Reviews by prometheus

Every now and again I'm exposed to mainstream American pop music and for the past, I reckon, 20 years it's all just sounded exactly the same to me. I have no idea about which artist is which and oftentimes it feels that for majority of people it doesnt even matter; they just need some easy, instantly gratifying background music while they're at home doing whatever. It's the case here too: well-produced (as in absolutely harmless and as non-offensive as possible) pop music that I might've heard playing at a grocery shop or something but would have no recollection of, since, like said, all American pop music has sounded the same to me for at least 20 years. So in short, it's well-made music, but have I personally any reason or desire to listen to this ever again? Well, no. I don't hate it the way some of the albums here have made me actually upset; I just feel completely indifferent about this.

I got Music for the Masses earlier on this list and absolutely fell in love with it. In the meantime I’ve been going through their other albums surrounding MftM, including this one, and while none of them are quite as good as it was, they’re still great all the same. It’s also quite surprising how good of a song Enjoy the Silence still is, despite being such a huge, overplayed hit. Personal Jesus I’m a bit less fond of though. Policy of Truth is my absolute favourite song on the album though.

I was going to give it four stars, simply because I think it’s not as good as MftM, but what the hell, I play this regularly now and will pick up a copy evemtually too, so let’s just go for five stars for this as well.

Fantastic, dynamic production with insanely good guitar and bass tones. Wasn't quite as aggressive as I was expecting since it would sound like a great noise rock record with this production.

I'm sorry, I really can't stand her falsetto.

Back in the turn of the millennium, I used to record MTV Nordic's Superrock on tape (Monday nights, from 1-3 in the morning) and still have distinctive recollections of a Death in Vegas music video, that due to this album being given to me for today, turned out to be Aisha. Around that time there used to a bit of a wave of these similar rock-adjacent electronic bands, that, for me, being 12-13 at the time, all felt a bit too weird to really undestand and "get" properly. Now, a good 25-ish years later, I do get what the thing with these bands was, even though I'm not overly enthusiastic about it. It's a solid, good album but that's mostly it.

I like me some noise rock quite a bit but Sonic Youth has never really quite clicked for me. I tried for years but always end up feeling underwhelmed. They're quite good at best but mostly it's just... okay. The same goes for this album.

Right at the start I thought this sounded quite good, but then the singer came in a ruined my mood instantly. Well, it’s not THAT bad, just has that 00s indie sound to him – I know you know what I mean – that I have a very hard time tolerating.

I don’t really get the comparisons to Coldplay myself. I feel like this is far more experimental (and therefore more interesting) than Coldplay, who to me sound very conservative instrument-wise.

You can definitely tell this is from the naughties by just about everything in it; from the production to the aforementioned singing style and the overall melancholic compositions. Hnece it makes me quite nostalgic, but sadly in a bit of a negative way. I used to listen to some sad and melancholic indie in my late teens back then too (Mew’s Frengers, for example, is an excellent album) and the mood on this album instantly bring back that troubled, depressed state of mind a kid who in actuality has nothing to worry about in his life. So in short, it kind of gives some lovely shivers of nostalgia, but the things it reminds me of are absolute bollocks.

A very loose, tangentical thought I got off of that is that I personally really enjoy the very old-school style and mood of this site. None of the horseshit that plague every modern website and the reviews in general feel that way too. Thus, I’m not even going to proofread what I’ve written in this review and let it go through as is.

I’m gonna give this a solid 3 stars. Made me feel things more than I expected, probably because I was listening to this while cycling around my hometown in the dead of night, which tends to be when I’m in my most nostalgia-receptive mood. But yeah, not really anything I’d want to listen to again after this one time.

Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to.

I’ve tried to get into Spacemen 3 before but the only album I’ve ever really listened to more is the aforementioned bootleg-turned-into-an-official-demo-collection-I-guess. Some great moments on this album, some far less interesting ones. It's okay.

NOTE: At least on Apple Music, this album isn't available as a stand-alone release but all the tracks are – rather unconveniently – on "The Virgin Years 1974-1978" collection instead.

While this isn't necessarily my favourite Tangerine Dream album (Rubycon and Ricochet that followed this one are), this was the first one I heard from them somewhere around 2007 or so and it basically changed, if not my whole life, than at least largely how I listened to music. There's just something about those Moog sequencers that I simply never get tired of. In vacuum, I might not give this full five stars but since it's their only album on the list and it was, nevertheless, hugely influential for me personally, I can't give it anything lower either. If you like this, go give Rubycon and Ricochet a listen as well.

Killed and smeared by the jews. Such sadness.

I can see why this album, along the others usual suspects, felt identity-changing as a teen, after the gradiose of the 80s. I, however, am a millennial so to me these were just some pretty good songs you'd hear on MTV Nordic's Superrock or 90s nostalgia programs. So yeah, pretty good (better than I thought AIC is, to be frank), but that's about it.

Well, that was bland and dull. Nothing really wrong about it, but there’s really no reason for you to ever listen to this album. Pointless run-of-the-mill music, that I will have no recollection of ever even hearing after this one time, to put it bluntly.

Well, it's perfectly fine alternative-ish pop-rock something. Nothing more, nothing less.

Album with a cover like this, released during the peak of whatever people call "woke era" and 14 songs in 32 minutes. Yeah, can’t help it, I admit I’m a bit prejudiced. But maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised, who knows?

Nah, I wasn't. This is dreadful, absolutely horrible. Is this what American mainstream music is like these days? No wonder they're out of their fucking minds.

Given that this album doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page, its importance to be on this list could obviously be considered questionable.

BUT: we’re not here to rate an album’s importance, we’re here to rate how good they are. And this one definitely took me by surprise. I’m quite a big enjoyer of the so-called krautrock and know a good amount of newer bands in the similar style, which I sometimes like to call neo-krautrock (Circle, Minami Deutsch, Motor!k, to name a few examples) and this album seems to lean a good bit on that same style. Not remarkably better than any of the bands mentioned and certainly nowhere near as good as the originators though.

BUT, another but, when it comes to modern music, this is still better than the vast majority of everything else that comes out these days. Listened it through three times today and have to give it a solid 5/5, no way about it. This was brilliant. Definitely one of the best new finds I've gotten off this list so far.

Heh, Vaimon faija.

One of those albums that are probably just fine (wouldn’t be on this list if they weren’t, surely?) but which I personally get absolutely nothing out of and have no reasons to ever return to.

There are only two versions of this album on streaming, both with a ton of bonus tracks so I ultimately decided that nah, I’m just gonna listen to the songs that were on the original LP and call it a day.

But what I heard was quite good indeed. Production-wise, this is just about as good as a live rock album can sound like while still sounding authentic and real, I'd say. The songs are, honestly, nothing that special to me, but I love when bands just jam away and let the songs live a bit live. It really is the kind of thing you see less and less these days, even in the more marginal corners of music, which is a shame.

Got another Pet Shop Boys album less than a week ago and was pleasantly surprised. Well, I got another one now and this one's even better. Gave Behaviour 4/5 so I guess I have to give this a 5/5 then. Played it twice today and I think it definitely deserves it though.

I've known this band by name for at least 20 years by now and used to see them mentioned a lot back when I was getting into shoegaze, dreampop and whatnot. But somehow I never really "got" them and had no longer recollection of what they sounded like. So I was, honestly, pretty excited to see if I'd find a new great band to listen to now. But weirdly, I still don't get it. It's just something about the melodies that simply does nothing for me. The exact same thing happened with Echo and the Bunnymen when I got their album earlier on this list. I can see why people like them but their thing just isn't on the same wavelength with me. It's perfectly okay, but nothing I really feel like I'd need to come back to. Maybe I'll give them another after another 20 years and see how it feels then.