Discosis

I was not expecting to like this at all, but I really did. Very diverse array of musical styles and the production was just impeccable. 4 stars.

More great music from Quebec! I was immediately… Astounded?… by the opening track featuring Curtis Mayfield. Funky, disco-y and oh so perfect driving music. Then the album sort of wandered about in some interesting directions. Unlike a lot of critics who thought there wasn’t enough coherence, I felt Bran Van 3000 in each song and completely loved the variety… especially their very very cool handling of easy listening (Love Cliché is SO GOOD!). Thanks for bringing this fabulous album to my attention!

I've been a Bran Van Stan for nearly 2 decades, man! I'm much more familiar with "Glee", but this is great too. I'll give it a bit of a ding for being over an hour, but this is still a piping hot platter. So far I think the User Albums are waaayyy better than like 500+ of the actual albums!

This was a great big grab bag of fun!

Vraiment bon. Il y avait beaucoup d'effervescence a Montréal dans ces années là et ça parait dans l'album !. 5

Excellent album

Something new to me and definitely worthy. Something of a mixed bag - start out with Curtis Mayfield and you've set an awfully high bar - but all interesting, all worth hearing.

Weird but way better than expected.

Dancey tunes that actually cover a lot of ground and keeps you interested

Great selection, a real surprise banger. Just a tad too long.

This is by far one of the most eclectic albums I’ve gotten on this list. It felt like every genre from the 70s to 00s was showcased at some point. Loop me in was my fav.

It's got a good soulful beat. Some of the lyrics are outstanding! See Kermit the Frog was one day daydreaming Thinking about himself at a red light With that it-ain't-easy-being-greenin' And the cars behind him kept honking and honking And Kermit's last words as he flipped the bird Was, Damn you Muppets just keep on taking! See I've got my own things now so stop tooting I do my lily pad jumping Miss Piggy bumping Lotta Miss Piggys and that's all good And I'm gonna turn this red light Into a block party So we can get down in basics of what?

I was vibing with this early-aughts mix of electrofunk for a while, but 70 minutes of club music is a tall order for any artist to pull off – as the LP went on, even the curveball instrumentation between tracks wasn't enough to sustain interest for the whole runtime, and the bargain-bin songwriting in the lyrics certainly didn't help.

I submitted this, and I finally get to review it! Hooray! Like everyone else in the 1990s, BV3k came to my attention courtesy of the Rolling Rock advert (featuring Drinkin' in La) and on the back of that, I was persuaded to buy Glee. Glee wasn't like anything I'd heard before, and it was a very strong contender for suggestion here. What Glee isn't, though, is accessible. James Di Salvio had put it together by contacting mates in the Quebec music scene, asking them for music and then throwing it all at the wall. Somehow something brilliant came out of it, but I can fully see why many people would be turned off by it. Discosis is more accessible, but I can still see why the variety and pace of it would put people off. Di Salvio used pretty much the exact same approach as he had for Glee, though instead of approaching his mates from Montreal, he went through his record collection - getting work from Curtis Mayfield, Big Daddy Kane, Youssou N'dour, Eek-a-mouse and Jean Leloup to play with. That's astonishing, and the pedigree of the performers is testament to how well Glee did with people who were in the know. Discosis opens incredibly strong - as other reviews have commented - with Curtis Mayfield's previously unreleased vocals forming the basis of a soul-lifting, foot-tapping journey, developing over it's 5¾ minute run into a fast-paced, Latinesque that feeds itself in perfectly to an all-over-the-place album. The rest of the album may not quite reach the heights, but almost everything just fits together nicely. It makes me happy in ways that few other albums do. Despite this, I agree they should have ended it with Love Cliche, as Rock Star easily whimpers out as the weakest track on the album by a country mile. I didn't know, when I submitted this (probably nearly a year ago) that there would be quite so many Quebecois acts represented in the user suggestions, however I don't have much in the way of regrets submitting this. If pressed again now I might have suggest Cymande's eponymous first album, but if I'm honest with myself, Discosis has the most play time of any album I've ever bought. So I'm sorry if you don't enjoy your experience with Bv3k. I think it's a grower, maybe give it another go, knowing it won't let you sit still and settle into a genre for very long. Set aside your expectations, be curious about where Di Salvio takes you and have fun. Don't worry about how you get there.

Rating: 7/10 Best songs: Astounded, Loaded, Dare I say

Alternative rock, electronica. Me ha gustado. Un 4, venga.

Some parts were fun and some were kind of stupid. But some of the lesser parts were also endearing in a way. I also loved the genre fusions. I think there should be more weird stuff on the list. I'd rather listen to something like this than the same ol' that fills over half of the original list.

I swear to God if you had asked me about Bran Van 3000 before today I would've told you they were a White Zombie side project. Why did I think that? Anyway I think the stuff on this album that's an eclectic mix of hip hop, club music, funk, soul and psychedelia is great, it reminds me of fun stuff like Dee-Lite, De La Soul, Gorillaz, Pizzicato 5, Cibo Mato and maybe late period Beastie Boys. The last third of the album veers into more conventional pop music; I don't hate it but it's a little jarring. I think if they left out the more pop stuff this would be a five star album but the pop stuff is pretty good so I'll still give it four.

3 + bonus quebecois!

Completely new to me, quite fun.

It was different sound. Mixing some music and adding more beats to them. It was there. Too long though. It is better than a 2, but not really a 3. I will generously round up.

This was pretty enjoyable. Bran Van 3000 clearly know their music history and are keen to bring in as much as possible. The breadth of the electronica was impressive and the quieter moments spoke to their ability to scale back when necessary. Though this album was about an hour long, it didn’t feel like it overstayed its welcome.

Loopy

There appears to be a bunch of music from Quebec submitted, which is great. However this felt like a compilation album of a bunch of different songs. It's neat but ehh... not super my thing. Also too long. Once again that plague of long albums. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

A very weird and diverse album that I loved at times and found incredibly annoying at others. Having both Curtis Mayfield and Big Daddy Kane on the feature list is insane, though the songs they featured on were a bit underwhelming (with Mayfield’s track riffing waaaay too hard on his classic Move On Up) There’s some fantastic production on here, and some dogshit lyrics, and some very weird and almost pained vocal performances. Speed is a great tune until the singer just starts rattling off a load of Springsteen song titles, like one of those cringy All on the Board ‘poems’. Love Cliché is fantastic and sounds like absolutely nothing else on the rest of the album. It’s far too long and far too inconsistent, and I genuinely genuinely hated some of it - but by god some of it was charming as well

Enjoyed this.

I had their debut "Glee" on CD back in the day, but didn't realize they continued to make more albums. Always thought of them more as a sort of one hit wonder/novelty act. It sounds like an excuse to get all your friends together to record a bunch of stuff, slap an picture of some tits on the cover, and call it an album. A sprawling incoherent mess.

Didn't really quite know what to make of this. This was some kind of mixture of all kinds of styles with various artists. The first song I recognized from the radio. The rest was not that memorable I'm afraid.

Not for me, but it's a beautiful cover

This also had me. The first song with Curtis mayfield was actually pretty decent. I thought it was going to be a funky pop album. And then every other song proved me wrong. This was something that really confused me. Not sure what most of these songs were but to me they were bad. This is a never revisit album for me. 2.4/10

7/10. I liked a decent number of these songs, and there was a fun range of moods. That said, it got old after 45 minutes or so. Wouldn't listen through it again, but definitely worth listening to

This is an interesting choice for sure, I'm not entirely sure why it was submitted but I enjoyed it. Had a bit of bloat though.

When listening to the first song I thought, wow I really like those Curtis Mayfield vibes! But upon closer inspection, I discovered that it really was Curtis Mayfield! Kudos to DiSalvio for assembling such a notable bunch of legends for this album, but its almost too much of a good thing as it clocks in at over an hour and there's quite a bit of filler. But the good moments do shine.

Opening with Curtis Mayfield was too bold a move, the rest of the album really just couldn't reach that bar again.

Discosis sure is a Canadian album, in the globe connection sense as much as in the way it makes you guess about its seriousness. The topping's been smoothed to a mirror sheen. Below, though, is some kind of avant-dance piece. Feels like daring a probably-square audience to throw you out of the theater.

Was better than I expected from the album cover, but it's still just kinda just okay for me. Kinda cheesy, but I did recognize Curtis Mayfield here.

The first song striked some sparks of recognition. The rest of the album was a little bit of hit and miss. At some points I lost my attention

Nice and upbeat album.

Interesting 2000's disco-like record. Much variety of sounds too.

Strong start, some nice tunes, however a bit too inconsistent

Interesting listen. Just jammed out and got some shit done. Rest of the album couldn't compare to the first track

Catchy!

seems very mid 90's Eurodance, I guess by this point North America was just catching up, ok fun album.

Another album of very eclectic styles. I knew the good Astounded through my love of Curtis Mayfield and I knew the previous hit Drinking in LA, but was not expecting rap, indie, pop, folk and a song totally inspired by Springsteen. Great fun and better than it ought to have been! 3.5

I'm not sure I "liked" this, or if it's "good", but I certainly enjoyed it as an hour of well produced, eclectic, early 2000s electronic pop. Rating: 3.5 Playlist track: Astounded Date listened: 20/08/24

I completely forgot about Astounded which I a put on several playlists at the time. That is a fantastic song. Too bad the rest of the album is not of a similar quality.

Absolutely loved the first track.

To say this is multi-faceted is selling it short. I don't really think I heard one repeat of vocalist, let alone genre throughout. It's impressive, but very all-over-the-place, and my mood for it could change depending on what the song was. That being said, the songs flow into one another in such an impressive way that it feels like it took a lot of planning. Feels like a well-curated DJ mix more than a band. Favorite tracks: "Discosis", "Go Shopping"

My buddy gave me a copy of Glee when it was released and i was instantly hooked at the weird sampling/mix thing that was BV3. Drinking in LA is just amazing, but its even the weird other segments and attempts that work for me. Though Loop Me stands out on this album, not much else has the charm and fun of glee. Still worth listening to, but not sure it is above average.

I liked about half of it and wasn't into the other half of it. I'd give it a 2.5 if I could.

I actually enjoyed this album. There was lots of variety. Would I listen again? Maybe. Don’t say that about too many albums.

Cool electronic music, a few twists and turns. Kept me engaged. Cool pick! 3.5/5

Now this is a real chicken and egg situation. One of the greatest soundtracks out there, Jet Set Radio Future, has a track called The Answer with the same beat and samples as this albums The Answer. I'm not sure if JSRF is the remix or if this one is but either way it was exciting to hear that one on here! Overall this was a really nice variety of an album, not necessarily unique in design but the songs were different enough. I liked it!

It sounds like someone's incongruous, chaotic playlist.

It's good, but far too nice and polite to form a part of my record collection. Clearly made by music lovers, but not necessarily amazing songwriters.

Somewhat underwhelmed at first by what seemed to be another 2000s dance album, but around the halfway mark there’s a shift towards more indie tunes. Suddenly it’s much more difficult to make heads or tails about this album! Though with such a unique charcter I can see why you’d want share it with others. Still not the biggest fan of the first half, but the song ”Dare I Say” struck me. Real nice tune

This is weird and all over the place, but maybe not in a particularly good way. I think want to like it more than I actually like it.

This was pretty fun actually. I didn't know what to expect but the album was varied. Like the disco ones best

This was just too drawn out. I thought the first song was cool but it dropped off shortly after that and over an hour was a chore. 2/5.

I quite liked the first song and then it was all downhill from there. French Canadians are so weird. Bonus points to the person that submitted this because you have very unique taste. 3/10

Stylistically a bit scattershot and confusing. Vocals are pretty flat and the use of sampled/guest parts don't always feel organic to the music. Fave Songs: Astounded, Loop Me, Discosis, Predictable

This is a joke, right? If it is, it's a good one, and fully deserves a second star. If not, and someone really thinks "brand van 3000 should be in the book", then it deserves one star (at most). A shambles of an album, with some interesting guests (mostly in a 'how did they convince them to be on the record' way) and no songs I felt the need to hear a second time. Better than the very worst of the original list, but barely. But it's a joke, yeah? It must be, mustn't it?

Carried primarily by the opening hit single assisted by Curtis Mayfield, Discosis is more of a Canadian oddity rather than a must-hear album that defined any particular sound of the 2000s. Most of Bran Van 3000's music feels like a proto-LCD Soundsystem that's less focused than it's American counterpart. Also not nearly as fun or interesting. And too long! Woof, lots of things going against this album. CONTENDER FOR THE LIST: Nope.

Not my thing

Found this a bit meh

My eyes feel a bit violated by the album cover. My ears are lulled by the fin-de-siècle DJ- driven electronica. I’d rather be listening to the Propellerheads. It’s another Montreal techno album on this “alternates” list. It’s fine, he says dismissively.

It was ok

Not for me sorry.

Hasn't aged well at all

No thanks. I'm already on record for hating electronic music. And this album cover looks like a rendering of some gross basement dwelling incel's dream woman.

Þetta varð fljótt leiðigjarnt

Inferior version of the Persona 3 soundtrack.

Generic, tasteless dance music.

Nope