John Kongos - Kongos

The Happy Mondays' Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches is one of my favorite albums and never fails to put me in a good mood.  But I hadn't really gotten into other bands of the same era and feel, so I wanted to search for some of their influences instead.  The Mondays covered at least two John Kongos songs that appear on this album.  

This album sounds like some pretty talented studio / session players (essentially Elton John's band at the time) dragged their instruments out to the woods, overloaded on really fantastic drugs, and tried to find Jesus.  It's no wonder the Happy Mondays like this guy so much.  You could spend a career trying to hit the same highs Kongos does.

Yellow Magic Orchestra - Solid State Survivor

I enjoyed YMO's self-titled debut, but Allmusic recommended their second album more.  These guys are often compared to Kraftwerk, but where Kraftwerk is steely and grey, YMO is popped colors, fun.  Here they ditched some of the traditional Asian tunes they had on their debut and save their cover song for "Day Tripper". 

I don't know as I'll keep looking for more YMO albums, though.  I do have a Ryuichi Sakamoto solo album that I've hardly listened to; maybe that's where I'll go next.

time away

My devotion to this kind of thing is a pendulum and apparently that pendulum got stuck in the inactive half for, well, a few months. I generally stopped listening to new music, stopped buying albums, and forgot about this entirely. I spent a bit more time reading (Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) and going through the backlog of podcasts (Best Show and WTF) until I was mostly caught up.

So where do I pick back up? There are the five albums in the previous post (from late April) plus these three I never got to:

Michael Rother - Flammende Herzen
Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis
Yellow Magic Orchestra - Solid State Survivor

That makes it eight. I want to get through at least four of those before adding some new wave, lovers' rock, and punk albums I want to listen to.

on deck

David Sylvian - Secrets of the Beehive
Henry Cow - Unrest
Ivor Cutler - Life in a Scottish Sitting Room
John Kongos - Kongos
Morrissey - Your Arsenal

blitzkrieg blop

Subtle - A New White

Of the non-Why? Clouddead-related stuff I've tried, this might be the best so far. So I want to revisit this later when I go into my annual Why? / Clouddead / Hymie's Basement binge.

Buzzcocks - Another Music in a Different Kitchen

I enjoyed this well enough but it's no Singles Going Steady.

John Fahey - The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death

I've been listening to another John Fahey album instead so perhaps I'll address that one.

M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming

Good, not great album. If someone played tracks from the last three or four M83 albums, I doubt I'd be able to connect any track with an album other than Kim & Jessie. Still excited about seeing them live, though.

Pisces - A Lovely Sight

A Numero release I thought I'd try. Nothing special here.

Television Personalities - Privilege

And Don't the Kids Just Love It is one of my favorites, so I was hoping for something a bit more, but Privilege lacks the same charm.

Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring for My Halo

This was the best album of last year.

I like this bit from the AllMusic review:

In an age where angst is delivered with the subtlety of a laser light show, it’s nice to hear some good, old-fashioned, smokin’-and-drinkin’-cheap-beers-on-the-porch-with-your-friends-style pessimism.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Flaunt It

There's a scene in High Fidelity when two young punks try to shoplift from Rob's record store. One of them drops their skateboard and Rob chases after them. They eventually drop their stash, which at a glance includes the Minutemen's Double Nickles on the Dime and Brian Eno's Music for Films.

"Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Breakbeats, Serge Gainsbourg. What are you guys, stealing for other people?"
"No, those are for us."
"You guys slamming to Joni Mitchell now?"

I should've followed up on those reference earlier, as I undoubtedly would've gotten to Yellow Magic Orchestra sooner than just last year. But here I am, just now getting to Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

Their album Flaunt It--which is essentially the extent of their career--is pretty wild. The sound is somewhere between Suicide and a glammed-up Devo with Max Headroom as the frontman. Not knowing much, I would've placed this as late 70s or early 80s, so I was surprised to find this didn't come out until 1986.

As much as I find it enjoyable, I don't think Flaunt It is really that mind-blowing. It's got a lot of energy and it's fun to listen to but man is it a handful. The song below is one of the few comedowns on the album, "Atari Baby."

Ellen Foley - Spirit of St Louis and Poly Styrene - Translucence

I rarely make blind buys but both these albums fall into that category. I knew Ellen Foley's Spirit of St Louis was considered like a spin-off Clash album, and I was also familiar with X-Ray Spex's Germ-Free Adolescents, so I suppose they weren't entirely blind. Both are pretty good albums but not superb enough to make me feel more adventurous about not trying before buying.

Ellen Foley was dating Clash guitarist Mick Jones, which apparently also meant not only would Mick produce the album but he'd get some of his bandmates to play on the album and even write a few songs for it, too. Any gaps left by the Clash were filled in by members of Ian Dury's band the Blockheads, so there's pretty good pedigree here. But Ellen's singing isn't too grand and these songs end up sounding like Sandinista! B-sides (if you can imagine what B-sides of a triple album would sound like). So even though Sandinista! is probably my favorite album, the association doesn't quite help boost Foley's album as much as she probably hoped.



As for Poly Styrene's album Translucence, I expected something like the awesomeness of X-Ray Spex but this is quite different. Instead of X-Ray's bombast, Translucence is muted and often unexpectedly pretty. There's the kind of instrumentation (mainly the use of horns) that I associate with Sandinista!-era punk copping Lovers' Rock, so that's all good. A few songs suffer from the 'repeat the title way too often' curse but otherwise this is an interesting enough album.

movin' on up

I don't think about albums in this way as much as I used to, but if I were to list my favorite albums Of All Time and compare that to what the list might've been a year or two ago, two albums would've moved up into the top tier: Nilsson's Schmilsson and Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom.

Nilsson was someone I only discovered this year, but I've been listening to Wyatt / Soft Machine for over a decade. I'd be doing pretty well if each year I found one or two more top-tier albums.

remnants from 2011

So after taking the month of January off, you'd think I'd be able to clear some of this out:

Subtle - A New White
Buzzcocks - Another Music in a Different Kitchen
Michael Rother - Flammende Herzen
Why / Odd Nosdam - Split EP
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
Gas - Pop
M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
Pisces - A Lovely Sight
Polystyrene - Translucence
Television Personalities - Privilege

I'll at least single out a couple of dead ends: Gas's Pop is something I may never find interesting, ever. The Why / Odd Nosdam Split EP is the definition of throwaway.

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.