Stegzy's Music Project

A commentary on Stegzy's album collection

Dec 31

Leftism- Leftfield [#669]

by stegzy

Another soundtrack of mid nineties culture. A time where less seemingly mattered and the optimism of a new millennium was peeping over the horizon.

Leftism was never one of those albums that I went and bought but it seemed to be in most people’s music libraries or displayed proudly on their coffee tables having been cited as one of the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die in either the 2005 book by Robert Dimery or the 2007 article in the trendy British Berliner-sheet, The Guardian.

To be fair I had completely forgotten about it and, had it’s familiar album art not popped up on a list on a long forgotten laptop hard drive some years ago, I might have never even included it in the music project and I guess now, with slightly more mature ears, it tickles some nostalgic gland and has some memorable melodies.

Released in 1995, Leftism is contemporaneous with the likes of Portishead’s Dummy William Orbit’s Strange Cargo Hinterland and Tricky’s Maxinquaye all having a similar flavour and vibe of tripping off your tits in a “presocial media world”.

Aside from a few tracks (Melt, Open Up and Original) I really can’t say that the album is that remarkable. Moby was doing similar stuff and so was Massive Attack I guess I just had my head too deep in Chris Isaak’s Forever Blue and other goings on to notice.

1995 Columbia Leftfield Progressive House

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Apr 14

Jardin D’Eden – Arom [#647]

by stegzy

Album Cover Back before the great internet download free for all of the early noughties and way before iTunes, Amazon Prime and Spotify, pioneers of the internet created diverse websites which fostered creativity instead of stifling it. One such groundbreaking website was called Peoplesound which encouraged and facilitated unsigned bands to release their music through the site who would curate and aggregate their works to potentially new fans.

For many bands this would be their first foothold into the world of music, indeed, a number of former Peoplesound artists went on to be hugely popular for example Sugarplum Fairies to name one. But more on Peoplesound in the future.

One of the Peoplesound artists I fell for was a french group called Arom. Now, if you’re ever thinking of starting a band, can I suggest that you use a word or phrase that is Googleable because Arom brings up all sorts of results, very few if any, relate to the band Arom. Or, for that matter, the band Arom I’m writing about, as it appears there have been several other bands with the same name.

The particular itteration of Arom we’re interested in today is one, possibly from France, maybe Canada or Belgium,  who have a bit of a “Bjork meets Portishead” sound. I actually have two versions of the album – the Peoplesound EP and the official album which is available on Apple Music.

The Peoplesound EP (2000ish) features 5 tracks, 3 of which, after much post-production, made their way to the official album (2007) which features 11 tracks – all of which have been heavily processed and, in my opinion, have lost the haunting focus of the EP.

Jardin d’Eden by Arom is available on Apple Music and Amazon

2007 Arom Etheral Wave Fairplay Peoplesound Trip Hop

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Dec 9

Blue Lines – Massive Attack (#207)

by stegzy

MassiveAttackBlueLinesBlue 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.

 

Massive Attack

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Jan 13

Music Project – Album #11: 18 – Moby

by stegzy

18 by Moby

Ah Moby. Your baldness makes you who you are.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Moby. To me, his albums are nothing but coffee table music. The kind of music you put on when you’ve got some girl back to your flat that you want to romance over very large glasses of red wine in the warm autumn evenings.

Unfortunately, every music editor for television documentaries and films since 1997 has immediately turned to Moby for incidental or illustrative music. 18 is one of those albums where you spend the majority of the time listening to it half expecting to see the irritating toothy grin of “Professor” Brian Cocks [sic] loom into view and give one of his patronising monologues about why you are doing the dishes.

After you have washed Brian Cocks’ blood off your hands you then start to muse about which film the song you are listening to appeared in (Extreme Ways is the end credits tune for the Bourne films). Your date looks on horrified at the bloodied corpse of Brian Cocks and listens to your pleas that it was for the best as you could never let him take the over Sky at Night since Patrick Moore’s death. It was for the good of the nation. At this point she picks up her bag and leaves. The evening spoilt. Thanks to Brian Cocks. Brian Cocks and his baldy musical chum Moby. He looks at you from the album cover. Grinning that “Heh! I’m famous for playing bits of records me!” smile and you vow to track him down and do the same to him as you have done with Brian Cocks.

Then, while you clean up the bloody cadavers of Moby, Cocks, Cameron and anyone else that takes your fancy, you think “Hey! What I could do with is some nice background music. I’ll put that Moby CD on…”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18_(Moby_album)

2002 Moby

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Jan 11

Music Project – Album #8: 10000 Hertz Legend by Air

by stegzy

10000 Hertz Legend by Air

I first heard Air in the mid 1990’s when they made 1997-1998 more bearable for me. That was Moon Safari. This is the album that followed.

At the time, the wife and I thought our selves very avant garde. Listening to music by French musicians of the electronica genre. Hey, we even read the Guardian newspaper on Saturdays. And we had a coffee table.

Yes. The coffee table that groaned under the weight of our extensive coffee table music collection. Coffee table music? Did I explain that concept?

Ok. You know when you go round to people’s houses. No probably not. People dont go to other people’s houses anymore. Not like they did in the 90’s. People sit at home and interact with others through the wonders of a like button. Well before the thumb when people visited others and held non-judgmental dinner parties, people would leave books they had no intention of reading on the coffee table for the guests to peruse and assume levels of intellect and culture. Likewise, the concept passes into music. Albums that people would play when they had guests as background music. It would show the visitor that the host was cultured, stylish and a Guardian reader. Hey, they probably also had a copy of the Buena Vista Social Club somewhere and they could then sit and discuss how everything was going well with their lives.

10000 Hz Legend could have been one of those albums. Sadly, Moon Safari did too much of a damn good job and it wouldn’t be until the recent Le Voyage Dans la Lune that Air would recapture the Moon Safari vibe. Legend is a little bit too much different to Safari to ease into. It’s like having a new conservatory built then completely demolishing it because you want a new carpet. There are some good tracks though, Wonder Milky Bitch is very weird while Sex Born Poison adds to the feeling of odd aural eclectica present but Caramel Prisoner takes you back to the Air pool with a nice gentle splash.

It’s another grower.

http://www.allmusic.com/album/10000-hz-legend-mw0000004288

2001 Air

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Jan 10

Music Project – Album #1: 69-95 by Lemon Jelly

by stegzy

’69 – ’95 – Lemon Jelly

I must have first heard of Lemon Jelly when I was living in Huskisson Street in Liverpool, so that must have been about 1999-2000. I most certainly had some of their other albums on my battered old Creative Jukebox 2 and that died when I worked at Liverpool University.

Anyway, in this, the first of several Lemon Jelly albums that I “own”, the artists have used samples from their own record collection to piece together a tidy package of eclectic and eccentric electronica. The first track launches us into a rousing maelstrom of sound that whips us back in time style wise. At times the thumping beats can be a bit exhausting but the album maintains a consistent form. By the middle track ’79 The Shouty Track the listener is cheekily reminded of their time travel through the archives by a heavily Doctor Who influenced track. Curiously, I actually have a mix of the same track where the creator has mixed in the Doctor Who theme which works really well. Then further in, we reach a track where William Shatner does his “talking” to great effect. I understand that in return for this favour, Lemon Jelly provided some of the music for Shatner’s Has Been.

If, like me, you like variety in your modern music then you might like this album. For me, it’s a grower. It used to be my least favourite Lemon Jelly album, but continued listening has made it act like a dose of thrush which has spread across my musical taste buds. Even so, I couldn’t listen to it every day. Maybe occasionally.

2005 Lemon Jelly

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