VW's Top 1000 Albums

[The Region Legion]

979. King Crimson - Discipline



Released: 1981
Genre: Art Rock
Label: EG Records
Producer: King Crimson & Rhett Davies

The 1981 return of King Crimson, last seen in 1974, was no doubt a shock to all. Having only retained drummer Bill Bruford from the previous line-up, guitarist Robert Fripp recruited Tony Levin - bassist with Peter Gabriel and renouned session musician - and guitarist/vocalist Adrian Belew. At that point, Belew had been a professional musician for all of 4 years, but had already toured and recorded with Frank Zappa, David Bowie and Talking Heads. It was clear just from the names that, rather than return to the almost Mahavishnu Orchestra-style jazz rock of the last incarnation, this group would be something different entirely.

The album opens with now-fan favourite Elephant Talk, a quirky little ditty underpinned with Tony Levin's Chapman Stick riff, Bruford's polyrhythmic patterns and the two guitarists soon-to-be-trademark interlocking guitar parts. Whilst previous albums lyrical content had ranged from perennial fantasy-based prog rock cliches to descriptive interpretations of The Night Watch by Rembrandt, this song was a list of words starting with the same letter to describe different kinds of talking. Throw in the obvious gamelan influences and the comparisons to Talking Heads came all too quickly.

However, what separated this band from the Talking Heads is that the latter needed practically a second version of the band to accomplish what this group could with 4 people, and these guys rocked harder as well. Indiscipline - a track inspired by Belew's wife's descriptions of a sculpture she had made during his absence - and Thela Hun Ginjeet, inspired by an attempted mugging on the streets of London during the recording of the album (and featuring a tape recording of Belew's first reactions to the event), rock harder than anything their former contempories could manage, let alone their new modern counterparts.

However, it's the penultimate track on the album that stands out to me as the best. The Sheltering Sky starts with Bruford's log drum, and over the course of some 8 minutes, builds gradually up to a searing guitar solo by Fripp on the then new technology of guitar synthesiser - which this group practically put on the market - and then gradually back down to the log drum again. It's a hypnotic piece of music that anyone with an ounce of patience will surely find mesmorising.

The band went on to make 2 more albums with this line-up before disbanding for a decade in 1984, but neither albums captured the pure inspiration and invention of this first meeting.

In 1981, King Crimson were the best band in the world.


Elephant Talk: http://www.sendspace.com/file/b7tu3c
Thela Hun Ginjeet: http://www.sendspace.com/file/ba94oy
The Sheltering Sky: http://www.sendspace.com/file/rtnfmf

[Retinend]

#984

The Beach Boys - Holland



Released:   Janurary 1973
Genre:    Pop, Rock
Label:   Brother/ Reprise
Producer:   The Beach Boys


(I had a hard time choosing this album over SURF'S UP for my choice of a favourite Beach Boys album. Tracks like 'TIL I DIE, FEEL FLOWS and, of course, SURF'S UP have such power and melancholic lyrical majesty that I feel tempted to chose it just to discuss these tracks at length... but it is HOLLAND which I find superior in the sum of its parts.)

The album opens with the Brian song, SAIL ON SAILOR, providing a driving, mid-tempo kick-start to the album. I think, however, that it's newcomer, Blondie Chaplin's vocals which really sell this song; a husky and earnest delivery of the lyrical character's hardship. The song's simple rock arrangement and minimal harmonies would be striking to a Beach Boys fan familiar only with PET SOUNDS. This phonic departure is sustained throughout the album, lending a more mature and sombre mood to the album as a whole, with earnest ballads like THE TRADER, LEAVING THIS TOWN and ONLY WITH YOU, holding an understated profundity, separate from the heartbreaking longing of SURF'S UP's 'TIL I DIE and WILD HONEY's LET THE WIND BLOW.

The standout track on this album is without a doubt the sublime, sardonic imperialist fable, THE TRADER, written by Carl Wilson – not one of the most prolific writers, but a Beach Boy whose songwriting skills are not praised nearly enough. The song's lyrics, telling the story of the 'Velvet Robes's conquest of an indigenous population, might not approach Steely-Dan-esque levels of oblique wit, but nevertheless contains some expert sarcasm: "trader... cleared humanity from his way/ he civilised all he saw/ making changes every single day say".

The song, opening with this toe-tapping narrative, flourishes and turns into something truly wonderful at the 2:20 mark, with the instrumentation melting away until only a silk-smooth bassline, quiet shaken percussion and heavenly harmonies remain. Carl's vocals transform from sharp and acidic, in the first half, to hushed and incredibly intimate. This second half of the track is without a doubt one of the most moving and perfectly executed pieces of music I have ever heard. At the lyric "beyond tomorrow...", I almost well up. It is not something explainable, but the simple combination and sequence of notes is affecting on a very real, emotional level. The lyrics of the song, from this point also adopt a poetry and mysticism to equal the beauty of the music.

LEAVING THIS TOWN is a similarly sublime ballad; honest, heartfelt and with another fantastic lead from Chaplin, which, while not to any extreme, gives a soulful, relatively rough performance - in contrast with the other members' note-perfect vocals.

The 'California Saga', a suite of three consecutive songs, is another standout feature of the album, which I believe should be listened to undivided. The nostalgic melancholy of BIG SUR echoes Neil Young's HARVEST, released the year before, and features a beautiful vocal performance by Mike Love (as does the rest of the suite). THE BEAKS OF EAGLES, half a sombre spoken poem by Robinson Jeffers, half a brisk, optimistic pop tune, which segues straight into the silly, zippy CALIFORNIA, which, although I admit is slightly cheesy, provides a cheery reminder of more optimistic times for the band.

The album is bookended with the second of the two Brian songs: FUNKY PRETTY, a song about a superstitious girlfriend. Whilst I have nothing against the song, it is probably the weakest on the album (not a great insult), and is made all the more incongruous by its stark contrast to the rest of the otherwise coherent album.

HOLLAND deserves recognition as one of the Beach Boy's very best albums. Epic, emotional, inspiring and uplifting, HOLLAND represents the Beach Boys at their most understated and mature. The playful, naïve elements of previous classics, WILD HONEY, SUNFLOWER and the superb SURF'S UP, are nowhere to be found on this album, and the sound of the record, whilst unmistakably theirs, bares little relation to anything else in their repertoire. With Brian no longer able to handle duties of chief songwriter, the writing talents of the other band members were able to shine. HOLLAND proves that the Beach Boys were more than just Dennis and Brian.

http://sharebee.com/16020d96
The Beach Boys - The Trader

[Retinend]

999. Gene Clark - No Other



http://sharebee.com/5cbf55c3 Life's Greatest Fool
http://sharebee.com/52eeac23 Some Misunderstanding

Just started listening to these downloadable tracks. Really liking these two. I should investigate.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Let's hope this thread keeps up this high standard.  Lots of interesting stuff - really liking The Microphones, and that Elephant Talk's an interesting listen as well.

[buttgammon]

WHERE ARE THE FREEEEE TRRAAAACKS

Oh shit, sorry. Two tracks from Chairs Missing coming up:

http://sharebee.com/76baecef Marooned
http://sharebee.com/6162a276 Outdoor Miner

[alan nagsworth]

Aye, don't be a dick.

Does the same apply to you, cock-chops?

[jamiefairlie]

978. New Order - Movement



Released: 1981
Genre: Post-punk
Label: Factory
Producer: Martin Hannett

So, what do you do when your singer, lyricist, musical driving force and, most importantly, friend decides, on the verge of impending massive success, he can no longer struggle to undo the Gordian Knot that has become his life? Well, if you're a bunch of chancers from Salford & Macclesfield, you change your name, discard all your old songs and simply start all over again.

Although now overshadowed somewhat by the pioneering electro-pop they produced later in their career, those first faltering years (1980-1982) displayed New Order at their rawest and most vulnerable. No longer able to hide in the massive shadow of Ian Curtis, they were forced, unready and unwilling, to take centre stage themselves. This sense of uncertainty, mixed with overwhelming numbness and loss permeates every track on debut album Movement. Recorded throughout 1981 with Joy Division Producer Martin Hannett, the album is made up of tracks the band had gradually introduced to their new live set throughout 1980 and the early part of 1981.



Opener, Dreams Never End, starts with a stunning bass guitar riff and, yes, it is a bass and not a guitar. The song, written and sung by bass player Peter Hook, is similar in style to debut single 'Ceremony' and finds the band employing a slightly lighter tone but continuing the lyrical style of Ian Curtis. Oblique and full of imagery, the words conjur a strong sense of longing:

To be given your sight, hidden in a warm peaceful night
A nervous cry for your eyes, a fractured smile that soon dies
A language drawn from your life and soul, a sign that might have begun
A long farewell to your love and so, a long farewell to your soul

The album continues with Truth, which, along with 'Dreams Never End', was one of the first tracks the new band wrote in the immediate aftermath of Ian's death. Slower in pace and with Bernard Sumner on vocals, the song employs a drum machine for the first time and is heavily draped in atmospheric synths and powerful bass. The master stroke though is the beautiful use of the melodica, an instrument also used on Ceremony's b-side 'In a Lonely Place'.



Advancing to the b-side, we have the most stately and dignified track on the album, Doubts Even Here. Again sung by Peter Hook, the song would not have been out of place on Joy Division's last album 'Closer'. Advancing at funereal pace, pushed on by relentless martial drumming and again swathed with heartbreaking synth washes, the song is punctuated with one of Hooky's most elegiac basslines. Also of note is the song's climactic extended coda which features a finely woven vocal web created by Hook and Gillian Gilbert, the new recruit to the band.

The final track featured here is The Him (no prizes for guessing the reference point there). Another song based on Steve Morris's pattering tom-tom rhythms and Hook's fine bass work. The instrumental sections that structurally pass for a chorus see the song suddenly change pace into a frenzied, but still contained, howl of anguish. Over all of this Sumner solemnly intones lyrics that can only be interpreted as a homage to their absent friend:

Small boy kneels humble in a great hall
He pays penance to the air above him
White circles, black lines surround me
Reborn, so plain my eyes see
This is the reason that I came here
To be so near to such a person

I'm so tired, I'm so tired

Movement is caught in a vacuum, it's not Joy Division but nor is it New Order, or at least what people expect of New Order as fashioned by their subsequent musical style. Because of this, it's been somewhat airbrushed out of history as an awkward thing that gets in the way between Joy Division dying and New Order 'inventing dance music' with Blue Monday. For those of us that were there at the time though, it remains a very, very special reminder of what was lost but, at the same time, that there was still hope and that the spirit would go on. To this day, it's still the album that touches me more than any other.

Selected Tracks:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/lrvv68

[Don_Preston]

976. Frank Zappa - Lumpy Gravy



Released: 1968
Genre: Experimental, Classical and everything in between.
Label: Verve
Producer: Frank Zappa


"The way I see it, Barry, this should be a very dynamite show."

And so opens Zappa's first solo release. It was also his first significant dalliance with classical music, co-crediting the album to The Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, which he would go onto further visit later in his career.

The album is split into two parts (Lumpy Gravy Parts I & II) and both contain a similar combination of classically performed themes and motifs that became standards during the Mothers of Invention concerts (such as Oh No and King Kong), fragments of pop ditties from the Studio Z days of the early 60s (such as the jaunty Duodenum) all broken up with various pieces of dialogue from MOI members and other associates, recorded inside a piano with their voices treated using a sustain pedal.



Although it's often conceptually linked to the classic "We're Only In It For the Money," indeed a speech bubble from a photo of Frank asks if it is 'Phase Two of We're Only In It For the Money,' I think it shares more with the MOI's second release, the under-rated Absolutely Free, due to the schizophrenic presentation of the music. Indeed, the album brings to mind an almost Python-esque ethos, due to the constantly changing pieces of music, some of which are later revisited further into the album.

It's not among Zappa's most accessible albums by any means, although there is plenty of enjoyment to be had from this madness through sheer perseverance.

Selected (Youtube) track:

The first 10 minutes of Lumpy Gravy Part I - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apTPXPBMBXk

[The Cloud of Unknowing]

#994
Todd Rundgren - Todd

By coincidence, I was thinking about this album as I wrote my half-arsed appraisal of the Operation Ivy disc.  Everything I've heard from this Rundgren album is staggering.

Glad you agree! I have no idea why it's so dismissed.

Interestingly, the late Ian MacDonald ('Revolution In The Head') reviewed some Rundgren re-releases in Uncut magazine about 10 years ago, giving the usually-accepted masterpieces Something/Anything? and A Wizard A True Star three and four stars, but awarding Todd a five-star rave.

...the tragic-transcendent "Todd", Rundgren's only clear-cut masterpiece. One of the towering works of the Seventies, this double-album goes against the grain of its self-adoring glam-rock era by resurrecting the global idealism of the late Sixties counterculture. Haunted by his predecessors' failures, Rundgren presents a vision of hope shaded with a melancholy perhaps partly induced by his Ritalin come-downs, yet braced by determination and his finest assembly of songs: work of depth, passion and confrontational engagement inhabiting an astounding synthesised sound-world wherein wit, anger, sadness, avant-garde sonics, and lyrical beauty co-exist in mature balance. Few records can plausibly be called great. "Todd" is pre-eminently one of them [...] Three and a quarter minutes into 'Heavy Metal Kids', something happens which you don't hear much any more: an eruption of musical feeling so passionate that it rocks you right back on your heels ..... all hell breaks loose, bassist John Miller busting out of the riff into raging double-time while Kevin Ellman switches both sticks to his snare-drum, driving the coda to self-immolating consummation under Rundgren's demented lava-spewing guitar. All the expressive power of modern rock explodes in this mad minute - all the feeling, the ambition, the frustration, the megalanova mind-detonating excitement. Future generations will, one trusts, look back and recognise that, in moments like this, rock expressed crucial aspects of being alive in the late 20th century which classical music either gave up on or lacked exponents talented enough to capture and reproduce.

[The Region Legion]

the under-rated Absolutely Free,

I never understand how that album can be under-rated, I think it's easily in his top 5 best, and well worthy of an appearance on this list. That and about 30 others...

[Retinend]

Interestingly, the late Ian MacDonald ('Revolution In The Head') reviewed some Rundgren re-releases in Uncut magazine about 10 years ago, giving the usually-accepted masterpieces Something/Anything? and A Wizard A True Star three and four stars, but awarding Todd a five-star rave.

Hell yeah. Fuck classical (except Beethoven, you're cool).

I first became interested in him when Adam of Adam and Joe played 'Song of the Viking' (great track) on one of their radio shows, and talked about his spat with John Lennon. I honestly never warmed to Something/ Anything, even though it was the first Rundgren album I bought. I only fell in love with his stuff when I heard 'Hermit of Mink Hollow'. Like I said in my review, Wizard, A True Star strikes me as 'playfully experimental' - it's layered and by no means a novelty, but there's no real passion, while 'Todd' really stands up as one of the greatest Rock albums I've heard. I think he disappeared up his own arse a bit with Initiation, but I don't think he made a bad album in the 70's.

[Don_Preston]

I never understand how that album can be under-rated, I think it's easily in his top 5 best, and well worthy of an appearance on this list. That and about 30 others...

Seems a bit forgotten as it's inbetween Freak Out! and WOIIFTM. But always one of my favourites.

[Gradual Decline]

Sleep - Dopesmoker

Of course, Jerusalem is a much better album.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Really? I've not actually listened to Jerusalem myself (other than that one bit that I posted above). There are times when I think maybe I'll just listen to a little snippet of Dopesmoker - in which case having it already chopped into separate tracks would seem to be handy - but I always end up listening to it in its entirety anyway, so I don't know.

Or were you just joking?

[Gradual Decline]

Ah no, soz if it came over that way Claude, I wasn't joking. Jerusalem sounds better than Dopesmoker.

It's always felt the weightier record. Dope is longer, so I guess that resonates more with people, it works as some kind of massive, unwieldy beast, a final 'up yours!' to the man at the major label. Sonically it doesn't quite cut it, for example, a minor detail like the double tracked guitar solos on Jerusalem adding so much to the albums overall feel of suffocating, fucked up otherworldliness.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Hmm, interesting. I'd always just taken it as read that Dopesmoker is the definitive work, with Jerusalem being just a redundant, cut down version. I didn't realise there were more fundamental differences between the two. I may have to get a copy now.

[Vitalstatistix]

Where's Boston Crab's 5,000 word essay on Daft Punk at?

[The Cloud of Unknowing]

I think he disappeared up his own arse a bit with Initiation, but I don't think he made a bad album in the 70's.

Initiation is a difficult one, and it gets slagged off so much, but I've grown to love it.  'Real Man' is obviously genius, but even the 36-minute instrumental I now find absolutely hypnotic, especially on headphones.  My main gripe is the compressed sound; I mean, the title track has two drummers - Bernard Purdie and Rick Marotta for Cliff's sake - going hell for leather, but they're practically indistinguishable.
Coincidentally: you may already know that Todd's being interviewed all this week on the Ken Bruce show on R2 for the Tracks Of My Years segment.  Monday's and Tuesday's shows are on the iPlayer - listen from about 2hrs 10mins on - or there's this link that isolates the Todd extracts (if you don't mind Real Player): http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/bruce/tomy/tomy_thisweek.shtml 

[The Boston Crab]

975. Daft Punk - Homework



Released January 20, 1997
Recorded 1993–1996
Genre House
Label Virgin
Producers Thomas Bangalter, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo


My favourite albums as a sixteen-year-old were 'Parklife', 'I Should Coco' and '1977'. I was young, affected and had too much curly hair. I had no time for dance music. It was devoid of personality. It was cold and inhuman. Besides which, it didn't impress at the eyeliner & indie under-age sweatfest where I used to try and fail to pull of a Friday evening. If you had an 'Olympian' T-shirt, you were the fucken MACK. Around about that time, our school had a bizarre extended French exchange thing. Twenty French birds came over to ours for a month and then we went back to theirs for same a few months later. When the initial letters came through, I was lucky enough to be paired up with a bit of a cracker so my spunk-addled brain was doubly chuffed to see that she was a big fan of English music. Being creative with the truth, I told her that I was also a really big fan of French music, such as Serge Gainsbourg (whose "L'Histoire de Melody Nelson" I had recently picked up by chance and rather enjoyed) and MC Solaar (who my classmate was always banging on about to score cool points). Desperate to satisfy the rule of three which would surely back up my pointless lie, I remembered my mate Sconny had bought a Daft Punk single on cassette a few months ago. It had quite a vile salmon pink font and sat right next to his stereo so the image had burned itself without my conscious notice. I knew they were French but knew nothing else. Fuck it, old bean. They'll do. So, off I sent my little letter, revealing all my esoteric finery in the hope that she might give me a snog. When the reply came, I was pretty pumped to find that she was not only a fan of Gainsbourg and MC Solaar but that she also quite liked Daft Punk. I'd really chosen well and I probably got a boner in expectation. The only problem now was that I really needed to actually get hold of some of these records or I'd be revealed as a pasty-faced poseur fraud. Gainsbourg wasn't a problem, I already had his best one (so Q magazine said) and I could borrow a load of MC Solaar for a few weeks off my mate's older brother. Daft Punk was trickier though because I didn't know anyone who had it. Cock. The weeks went by and although I'd listened to (and surprisingly enjoyed) Sconny's tape, which turned out to be 'Da Funk', I knew it wasn't enough to significantly pad out conversations which should have been brimming with my Francophone expertise.

Shortly before she was due to arrive, I somehow came by twenty quid, legged it over to Virgin and bought 'Homework', purely for face-saving purposes. This is how warped I am. That night, I took it to my mate Tom's as backing music for some Actua Soccer on the PlayStation and as the game loaded up, I whacked it on, just to familiarise myself with it a little. Well, we never got to play that game for another couple of hours. Both of us stopped immediately, looked at the speakers and wondered what the hell that warping bass blurt was. We looked at each other, frowning, as the muffled distortion gradually revealed a refrain of sorts 'da funk back to the punk, come on!' 'What the fuck does that mean?' I thought...then the ice-precise Billie Jean beat dropped and it didn't really matter. I can't say I got every track on the album that night but I hadn't been so excited by music for as long as I could remember. A couple of weeks later, the French birds were here, I fell in love at first sight with my exchange partner's best friend and the house parties began. One night, a new mate who was also doing this exchange played me a tape recording of Daft Punk's 1997 Essential Mix and everything changed for me. It revealed the sources of their inspiration, it showed the blueprints that they'd studied meticulously but more importantly, for me, it solidified their own musical achievements. Having crept out from under my indie-kid blanket, I now had a context in which to place them.



They hadn't always been involved with house and techno. They'd started in a band called Darlin', with one of the chaps from Phoenix. They played some pretty simplistic fuzz-pop and were infamously described as 'daft punk' by Melody Maker, depending on whose story you subscribe to. They released two tracks on a vinyl split on Stereolab's label. I've uploaded one below, it's an interesting curiosity, a cover of the Beach Boys' song of the same name – and unsurprisingly enough, it's where they got the band name. The other track, 'Cindy So Loud', is so unbelievably shit, I'll post it only upon PM special request. Whether or not the review stung them into submission, whether or not it was inspiration from Laurent Garnier's thumping residency at the Rex Club, Paris, whether or not Thomas Bangalter's dad (the writer/producer of Ottowan's D.I.S.C.O.) bought all their new equipment for them, they returned shortly after with an E.P. of minimal techno which impressed Glasgow's Soma label sufficiently for them to put it out in 1994. I'm not sure how or why because two of the three tracks are quite shit. In fact, it's still difficult for me to see how 'The New Wave' and 'Assault' came from the same duo which produced the orgiastic throbbing waves of 'Alive'. In 1996, they were signed to Virgin, released an E.P. containing 'Da Funk/Musique/Rollin & Scratchin' and that was pretty much it. They snared as many grubby-pawed indie urchins as they did Nuyorican house dons, I was just a bit late to the party...



As I mentioned earlier, 'Homework' isn't a revolutionary record in terms of genre-busting experimentation. Its influences don't extend too far beyond Chicago house and Detroit techno. Virtually every track has the same structure. The drum sounds seem almost implausibly dry, identical hi-hats skip over the entire album. So why did it change how I felt about music forever? It's just the sound. It could be their obsession with American FM radio compression. It could be the way they ran their analogue synths through guitar pedals so they sounded 'like an orgasm'. It could just be the teenage sweat in their bedrooms (where they recorded their 'Homework', naturally). The entire record smothers me with this intangible euphoria. Everything hums and throbs and defies closer inspection. What sounds superficially primitive somehow becomes much more than the sum of its parts. If that sounds like vague fanboy wanking, consider that people are still trying and failing to emulate that kick drum sound over a decade later – an aeon in dance music terms. Where the pretenders fail is in even attempting to dissect the Homework sound down to its most familiar tropes. Many records want to sound like this. None do. From the sleazy, metallic caterwaul riff of 'Da Funk', via the rave-gospel stabs of 'Phoenix' through to the indistinguishable vocal slicing through the winding sludgy funk of 'Teachers', these samples originated elsewhere but the sound they produce on 'Homework' hasn't yet been replicated.

For those who fell in love with this album but didn't know where to look next, I envy you. With their side-labels, Roulé and Crydamoure respectively, Thomas and Guy-Man explored every last possibility of these sounds, with at least half a dozen tracks at least the equal of what they put together with this album. I spent the last of my teenage years dreaming of a solo Bangalter album on Roulé...at least Cryda managed to put out two 'Waves' mix compilations, the first of which is effectively French House 101, with 'Holiday On Ice' and 'Santa Claus' sounding, to my ears, like proto-alternate-versions of 'Around The World' and 'Phoenix'. Unmissable. Yes, 'Discovery' is a classic. Yes, it thrilled me. Yes, I expect it to appear in this list at some point...I might even do it myself...but this is the one. Ironically, the best thing about the 'Discovery' release for me was the bizarre exclusive content 'Daft Club' concept which ultimately resulted in a release of the 'Alive 1997' live album, which shows them, post-'Homework', at the absolute top of their game. Not the crowd-pleasing poptastic lightshow megamix of a decade later, just two twenty-year olds changing dance music forever. I wish I'd been there instead of that Cornershop gig. Still the greatest night of music of my life is when I saw them play at Bugged Out. I'd heard that afternoon that Guy-Man was flying in for a special guest DJ set so I phoned everybody I knew who might be interested. We turned up and found that it was actually a full Daft Punk set with Thomas playing solo live for an hour in the middle on DATs, drum machines and samplers...I can still remember it all.



I'm not going to upload any tracks from this album since I expect most people with even a passing interest in house/techno already own it. Instead, I'll point you in a continued direction with two tracks off their solo labels and the aforementioned Darlin' curio.

http://sharebee.com/47e81a23 - Darlin' - Darlin'
http://sharebee.com/ffd44230 - Le Knight Club (Guy-Man & Eric Chedeville) - Holiday On Ice
http://sharebee.com/64a64b31 - Thomas Bangalter - Spinal Scratch (the best house track I've ever heard)

Special Extra Bonus: For those who didn't step into the Dance Music thread, this is Thomas Bangalter solo, playing live at Further Festival in 1996, absolutely unreal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ7rMzORPgg

[The Boston Crab]

Where's Boston Crab's 5,000 word essay on Daft Punk at?

Woo! Uncanny...

[Why I Hate Tables]

974. Saul Williams - Saul Williams
Released   September 21, 2004
Genre   Hip Hop
Label Fader
Producer Various



Saul Williams is an author, a performance poet, an actor, a teacher and an activist but first and foremost (to me anyway) he is a rapper and a damned good one. He can work with Trent Reznor, Rick Rubin or sample Bad Brains and still whatever he produces just sounds like Saul Williams. He manages to cover U2 and not sound pompous. This album may not even be his best, it's just my favourite it so happens. He's also the brother of the guy who plays Omar in The Wire. He's been described as the 21st century Gil Scott-Heron, and that's not really far from the truth. He is, however, very much his own man.

Musically this album is fantastic. Talk To Strangers revolves around an eerie descending piano melody played by Serj Tankan. Seaweed deserves special mention for the unusual underwater melodies, gamelan sounding percussion and Cocteau Twins sounding chorus vocals. List Of Demands revolves around a stuttering synthesized I Wanna Be Your Dog riff, and Telegram uses that Bad Brains sample to incredible effect in a low budget Bomb Squad explosion. Sometimes he misfires slightly, like on Surrender (A Second To Think), where he decides to sing.

His voice is perfectly good it just seems that he's only using it to distract from some of the clunkier lines. On the closing track, Notice Of Eviction and on his Niggy Tardust album, he sings to better effect. Still after a few listens it just becomes part of the fabric of the album as a whole.

Whatever's going on in the background, though, the main thing you notice is the lyrics and Saul's delivery of them. You can't ignore them. Saul is high in the mix, imparting wisdom like a patient, understanding version of Chuck D. When someone else appears, like Zach De La Rocha on the album highlight Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare), a track bizarrely used in an advert a few years back, they imitate Saul. The guy's voice is that powerful, and it's made even stronger by the words that are coming out of his mouth. As he says on the opener Talk To Strangers, he doesn't "have the diction for the makings of a thug", and it makes all the difference to his delivery of these particular lyrics.

The topics he covers run from the downfall of hip hop (Grippo, Telegram and Notice Of Eviction) to trying not to be too black in high school (Black Stacey) and a lot of the tracks here cover more than one. On African Student Movement he's literally just listing words, but you don't realise until you read the lyrics. Simply because they're so well chosen.

Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare) genuinely moved me to tears the first time I heard it, from the sheer emotion that Saul poured into it and the intensity of the whole thing.

If they ask you to believe it question whether it's true
If they ask you to achieve, is it for them or for you
You're the one they're asking to go carry a gun
Warfare ain't humanitarian
You're scaring me, son
Why not fight to feed the homeless, jobless, fight inflation?!
Why not fight for our own healthcare and our education?!
And instead, invest in that erasable lead, 'cause their twisted propaganda can't erase all the dead
And the pile of corpses pyramid on top of our heads
Or nevermind, said the shotgun to the head.

I could sit here and quote lines off this which have stuck in my head all day but that gets no one anywhere. Needless to say, you could actually get a lot of enjoyment out of reading the lyrics cold. Separated from the music and Saul's voice, though, you're missing part of the big picture. Before I heard this (through being a Nine Inch Nails fan and listening to Niggy Tardust. There'll no doubt be a NIN writeup from me somewhere along the line.) I had little place for hip hop (other than Public Enemy) in my CD collection. Now I've found that despite the fact that Saul thinks it's a dead medium, it has/had a lot to say in the past.

Talk To Strangers
http://sharebee.com/18384332

Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare)
http://sharebee.com/aae85b09

[Vitalstatistix]

Woo! Uncanny...

I fucking knew it!

Nice post btw :)

974. Saul Williams - Saul Williams

Amethyst Rock Star is great. I'll check this one out. I had no idea he's Omar's brother!

[trotsky assortment]

I've only heard Saul Williams on one of the Buckethead albums... Might check him out later.

[Retinend]

990. Joanna Newsom - The Milk Eyed Mender



Released:   3 May 2004
Genre:   Harp and shrieking
Label:   Drag City

When you listen to The Milk-Eyed Mender, what immediately jumps out at you is Newsom's voice; it's a trembling wail that ranges from plaintive purring to savage screeching, the multitracked harmonies cast over harpsichord, pitched somewhere between a shrieking banshee and a hive of bees.

Her tremendous voice takes The Milk-Eyed Mender to all kinds of magical, mournful places.

En Gallop

http://sharebee.com/f8ae4159

The Book Right On

http://sharebee.com/4df03422

This young lady has a funny ol' voice.

[Toad in the Hole]

It's an acquired taste, for sure - and one which I still can't get, I'm afraid.  Some great tunes but those nails running down the blackboard over the top of them are problematic for me.

[Vitalstatistix]

Ys is stunning. Newsom's voice is somehow more tenable.

[Retinend]

It's an acquired taste, for sure - and one which I still can't get, I'm afraid.  Some great tunes but those nails running down the blackboard over the top of them are problematic for me.

I like it, in fact I have a penchant for weird voices (not that I've shown it in my choices... or my next one). I've listened to that first track about 10 times today. You don't hear enough harp in pop music.

[trotsky assortment]

Newsom is the poor-man's Victoria Williams.  There, I said it.

[Retinend]

Ys is stunning. Newsom's voice is somehow more tenable.

Just bought it today. Who said that piracy is killing the music market?

[falafel]

Absolutely stunning album, that. Each song a carnivalesque, picaresque epic. If my return to CaB endures, maybe I'll drop it in here if nobody does first. And I'd put more effort into it than I did with the singles thread, because I genuinely thing Ys is absolutely unique and just super-awesome.