Sincere

Uh oh, it's 25 songs at 2 hr 3 min and I've never heard of this niche Brit pick with this glossy, staged album cover of some fancy bag with a fire starting inside. "Dimery strikes again." I think as I hit play with trepidation and worry that my delicately situated average for the 00s† is going to tank. And, by the first couple of minutes of the track titled Introduction, I know that this isn't going to be my thing but I'm also relieved that it's not going to be the worst 1-star album I've heard on the list. Mostly it feels interminable though practically benign. It's just some random DJ's production calling card that, despite apparently being nominated for a Mercury Prize (really beginning to doubt the prestige of that honor), sounds like slick uptown department store music. I'd like it better at half the running time and with over half the guest vocalists removed. I wanted to give it 2-stars but felt fairly worn out by track 7 of what the stream has labeled Disc 1...it's a death by a thousand paper cuts of that posh bag on the cover. — † a footnote of complaint. It's not that I don't like the music of the 90s, 00s, and the 10s it's that the selections are terrible and these are the decades representing my best grasp on what these eras had to offer. I can't help it if Dimery has figured out the 60s–80s more or less thanks to the different ways that the canon forms over time. He's not helped by this site retaining all his picks, either. I love that element, but let's be real. New editions of the book help him revise out his most awkward blunders while we're left holding the statistical bag.

It's a pretty normal UK garage album. I do quite enjoy the genre which is why I like it, however i feel like there's surely an album which is better, shorter and better showcases the genre.

Nothing special...

🕺🕺🕺 so corporate

I don't know what to make of the inclusion of this, but it's musically fine. Not special. This list seems to think Britain did unique things with distinct American genres in the early 2000s that they most definitely did not do.

great vibes, was perfect to listen to while studying. each track felt a little disconnected tho

"Do you feel the vibes?" No sorry I don't. This album was way too long, and even though there are a couple garage tracks out there that I adore (Eg. Sunship & Sweet Feminine Attitude's 'Flowers', Livin Joy's 'Dreamer' and 'Stand up Tall' or 'I luv u' by Dizzee Rascal) I couldn't deal with this. There's nothing outrightly wrong with it, it's just really boring, and repetitive. The vocals are brilliant, and I;m glad to see Elizabeth Troy credited as I feel like the most iconic voices of the garage scene often go uncredited or lack the recognition they deserve. I did listen to this whole thing, but I think if we're going to have a garage album on here, we should have one with better lyrics. "I'm crazy. Don't do it. Be sincere" ok. "And now even if I close my eyes I see I see" wow! not cliche at all! "I was in the dark and love opened my eyes."....you see what I mean? Anyway there are probably better albums out there at showcasing the genre, and shorter.

This album is played exclusively at stores with like 5 items on display and the meanest 20-somethings you've ever met working the floor.

Not typically my cup of tea, but I did enjoy it. Had some fun grooves in there.

This album was definitely a Vibe and one that I can get behind. I may have heard a track or two in the past, but it's not something that really sticks out. It was a solid listen but the Apple music version is over 2 hours long so it was a long one and I don't know that I can pinpoint one specific track. There are certainly a few tracks that I hit skip on or would hit skip on in the future.

This is a tough argument for is it a good album or just not a genre or style that I dig. Also, could only get a deluxe edition, so not sure if I was experiencing it as it should be. It’s 90s dance RnB, it’s got energy and a vibe, but I didn’t really get pulled in to any hooks or tracks.

feel like i didnt have to finish this one

Hard pass

Boring.

I really, really did not enjoy this album.

A few of the songs were okay, but mostly the repetition bored me, especially with this being over 2 hours long.

Cool but so long

Haven't listened to it yet so I'll get back to the review later

Not enough ketamine in my morning to fully appreciate this one

I am not a massive house fan but then i hear something like Bassment Jaxx’s Remedy and i think i am wrong. This MJ Cole album felt like my life with House, this is meh, nah this is amazing.

есть некоторые интересные инструменталы, конечно, но в целом этот альбом не для меня опять таки. очень затянуто, даже несмотря на то, что треки в среднем по 2-3 минуты, но это слушать тяжело. музыка для лифта или на фон видео, повседневно я не смогу такое слушать оценка: 3/5

It was nice to listen to all day

I don't think I've done anything recently in this life to deserve being tasked with listening to this.

Terrible.

Like this genre well enough, but a little went a long way. Rounded up.

First album generated for me after a short break. I wasn't very hopeful for this as UK garage is a genre I never enjoyed and which I had no desire to revisit. Actually it wasn't as bad as I feared, there was the odd nice but of house piano and Spanish guitar mixed in, and it seemed at the more tasteful end of this type of stuff, without a reliance on boing noises and an MC trying to constantly hype people. I still found it boring but not borderline unlistenable.

Good Bobbing of the head music, but nothing too nuts. Really liked the song Bandelero Desperado. Was tight.

Bit dull, one dance paced.

Doesnt realy work as an album imo. It has Some strong points but overall it is pretty uninspiring imo. 2 or 3 song of this album in the perfect setting could be realy enjoyable, but the entitire album in a standard listen is just to much

Ничего особо не понял.

This was fine a bit long and a bit one note low 3

2 Step UK Garage with a jazzy house feel with soul vocals. Toying with the pop end of the scene and a bit repetitive in places, it's still got just enough to keep you interested. This is summer rooftop vibes at sunset. But there aren't any real bangers and it ends up being somewhat like background music.

Based on the (short) Wiki page I'm going to guess that this was popular in the UK for about 5 weeks and then disappeared into obscurity. This one is a no. Seven tracks in and it is grating on my nerves. Affectation is a word that comes to mind. Anything enjoyable about the music is ruined by the god awful, over the top lyrics/vocals. This is clearly a filler album. At least I know what "garage" electronica sounds like now (not great).

It's your standard electronic fare. There are some interesting beats here, but overall it's nothing special.

Really tedious album to listen through. I was really looking forward to it ending.

It wasn't bad at all

unexpectedly good

Some chill and upbeat house music. Way too long of an album though.

Honestly not the worst electronic music I've heard on here, but also not exactly the best either. And over 2 hours of it was a real slog to get through.

Some interesting samples, including strings, sax, and other jazzy instruments. However, this is still a lot like most other electronic music in that it grew to be repetitive and boring.

I’m surprised that there’s not more of this sort of stuff on the list, but then again, (a) there’s very little more recent stuff to be found and (b) this is just cliched and indistinguishable from everything else in this genre.

Back in the day I might have been found dancing in the Golden Flamingo in MK to this sort of bog standard by numbers dance fayre with one group of mates, dressed in our best suits and ties and the next week I'd be in London in a dingy dark dive of an alternative nightclub with a different set of mates. This album is ok, if you want to reminisce about how bad one danced and then the catastrophic attempts to pull a pig at the end of the night. This has its place, in my past, like all the glitzy nightclubs of that era. File under 'no more Pro Plus'.

..... this came out 1 year after Moby's album? And like 2 weeks after the Avalanches album?!?!?!?! Its 2000s cheese and not in a good way. Somebody told this guy about sampling and just fuckin cut random shit up and gluest8cked them together... I dont give 1 stars lightly but man, this is just a no from dawg

Unremarkable; tedious.

i thought this was going to be rap. i was wrong. after hearing the first track i thought this album was going to be boring. i was right.

I tried. I really like some of the beats to be honest but overall music is kind of like fashion. Certain things would be unrealistic reflections of my personal character or true self to explore. This kind of music is like cowboy boots--it looks good on somebody but if im wearing them im having an identity crisis.

I've always dug UK garage when I heard it but never really explored the genre. I enjoyed this! A 3.5 star rating rounding up to 4 because it doesn't deserve the low 2.37 ave. rating

Es curioso, tampoco se si es un disco que escucharía de normal pero aqui está la base de todo el 2-step y del uk garage.

Garage is ace. It's rooted in the same sounds as drum and bass, but it's classier, and more tasteful - jungle for the laydees. I wasn't exactly a regular at Twice As Nice, but I did spend some of my weekends in the classier bars and clubs of Winchester in 2000AD, and it sounded a lot like this. It also provided the palette for some incredible progressive electronic music of the time, like Burial and Squarepusher. So there's a rush of nostalgic goosebumps when those whipcrack snares kick in. Trouble is, like a lot of dance music, Garage was all about singles, not albums. I remember "Sincere" and "Crazy Love" from back in the day, and enjoyed hearing them again, but neither are top tier (e.g. Roy Davis Jnr's "Gabriel" or Sweet Female Attitude's "Flowers"). Maybe MJ Cole was hoping to make the garage equivalent of "New Forms", sprinkling in jazz licks; sample fragments; pizzicato synths; smooth r&b vocals and Nokia bleeps with the brutal bass lines - it's a good listen, but it's a bit too safe to be a great album.

I’ve enjoyed this a lot. Turning it up loud and enjoying the dirty skiddy bass. Some great vocals. The Britishness of it. Danny Vicious is fun. 7/10

Dette var grusomt

It's funny that the next place I'll likely listen to a song from this album is in some designer store, and I won't even realise I'm listening to it. That is the significance of this album: it's not bad, but it's background-music quality. Though I don't hate it as much as the rating suggests, I like it; it is good designer music. Maybe I'd like it more if I didn't listen to it at 7 am on a Wednesday morning.

This was ass. Zero reason to be on this list. Besides that it's not my favorite genre, the drum beats were repetitive (as in just copied and pasted between songs), the vocals were pointless, and there was nothing in this album to make it distinct. Really don't get this inclusion.

The Good: That I never will have to listen to this ever again? The Bad: That I actually had to listen to this? The Ugly... my brain hurt in technocolor... On Apple Music this album is only available as a deluxe (which in this case means a double album)... and I believe that I am going insane... Won't waste more words on this.. EMD is repetitive shite. Hate 1* ps I know there are people who will defend this music to death.. and good for you, honestly, because it is important to really believe in things... just accept that I hate this.

meh

Favorite songs: Tired Games, I See Not for me.

You get some more variety later in the album, but the heavily dragging start really makes one not want to revisit this.

Yes, all the tracks are very long and boring, and the album as a whole is very long and boring as well, but this album earns its place on the list by being strongly representative of a kind of music which was very popular at the time, inexplicable as that seems nowadays. I was going to give this two stars for being mindless and chill and letting me listen as closely as I needed to while still having 95% of my brain capacity free to get on with my job of filling in documents on the computer, but by halfway through disc 1 I was thoroughly sick of the repetitive beats, repetitive lyrics, repetitive everything. Special shoutout to Rough Out Here for trying something different and failing utterly. It's like listening to high schoolers improvise their own 70s soul song.

This was totally fine house music. Inoffensive but also not particularly notable or inspiring.

Not listening. I saw 2 hours and did a scan of 4-5 of these and noped out.

Please no more crappy techno

2 out of 5. Some bits were ok, mostly just meh. YouTube does have a confusing playlist for this one (at the time of this review being posted)

Unfassbar! Elendiger Mist!

Pretty generic soft sync 90s club music

So there’s at least 300 shitty English EDM & indie from early 2000s but no metal aside from the most mainstream albums?

Good 2 step UK garage, not sure shy this album gets so much hate.

A little out of my zone, genre-wise. Still a fun and recognizable sound from the late 90's/early 2000's. Some great vocal performances as well.

The reacton to this album is amusingly over the top. Sure, club music doesn't really translate to the album format comfortably and it is a bit long but the way some folk are carrying on you'd think they'd either been subjected to three hours of gabba techno or three hours of shopping channel background music. Fair play to the editors trying to represent UK Garage even if it wasn't really an album based genre. With my limited knowledge I'd say this was a good example.

Listen, the duty free store needs music too, I understand that.

Meh

What the…

This album started off pretty bad and then just kept getting worse for 72 minutes.

Trash

It's like they started making this 2 hour album when this was relevant and fresh, and it took them 10 years and they decided to just go with it at that point

Not questioning the sincerity. Yet another album that plays like the soundtrack to every visit I’ve ever made to Old Navy.

Easy-listening dance music. It had several moments of singing or jazz that were good, but always interlaced with simple repetition that made these songs too long. 3 minute versions, rather that 5-6, might improve the star rating.

Dear Mister MJ Cole, I'm going to be sincere. I didn't like your album at all. For me every song on your album sounds the same. It's like you used the same drum pattern on every bloody song. I think that's what we call laziness. Another thing: The songs on your album are way too long. You are MJ Cole and you make 2-step. Not Prog Rock! Even I listened to your album at circa 9PM it was hard for me not to fell asleep. So: 1/5 Sincerely yours, David

I really can't handle the Brit house dj music.

No, but more importantly, why?

Total waste of my time

I cannot fathom how many shitty techno albums are on this list.

Pretty rubbish album. Boring, uninspiring

Listened to this on a long, early morning car journey. Can't say I was particularly impressed - not really sure what it was or what message it had. It was also far too long, no one needs a two hour album.

I liked this whole lot more than I expected to! Some good beats throughout. Could have been a single though

Bandelero Desperado

Some fun grooves, not something I'd usually put on, though. I thought some of the use of samples was really innovative.

I had always wondered what the Persona soundtracks would have sounded like if Shoji Meguro had been British and without talent. Said no one ever. I think it says a lot about the quality and relevancy of this 1,001 list that, as generic and unimportant as this album may be, it's STILL more listenable than a full third of the crap on here. In that light, I'm forced to give this an ordinal 2.

This was a little too much investment for a Monday. I didn’t hate it, but it went nowhere for me. Maybe on another day this would have hit better.

esta bien pero me aburrio no quiero escucharlo mas. no es mi estilo de eleccion, pero esta bien

Tinnitus the album

so repetitive, DNF

wanted to passively enjoy this since I dont mind garage music...but couldn't get over the mediocrity of the vocals and beats.

And to think I started getting sentimental about being almost done this god damned list

I enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting. Took me back to a younger time, and this music was more present in my life. Very fun. Gotta say, the two hour run time was a little bit much, though

No

Never heard of this before but not the type of music I enjoy.

Not even gonna let this touch my algo

punchis punchis

nice

人声太多了，很可惜