Log #144 - Two Big Arrows From Marley To Marling

Manitoba / Caribou - Stop Breaking My Heart

Chemical Brothers  - We Are The Night

Bob Marley - Catch A Fire

Laura Marling -  I Speak Because I Can

Blue States - Man Mountain

King Tubby - Declaration of Dub

A couple of entries in the box this month are from some more charity shop pickups. Honestly, as a CD collector, there is no better way to spread your collection with many outlets letting their CDs go for as little as 99p.

Man Mountain is the 2002 follow up to Andy Dragazis' (trading as Blue States) brilliant 2000 debut Nothing Changes Under The Sun which had the Bamyasi work over in Log #106. Man Mountain maintains his signature lush keys and ear for an excellent melody, and adds vocals on a number of tracks courtesy of New Young Pony Club vocalist Tahita Bulmer. Initial hearings suggest it's a little more easy listening.

It's another great album cover too, perhaps from the same photo-shoot as Nothing Changes?

The giant twin arrows are actually situated on the iconic Route 66 in Arizona (now by passed by the new Interstate 40) between the towns of Flagstaff and Winslow. They signified an old trading post (diner, fuel station and gift shop) which is long abandonned.

Next bargain was the King Tubby Declaration of Dub. This is a compilation of dub remixes of King Tubby 70s tracks. It's as you'd expect. Simple instrumental music including some covers, with the bass maxed up to speaker bursting volumes. It's the sort of music that you hear occasionally from a passing car which rattles your living room windows. Most the tracks sound the same and it's hard to play too many back to back.

At the risk of starting to repeat myself (I have a limited CD collection despite the frequent charity shop visits and some albums, but only the best, inevitably come around again):

Caribou - Log #109

Bob Marley - Log #2 

Laura Marling - Log #35

Just time for one more lukewarm review this week. I watched the Chemical Brothers Glasto set on TV and thought it was fantastic. But... was it more the visuals than the music? My suspicions deepened on hearing their We Are The Night album which is a relatively dull beats by numbers affair, without any visuals of course. 

Some bands are great on record but don't make for an exciting live experience, some do the opposite. Is this a "by band" phenomenon, or is it a wider "by genre" characteristic? For instance I've said before I'm not sure a lot of prog rock ever sounds great live, but I love the records. Whereas I love a good live rock out to heavy metal or a dance to some banging DJ beats but don't play those sorts of albums at home so much.

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Log #106 - So Much Good Music Under The Sun

I'm excited about this week's listening. Sometimes it's hard to think of 6 albums to listen to, but this week the CDs were positively jumping off the shelf like those springy sticky toys we used to have.

This was because my interest in ambient minimalist electronica was re-ignited and this opened up a wealth of potential listening from the likes of Tangerine Dream, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Four Tet, and Brian Eno.

Debussy - Preludes Books I and II

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Union Cafe

Tangerine Dream - Zeit

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

Fripp and Eno - No Pussyfooting

Blue States - Nothing Changes Under The Sun

Take Tangerine Dream for example. Last year, or maybe the year before, through this blog I became reacquainted with the band mainly via their classic mid 70s albums like Phaedra and Force Majeure.  Checkout a track like Cloudburst Flight if you aren't convinced. But I hadn't ventured deeper into history to hear much of their early 70s work which was much more ambient before they started introducing pulsed rhythms.

Zeit seemed to be the go-to album for most fans of early period Tan Dream. I bought the new remastered double album version containing the original double album plus a live disc. I haven't even got on to the live disc yet. The original album is gorgeous. It's just what I want from an ambient piece of music. Consisting of just 4 "side-long" tracks of chilling dark drone music - you can safely stick it on repeat all day, and go about your business. It's great to listen to passively, as background music.

It's very unobtrusive and as such creeps up on you very subtly. You pick up different things each time you walk past your speaker, things you haven't noticed before.

Contrary to what you may expect I actually find incredible depth and interest in this sort of music. Because it is so subtle there is a lot to discover that isn't immediately obvious. New sounds and textures reveal themselves gradually over repeated plays. It really challenges conventional understandings of what music is.

In comparison The Penguin Cafe Orchestra are relatively mainstream. This album is also a "double" in old money. I think it suffers slightly from covering too many different styles across it's 16 tracks. There are straight forward classical like pieces (these are the most successful), ambient sound effects, and whimsical throwaways. As such, as a whole it does not convey the mood or continuous aesthetic of a piece like Zeit. My favourite PCO album is their debut, Music From...

Fans of instrumental electronic music are in safe hands with the assured Boards of Canada. With only 4 full length albums over a 20 year career (Geogaddi from 2002 is officially their second not counting the excellent extended EP Twoism with which they announced themselves in 1995) they practise quality over quantity.

Spoken word samples are backed by ghostly synth melodies over down tempo hip hop beats. I always think their particular type of analogue synth music sounds vaguely out of tune with it's variations, clicks, flutters, crackles and bends; this makes it all the more organic and earthy.

When I first bought Fripp and Eno's No Pussyfooting (1973) I remember whizzing through the two side long tracks in double quick time trying to find where they changed (I had it on cassette tape). Of course they didn't change and I was left confused for a long time before realising the point of this classic ambient collaboration. Ironically later releases of the album included a half speed/double length version of one side of the album - The Heavenly Music Corporation (as well as a recording of the entire album in reverse!). I'm not sure how I feel about this. To me it devalues the original, making it seem even more random and thrown together than it did already.

Urban myth says that on release the album was accidentally played on BBC radio backwards (I have no idea how this happened, it sounds very unlikely, but I'm not surprised that the only one who noticed was apparently Brian Eno himself who phoned in to complain). 

Nevertheless with it's epic distorted Frippertronic guitar improvisations over Eno's loops and phased drones it remains an early classic of the ambient genre and entirely unexpected coming from two artists respectively members of the bands King Crimson and Roxy Music at the time. Great cover too.

Fripp and Eno recorded a second album Evening Star (1975). When later asked about a promised third album that had never materialised Fripp sarcastically replied it had already been done in the form of Eno's celebrated collaboration with David Byrne - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts which appeared in 1981 (Fripp did receive a writing credit).

Cover album this week is Nothing Changes Under The Sun by Blue States which is the stage name (or more fittingly the studio name) for producer Andy Dragazis. The music is less ambient and more chilled down tempo electronica along the lines of Zero 7, Kruder and Dorfmeister, and most of all Air. If you like Air's Moon Safari you'll love this too.

As I've said before this sort of music can run the risk of becoming wallpaper or elevator fodder. It's a fine line but the right side of the line is maintained when the melodies are as consistently good as they are here on beautiful tracks like Diamente or Trainer Shuffle or Heroes' Elegy

Hear Diamente below (with apologies to email readers for whom I don't think videos render - please click into the source blog or try this link >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC6fD_j0Cqw ):

Finally, just occasionally you just need some classical music on a dull Sunday morning, and when you need some classical, you can't get better than Debussy. I'm no expert on classical music but for me he seems to bridge the gap between traditional melodic classical music and more modern discordant 20th Century "classical" music. So you get beautiful melodies, but with originality and a modern edge. It's a win win.

Also there's not much of him as I understand (willing to be contradicted by any Debussy experts out there?). This is a big advantage in any music, but particularly classical where you have not only 400 years worth of history but also multiple copies of the same pieces. Debussy didn't write any symphonies and all his orchestral works can be entirely found on one classic double album, the famous Phillips edition:

https://amzn.to/2J2xmKX

This is so worth getting. Even if you don't think you've heard any Debussy before you will recognise some of the tracks on here. It's a beautiful record that will reward repeated listens. It's your duty to try it even if you are an outright punk rocker! It might just change your life.

[..actually classical is a definition oft misused in classical music. It refers to a particular era in music, rather than a style. So classical is a term equivalent to baroque, or romantic, or renaissance for example. But for the purposes of this blog, and most people's understanding, classical stands for all music that people generally understand and accept as "classical", ie. stuff that uses traditional acoustic wooden and brass instruments like violins and oboes and stuff and is often performed in chambers, quartets and orchestras and... you know what I mean] ... I'm glad you've cleared that up. Ed.

The album in the slot this week isn't actually this one. We have here Debussy's books of solo piano preludes. These are mostly short tracks - mostly very pleasing, although as I mention above, with an edge. It's not pure easy listening that's for sure. Some of these tracks have been made famous in ads and films like The Usual Suspects.

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