Reviews by ikejiri

Born in the USA
From the mid 80s thump and synth of the opening bars of Born in the USA it’s hard to reconcile this being birthed from the same initial demos as Nebraska, even if thematically they are akin.

The song and album cover remain a tentpole childhood memory for me, I remember my parents vinyl copy and them recording it onto cassette for me, there’s something about the synth riff, chorus and drums that was very appealing to 8 year old me, even if I was completely oblivious to the lyrics.

It’s interesting that Cover Me was written for Donna Summer, and you can definitely hear an echo of disco in the drums, and while it may not be lyrically top tier it's an incredibly catchy track. As are Darlington County, Working on the Highway, Downbound Train and the creepily excellent I’m On Fire.

In fact nearly every song is insanely catchy and memorable, I suppose that's why there were so many singles from the album, continuing on the second side with No Surrender, Bobby Jean and I’m Goin’ Down, before the superlative trio of Glory Days, Dancing in the Dark and My Hometown.

Obviously he has always played with catchiness and anthemic songs, but they have often been shot through with despondency and despair, that the promised escape will never arrive and the protagonist knows they will be stuck. While there are still moments like that on hear, as in the title track, there are also some sparks of life or steelines or hope, eg the desire of I’m On Fire or the fuck it let’s dance of Dancing in the Dark.

It’s a truly great album for many reasons; excellent songs, great melodies, bombastic production, great stories and a load of nostalgia. 5.
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Playlist submission: Born in the USA

Throwing Muses
I was really intrigued by the first track, it has a bit of early REM to the guitar and some Siouxsie Sioux/new wave to the drums and vocals, making a great track and confounding my assumption that this would be generic alt rock, especially with the folky/shanty breakdown, and the overall idiosyncratic and direct vocals and lyrics.

Based on that I feel I should have really liked the rest of it, but I kept finding myself tuning out, struggling to latch on to much of it over my first listen. I did start to get into a little more on repeat listens, but I think there is a marked lull from Green to Rabbits Dying, with it only really picking up with the punkish rockabilly of America (She Can’t Say No), the vaguely alt-funk country of Stand Up, the quirkily structured and excellent Soul Soldier.

There’s enough interesting stuff to come back to, even if it’s never going to be a favourite so I’ll go for 3.
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Playlist submission: Call Me or Soul Soldier, I’ll go Call Me

Stephen Stills
Goddamn hippies

I really loved this, it shares a similarity to If I Could Only Remember My Name, as you might expect, but with an earthier, bluesier tone to it compared to Crosby’s more hippified psychedelia, although both sharing similarly stereotypical late 60s lyrical themes.

Love the One You’re With is a banger, although I do prefer the Isley Brothers version, Do for the Others is a lovely tune and Church has a great touch of gospel a la some of Exile. Old Times and Go Back Home are a perhaps slight step down from those three tracks even with Jimi and Eric appearing, but Sit Yourself Down is excellent, with more of the Gospel blues feel, and very Still-esque melody. Ringo provides some lovely subtlety to To a Flame, and it sort of reminds me of a Neil song. Black Queen I can take or leave, but I like the sitar-soul-funk of Cherokee a great deal. Is We are Not Helpless an answer to Helpless from Deja Vu earlier in the year? I presume so, and it's another great gospel tinged track, with a slight Pepperness to the horns, and more hippie children are the future lyrics.

I thought this was a great album, maybe not top tier but thoroughly enjoyable and a bit of a gem.
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Playlist submission: Love the One You’re With

DummyPortishead

Rated 10/10

Dummy
Straight off the bat this is obviously a 5, one of those albums I knew through school and uni osmosis, although I didn’t really become properly familiar with it until much later, getting into it fully after Third was released.

Mysterons, Sour Times and Glory Box obviously stand out and I think it's great how they bookend the album, but it really works so well as a wholly coherent album, with consistent elements and styles running throughout the songs, creating a beautifully atmospheric record. The touchpoints are clear; 60s cinema, hip hop inspired beats and sampling, Massive Attack style atmospherics, but what really elevates it is Adrian Utley’s spidery guitars and Beth Gibbon’s enigmatic and arresting vocals.

It still sounds fresh and exciting, even though it’s been aped and ripped off many times, and there’s nothing in a similar vein that comes close to touching the recondite heaviness of the atmospheres they create, while also being as emotionally affecting as something like It Could Be Sweet.

As I say I love the whole, but to pick out a couple of songs; I love the hints at Western soundtracks on Wandering Star, with the harmonica and twangy guitar interwoven with scratching. The Swelling organs and strings on It’s A Fire are gorgeous, and I love the underwateriness on Numb. Roads is another great track, the slow march of the percussion with the guitars and the strings is fantastic.

Great album, easy 5.
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Playlist submission: Obvious, but Sour Times

Green River
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I think I’ve reached saturation point with covers of Night Time is the Right Time, I find the song disproportionately annoying, and the version on here slightly sours what is an enjoyable if not top tier CCC album.

Bad Moon Rising has never really suffered for me from its ubiquity, it remains a superbly evocative song. Alongside that Green River, Commotion and Cross Tie Walker are typically great choogling CCC songs, combining that warm swampy admixture of blues, soul, country, pop and 50s rock’n’roll. Wrote a Song For Everyone is great as well, one of the slow moving and moving CCC songs. Sinister Purpose carries a nice hint of the title, with a little bit of a funk groove and you can feel the steam rising off the swamp in front of the porch they’re playing on. Tombstone Shadow is probably the weakest track, but Lodi is my favourite, one of their best, a melancholic tale of a down on his luck singer, the shuffle echoing the inevitability of his fate.

It doesn’t quite reach the heights of Cosmo’s Factory but it’s a rock solid CCC album, showing their ability to elevate relatively straightforward arrangements into compelling soulful country rock.
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Playlist submission: Lodi

All Born Screaming
I love how Annie Clark switches up her styles between albums, while having a consistent throughline. I was quite into Masseducation when that came out, and the subsequent Fast Slow Disco remix of Slow Disco is superb, but I’d not heard this album before so I was interested to see what avenue she had gone down.

Synths and danceability are still a large part of it, but it is much more multiform than the electro glam pop of Masseducation and the groove driven Daddy’s Home, with a darker, gothier shimmer, recalling Bowie, but also 90s and 2000s alt rock.

There’s a Britpop/Radiohead/Zero 7 feel to the opener Hell is Near, and Reckless carries a bit of Tori Amos and PJ Harvey before the dramatic outro. There are Nine Inch Nails and Yeah Yeah Yeahs elements to Broken Man, with the synth pulse and Karen O style delivery. That song and Flea also benefit from Dave Grohl's grunge-disco thump.

Big Time Nothing is a banger, part Depeche Mode, part Station to Station, part 80s funk. Violent Times successfully takes a big detour into Bond/Portishead territory, I love the combination of the John Barry strings and horns with the darker, industrial synth. The Power is Out nods to Madonna and Bjork, with an iciness to it, before the excellent pop of Sweetest Fruit and the reggae accented So Many Planets. All Born Screaming is superb, a little bit of Talking Heads and 80s funk with a great chorus and a superb spacey acceleration over the final few minutes.

It’s notable that I’ve mentioned so many bands with each song, but it doesn’t feel derivative, it feels forward looking, with excellent musical references and it sounds superb/ The Power is Out is perhaps my only dip, but it is minor one on an excellent album, so much so I think I’ll nudge it to a 5.
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Playlist submission: Could be Hell is Near or Big Time Nothing, but I’ll go with All Born Screaming

DÍAEla Minus

Rated 8/10

Día
From all accounts this appears to be quite an obscure addition, without a huge volume of critical response or streaming/sales. I’m not surprised I’ve not heard of it, as I’m quite out of touch, but it definitely feels very much like something they’d play on 6 Music, and overall I really liked it.

The duo of Abrir Monte and Broken kick things off brilliantly, the former’s moody atmospherics giving way to the excellent Synthpop of the latter. Idols is great too, I like how ‘I took a blow to the face’ sounds like ‘I took a bloke to the face’.

It loses its way a little for me with IDK, it sort of meanders around between synths, feeling a bit like a Super Hans style the longer the note, the more dread, and QQQQ feels less inspired and a little more generic than the majority of the songs on the album.

I Want to be Better is good though, with a more Latin rhythm and some synths that recall Sledgehammer. Onwards is great, with more of a 90s feel to it with the synth bass and ravey whistles and more mondegreens, this time wanting ‘to see Ed Byrne’. I like how it transitions into the clunky sounds of And, before the excellent Upwards (Shave you, shave myself), again with a great 90s, ravey feel. And Combat has a pleasant dreaminess to meander things to a close at a pleasantly concise 33 minutes.

A couple of dips in the middle notwithstanding I thought this was great, and I’ll be keen to come back to it.
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Playlist submission: Upwards

Bright Flight
I can’t quite put my finger on whose voice he reminds me of, it might be Bill Callahan, they share a similar slightly stumbling flatness, and how much you like this will likely depend on how much tolerance you have for it.

I do really like it, even if it does occasionally feel a bit affected, his vague atonality and talk-singing suits the loose, homemade country-indie feel of the album. It starts off nicely in that vein with Slow Education, Room Games & Diamond Rain and Time Will Break the World, the backing vocals are really nice on the former and the guitar on the latter two are great. And the line ‘My horses’ legs look like four brown shotguns’ is excellent. Rather like his voice I think his lyrics are likely an acquired taste, and whether you like lines about kittens from Great Britain will probably affect your overall enjoyment.

There are a couple of dips, or more like moments where it seems like it’s treading water a little, but it’s never truly unenjoyable. But Tennessee is probably my favourite track, Cassie Berman’s entry is lovely, her Meg White pseudo-naif vocals are quite charming and it’s an excellent indie-country track with a great chorus. Death of an Heir of Sorrows is also a great closing track, with an amiable sadness that I like.

Tricky one to rate, it’s between a 3 and 4. It’s a very agreeable album, and I like its 35 minute brevity, but I’m not sure how long it lingers on the mind after hearing it so I’ll stick with a high 3.
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Playlist submission: Tennesse

SupernovaNova Twins

Rated 4/10

Supernova
I’m quite intrigued to hear some of the new entries, and I had never heard of the Nova Twins before.

The Guardian reading liberal in me wanted to like this for the r’n’b, punk, pop, hip hop, glam-metal mash up by two women of colour defying expectations of what type of music they should be making

But in reality it didn't really float my boat. It seems quite mad to me that people are reaching back for another go at Nu Metal, surely one of the most infecund genres of music, and so often this sounded like fuzzed up takes on the rights free music they use on reality shows like Selling Sunset, with all the I’m a boss bitch, I’m a bad bitch lyrics.

That seemed particularly prevalent over the first few songs, but there were a couple of tracks in the middle that stood out. The backing vocals on Puzzles are great and A Dark Place for Somewhere Beautiful combines quiet/loud nicely with a good chorus. Sleep Paralysis is probably the best song, with a more evolved melody alongside the kitchen sink bass and guitar and disco thump of the chorus.

A 2 possibly feels a bit harsh, but realistically I’m unlikely to revisit, even if I was glad to have given it a go.
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Playlist submission: Sleep Paralysis

The Scream
This certainly feels like a debut album, in the sense that they are kind of finding their feet and groove, and consequently it doesn’t have that same accomplished foreboding as Juju, although it's still a striking album.

Carcass is a real standout, it's a great punk/post punk tune reminiscent of Queen Bitch, and I really like the cover of Helter Skelter, the new wave tom toms, scratchy guitars and wailing give it a nice difference from the heavier bluesy sound of the original.I love the sparseness of Overground before the sludgy rhythm kicks in. Mirage has a hint of Public Image (the song) in the riff and it's a great track. Metal Postcard almost sounds like Big Bottom, but it moves more towards sinisterly marching Krautrock. Suburban Relapse is great, not least for its lyrics about suburban mindlessness. You can draw a throughline from The Kinks to Blur with this, both for theme and music, some of the guitar stabs sound like Coxon on Charmless Man I think. Switch is a great closer, brooding but also musically bright, especially as it moves through different passages and introduces the sax.

I don’t think it quite reaches the heights of Juju, but it is a great album and a high 4.
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Playlist submission: Carcass

S&M
As is customary I need to say that I think both Enter Sandman and Master of Puppets are excellent songs, but my tolerance for the rest of their oeuvre is pretty much exhausted now so this was probably never going to land for me.

It’s not a terrible idea to try and add orchestral drama and flair to their songs, but as so many of their songs are harmonically and melodically barren that there isn’t much the San Francisco Symphony can really do, other than add to the superficial juvenile bombast of it all, and it all ends up feeling rather pointless, particularly once the guitars kick in, Lars clodhops gracelessly around his kit and James Hetfield starts gurning for his life, and over the course of 2 and a quarter hours it certainly feels needlessly self indulgent.

There also seems to be no real sense of interplay between the band and orchestra. Metallica are just playing their set as normal while the orchestra separately but at the same time play string and horn arrangements of the same songs.

I was hopeful Enter Sandman might be good, but I don’t think the horns really work. The only successful songs are Nothing Else Matters, mainly due to the band being relatively restrained and it being one of their better melodies and The Ecstasy of Gold, principally because it’s not a Metallica song and we can really hear how great Kamen and the orchestra are.

Obviously not much in this for me, but the orchestra does stop it being a basement dweller however so I’ll go 2.
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Playlist submission: The Ecstasy of Gold

RisquéChic

Rated 10/10

Risque
Good Times is pretty much the perfect Chic song, a musical and thematic distillation of everything great about them; an unimpeachable (and endlessly repeated) bass line, Nile’s guitar, swirling and stabbing strings, the piano lines, the female vocals and the call to the euphoria and freedom of dancing and hedonism, although with a subtle subtext.

A Warm Summer Night is a classic Chic ballad too, lush and hypnotic and a great flip side to Good Times. My Feet Keep Dancing may feel a little like Chic by numbers, but it’s still a superior disco song, with customarily excellent bass. My Forbidden Lover is a top tier Chic banger, yet another precision tooled production. I really love Can’t Stand to Love You, the bluesiness of the lead guitar and the rhythm give it a different flavour. Will You Cry isn’t as strong as A Warm Summer Night, feeling a lot like a song written to fulfil the ballad requirement between the upbeat songs, but its enjoyable enough before ending on another excellent disco production in What About Me?

I gave C’est Chic 5 and there’s no reason to not give this the same, for exactly the same reasons, plus it has Good Times.
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Playlist submission: Good Times

Run DMC
I love the cold, minimalist beats and synth stabs on this. Obviously it’s heralded as the start of a harder form of rap, and, as often happens with bands who are first to strike new ground they are also the first to sound old fashioned, and there is no doubt that both the mix of rap and rock and the more confrontational lyrics were taken on and made more sophisticated by groups that followed.

However that shouldn't detract from the quality of this, even if it does sound slightly quaint nowadays in places nowadays, and you have to appreciate how influential it was/is.

Hard Times, Rock Box, Sucker MCs, It’s Like That are still all fantastic, and although Jam Master Jay, Hollis Crew and Wake Up aren’t as strong 30 Days is excellent, with great synth, reminiscent of Afrika Bambataa, and Jay’s Game is a great percussive cut up of It’s Like That.

I’ll tip to 4, it is of its time, but it's still very listenable, I love the sound of the beats and it is hugely influential.
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Playlist submission: It’s Like That

Kimono My House
An obvious comparison is Roxy Music, and while this doesn’t quite have the same strange glamour and compelling drama of Roxy as their best, it definitely has its own peculiar art-glam charm and is a bouncingly fun listen with some absolute bangers.

This Town is the obvious standout, a brilliant track, but it’s followed by two great tracks in Amateur Hour and the swirling wurlitzer waltz of Falling In Love With Myself Again. This track and This Town pull their great trick of cramming too many words and syllables into the meter, making it feel on the edge of breaking down.

It doesn’t quite maintain that strong start over Here in Heaven and Thank God It’s Not Christmas, but it picks back up with Hasta Manana, Monsieur and the brilliantly catchy Talent is an Asset, with a 50s rock and roll drum beat welded to one of their over the top choruses. Complaints carries on the exaggerated pace, with what feels like a slightly oompah mittel-europa melody. I’m not as into In My Family, but I really like the silliness of Equator, closing the album on a suitably offbeat note.

Although there’s a couple of dips among some real belters, it's a brilliantly enjoyable listen , idiosyncratic with a great combination of grandiosity and knowingness, but compared to some of their peers I don’t think it's in the top tier, so I’ll go 4.
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Playlist submission: Some great track, but has to be This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us

PhrenologyThe Roots

Rated 10/10

Phrenology
I loved this when it came out, mainly off the back of the excellent The Seed. I liked it so much I also ended up buying Cody Chestnutt’s album that The Seed originally came from.

I’ve not actually listened to it for a while so it’s been nice remembering what I liked about it. Obviously the main thing is the live instrumentation, which elevates the jazzy soulful feel and also allows them to go into some interesting, if not always totally successful, corners - there is certainly a slight disjointed feel between the more schizophrenic first half and the jazz-soul second half.

Rock You is a strong if fairly straight ahead start, and !!!! gives Beastie Boys hardcore vibes, before the excellent Sacrifice. I love Questloves’s drums on this and the sequenced electronic burbling is excellent, giving it a slightly atypical feel. Rolling With Heat is great too, again excellent jazzy drums and a great hook. Thought @ Work combines Apache and 70s funk samples and the theme of dancing and music as freedom. The Seed is still superb, combining hip hop and Cody Chestnutt's indie-soul brilliantly. Break You Off is much more like jazzy r’n’b rather than straight hip hop. I like the lyrics about breaking up someone’s relationship, and the hook is catchy, if I sometimes find it a little bit irritating for some reason.

Water is superb, the emotional and musical centrepiece of the album, ruminating on how their bandmate was lost to drugs, with a superb bass sample/interpolation and a great chorus, before descending into some Revolution #9 style music concrète. Quills is also great, I love the harpsichord/clavinet riff and the Swing Out Sister interpolation, even if I don’t quite connect with the lyric.

Initially Pussy Galore feels like another sex obsessed hip hop track, but it’s slightly more nuanced than the repetition of Pussy Galore suggests I think, examining how sex is commodified, capitalised and weaponised. Complexity has another great soulful chorus and as well as a ruminative and rather sad lyric about relationships. I love Something in the Way of Things in Town, Questlove's percussion is great, moving under Amiri Baraka’s poetry, building a very Gil Scott Heron style track. Rhymes and Ammo also has an interesting lyric, conflating guns and wordplay with a great harpsichord hook, and then Thirsty takes things in a completely different direction to close, although I don’t particularly care for it.

It’s not a perfect album, there are a couple of things that don’t quite work, but I do love it, and as the only Roots album on the list I’ll push it to a 5.
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Playlist submission: Water or The Seed? As much as I love The Seed I’ll go Water

3 Years, 5 Months and 2 days in the Life of
I love the sound of this, the drums are big and echoey, and there is some excellent live sounding guitar interspersed throughout, and they are also excellent at building hooks out of disparate samples. The three singles are great examples of this, the brilliantly catchy People Everyday and Mr Wendall and the superb Tennessee.

The whole album has a great laid back feel too, with a notable country-soul-funk element that Outkast would pick up, and allied with their focus on straightforward messages of equality and unity you can see why this cut through in the early 90s, especially as they presented an acceptable version of blackness to white audiences. Also there was a kid at my school called Wendall, which helped.

On Mama’s Always on Stage, the harmonica sounds very much like the harmonica from the Blind Boys of Alabama’s version of Way Down in the Hole from S1 of The Wire. I really like the feel of Raining Revolution, with their blend of rapping and singing. Fishing 4 Religion has a great catchy bass hook and another nice percussion sound, leading into the funk of Give a Man a Fish and then the more jazzy feel of U. The Baby hook feels very familiar to me, but I can’t quite place it. Eve and Reality and Natural both have an eco-spiritual vibe to them, and Natural is a very pleasing, laid back track. Dawn of the Dread’s funk bass is great, I love the wonky intro before hitting the groove. Washed Away is a nice closer, very reminiscent of 3 Feet High and Rising.

It does perhaps miss a bit of the edge and playfulness of De La Soul or Tribe, occasionally their positivity becomes a little earnest, and it misses some of the silliness and humour of those groups. It also feels a little long at an hour, but it's still a great listen and an easy 4.
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Playlist submission: Tennessee

Morrison Hotel
I thought this was a really fun listen, but it points to my lack of knowledge of The Doors catalogue that I was surprised to see it has a mixed critical standing.

I can see that it is a little uneven though. There’s clearly a focus on bluesier material, with little of the jazz and psychedelia of previous albums, and some songs are more successful than others, but it does have more than enough to be a great listen. Roadhouse Blues is of course superb, and Waiting for the Sun is perhaps the only nod to psychedelia, and I love the Moog parts with the organ. Peace Frog I remember Paul playing for me at Hawthorn Terrace and its a superb song. Ship of Fools is propelled by some bouncy organ and bass, giving it a nice vibrancy under Morrison’s crooning about dying at sea. Land Ho is another bouncy track, continuing the nautical theme. The organ is great on Queen of the Highway, rippling and carrying the song along. Indian Summer is a very pretty track, with a sense of Albatross to it.

You Make Me Real, Blue Sunday, The Spy and Maggie M’Gill are where it works less well for me, not quite hitting the right bluesy rock heights of the other tracks. Altogether though the good songs outweigh those slight dips and make it a solid 4.
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Playlist submission: Peace Frog

Teenage Head
This sits nicely in the venn diagram of The Stones circa Exile and Safe As Milk. High Flying Baby has a touch of All Down the Line and a touch of Electricity and is a belter of an opener. The looseness of Exile and specifically Sweet Virginia continues on City Lights, a great country blues with some excellent backing vocals, and a lead vocal with a definite Keith quality to it. Yesterday’s Numbers is excellent too, as is Teenage Head, which has an element of Barracuda to it, and there's yet more country blues on 32-30.

They bring in a bit of Elvis and boogie with Evil Hearted Ada, and continue the boogie and Jaggerish vocalisms with Doctor Boogie. Although enjoyable enough these two tracks are a little bit of a dip, but it finishes exceptionally with Whiskey Woman, a brilliantly forlorn song and the standout track.

I didn't realise until the 2nd listen that this predated Exile, which is quite remarkable. They sound hugely influenced by the Stones, but then point to the louche country blues the Stones would go on to do. That loose, garage band countrified blues is what sets them apart from a lot of contemporary blues plodders and turns this into an charming and excellent 30 minute gem. 4.
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Playlist submission: Whiskey Woman

Oxygène
Ladies and gentlemen, enter the mysterious domain of Tony Le Mesmer. Behold the cage of Katmandu. The void of solitude. The dance of Diabalos. The shroud. The forces turn upon their axis. The summoning of the spirits of Talamachus.

It is hard to divorce Pt 4 from things like Tony le Mesmer and its ubiquitous TV shorthand for mystery growing up in the 80s, but it is genuinely a fantastic track, one of many on here.

Because of those associations I’ve never thought to listen to this album, and it's a shame as it is a great album that interestingly predates both Low and Music For Airports. It doesn’t quite go into the darker corners of Low, or stay within the same floaty atmosphere of Music for Airports, mixing moments of nascent Ambient with nascent Synth Pop.

Like all early electronic music the influence of Kraftwerk and early 70s German music is clear, and like a lot of early synthesiser music you can sometimes see the joins. For all the charm that brings, it is also notable how great it still sounds, he definitely has an eye for catchy melodic hooks and electronic rhythms, and it’s consistently engaging, interesting and enjoyable to listen to.

I don’t really recall many people citing him as an influence, when he clearly is, not just on fellow French bands like Air and Daft Punk. Perhaps it’s because of all the son et lumiere connotations of Pt 4 and perhaps because in the UK we tend to look down on European pop music it's probably dismissed too easily, when in fact it's an excellent album.

I don’t quite think it reaches a 5 though, for all it’s quality it’s perhaps missing some of the sophistication, oddness and immersiveness of some of the groups it was influenced by and who it influenced, so I’ll go for a very high 4.
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Playlist submission: Oxygène Pt 2.

Kings of the Wild Frontier
They are a great post punk pop band, magpie-ing contemporary and B-movie references, double drums, Marco Pirroni’s excellent guitar and Adams camped up swaggering persona and delivery to make some excellent singles. Those same qualities are probably what gets them unfairly dismissed as a bit of novelty act, that they are throwaway 80s pop stars and not much more.

Having said that there is an initial sense that there isn’t too much beyond the singles in Dog Eat Do, Antmusic and Kings of the Wild Frontier, but in reality there are plenty of gems on here.

Pironni gets just the right amount of twang on Los Rancheros, it’s a great western inspired track and Ants Invasion sort of combines Black Sabbath and Joy Division for a great bit of sinisterism. Killer in the Home has some Echo and the Bunnymen to it. The Magnificent Five is a great bit of camped up glam-post-punk and Don’t be Square is an excellent track with great bass and a campy 50s rock and roll new wave feel to it. Jolly Roger is more campy fun and Making History melds a Disco-ey Bo Diddley guitar rhythm and pop melody to pleasing effect. The Human Beings is a great groove, the nagging refrain is a real earworm.

All in all, there’s plenty of fun and some surprisingly great and ominous songs to easily make this a 4.
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Playlist submission: Antmusic