Reviews by mibbiesaye

My wife hates this album with a passion. She cray cray.

Some people just don't know how to part like it's 1989. If anything I like this even more now than I did back then when I picked up a vinyl copy with a free 12" for diddly squat. Back then I was more of an S'Express fan who I guess had a more effective unified image.

This is more like a compilation of early dance music tunes. Kind of mad it launched both Lisa Stansfield and Yazz, and it launched Mark E Smith of the The Fall's ongoing flirtation with electronica. See also D.O.S.E, INCH and Von Sudenfed as well as the contributions of Dave Bush and then Julia Nagle with The Fall. Check out The Fall's 'cover' of My Telephone renamed as Telephone Thing. Sound nothing like the original not least in including a lyric about Gretchen Franklin who played Ethel in Eastenders.

Anyway all that and Wikipedia has just informed me Queen Latifah is on it too. Although I can't hear what she's doing....

I'm not a big fan of that 'jazzy' approach to vocal melodies. It too often feels like an excuse for not having an idea for a tune. I liked the stories about how they recorded outside and used a lake for the final mix on some of it. The stretchy last track is good. However, the overall floaty hippy vibe for John Martyn for me is always a bit spiked by the nagging knowledge that he could be such a colossal dick, especially to his wife Beverley.

That hold post Les Cousins folk rock scene produced some amazing female musicians and songwriters who were real pioneers in terms of how women could operate in the music industry. But some of them certainly paid a price. Alongside Beverley Martyn see also Shirley Collins, Linda Thompson, Sand Denny, Gaye Woods, etc

Illbient, my new word for the day and a brilliant genre idea and name. Even better than Glambient.

If you knocked 35 minutes off the catchy singles would make it not seem so heinous.

Is it too mean on whoever can be gathered to have Who Knows Where The Times Goes? played at my funeral? I can barely get through it on a sunny Thursday morning without getting a bit tearful.

A lot better than Fatboy Slim and The Chemical Brothers not quite as good as Aphex Twin or Orbital. Still, a fun trip back to that forgotten time when dance music was ascendant.

I have loved this album since my best mate aged 13/14 found his older brother's copy in a box in the attic. It was the double edition with the follow up included too. I think its mood perfectly fits that sort of age. The melodies are quite child like at times but the sounds and songs are rebellious and angsty in places.

The band on the Malcolm Jones produced stuff are fantastic the way they respond to and match Syd's unique lopsided approach to things. The bare Gilmour/Waters productions are a little exploitative when it gets to including bits of failed takes. And it has fed into the tendency to either dismiss Syd as a hopeless acid casualty/victim of mental health, or indeed the opposite tendency to worship him as the ultimate out there outsider artist. Both feel a bit reductive. I suspect he knew what he was doing more than is sometimes made out. E.g. the Have You Got It Yet? episode with Floyd just sounds hilarious and intentionally pointed.

I like Piper At The Gates of Dawn and the early Floyd singles but I think he wrote his best songs for his solo stuff. The follow-up Barrett is every bit as good with a more sympathetic production duo of Gilmour and Wright pulling off a sound more in keeping if a little less innovative than Jones work on The Mad Cap Laughs.

Sounds closer to Throbbing Gristle than I remember from when I've listened in the past. Negativ Nine especially. Maybe I'm just more familiar with TG than I used to be. I know Halber Mensch better but I think I much prefer this. I find I can't really get into their later less noisy stuff.

Weird how Moody Blues they sound but like an improvement on that template. A bit samey throughout.

Aww 19 year old me dancing with a never happened crush at the student union to Keep On Moving. Aye kid, keep on moving right along.

A shame the single version of Back To Life isn't on the album but that's my only quibble.

In theory this is my favourite period for the Stones with them writing their early tunes and Brian Jones mostly engaged and innovative, but it is still only half a decent album to me and the lyrics are so odious. But that marimba part on Under My Thumb.

I don't like the proto punk label. MC5 stand on their own and they were very much of their time just as much as they were timeless or influential. They weren't no John the Baptist to punk's Holy Saviour status.

Just cos Henry Rollins is a big fan he doesn't somehow claim the MC5 solely for punk. Lemmy originally saw Motörhead as an English MC5. He had the rock n roll but louder and faster thing down but his despairing cynicism meant he was never going to write his own wide eyed Kick Out The Jams screamer. So, are MC5 proto metal too? What about Mothership? Is it proto ambient? Proto space rock?

They were exciting and innovative and still raise a thrill or a hackle.

The 'secretary rock' dude is Pearce from Community isn't he?

Fine I guess. Catchy, tastefully produced, some ok lyrics, some terrible. But the kind of daily album I wind up resenting cos there are plenty interesting new things out just this week I probably should have listened to instead.

You can just about hear the influence on Prince with the whole prodigy solo effort playing all the instruments thing. Although, I think it makes this feel a little bit restrained at times.

I find myself increasingly enamoured of 90s soul and R&B. This is great. Very much a worthy successor of classic 70s soul but not a poor replica. I'm going to listen to his other two albums.

https://youtu.be/UFXdTZQ7lkE?is=B_f4a97TV2tngqXU

If you go to the last couple of minutes of this you can see how the bass player on this album got the heave ho!

This album is a real treasure. Maybe the wildest album to be the best selling in a single year in the UK? We live in such different times. Who at the top of pop is making anything this out there? Charlii XCX? Maybe 🤔

I get why this is viewed as an approachable Zappa album. There are zero unfunny doowop parodies. It's well played I guess but all a bit bloodless to my ears. There's way better fusion stuff out there. I recently settled on rounding up 2.5s to 3s. I shouldn't punish this because of the other Zappa stuff I can't stomach at all.

I love the contrast of the static meditative instrumentation with the soulful vocals.