Kilimanjaro

Another late-70s-early-80s british new wave post-punk album, right from the vat where they keep them all. This one's a little lacking in personal identity, but it's competent and listenable enough, at least

A high 3. Very good. Treason is a great track.

DAMN! Who does this sound like? This singer is SUPER familiar!!! It's Julian Cope. The singer is Julian Cope. This is good. Exceptional? No, but pretty good. Very exemplary of this sort of British post-punk/new wave in the early eighties, with more pop leanings, and what Simon Reynolds termed an "aspirational" attitude in contrast to the darker nihilistic vibe of these bands' precursors like Souixsie and the Banshees or PiL . Ticks all the boxes: - Occasional jaunty horns? Check. - Angsty, aimless protagonist? Check. - Synth wash over everything? Check. - Bass in your face? Check. - Drums for miles? Check. Se also: Echo and the Bunnymen, Simple Minds, Duran Duran

They LOVE me and CATER me with NEW WAVE and 80s POP SLOP which are my favorite genres because I am LAME

Treason is good, closing track is a bit of a trip but it's pretty average to my ears. It's not terrible but nothing hugely sticking out either, it's standard stuff for a band of their era and genre. A better album if you have the version with Reward on it but I've stuck to the original tracklisting for this. 4/10

Sounds like many other 80's/90's synth rock bands, not my jam.

Never heard of it. Interesting.

Lots of classic '80s elements right off the bat. As I started I was leaning towards a 3 but the second half didn't resonate as well. Not my style.

Very weird and in my eyes very 80's

Lame 2/5

Fun

The only stand out is Reward- the biggest “hit”. Just too bland to hold any interest. For 1980 it’s with two stars

Great Songs: When I Dream Good Songs: Books, Treason, Thief of Baghdad, Brave Boys Keep Their Promises, Went Crazy Bouncing Babies, Second Hand, Poppies Mid Songs: Ha Ha I'm Drowning, Sleeping Gas Bad Songs:

I tend to just play the 7" singles nowadays, but its great to hear the album in total again. Let's face it Reward is one of the greatest songs in history, so lets pretend it was always on the album. Bouncing Babies and Treason are classics also. Read It In Books is one of my favourite Echo and the Bunnymen songs and the Teardrops version is cool too because it's sung by Cope. In the morass of 70's and 80's American mainstream rock that pollutes this list it's nice to have something from the post-punk era this side of the the Atlantic pop up on the generator.

this was super average

Bang on average

Not for me, it's ok not much more than that.

Reward is a stand out... the rest really didn't offer anything.

I don’t care what Wikipedia says, neo-psychedelics is not a real music genre. This was just bad, Treason was an okay track, but the rest just sucked. Worst combination of Brit post punk and bad drugs. Just repetitive and uninteresting

Reward stood out. This is pretty generic new-wave/post punk, but I don't hate it. 2.5/5

A new band for me. Fun stuff! Reminds me of Echo and the Bunnymen, sorta, which makes sense considering the connections -- also the Police a bit and maybe the Chameleons, although not the 50%-KLF "Chameleons" who produced the album, I guess? Britain is so confusing.

Didn’t finish, bad prof rock sounds like a cheap rush copy

Weird and boring. Hard pass

No more and I don't wanna finish OK.

Total waste of my time I did not get anything from this

More listslop

Pretty neat and funky 80s pop record, simultaneously not all that special.

More 80s British new wave. I guess I don’t get sick of this like most of people here do. I enjoyed this quite a bit and checked out Julian Cope’s solo stuff after this and it’s pretty great too

When I dream is a good song and i liked the riff he was doing until he did it a million times and then it was so fucking annoying. I like the bass throughout these songs. The lyrics are kinda bad but i like the style of music so that's why i like this album mostly.

Knew of this group, but had never listened to them. A pleasant surprise.

Ugh

Boring 80s British emo. Fairly boring stuff all in all.

Number: 280 Familiarity: Moderate (3) Rating: 3 Before: ======= Sure, I'm familiar with them but they were not one of my favorite new-wave bands. Probably a tier 3 band for me within that genre. I think I even might have their Wilder album but I never listened to it more than a few times, at least that' how I remember it. After : ======= Mostly 2's and 3's. I did like When I Dream a little and gave that one a 4. Overall the album is probably a 2 for me. Just for kicks, I listened to some of their Wilder next and liked that much better than Kilimanjaro. Neither one is appropriate for The List, imo, but what do I know? I'm sure the experts had a good reason for including Kilimanjaro. Overall, I get 2.45 on a song by song basis, but when accounting for song lengths I get 2.55 due to the last song on the album, When I Dream which I gave a 4. So, it gets a very low 3 for me instead of a 2.

Really interesting record!

Sounds very similar to a Spanish band called Maná, wonder if one inspired the other

It's everything you wanted out of echo and the Bunnymen without actually listening to echo and the Bunnymen.

4/10 - It's alright, thankfully not too 70s

Good

I don’t like this, wish i could put to words why.

Boring, some interesting bits but won’t listen again

Decent - really enjoyed - was only familiar with Reward, but not a bad album at all

Boring-ass Brit pop.

Northern Lights sounds like background music to a sitcom intro. Maybe it is. Overall, enjoyable to listen to. Probably wouldn’t revisit for fun.

Aburrido

British Bias strikes again but did like 2 songs

It was fine.

80s alt rock sorta stuff

Not a good sign that YouTube Music did not have the album even though YouTube itself had a playlist. That said, it's not terrible, so not sure what the issue was. Nothing to write home about here though.

Pretty solid new wave album.

I wasn't a fan back then, though I generally like the music from this era, especially punk/new wave or whatever this is. My bad for not giving more time to Julian Cope/Teardrop Explodes. So I like this...as usual I probably heard one song, didn't like it; hence avoided Teardrop Explodes. Retrospectively, I wish I wasn't such a d-head. 4 "mea culpa" stars.

British post-punk. Very meh.

A wee bit temu version of the cure sorry Pure don’t like the fake trumpets Top bops: Haha I’m drowning Second head

Normal sound but there was a song which was unexpected: "Traison (C'est juste une histoire)" sang in french!

Nah, not good... Really annoying. Basically with each song, I would think: 'oooh this is cool', and then it would go on for too long, and by the end, I was just annoyed and bored. This album isn't very good. There are some interesting songs, but overall it's just 'mush'. Like pretentious kids trying too hard. "When I dream" is one of the most annoying songs of all time. "Strange house in the snow" might be one of the worst of all time.

Loved it

It's interesting, goes on for a bit too long

This just doesn't quite do it for me.

Nothing to write home about but a decent enough listen

Quite ambivalent to much of the first half/ two-thirds of this album and I did skip some I didn't care for. I don't really understand the rationale behind the order of the track list if there is one; the mood jumps all over the place from track to track. Choosing a fave track: The one about poppies had some interesting backwards sounds, but would I choose to listen to it in a mix of fave songs? Hmm, nope. Flagged Bouncing Babies as being OK. Later tracks finding more interesting - (or maybe ears have been beaten into submission?) A run of 'Strange House in The Snow - B-Side', 'Use Me' and 'Traison (C'est juste une histoire) - which, despite being identical to track 2 outside the main vocal line being in French rather than English, is MUCH more interesting than its English counterpart. How is that possible? The blurb in the actual 1001 book implies that some thought the band were past their peak when this debut was released, and some tracks were re recordings of singles released under the post-punk record label 'Zoo' two years prior. Which I also dug out. I prefer the earlier recordings (less depth in the drums, but just more 'noise'/reverb/personality across the mix). Having done all that listening ^^^ I'm gonna choose the title track, Kilamanjaro, as fave track cos it has the experimental vibes of the early Zoo recordings, but isn't as crazy as Strange House in the Snow. Definitely over thinking this one today.

This was pretty decent.

Not sure if I liked it or not

another day, another sampling of '80s post-punk for the listening masses. the debut album of the teardrop explodes, this almost psychedelic album had at least a few different personnel from track to track, with even band members switching and leaving during the recording process. hit singles from the album made it reasonably big on some big-name british charts, but the band didn't really hold for too long. continuing creative differences and the more modest success of their second album eventually lead into the group falling apart before a third album could even be conceptualized. it's a group that was never sure where they wanted to go and could never decide on where to take their music... hell, album releases and rereleases have different tracklists and different album covers too. this is another one of those post-punk albums that would get lumped in with other dance-oriented new wave bands and musicians. with the shuffling grooves, guitars, brass and especially that organ... if you're going to play this record, you better find some big speakers. honestly with post-punk, it's one of those genres where more often than not, even deeper cuts just have a specific energy to them that you can't hate. songs could benefit from a bit more fluctuation, but really it's a bit of a shame listening to this and knowing how the band went out with a quiet whimper. these guys have the potential to make something legendary if they really wanted to.

Another album that my general reaction coming out of it was "I feel like I didn't need to hear that before I died." Is it good? Yeah, there are some solid songs on here (I liked Ha Ha I'm Drowning, Sleeping Gas, Poppies, and Reward), but nothing that was like "holy shit, this is amazing." Is it because it's British? I feel like Britain is being overrepresented.

I actually quite like 1980s music. The sound hasn’t necessarily aged well, but underneath there are often decent songs. This had all of the bad stuff without the decent songs. Someone will probably inform me that this is seminal and legendary. I thought it was just a bit shit. I went into this hopeful so it loses any grace marks for disappointing me.

Sounded like a lot of the other new wave/pop stuff coming out of the 80s but without anything that was particularly memorable. Echo and Bunnymen had a bit more working class grit come through, Tears for Fears had the songwriting chops, this didn’t neccessarily have either.

Shifty Brit pop

Not bad

What the hell is this? I've never heard of this band

Pretty typical 80's music if you ask me. "Sleeping Gas" went on way too long.

I’d never heard of The Teardrop Explodes before this, so I really had no expectations going into Kilimanjaro. And honestly, I came away pretty pleased. It definitely has that early-’80s sound, but what stood out to me was the heavy use of organ and those echoey guitars. That combination gives the album a really distinctive atmosphere that I dug quite a bit. Apparently the band gets labeled as neo-psychedelic, and… sure, we’ll call it that. Whatever the genre technically is, the sound worked for me, especially early on. There’s a lot of personality in the production, and at first I thought this might end up being one of those surprise discoveries from a band I’d somehow never heard of. Unfortunately, as the album went on, it started to repeat itself a little too much for me, especially when it came to the rhythms. A lot of the songs began settling into similar grooves, and I gradually started losing interest, which was disappointing because the album had grabbed me pretty quickly at the beginning. Still, this wasn’t bad at all. I liked the overall sound and there are definitely some interesting ideas here. I just wish those ideas had been stretched in a few more directions as the album went along. 3.4/5

Day983 - it’s a good album but could you imagine if they would have stayed together

This is fine, but not very memorable.

maybe a 2.5 or 2.25

This was just kind of another post punk/new wave/goth album, but there was admittedly something kind of odd here. I've heard some arguments that the X Factor here is psych, but I can't really here it. Regardless, this has it's moments, but it doesn't have the energy or slickness or songwriting of other albums in this pocket that I like more. The result is fine, but it does very little for me in the grander scheme of music. I also can't really see the argument that this is essential, give how much music like this is on the list.

I feel like I've heard this album already on this list, and I'm only about 320 albums into the whole thing.

Sounds a bit dated these days but still contains some great tunes

Overall Rating - 2.57/5 (5.13/10). Pretty forgettable, early 80s Britpop.

Thanks to the author of 1001 albums to hear before you die being a die hard Brit, we get plenty of niche Post-Punk music on the list that I have never heard of. The Teardrop Explodes' album Kilimanjaro is yet another one of those Post-Punk releases, and before you write it off as a nothing burger, I actually would say this is really solid even if not being impressive in any way. The weirdness of this project isn't a huge deal all things considered but does provide some very cool sounding tracks like Treason and When I Dream that helped me feel a bit more into this very slightly run of the mill Post-Punk album. Not a bad pick but you can definitely tell this is the author's pick rather than being one of the "best album ever made."

Went in blind to this one- I was pleasantly surprised. Kind of a transition from garage rock to new age. Fealt like it set the one for later new age bands.

Meh

Quite bad, no memorable songs and was getting quite irritating by the end

like the definition of meh

So 80s in the best way

Sounds British and like 80s

I would rather do almost anything else than listen to Strange House in the Snow or Brave Boys Keep Their Promises again. Treason is passable. Everything else was something inbetween.

Not an 80's fan

I enjoyed this album, Treason, Books, When I Dream and Reward are the most known songs i guess.

597/1089 - Is Neo-Psychedelia pretty much New Wave with an Organ? Eh who cares, besides the brass synths, it sounded pretty cool. Also learning that normies think britpop = any pop music from Britain ever and not specifically the 90s alt-rock stuff like how normally I think of it.

Mostly just reminded me of a band trying to rip off The Police. And I don't even like The Police.

413/1089 not sure what to expect but i’m liking the cover okay so extremely 80s punk pop vibes. not bad but quite standard (to me in 2026) The album mostly blended together but then i liked Thief of Baghdad and When I dream. The latter had some strong repetition but it really works for me and gives a more dream/trance like atmophere that works SO well 54/100

Boring Britpop. Next album please

Very bad. Very nothing 80s trash pop.

This really reminded me of Orange Juice, who I really like. It was that moody teenage feel, with the niche UK 80s grunge sound. I am surprised I had never heard of this before. I would defo listen again.

I love how the rhythm section is recorded on certain post punk records. It's so dry and such short sharp sounds that almost anticipate the drum machine that's coming. I think hearing this on Unknown Pleasures at an impressionable age definitely pushed me towards more rhythmic music and enabled me to pay more attention to this part of the song across all genres and styles.

Alkoi tosi lupaavasti mutta loppupuoliskolla mentiin niin laukalla sellaiseen suuntaan mikä ei sopinut omaan musiikkimakuun että pakko antaa 2,5/5.

Not going to lie, I wanted to hate on this album because I'm sick of all the obscure British bands that exist in some layer of the punk/pop/new wave orbit and made one good album. But this is kind of a bop. *shakes fist angrily*

It's fine.

Epic. Love Julian Cope.

It’s just fine. Wouldn’t be able to pick it out of a lineup from half the other post punk jangle bands, but then again this genre has never really been my jam. Sometimes he just yelled random sounds for a few minutes and that really dragged the songs down.

Solid 80s album tbh but it was nothing to necessarily rave about