on deck

Gas - Pop
M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
Pisces - A Lovely Sight
Polystyrene - Translucence
Television Personalities - Privilege

Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Volume 2: Judges

Admittedly I didn't really get this the first few times around. I had it on in the background and thought it was just another dude making some abstract noises electronically. There were some spoken word bits that sounded an awful lot like Laurie Anderson. It sounded interesting, kinda Aphex Twin-y, but with all the tools available to musicians today, it didn't sound like anything mind-blowing.

Which is why it's a good idea to read a bit about stuff sometimes. What's going on here is mind-blowing on both the inhale and exhale. It turns out these songs are done by Colin alone with no overdubs or loops. It's just him, his saxophone, and about 20 well-placed mics. So in a sense the only manipulation here is in the mixing.

So now knowing that, I wish I could go back to ignorance and try to listen to the music just for what it is. Now when I hear it I have difficulty getting past the question, "how in the hell..."

I'm not too familiar with the sax but what he's doing must destroy the reeds. So witness the music of destruction:

on deck

John Fahey - The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death
Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis
Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Flaunt It
Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring for My Halo
Yellow Magic Orchestra - Solid State Survivor

to revisit

It's not really fair to call these dead ends, but they've been in the rotation for a while and I wanted to get them out. So, temporary dead ends, perhaps to be revisited.

Right now I am initially dismissing Robert Fripp and Brian Eno's No Pussyfooting as an album that never risks dabbling in the world of the interesting. Apparently it's better known for the way it was recorded rather than, you know, how the music actually sounds. And Ash Ra Temple's debut album I'm thinking is too cosmic, not enough rock. I need more Gottsching, less Schultze.

I'm having trouble with finding a good version of the Ellen Foley / Clash album to listen to so I'm pausing on it, too.

New York Dolls

The Ramones' first album came out in 1976. "God Save the Queen" was released in 1977. So sometimes it blows my mind that, the Stooges' Fun House came out in 1970 or T. Rex did Electric Warrior in 1971. In a similar feat that makes me double-check the chronology, the New York Dolls' first album came out in 1973. It was produced by Todd Rundgren in the same year he did A Wizard, A True Star, an album that seems the polar opposite of punk's straightforwardness.

I can't really say I like this better than the Stooges or T. Rex or whatever but it's still pretty amazing for what it is. I'll check out their second album as well. In the meantime, here's some trash:

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

The theme for The Exorcist is one of the most recognizable movie themes in American history. But it's not as well known that the theme was from an early album of prog rocker Mike Oldfield. Oldfield came out with Tubular Bells in 1973; it was used in The Exorcist in the same year. So the first few minutes of this album, at least, are already familiar. The rest of it, perhaps not so much. Tubular Bells is nearly ubiquitous at used record stores, so I decided to give it a try.

What a treat! At first, the unusual time signatures and general repetitiveness of the music reminded me of Steve Reich and other classical acts. With time, though, the way various instruments are introduced, the way things culminate, peak, decay, soar, and disappear reminds me more of prog rockers like Soft Machine. It's rock, it's kinda jazzy, it's well-composed. Tubular Bells is only two tracks; each spans the entire side of a record, much like Soft Machine's Third album. So it's not surprising to see that Oldfield has some connection to Kevin Ayers. (The surprising bit is that he was 16 [16!] when he went on the road as part of Ayers' touring band.)

There are about 50 different instruments that come into the mix here, and Oldfield is playing the vast majority of them. It seems in the early 70s there was this trend of a self-made album, like Paul McCartney's McCartney, Stevie Wonder's Music of My Mind, Roy Wood's Boulders, and Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star. There's a level of ambition and talent in those albums that seems absolutely inconceivable today.

Really, the more I dig into this album the more amazing it seems. For instance:

Tubular Bells, originally dubbed Opus 1, grew out of studio time gifted by Richard Branson, who at the time was running a mail-order record retail service. After its completion, Oldfield shopped the record to a series of labels, only to meet with rejection; frustrated, Branson decided to found his own label, and in 1973 Tubular Bells became the inaugural release of Virgin Records.

Yowza.

Edith Frost - Calling Over Time

I came to this one when trying to find other albums produced by Jim O'Rourke. I had never heard of Edith Frost before. Calling Over Time is her debut, released in 1997 on Drag City. It's pretty sparse, usually just a guitar and/or piano, sometimes with another instrument or two low in the mix. Chicago being an incestuous pit of musicians, some other members of Gastr del Sol were involved in the recording, but this doesn't really have the feel of something like Camoufleur.

This normally isn't something I would seek out, but I'm glad I found this one. It's a fantastic winter album, incidentally. Maybe I'll try some other Drag City stuff I haven't tried before, like Palace Brothers, and/or revisit some more Smog and Will Oldham / Bonnie Prince Billy / whatever albums. As for Edith Frost, she only has three other albums, I might as well check them out, too.

Yellow Magic Orchestra

Coming across something like Yellow Magic Orchestra vindicates this dumb effort to keep finding new music.

As much as I enjoy Krautrock, I never really want to listen to much Kraftwerk; I find it too uptight. YMO is like a Japanese Kraftwerk, but fun to listen to. This, their self-titled debut, is considered the first computer-themed album. This came out in 1978, the same year as Space Invader!

I came to YMO in a fairly roundabout way. Basically I got to this through Destroyer, via Japan. Destroyer came out with Kaputt either early this year or late last year. In an interview with Dan Bejar about the album, he mentioned something about David Sylvan records. So that got me to his solo career as well as the band Japan. On some of those records, Ryuchi Sakamoto was listed as a collaborator and YMO in general was considered an influence.

Pitchfork: Back in your twenties, would you ever imagine that you'd make an album like Kaputt?

DB: No, not at the time. When I got into the American scene, I put aside a lot of stuff that was dear to me. There was this 10-year period where the idea of putting on a David Sylvian record was ludicrous because it was just too lame. I banished Morrissey from my life in favor of Sun City Girls, so I only really discovered Your Arsenal in my thirties. It's embarrassing.

Pitchfork: Do you think your 25-year-old self would think Kaputt sounds lame?

DB: For me to bother with it at 25, someone would have had to sit me down and said, "No, you should actually listen to this." Maybe I'm selling myself short. At that time, I was almost exclusively listening to classic rock records from the 60s and 70s.

Yeah, that's where I am, or where I have been for the past five years, listening to classic rock records from the 60s and 70s, really in need of someone to sit me down and tell me to listen to stuff. You'd think the internet would make it relatively easy to find where to go next, but it's not that simple. If anything, it provides access to too much. It would be overwhelming to take that much in.

Anyway, this is definitely one of the better finds. Last weekend I was giddy when I saw the translucent yellow vinyl version for under 10 bucks at the local record store. I fully expect to check out some more YMO and related stuff like Sakamoto's solo work.

Nilsson Sings Newman's 12 Songs

Getting into Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman have been two of the better things I've done this year. I knew Randy Newman was writing songs for others in the late sixties; he penned the intro to Van Dyke Park's Song Cycle, "Vine Street" as well as some songs for Harpers Bizzare and similar bands. And even though he had his first solo album in 1968, it wasn't until Nilsson came out with Sings Newman that Randy was introduced to a wide audience.



It seems hard to imagine why Nilsson would've done such a thing at that point in his career. He had some success with his first three albums and his big single that he didn't write, "Everybody's Talkin'" but Nilsson Schmilsson was still to come. So maybe he hadn't reached the peak of his success but he was definitely on the way up when he drops an album of songs written by some no-name guy, Randy Newman. Just the idea of doing that seems unheard of in today's world of constant self-promotion.



Listening to Randy Newman is strange. He has a unique style and relies on similar melodies in some songs, most of which (for me and others around my age, I expect) well-associated with the Toy Story movies. I know that may be unfair, but it's hard to listen to songs like "Yellow Man" or "My Old Kentucky Home" or whatever without thinking of Woody and Buzz Lightyear. Still, I've severely enjoyed his early albums, which can usually be found for under five bucks at vinyl stores.

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.