The Album Review Club - Week #126 - (page 1531) - All Mod Cons - The Jam

GoatersLeftShin said:
Ok, I'll put you out of your misery! I don't think anyone would guess this.

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading, and listening, through these music threads so I thought I'd like to contribute an album for you to listen to. I hope you enjoy listening to it just as much as I've enjoyed listening to all yours. And a big thanks to @BlueHammer85 and @RobMCFC for putting these together, I've found lots of new music to enjoy.

I could've easily picked Sgt Pepper, Abbey Road, Revolver by The Beatles. Or Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones, Ok Computer by Radiohead, Pocket Symphony by Air or Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. Not to mention anything by Joni Mitchell or Steely Dan.

However, the part I've really enjoyed with the albums the most is the ones where it's something I've not heard before. I loved @KnaresboroughBlue 's choice - something I didn't expect. I also enjoyed listening to Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk, Let It Be by The Replacements and Foxtrot by Genesis as well as others. So my choice is something that I don't think many people will have heard, but I love. I have listened to this I'd say once a month for about 20 years now and I've never got bored of it. But first a bit of a backstory of how I came to find and love it.

When I was growing up, the main music I heard was my Dad's and he was really into Yes, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell etc. I didn't appreciate it as a kid, but as I got older I love it now! However, there was two songs I remember hearing quite vividly in the early 80s which had a profound impact on me: The Model by Kraftwerk and Joan of Arc by OMD. I'd never really heard this...'futuristic sound' before. The sound only a synthesizer can make. It sounded so other-wordly and unusual to me. I must've listened to The Model hundreds of times after I recorded it! It was a song which lead me to start playing the keyboards (badly).

Back in the 80s you could easily learn to play songs like The Model on cheap keyboards. I could never dream of copying any prog rocker! My Mum n Dad got me a Yamaha keyboard and I copied Kraftwerk songs even though it was hopeless - my £50 Yamaha couldn't cut it and in truth I got bored of it a bit. It might sound odd, but even though a lot of music in the 80s was made with synths, it wasn't the synth sound I liked as it sounded too modern - the original, soft, analogue sound. I think there was a certain naivety about the sound I loved.

By the time the late 80s came around I lost all interest in synths especially once the Stone Roses etc came in. I dropped the keyboard and started playing the guitar. However, after a few years I was getting bored of guitars and one day I heard The Model again and basically rediscovered my love of synths. I very nearly chose Trans Europe Express by Kraftwerk as my album (I know The Model isn't on it). I am a big fan of pretty much any music from the 1970s and I started looking at the origins of synth music and discovered ambient music. The starting point was Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" and I found it astonishing that anyone would write music that didn't have to be listened to actively! I had no idea music could be like that! I found the whole idea of it nonsense and yet fascinating - surely there couldn't be any decent music like that?

For those who've not come across it before, ambient music is designed to sit in the background and be unobtrusive. It doesn't grab your attention, it's not meant to. There's no choruses, sometimes no form or structure, it's meant to enhance the atmosphere. It could be music for lifts, meditation, a 'soundscape', noise or whatever. However, when it's done well it's superb. It does take a certain amount of listening to as it's very different to pop, rock or jazz.

I soon started scouring the internet for reviews of 70s ambient music as I knew I would find that soft synth sound I loved. Instead, I found this entire "world" of music that was never played on the radio or TV, never really discussed, never bothered with apart from a few websites dedicated to ambient music. I was finding some music that I found astonishing in it's ambition, particularly given the technological limitations of the times.

I loved ambient from the off and went from Brian Eno's "Music for airports", through to Steve Hillage's "Rainbow Dome Musick", Jean Michel Jarre's "Oxygene" and "Equinoxe" to Tangerine Dream's "Phaedra" and "Rubycon". Phaedra and Rubycon were superb and reminded me of the worlds that Roger Dean drew for Yes album covers which I adored looking at as a kid. I started to remember the "other-worldly" sound from The Model and Kraftwerk with "new ears". I loved it. However, none of these albums were a patch on one I found which absolutely blew me away:

Planetary Unfolding by Michael Stearns:



Planetary Unfolding is an ambient masterpiece.

It was recorded in 1981 by the American artist Michael Stearns. He composed it on a synth and it is based on a dream he had where all of the Universe was made up of sounds. It sounds absolutely pretentious, but it's not - I can't think of any other piece of music which sounds so perfect to describe what space sounds like. It is regarded as a classic of ambient music. It can be played in the background but you'd do it a huge disservice.

There's 6 pieces on the album and it only lasts 45 minutes which is quite short for an ambient album. Some of the songs are on Spotify, but the full album isn't sadly. If you want to listen to it in full, you will have to listen to it on YouTube. The tracks are:

In The Beginning...
Toto, I've A Feeling We're Not In Kansas Anymore
Where Ever Two Or More Are Gathered...
Life In The Gravity Well
As The Earth Kissed The Moon
Something's Moving

I won't go through each track, I just think you have to listen to it for yourself. The opening track begins from a low rumbling to a crescendo at around 5 minutes where it sounds like the entire Universe has been created, it's the only words I've got to describe it.

I expect a lot of people will find this something quite different. It's not an album to make you move, sing or dance to. It's there to provide background atmosphere, meditate or just sit outside watching the stars. It moves slowly, builds up slowly and gives you the time to listen to it. If you persevere with it, you'll find so much in the music. It is simply beautiful. In my mind, rightly or wrongly, I think this could be played by a classical orchestra and I kind of see it as a 'classical piece'.

I can put this album on at work and just get absorbed in the sound and block out any distractions. I can put this on at night with a few beers and just relax. If I've been listening to something like Rage Against The Machine, it calms you down and soothes! If you've had a mad Pantera-half-hour, this is ideal to cleanse the ears! Even though it is a synth album, I find that it has such a natural, organic sound, I really can't describe the sound at all - you just have to listen to it. If someone asked me what a fly-by of the early Universe sounded like it would be In the Beginning! What sound does a star make as it's pulled into a black hole? Life in the gravity well. It's got that epic "size" of sound.

I am astonished it was made 40 years ago, it's not aged at all. I also find it astonishing how anyone could 'hear' this in their head and then start to find the sounds and put it together. To make each piece sound different, yet blend to the next movement so naturally just astounds me. The music doesn't change much, but it changes a lot too.

It is something very different to the rest of my favourite albums, but I love it just as much as any Beatles, Stones, Bjork etc album. It's just different, very different. And that's what I love in my music, different sounds for different moods.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed your choices!
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Good write up Rob, I don't know any ambient music really so look forward to hearing this.
 
mancity2012_eamo said:
Firstly I’ll apologise for coming across like I was criticising you. Far from it.
I like your passion and get what I think is your humour, that’s spelt correctly by the way, I’ve learned a fair deal and listened to new stuff from your posts alone.
I more saw it as a demonstration as to why I said I don’t really like these polls, by Rolling Stone or NME or whoever else and I was always reluctant to get involved in music threads that have their own lists of one to hundred, or whatever.
Not so much because of my own indecision, but I see my taste from the sixty-seventies through to now as ever changing and evolving as I get older. That doesn’t mean I don’t like what I liked back then, but often means I appreciate now what I didn’t before.
Hindsight and all that.

I love the debate and hearing new music in particular but don’t have any interest in where that places anyone’s selection in a chart.
Listening to other peoples reasons for loving a piece helps me to maybe give things a go.

It was me being touchy tbh.
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No worries! I wasn’t offended in the least mate. There isn’t a single bit of music out there that is universal in its appeal and there never will be. Though TBF there are some Beatles songs that are probably close :)

Honestly I just use lists like those to find new stuff to listen to and sometimes — definitely not always — highly-ranked records end up having some appeal to me.

Just as two examples I found a now-beloved Archers of Loaf record through one of those lists, but I also bought (back when you bought music) a PJ Harvey record because of its reviews and couldn’t understand in the least what the fuss was about.
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
No worries! I wasn’t offended in the least mate. There isn’t a single bit of music out there that is universal in its appeal and there never will be. Though TBF there are some Beatles songs that are probably close :)

Honestly I just use lists like those to find new stuff to listen to and sometimes — definitely not always — highly-ranked records end up having some appeal to me.

Just as two examples I found a now-beloved Archers of Loaf record through one of those lists, but I also bought (back when you bought music) a PJ Harvey record because of its reviews and couldn’t understand in the least what the fuss was about.
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I’ve tried listening to My Bloody Valentine a few times because of the wonderful critical reviews but find the production on the recordings almost unlistenable.
It’s a pity because I actually hear something in them that’s attractive to me, but by and large it is one indistinguishable lyric after the next.
 
mancity2012_eamo said:
I’ve tried listening to My Bloody Valentine a few times because of the wonderful critical reviews but find the production on the recordings almost unlistenable.
It’s a pity because I actually hear something in them that’s attractive to me, but by and large it is one indistinguishable lyric after the next.
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“Only Shallow” is on my list of top 20 songs — but they were definitely a sound band, not a song band.
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
“Hey, Foggy. You’re gonna do some music reviews on the Bluemoon thread.”

“Really? Normally I just write about how I’d leave my wife for Vincent Kompany, or how shit I think Aaron Wan-Biasska is. Maybe pop in on the Trump thread, see if anyone’s bumped him off yet.”

“Yeah, really. These two guys are going to start threads and you listen to the music they or other folks toss out there. And then you get to write reviews.”

“Well, that sounds fun. I have a pretty broad palette despite some preconceived notions. You know how much I love punk and dance music. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Now . . . I should warn you. It’s not going to go as you expect.”

“What do you mean? You know what I expect. Mancs are all the same. Stone Roses are the best band in the universe despite only having one record anyone cares about. Johnny Marr is God, Morrissey is Beelzebub. Joy Division is better than New Order, blah, blah, blah . . . yeah, I know already.”

“No, no. Not that. First, there’re a lot of prog fans. I mean . . . a LOT.”

“That’s no surprise. They’re English. They’ve been overrating Genesis for fifty years.”

“Fair enough. Second, Led Zeppelin records will be publicly fellated. We’re talking fucking Hoover vacuum levels of suction.”

“Errr . . . okay, that makes me a little uncomfortable, but they were really good. No worries.”

“Third, out of all the new stuff you hear . . . . uhhhh . . .”

“What? Tell me.”

“You . . . ummm . . . are going to be most positively surprised by a, errrr, late career work by Bob Dylan . . .”

“WHAT?!?!”

“. . . and this ethereal ambient space thing by some guy named Michael Stearns.”

“WHO? Get the fuck out!”

9/10.

PS. Somewhat more proper review to come later, but I'm busy listening again just for the sheer pleasure.
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Loved reading that, Foggy, well done. There are some home truths in there for sure. For the record, I'm a Mancunian born and bred, but I just don't see what the fuss is about with these Manunian bands. Bands from your neck of the woods can play better and sing better, but for the Top 100 thread, I'll just have to grit my teeth and bear it.
 
Sounds like it will be just the thing to see me through the last half hour or so of my shift today, usual go to is a bit of classical. The sound quality available to me might not do it justice though
 
mancity1 said:
Great track , Loveless is on my playlist not a lot better IMO came out of the 90's.

Hard to go past Soon IMO though.

Their production is top notch.
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I kind of figured that the distortion is totally intentional.
I almost get it, but ultimately it’s not for me.
I can see the music it influenced but, I end up turning it off every time.
 
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