Can’t Look Away – Trevor Rabin
This is former Yes guitarist, Trevor Rabin, and his third studio album.
Cammell Laird Social Club – Half Man Half Biscuit (#242)
Cammel Laird Social Club – Half Man Half Biscuit
Cammell Laird Social Club is possibly one of my most favourite albums. Not only is it a sly dig at Buena Vista Social Club but it’s possibly the finest bit of musical wit and whimsy that has ever existed.
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Camera Camera – Renaissance (#241)
Camera Camera – Renaissance
Prog is a funny old thing. Lots of twiddly widdly. Lots of showing off. Long songs. Nice things like that. Punk came along and ruined it; turned music listeners into consumers of sweet saccarine junk with about as much artistic merit as a lump of tar.
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Buena Vista Social Club – Buena Vista Social Club (#231)
Buena Vista Social Club – Buena Vista Social Club
This is one of those albums that everyone seems to have.
Bridge over troubled waters – Simon and Garfunkel (#222)
Bridge over troubled waters – Simon and Garfunkel
In one of those odd little moments of synchronicity the day my beloved asked me to write about this it was mentioned in a book I was reading ‘the unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ where a bridge by a West Country pub is credited with being the inspiration behind the name. This may not be true, but Paul Simon is well known for his affection for England (and his English girlfriend who couldn’t face life in the limelight).
Breakfast in America – Supertramp (#220)
Breakfast in America – Supertramp
This album takes me back to my father’s office, filled with his diving treasures, a fascinating roll- top desk my mother later worked at (with an old cheque book in pounds shillings and pence in the drawer) and his drawing table where he would draft out plans. Oh, and the hi-fi, a futuristic silver thing that played my favourites on a Saturday morning when I wasn’t listening to Junior Choice with Tony Blackburn and Arnold the dog (woof woof) on the radio.
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Born of the Night – Midnight Syndicate [#212]
Born of the Night – Midnight Syndicate
If you ever want to give your neighbours the impression you are a goat worshiping Satanist or maybe get the locals gossiping about you being a bit odd. Then all you have to do is put this album on, invite a few local dignitaries round for a glass of red wine and roll your eyes uncontrollably while chanting in Latin every hour or so.
Seriously.
This album will make you seem like either a teenager trying to be all out goth or a middle aged nut case who wants Peter Sutcliffe or Charlie Manson as bunk mates. If you were holding a seriously dark Halloween party then yeah, this would go down well providing, of course, there are no plans to dish out psychotropic drugs with the jelly and ice-cream.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm7-DcYib64
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[Big] Bond Movie Themes – Geoff Love & His Orchestra (#209)
![[Big] Bond Movie Themes - Geoff Love & His Orchestra](https://stegzysmusicproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/screen-shot-2014-12-07-at-11-28-11.png?w=150&h=150)
[Big] Bond Movie Themes – Geoff Love & His Orchestra
Ok. Well it was going to happen. Some git tagged this album with the incorrect album name thus buggering up my alphabetising of the project.
Bond Movie Themes, or BIG Bond Movie Themes sees us back in the welcoming auralscape of Geoff Love’s easy listening. The main theme gets the Love treatment along with a number of Bond theme tunes.
Not as good as Geoff’s sojourn into Westerns or Sci-fi but a notable addition to his works.
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Bodkin – Bodkin (#208)
Bodkin – Bodkin
This album is exactly what I’m doing the Music Project for.
My music collection is so vast it is impossible for me to have listened to every single album. The point of this project is to listen, filter and discuss with others what the albums mean to me, them and the rest of history. It is also there for me to delete albums that I have no wish to listen to again. However it is also there for me to discover albums I didn’t know I had. This is like that.
Bodkin is a gem. A prize in Prog-ism. Heavy in Hammond organ. Crazy drug inspired lyrics and wild wild instrument solo breaks. What more could a prog fan want?
Bodkin were a Scottish progressive rock band from the 1970s Doug Rome (Hammond organ), Mick Riddle (guitar), Bill Anderson (bass), Dick Sneddon on drums and Zeik Hume on vocals. A smooth mix of dirty blues (much like the Groundhogs) and Heavy Prog (King Crimson). Unique sound. An absolute pleasure to listen to and almost akin to Thotch
Unfortunately, Bodkin is the only album Bodkin made and it leaves you wanting more. Considering I heard this for the first time the other week, the album has already gone up my personal charts and nuzzled itself between Illusions on A Double Dimple (Triumvirat) and Animals (Pink Floyd).
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Blue Lines – Massive Attack (#207)
Blue Lines – Massive Attack
As I’ve stated before during this project, when relationships break down these days there is often an amicable exchange of music via the ripping of jointly owned CDs and mergence of MP3 libraries. Unlike in the past where bitch fights would break out over who owned the Peter Sarstedt album, these days we can share and amalgamate, break up peacefully without the need to decimate music collections.
Unless you’re a bastard and you delete all your music just to spite them.
Anyway, this is an album gained through one such breakup. I’m not a big Massive Attack fan. I have their best of somewhere I think, though it doesn’t seem to have appeared on this project yet, and I have their “coffee table album” Mezzanine. But other than a few songs of there, I’m not a big fan. They’re ok. Just not my scene. A little like a seedy version of Portishead.
So I can’t really tell you what I think about this album other than I like one song on it. The rest is just Meh. I have no stories attached to the album and I have little memory of when it was added to my library.
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Album #97 – Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music – Hawkwind
Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music – Hawkwind
Hawkwind prog their way through 7 tracks of drug infused twiddle. How Hawkwind became as popular as they did I have no idea. Drugs in the 70s must have been some kind of mad shit.
Typical Hawkwind with only Reefer Madness, the title track, being of note. Twiddly keyboards and Gongesque overtones. One for the very stoned I think. How I ended up with it, I’ve got no idea.
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Are you Experienced – Jimi Hendrix [#85]
Are you Experienced? – Jimi Hendrix
I am experienced. I am experienced in listening to music.
Short of jumping into your TARDIS and travelling back to Woodstock, you’re unlikely to see Jimi Hendrix perform in these parts. Though if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably end up in Woodstock in Oxfordshire.
Oh how we laugh.
Anyway, this is Jimi’s debut album. Had you been about in the 60’s you’d probably be listening to it on your portable gramophone while older stuffy types look on disapprovingly. It’s got all the overplayed Hendrix songs, Foxy Lady, Are you Experienced and Hey Joe and runs into about an hours worth of playtime.
Personally, with my futuristic ears (they have their own jet pack), I can’t hear what the fuss was all about. It’s some bloke with a guitar. Unremarkable. Run of the mill. Nothing exciting. Nor stimulating.
I suppose back in the time it was ground breaking but probably only because it was harder to get yourself heard in those pre-internet days. Modest musicians would probably say that their skills on guitar are nowhere near as good as Hendrix. But that’s like Mozart saying William Byrd was the better composer.
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Album #83 – Aqualung – Jethro Tull
Aqualung – Jethro Tull
Sitting on a park bench listening to Aqualung reminds me about history lessons at school. Read the rest of this entry »
Annwyn, Beneath the Waves – Faith and the Muse [Album #76]
Annwyn, Beneath the Waves – Faith and the Muse
Until the last decade I had shamefully only heard of Faith and the Muse in rumours and student bedroom wall posters. Faith and the Muse have a similar style to Ordo Equitum Solis. Much like OES, Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, Faith and the Muse are popular amongst the dark clothe wearing goth fraternity. Dark in style with mediaeval tones, Faith and the Muse mix open atmospheric chords with wailing floaty dressed female vocals and, in some tracks, militaristic drumming.
I had only listened to Annwyn once before. I’m not sure I would choose them for a car mix tape or to accompany a dinner party. Unless I was trying to be some sort of hipster goth or impress some Twiglet (sic) obsessed teenagers on their first forays into the dark.
I don’t know why I find this kind of music enjoyable. Perhaps it is the mental images of dark and wet rainy streets that it conjures. In all, if your folk is too cheery, this is what you want. In a room. With joss sticks and pentagrams.
Angels Fall First – Nightwish [#73]
Angels Fall First – Nightwish
Long ago, deep deep in the forests of the snow bound lands of the bearded Vikings men gathered and sang of the faerie folk and mystical things too mystical for our closed modern minds to comprehend.
Spin forward several centuries and they’re at it again, complete with huge chested Valkyries, heavy metal guitars and lots of chugga-chugga riffs.
This album was my first experience of Nightwish. With it came a desire to visit Finland and see the forests and voluptuous valkyries while drinking salmiakki and growing a beard. The music had the added bonus of “This is shit get it off” chants from the wife. Of course, I didn’t, I just lapped it up in Lapland, sought out other similar artists and probably damaged my credibility as a music lover along the way.
But I don’t care. I was into Nightwish before metal hipsters. That makes me cool.
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Album # 61 – The Album – Various Artists
The Album- Various Artists
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.
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Actual Fantasy – Ayreon [#54]
Actual Fantasy – Ayreon (1996)
The second Ayreon album in this project.
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.
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Music Project – Album #50 – Absolute Beginners (Soundtrack)
Absolute Beginners (Soundtrack)
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.
Music Project – Album #49 – Absinthe: La Folie Verte – Blood Axis & Les Joyaux de la Princesse
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.
Abraxas –Santana #48
Abraxas by Santana
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.
I know some of you guys like Santana.
Good for you.
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Music Project – Album #47–A’arab Zaraq Lucid Dreaming–Therion
A’arab Zaraq Lucid Dreaming by Therion
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.
Music Project – Album #46 – A World We Pretend–Twilight Garden
A World We Pretend by Twilight Garden
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?
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Music Project – Album #45 – A Metal Tribute to Abba – Various Artists
A Metal Tribute to Abba – Various Artists
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.
In the meantime….here is a Youtube clip
Music Project–Album #44–A Thousand Roads–Lisa Gerrard & Jeff Rona
A Thousand Roads by Lisa Gerrard & Jeff Rona
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.
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Stegzy's Music Project 