Boom Bip and Doseone - Circle

I came across this one from two directions. One, I'm slowly going through the cLOUDDEAD-related works beyond Why?'s solo work. So eventually I would've gotten to this Doseone / Boom Bip collaboration. Circle also came up on a list of song cycle albums, so that brought this to the top of the list of things to check out.

This one is super weird. It's so left-field it makes cLOUDDEAD sound like Will Smith. I think there's a part where Dose raps about laundry instructions. Even though it's just Dose One on vocals and Boom Bip supplying the backdrop, it seems that each of the 29 tracks has some different genre or bent. Occasionally it returns to a theme about a birdcatcher, but only briefly.

Boom Bip does some pretty amazing work here; the Allmusic review mentions DJ Shadow and Aphex Twin, that sounds about right. Overall it's undoubtedly the most unusual hip-hop album I've ever heard, and one I'll keep coming back to.

on deck

Ash Ra Tempel - s/t
Buzzcocks - Another Music in a Different Kitchen
Michael Rother - Flammende Herzen
New York Dolls - s/t
Why / Odd Nosdam - Split EP

Jens Lekman - An Argument with Myself

It's hard to believe it's been four years since Night Falls Over Kortedala. He was fairly prolific from 2003-2007: only two real albums but plenty of EPs to fill the gaps. But Jens does great stuff so I'll take what I can get. Here I like the title track but nothing else is particularly note-worthy. I just hope he's got another album on the way soon.

on deck

Edith Frost - Calling Over Time
Ellen Foley - The Spirit of St. Louis
Randy Newman - 12 Songs
Subtle - A New White
Yellow Magic Orchestra - Yellow Magic Orchestra

dead ends

Spiritualized - Lazer Guided Melodies

I think I tried to get into Spiritualized once in high school, then again in college, and even this third time around it's not really clicking. This dreamy-pop, soft psychedelic, spacey shoegaze is nice to have on in the background but I can't ever focus on it enough for active listening. Also, I'm constantly comparing it the Verve's self-titled EP (which also came out in 1991) and their first full album, A Storm in Heaven. I listened to those so much in high school that I basically can't hear anything but Verve when listening to Lazer Guided Melodies. Oh well.

Klaus Schulze - Irrlicht

Holy moley this is creepy. I was listening to it at home alone in broad daylight and I had to turn it off because I thought I was going to get murdered. It's perhaps unfair to call this a dead end; I'll still check out some of his other works. I reckon I checked this out due to his history with Ash Ra Tempel, but it turns out Schulze wasn't involved with my favorite album of theirs, Schwingungen. Since it's Schulze, I expected it to be synth-heavy, but instead there are no synths to be found here on his debut album. It's all organic, both in the sense that there's no electronic manipulation and that an organ drone is the dominant instrument. It's amazing how evocative this album is, but it's not something I'll return to often.

Duran Duran - Duran Duran

I gave it an honest try but this doesn't do much for me. I'm still going to check out Rio, so if that one clicks, I may return to their self-titled debut.

Prefab Sprout - Two Wheels Good

I've been listening to this almost non-stop for weeks now. Seems like an appropriate fall-weather album. I suppose the closest thing that comes to mind is the Smiths, with a bit of the Mekons thrown in for fun on songs like "Faron". Very clean and polished, though. Thomas Dolby produced!

Two Wheels Good was known as Steve McQueen in the UK; the name was changed stateside due to a legal conflict with the McQueen estate. (Steve had died five years earlier; I never knew how he died--that is a story definitely worth Wiki'ing.)

I don't remember how I came across this one. It was probably searching 'sophisti-pop' on AllMusic, trying to find anything similar to Scritti Politti's Cupid & Psyche 85. So I may end up checking out some other Prefab Sprout albums, as well as other sophisit-pop albums.