]

Heart Still Beating – Roxy Music [#574]

Heart Shaped World – Chris Isaak [#573]

Headlines and Deadlines: The Hits of A-Ha – A-Ha [#572]

Harry Roy Collection – Harry Roy and his Orchestra [#569]

Happiest Days of My Life – David Galas [#567]

Flying Teapot: Radio Gnome Invisible Part 1 – Gong [#484]

Floating Into the Night – Julee Cruise [#482]

Flesh & Blood – Roxy Music [#481]

Fallen – Evanescence [#458]

Demo Tape – Big Ade & Simon [#360]

Deep Forest – Deep Forest [#354]

Death to the Pixies – The Pixies [#351]

Dead Can Dance (1981 – 1998) – Dead Can Dance [#348]

Cure for Pain – Morphine [#332]

Crooked – Kristin Hersh [#326]

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A commentary on Stegzy's album collection

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