This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!

"This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!" is a cross-over rock and electronics album. It is from 1989 and sounds very like the music from that time. Like contemporaries like Happy Mondays, The Charlatans, 808 State and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine it has a certain production and feeling that is very dated. The late 1980s are my teenage years, so I have some positive sentiment, though I can understand that many people would agree this has not aged well.

More like poop will eat itself am I right fellas?

I liked this quite a bit. I think if I had listened to this back in ‘89 it might have altered my musical course a bit - young me would have listened to a lot of this!

One thing that you absolutely must bear in mind when listening to this is that Clint Mansell went on to score the movie Requiem For a Dream. One could argue that his film scoring has become way more widely known that PWEI was - but that is probably doing a disservice to PWEI. The interplay between these guys and, for example, the Stone Roses is quite obvious - and naturally PWEI were doing lots of similar things to the KLF though notably less ostentatiously. They may not be the sole inventor of genre-mixing mashup rock, but they very much acted like the second row in a rugby scrum. Perhaps not glamorous, but definitely valuable. What is quite surprising though is their influence on other, less immediately similar work. For example, with The Prodigy on Their Law, which very much helped develop a more industrial sound. It could also be argued that this album helped to shape Trent Reznor's style, Trent signing them to the Nothing Records label in 1994, citing his love of this album as a reason to. PWEI toured with NIN through the mid-90s, and that's a clear indication that maybe they weren't "just" a late-80s flashfire of sample-heavy pop-rock. Yeah, PWEI held open a lot of doors for a lot of people, and I've got to say I can see why. Def Con One is an absolutely iconic record, as is Can You Dig It? This definitely has a place in my musical history, as an adjacent. I never really got into them in the 90s, but I can see how they absolutely weaved their magic through UK and American music and I reckon this probably should have been in the main list.

This had a very cool standout and a sound that was entertaining.

Rating: 7/10 Best songs: Wise up! Sucker

I gave this one a couple of rounds. I didn't think much of it on the first go, but it ended really well. Not Now James, We're Busy and Wake Up, Time to Die are both absolute bangers. The rest of the album is kinda mid. Goign to stick with a 3 on this one, because the album as a whole didn't grab me, but there are some solid tracks on there.

Very much a snapshot of its time

This is a fun album, but ultimately an unremarkable one for me. I already knew the big singles, and after a couple of full listens I feel the rest of the record sits in that “typical product of its era” zone. It’s energetic, experimental, and full of late-’80s social commentary, but not always consistent. The highlights are obvious: “Def.Con.One,” “Can U Dig It,” and “Wise Up Sucker” still land. Those song I should really add to some of my driving playlists. Outside of those, the album loses some steam. Tracks like “Inject Me” and “Wake Up! Time to Die…” haven’t aged well. They lean too heavily on late-’80s clichés and the thinner production makes them feel a bit dated rather than charming. It’s a decent album and it shows a band willing to take risks, but not every experiment works. For fans of alternative dance rock from that period, it’s worth hearing. For me, it has its limits. It's not an album I'll return to.

Another band with a familiar name that I've never consciously listened to. Don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't this - very odd vibe, very English sense of humor. I liked it but I wouldn't see myself listening to a ton of it. Very distinct personality to this.

Electronic, sound collage, hard rock, rap rock. Ni fu ni fa.

Fine I guess

Reminds me of that one Coldcut album from the original list. I might be a sucker for wacky albums where they sample cartoon sound effects, because this was kinda fun.

More british music for the list(!)

Not for me.

Maybe the 80s weren't that great after all...

👎🏻

Chock full of pop culture references, they’re so cool. I’d have to be a complete moron to not like this. Unga bunga boonga. 2/5

Not a fan of this almost breakbeat, wall-to-wall LP. I was a little surprised this band bills itself as alternative rock when this feels more like the house/dance output of Primal Scream. Whatever genre the band may roll with, there's little melodic cohesion to glue this entire thing together – I love noise music, but even the harshest tracks in that genre have some sort of hook or sense of artistic direction to make them interesting. This LP felt more like throwing sounds at the wall and seeing what sticks, and just seemed to drag as a result.

Too long and too samey.

Definitely a tougher album to get through than others. This late 80s album is exactly why people tend to forget about the bad of the 80s. This was just too much lame electronic sounds mixed with heavy beats and yelling. There isn’t much in this album that’s a cohesive formulated song but it’s a lot of noise. 3.1/10