1001 Albums Summary

big ups to rng for giving me a nice softball on my first day. i've already been feeling the more ambient side of dance music recently, ambient techno and chillout and stuff; i've always had a huge soft spot for this sound. i'd sort of assumed this would be a bit more new age-y, maybe take a bit more world music influence, just given the confounding and Mildly Intimidating orientalism on proud display as the front cover, but no, much of it is pretty standard kinda downtempo dance music. very british. Very 90s. i was reminded of, like, Irresistible Force and even Underworld, of all things, a couple of times. every once in a while this thing will slip into a beat that sounds like a Massive Attack instrumental, or something. very british. VERY 90s. ol' mate willy's biggest claim to fame—at least if you're a know-nothing pop dufus, like me—is his production work on Madonna's ray of light. now the title track on that record is like the greatest song of all time, or something. so this guy's some kind of heroic genius, right? we can all agree on that? i was pretty hype, then, to hear his solo work, especially because you just get a feel from the cover that this record is going to be very. very Produced. and that feeling is correct; it's an extremely Produced record. you will, in fact, get to hear production, from the guy that co-produced ray of light. one might argue over-production. if you're a Philistine. a true cur. but i don't believe in such a thing. my brain are huge. and you're are small... okay, well it actually is a little overproduced. Sometimes. so, on my initial listen through, i was extremely on board through the first two tracks. the opener, water from a vine leaf, seems to have been flagged as the standout on the record. it's got the most spotify plays by far, and the terrifying userbase of rym reviewers seem to agree that it's the best. even people that don't like the album agree that it's good. it's followed by into the paradise, which is this real edgy beat that actually evoked nine inch nails in my head, but don't tell anyone i said that or i'll lose my cred and you'll all gut me like the pig i am. i've Seen it. very strong tracks, those two. and then time to get wize comes around and, woof. look, if you're interested in 90s electronica—or man, a Lot of 90s music in general—you've just got to build a pretty high tolerance for its particular brand of cheese and corn. i Have a really high tolerance, but the spoken word bit on this track is... So much. i just had to kind of scoff and roll my eyes. i tried not to. it felt mean. it's not even that bad, i guess it just hit me like a truck for whatever reason. wasn't ready. it's so corny dude. oh god. i found the next track kind of so-so as well; i was, like, fully slipping out of the album at this point, but it does actually pick back up. in fact i really like the rest of the album! i'm particularly fond of all the atmospheric bits leading up to and away from the actual beats, it's a strong structure that's on full display with best friend, paranoia, one of my favorites. it starts out with this excellent, purely ambient synthwork that i so selfishly wish could just go on forever, and slides into a really nice beat and a far more evocative use of vocals than get wize. the last three tracks are also among my favorites, definitely the ones least beholden to a traditional dance structure. the most ambient and experimental the record gets, for sure. deus ex machina is very appealing to my aesthetic sensibilities; i actually really love that track. and water babies sounds like a track off the spyro the dragon (1998 psx) ost. so that's cool... man, my comparisons are fucking wack. anyway, yea! pretty good stuff! you can probably tell just from the Cover whether this is your kind of thing or not. it's definitely mine. i imagine i'll spin this quite a few times, and a lot of the tracks are definitely great for playlists and mixes. i'll have to look into more of this guy's stuff. Pieces in a Modern Style seems pretty intriguing, and i definitely need to hear his pop production work i haven't gotten around to yet. that all saints record looks pretty cool!

i'm unsure if an album has ever clicked so hard for me halfway through my first listen, to go from being underwhelmed and somewhat disappointed to thoroughly engaged and on the same wavelength. a very productive listen; i feel as though i've Unlocked something. the Doors are a band i've been tentatively interested in for a while now, but whose discography i've yet to explore. they're actually quite a bit divisive in my "scene," as it were—my scene of younger queer people autistic about music, i mean. they've become something of an easy target. i couldn't really tell you why that is—something about the cia, something about "boomers"—i tune a lot of it out. i don't really think it's Personal; it's just a product of an ever-changing culture, different political priorities, and generational gaps. it happens. that kind of stuff never bothered me, though, and what little i knew of the Doors had me intrigued: a highly eccentric and dramatic train wreck, a heady artist type full-on hollering beat poetry over a blues organ… that just seemed so obviously like my thing. i'd of course heard light my fire and break on through, they're impossible tracks to miss, staples of rock radio and soundtracks, but this marks my first real experience with their music. like all good stories, i've started at the end. gritty, ragged, and quite burnt out. the psychedelic 60s were over. we forget, really, how quickly the hippie movement came and went. i mean, this is a band who were, in a very real way, only active for five years. Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane would form in '65, and just four years later we'd see woodstock. we think of the woodstock festival as the beating heart of the movement, but really, in a lot of ways, it was the death throe. the same year, the hells angels would kill Meredith Hunter at altamont free. the manson family would murder Sharon Tate and several others, and a highly publicized court case ensues that didn't do much for the hippies' already sour reputation in the mainstream. this had all already happened by the time l.a. woman had come out. the writing was on the wall. the scene was dying. and you can hear it! it sounds exhausted. i think listening to this thing extremely hung over was a nice bit of tonal serendipity, though it's the kind of thing that usually appeals to me anyways. thankfully, this album isn't actually like, a massive bummer. it's tired, yes, and it's dark, but still fiery and intense. lots of inspired creative decisions. the building intensity towards the end of the sprawling title track in particular strikes me as the core of the record. electric. i was super into it. real head trip.

i haven't the faintest idea how to write about this, so i'm giving myself a break and kind of deciding not to. at least not a proper review. for one: this thing's highly self-referential, if not to specific moments and bits of iconography from Bowie's career, then at least to Bowie's status As a career artist. i don't know anything about Bowie's work, not really. i've heard some singles. i'd heard spiders from mars before. and that's like it. yeah, lack of background knowledge hasn't stopped me from providing real write-ups to other records—i got the last (real) Doors album as my First Doors album and i managed that just fine. but man, this is different. the man's dying. so look, i'll just say i like this a lot. i can't give everything away coaxed some very real tears out of me at nine am on a monday. and that's that. … okay, but look, while we're here, the idea that an artist's death leads to their work being OverHyped or something feels extremely Foolish. there's already this arbitrary purist tendency among critics and more snob-adjacent music fans to try to Pull music from its context as much as possible. you see it when a negative review claims an album "aged poorly," and you see it all the time in whatever follows "people only like this because []." but like. music isn't Just music, right? the story Matters, the artist's charisma and their background and politics and the musical landscape the record was released in and the Fucking album title and the cover and the promotion—all that shit matters, because why the hell Wouldn't it? like it or not, You're bringing a lot of baggage from outside the music itself into your listening experience as well. your own background and taste, the setting you happened to hear the music in, your choice of medium itself (headphones? knockoff earbuds? speakers? vinyl? streaming? are you a sit-still-and-close-your-eyes style listener or a pace-outside-or-around-the-room style listener? do you check your phone? it's not a sin to check your phone!) this shit Matters. an artist up and fucking dying after releasing an album changes the context because art is fluid and squishy and weird. that's, like. a Lot of the appeal, honestly. i continue to not understand why anyone expresses interest in this form at all if they're going to approach it with such rigidity. how do you enjoy music? this art form, even more than Most, defies that kind of thinking! what is in this for you? …that's a rhetorical question, and i don't actually think it's that complicated. i don't think someone is, like, evil, or stupid, for approaching art differently than me. it's just music. who cares. but it does also, honestly. makes me a bit uncomfortable. that's all. i'll get off the soapbox now. y'all do y'all, it ain't serious.