Having built up a strong fan base and back catalogue in just a couple of years, Erasure turned into a full-blown pop phenomenon thanks to The Innocents, winning the British equivalent of the Grammy for album of the year and spawning a big American hit single, "Chains of Love." Stephen Hague took over as producer from Flood, perhaps smoothing out some points for a more general mainstream appeal but otherwise letting the strengths of the songs speak for themselves. It begins with another single and stone-cold classic, "A Little Respect," with a charging beat/acoustic guitar/synth arrangement and a flat-out fantastic performance from Bell, especially on the ascending chorus. Guest performances help flesh out a number of songs quite well. Wheeler and others reappear on "Yahoo!," a gospel-touched (musically and lyrically) number, while noted session performers the Kick Horns add just that to the "please come back" punch of "Heart of Stone." On their own, though, the duo continues in the same general vein of earlier releases while the Erasure formula of dance/synth/soul was now clearly established through and through, thankfully the combination of slight variety and overall performance prevents the album from dragging. The Innocents' ballads are perhaps a touch prettier than the lyrics would make them out to be, but if the sheen of songs like "Hallowed Ground" cuts away from the sometimes blunt images of poverty and hopelessness Bell calls up, the music still has a solid power. The CD version adds a fine original, "When I Needed You," and a fun cover of the Phil Spector/Ike and Tina Turner classic "River Deep, Mountain High."
A dream release for the Killing Joke faithful, this 2008 compilation collects the first four sessions the band did for the legendary BBC Radio DJ John Peel plus a bonus session recorded for Richard Skinner's program. The years covered are 1979 to 1981, so this isn't the usual career-spanning Peel comp, but it does follow the band as they evolve from a tribal post-punk unit that could have been signed to the esoteric Factory to an apocalyptic metal group that often landed in the pages of metal mag Kerrang!. Raw versions of the big, important numbers from the time -- "Wardance," "Complication," "The Fall of Because," and "Tension" -- are all here to illustrate the change. These under-produced alternatives either equal or better their official album counterparts but what's revelatory are the rare numbers like "Malicious Boogie" where the band play cowbell-driven, no wave funk as if they were Medium Medium or Liquid Liquid. Liner notes from Alex Paterson, who was a Killing Joke roadie before he was the Orb, speak to these experimental years with stories of guitarist Geordie's Wall of Sound and bassist Youth playing the "Rapper's Delight" 12" repeatedly. While it's a sliver of the longstanding band's history, anyone with a taste for their early years will be thrilled by this thorough, well-presented set.
Talk to anyone who was the right age in the early '80s for both pop radio and the dawn of MTV, and "She Blinded Me with Science" will inevitably come up. The most famous song from the reissued version of the album, it's a defiantly quirky, strange number that mixes its pop hooks with unusual keyboard melodies pitched very low and a recurrent spoken word interjection ("Science!") from guest vocalist/video star Magnus Pike. To Thomas Dolby's credit, the rest of the album isn't simply that song over and over again, making The Golden Age of Wireless an intriguing and often very entertaining curio from the glory days of synth pop. Part of the album's overall appeal is the range of participating musicians, no doubt thanks in part to Dolby's own considerable range of musical work elsewhere. "She Blinded Me with Science" itself features Kevin Armstrong on guitar, Matthew Seligman on bass, mega-producer Robert "Mutt" Lange on backing vocals, and co-production with Tim Friese-Greene. Elsewhere, Andy Partridge contributes harmonica, Mute Records founding genius Daniel Miller adds keyboards, and Lene Lovich adds some vocals of her own. The overall result is still first and foremost Dolby's, with echoes of David Bowie's and Bryan Ferry's elegantly wasted late-'70s personas setting the stage. If anything, The Golden Age of Wireless is the friendlier, peppier flip side of fellow Bowie obsessive Gary Numan's work, where the melancholy is gentle instead of harrowing. Dolby's melodies are sprightly without being annoyingly perky, his singing warm, and his overall performance a pleasant gem. Especially fine numbers include the amusing romp "Europa and the Pirate Twins" and the nostalgia-touched, just mysterious enough "One of Our Submarines.
One of the more prolific bands in the second wave to appear on the seminal U.K. indie pop label Sarah Records, the Sugargliders were two brothers (Josh and Joel Meadows) who hailed from Australia and blanketed the shops with an impressive run of singles. Filled with witty and heartfelt lyrics, catchy minor-key melodies, and Josh’s achingly pure vocals, the duo’s songs fit in perfectly with the Sarah esthetic but also added twists like the occasionally danceable beat and a sometimes very forceful and direct lyrical/vocal delivery. This collection gathers up songs from the six singles they released for Sarah between 1992 and 1994, and adds a few from the singles done for Australian label Summershine in 1990-1991 and the U.K. label Marineville in 1991. While completists may have wished for a double-disc collection that had everything the band put out during this time span, the 20 tracks selected do a fine job of summing up the thoughtful, heart-rending pop charms the duo unfailingly displayed throughout their short career.
Disappeared is the sound of drum'n'bass dissected, blended with a spy movie score, and given the acidic, demonic twist of a carnival sideshow. It's also Spring Heel Jack's best album. It's no surprise that the album draws comparisons to John Barry film scores, as Spring Heel Jack seems to consist of card-carrying members of a 007 fan club, but they pull out all the stops here, producing muscular spy movie music that seems extracted from Hades itself. Devastating, bleak, and intensely powerful melodies wail and storm, jazzy fuzz-box jungle notes twist in the air, and trumpets seem to assert that the forces of darkness have been let loose. Ambient noodlings and screeches cause tension and chills. "Mit Wut" is ominous and fierce big-band electronica. Sci-fi alarms ring out on "Galina." One wonders if the music is meant to be industrial-dance-jazz or meant to conjure a techno-spy-stompfest. Unlike the music of spy aficionado Squarepusher, there's little whimsy in these 11 songs. While big beat leanings occasionally crop up, as on "I Undid Myself," the tone of the album remains relentlessly, compellingly bleak. There are moments when the duo seems to strive for chill-out vibes and when evocative violins inject grace and beauty, but the album never gives up the tinkered madness at its base. "Wolfing" concludes the album perfectly, raging aggressively like a massive steam train headed toward oblivion. Noisy, stark, and brimming with inventive, confused electronics, Disappeared is Spring Heel Jack's masterwork.
%20Front.webp)
As a debut album, The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain), is a kaleidoscopic assemble of emotional nuances, cathartic clear-outs and encriptive scriptures of the soul. As an album, it is hermetically hallucinogenic, which day-trips into a lucid dream, whilst alternating between different realms of consciousness. As a front man, Bramah, epitomises all things mysterious, modest and emotionally driven and through his many incarnations has maintained a compelling mystique. From the unadulterated punk delivery, to the melancholic musings, to the chimerical crooning, Brannah has a voice which resonates and streams a whole spectrum of emotions. A diverse guitarist and accomplished songwriter, it is through his collaborations with Baines that The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain) is emotionally enriched and unconventionally pitched. A free-spirit and forward thinking artist, Baines is a keyboard whizz, whose swirls, whirls and neon trails add so much magic and ethereal beauty to this delightfully dark piece of art.
What could be a cosmic cousin of The Monochrome Set, The Stranglers, The Velvet Underground, Television and The Stooges, The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain) is criminally underrated, but somehow belongs in an esoteric cult or should be kept in a vault with all things sacred or secretly influential. It’s an album which sees the reunion of Bramah and Bains ignite a rebirth, and whose combatant spirit is strengthened through the creative collective of Blue Orchids. It is also an album which resides in its own age of enlightenment, amongst the pagan poets, misfits and new-wave nomads. Where 1982 was a year of defined Indie records, The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain) was of no fixed abode and whose fluidity of post-punk, neo-psychedelia, garage art-rock, Proto-Punk, ethereal new wave and token industrial rock, created an incandescent, emotionally raw album which was ahead of its time
When Streets tracks first appeared in DJ sets and on garage mix albums circa 2000, they made for an interesting change of pace; instead of hyper-speed ragga chatting or candy-coated divas (or both), listeners heard banging tracks hosted by a strangely conversational bloke with a mock cockney accent and a half-singing, half-rapping delivery. It was Mike Skinner, producer and MC, the half-clued-up, half-clueless voice behind club hits "Has It Come to This?" and "Let's Push Things Forward." Facing an entire full-length of Streets tracks hardly sounded like a pleasant prospect, but Skinner's debut, Original Pirate Material, is an excellent listen -- much better than the heavy-handed hype would make you think. Unlike most garage LPs, it's certainly not a substitute for a night out; it's more a statement on modern-day British youth, complete with all the references to Playstations, Indian takeaway, and copious amounts of cannabis you'd expect. Skinner also has a refreshing way of writing songs, not tracks, that immediately distinguishes him from most in the garage scene. True, describing his delivery as rapping would be giving an undeserved compliment (you surely wouldn't hear any American rappers dropping bombs like this line: "I wholeheartedly agree with your viewpoint"). Still, nearly every song here succeeds wildly, first place (after the hits) going to "The Irony of It All," on which Skinner and a stereotypical British lout go back and forth "debating" the merits of weed and lager, respectively (Skinner's meek, agreeable commentary increasingly, and hilariously, causes "Terry" to go off the edge). The production is also excellent; "Let's Push Things Forward" is all lurching ragga flow, with a one-note organ line and drunken trumpets barely pushing the chorus forward. "Sharp Darts" and "Too Much Brandy" have short, brutal tech lines driving them, and really don't need any more for maximum impact. Though club-phobic listeners may find it difficult placing Skinner as just the latest dot along a line connecting quintessentially British musicians/humorists/social critics Nöel Coward, the Kinks, Ian Dury, the Jam, the Specials, and Happy Mondays, Original Pirate Material is a rare garage album: that is, one with a shelf life beyond six months.
While Richard Thompson's devotees will tell you the man is a triple-threat genius -- passionate vocalist, compelling songwriter, and sterling guitarist -- even his most loyal supporters will concede that the dour nature of his songs and the no-frills production of many of his albums make the bulk of his catalog tough sledding for the uninitiated. Given this, 1991's Rumor and Sigh is arguably the best album for those wanting to sample Thompson's work for the first time. It captures Thompson at the top of his form on all fronts, but also gives his songs just enough polish to make them approachable for the unconverted, and though it's several shades darker than the average adult-contemporary album, it honors Thompson's obsession with romantic despair and the less pleasant quirks of fate without sounding depressing in the process. Producer Mitchell Froom tricked up Thompson's sound a bit, but his approach added to the material rather than interfering with it; the topsy-turvy keyboards and sharp, snapping drum sound on "Gray Walls" and "You Dream Too Much" actually add to their narrative drama, and Froom coaxed some of Thompson's most soulful vocals on "Why Must I Plead" and "I Misunderstood." Thompson actually gets funny on "Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands" and the darkly hilarious "Psycho Street," and Thompson fans who like his work straight with no chaser will be knocked flat by "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," perhaps the best traditional-style number in his songbook, and the harrowing "God Loves A Drunk," an unnerving tale of several kinds of addiction. While Rumor and Sigh is quite slick by Thompson's standards, its clean lines and bright mix serve both the songs and the bandleader quite well, and make Thompson's tunes sound like the radio hits they've always deserved to be.
%20Front.webp)
