pressing Shuffle now...
I Can't Decide by Scissor Sisters from Ta-Dah - I love this song, it's Ragtime influenced and all about having a fight with someone and not being sure whether or not you should kill them. I really like Ta-Dah, it is much more consistent than their debut album and the arrangements and melodies are much more confident.
Locomotion by OMD from Junk Culture - the other big single from Junk Culture (the first being "Tesla Girls" which I discussed in a previous post) Junk Culture was OMD's first attempt at being more accessible. Their early work was definetly that of an "Art Band" with pop instincts. Junk Cutlture serves as the bridge to Crush their first album that contained pretty straight forward love songs like "So In Love". Steel drum samples and a slightly rushed rhythm give the song a feeling of, well, locomotion and it's great fun.
Night and Day by Esquivel from Cabaret Mana - Esquivel was a brilliant arranger and producer. His pioneering use of stereo is even more astonishing that typically the tracks were recorded live in one take. It wasn't uncommon that musicians would have to quietly move from one microphone to another during recording to get the stereo sound Esquivel wanted. Most people would identify his music with the "Bachelor Pad" music of the 50's, but he was rooted in Latin Music which gives it a bit more depth than some of the similar music of the time.
Buried In the Sand by Duran Duran from Medazzaland - What do you do when the person who founded one of the most successful bands of all times with you suddenly leaves? If you are Nick Rhodes you pen the lyrics to "Buried In the Sand" Medazzaland is one of Duran Duran's best albums but it lacks any great singles. Instead it is a cohesive collection of songs about desperation and bitterness. John Taylor left when the album was almost completed and the band was forced to deal with the consequences. The two strongest examples are "Buried In the Sand" and "Who Do You Think You Are?"
Communication by The Power Station from The Power Station - Sadly the first thing that comes to mind when I hear this song is the fact that 3 of the 5 people responsible for this song are dead. At the height of Duran Duran's success Andy Taylor and John Taylor were so dissapointed with how Seven and the Ragged Tiger turned out that they decided to try to record an album closer to the "Sex Pistols meets Chic" concept that Duran Duran was built on. Along the way they hooked up with Robert Palmer and Tony Thompson then asked Bernard Edwards to produce (Bernard and Tony were members of Chic). The results are an album that really doesn't sound like anything else from that era. It's big sounding yet filled with funk guitar and bass, Robert Palmer had a distinct soul voice. This is once of the stronger tracks on the album, but it's not the perfection that their cover of T-rex's "Bang A Gong (Get It On) is.
Taking Islands In Africa by Japan from Gentlemen Take Polaroids - Japan is an acquired taste. Not everyone can appreciate David Sylvian's voice or the bands use of Eastern influences and themes. David once said that the problem with Japan was that there was no "emotional core" in the music and based on the lyrical content it would seem that he had no real desire to put himself out there and instead explored politics and relationships from a distance. Still, the other factor is that whether or not the artist puts any of themsleves in the songs, the audience will. This is one of the songs that I identify with. For me it's about yearning to go home to your family after being gone.
Pump It Up by Elvis Costello from Girls Girls Girls - For the longest time I didn't understand the music press's love for Elvis Costello, as a singer he is horrible and I have a hard time getting past that. But as I learned more about songwriting I grew to appreciate his lyric writing ability. This is one song though that I have loved since the first time I heard it. It is so energetic, I once heard him say that he basically wrote and recorded this on speed, and it sounds like it. It's chaotic and so pumped up that you can't help but feel the same way when you hear it.
Mindfields by The Prodigy from The Fat of Land - Early on The Prodigy was just another faceless "techno" act from the early 90's, but along the way they morphed and learned a thing or two about presentation, focusing on two of the three "dancers" he used for live shows he wrote material that made them into legitimate frontmen and that's when they started to garner success outside the club scene. The Fat of the Land was the culmination of that growth following momentum the song "Firestarter". This album borrows heavily from the Nine Inch Nails school of electronic music as rock and fuses it with hip-hop and techno rhythms. This song's vocal is a bit too repetitive though.
52 Girls by The B-52's from The B-52's - Like many people "Rock Lobster" was one of the first songs I heard by the bands emerging from the New Wave scene in New York in the late 70's. I didn't know what to think of the image though. To this day I've never been a fan of the B-52s retro look, but I really love their first album which is produced by Brian Eno. It wasn't until I was older that I realized Brian's influence. He produced some of my favourite music from that era by bands like Devo and Talking Heads.
Halo (Goldfrapp Remix) by Depeche Mode from Remixes 81-04 - In the early 80's, at the birth of the 12" single, remixes and extended mixes were simply extended versions of the single version of a song. The songs were still easily identifiable. Somewhere in the late 80's remixing became a business and the results strayed further and further away from the original. As this happened I began to deplore them and it became the primary reason I stopped being a completionist in my music collections of the bands I loved. The best story I read was by Martin Gore who talked about how he had called Underworld after hearing their remix of a Depeche Mode song the band had commissioned and was wondering if they could add a few more of the sounds or vocals from the original track into the remix. It turns out the remix was a different tempo and in a different key and in fact did not contain any elements of the original song to which he replied, then it's a different song. Most of the remixes nowadays sound like throwaway garbage by the remixers that they use to simply funnel money off the more successful acts. This remix though is probably one of the best I've heard in 10 years. Goldfrapp stayed true to the original and simply expanded on it making it almost like a duet between Dave and Allison.
Posted by John at May 22, 2007 10:03 AM