Reviews by richardwiggins

I particularly like Orbital’s manipulation of rain sounds and the piano frenzy that is Kein Trink Wasser. The beats and production are fantastic but Snivilisation is missing the big tunes of the Brown album, so it pales in comparison.

Slipknot’s whole image is designed to drive a wedge between worried parents and enthusiastic teenagers. I can only imagine the number of confiscated CDs. But it’s a lot of fun! They’re music is all about manic extremes and pushing boundaries. It has an entertaining anti-establishment attitude that is designed to be played LOUD.

I’m a guest in these quarters, so feel free to dismiss my inexpert perspective, but to my ears Slipknot is miles better than the likes of Faith No More and Korn.

This album has been out in the wild for almost 50 years yet I'm not sure I've ever heard anything else that sounds like it. It is a highly artistic, fragmented Art Pop album, elusive and angular, mixing attractive and unattractive sounds. I am unable to fully pin down what Peter Gabriel is doing but I can only imagine my appreciation would grow with more listens.

This is a soothing hour of piano performed in front of an audience who are entranced and occasionally punctuated with vocal outbursts "urgh!" from Keith Jarrett, presumably pushing himself to his limit. Nothing particularly stood out to me but I'd take this any day over an algorithmic "calm piano" playlist.

There is a strand of Euro-Metal which still sounds like Laibach today, it's interesting to hear where that equal parts quirky and brutal sound comes from. I can't say it’s a flavour I've ever had a particular hankering for, but it's not unwelcome either. Interestingly the midi-synths sound like an amped up version of sci-fi TV show music from the 1980s, not something I've heard before on LP, also welcome.

The Byrds create a lovely, very listenable sound which goes down some interesting avenues but they do not compare to their more celebrated contemporaries. They sound like the support act for the major pop rock acts of the mid to late 1960s, riding the wave rather than creating it. Nothing too exciting here but you're very unlikely to have a bad time.

This is my Simon & Garfunkel album (out of the ones I've heard at least). It very naturally spans a vast variety of styles without ever feeling disparate. Some moments neatly point towards Paul Simon's solo career, others cast S&G more as a traditional folk act, which is very much in line with my tastes. I even like the Bob Dylan indebted track which gets away with its obvious influences by namechecking Dylan himself.

I've never considered myself to be someone ideologically opposed to funk, but it was only through looking through my funk genre tag ratings on RYM recently that I realised that I've just never vibed to funk - in fact it puts me in a funk.

Maggot Brain is a monolith - a super tight, highly detailed, hyped up funky experience which for some reason I am entirely unable to emotionally penetrate in any way. I can hear that the musicianship is highly skilled and I can hear that its more formidable than other funk albums I've listened to. It makes me realise that if I don't like this than I'm probably doomed on the funk front for life!

It's surprising how modern Justice's debut still sounds. Clearly there is a healthy dose of Daft Punk influence in there but they are doing their own thing with some slightly punchier, beefier, dirtier sounds. The hit rate is pretty impressive, though towards the back-end it does tail off significantly - TTHHEE PPAARRTTYY being the only song that I was totally unsure of.

Work It is probably the only song on this album which gets me properly excited. I think I could get behind a streamlined version of this LP, with some less inspiring songs cut and Missy Elliott resisting the temptation to verbally contextualise the record throughout.

My main problem with Elliott's music is that each song is very deliberately written around "an issue" which gets grating after a while, especially in a song that doesn't have much else going for it. You get the point she is making and then 3 minutes later she is still making that point. I could have done with some more of the confessional songs, including songs relating to some of the personal events she mentions in her monologues.

It's impossible to find fault with this record. A snappy LP that is easy to spin time and time again which could capture the heart of even the most hardened cynic. Dolly Parton shares a poppy form of country which still impacts the charts today - it's almost a rite of passage for popstars to have at least a token single ripping of Dolly. She knows how to write an iconic song with tonnes of energy and tell a great story while doing it.

A very promising and energetic young post-punk band with an experimental Icelandic edge and a mesmerising lead singer in the form of Bjork. The Sugarcubes have that classic smudged and scratchy 1980s gothic post-punk sound but their explorative nature sets them apart. The best moments are where Bjork is given space to flex her vocals a bit and provide a unique performance. The joyful Birthday is a smash hit and this album's highlight.

Underworld have a very cool, slow moving aesthetic which you could get lost in. They take their time with all things and every moment is earnt, they're not being overindulgent. I particularly like how the percussion is worked into the overall sound and the production is of course, absolutely fantastic.

I am a bit of a fiend for punch melodies in my electronic music, and that is where Underworld is lacking. There's a lot of interesting progression of rhythm and beats, but melody takes a bit of a sideline, although I like that we get some somewhat melodic vocals on the final track which is a nice contrast. Ultimately it's not a sound I'd return to too often, though some of the gentler moments do seem to have inspired The Field who is in my regular rotation.

André 3000 and Big Boi are amazing rappers in their own right, but they clearly unlocked something within each other that took them to another level. The vast majority of pop rap records would sound pretty rough once they passed the hour mark but Stankonia’s quality more than commands the 73 minute run-time. Any songs that aren’t straight up hits still have a great interplay between the duo who are experienced enough to perfect their craft, but not so experienced that they’ve fallen out.

Stankonia is particularly impressive once you consider what pop rap sounded like in the 1990s. This sounds closer to the hip hop of the 2020s than much of the hip hop of the 1990s. It represents a gigantic step forward.

The fact that hip hop developed decades after blues, jazz and rock were fully established leaves us with the surprising artifacts like Sex Packets, an album from 1990 which sounds as old fashioned as the boogie woogie.

The Humpty Dance is a straight up novelty song and is not at all representative of the album but because it's the opener and bit single it draws disproportionate attention. The bulk of the record is enjoyable, smart hip hop, not quite A Tribe Called Quest level, but music that’s a lot of fun with a good energy.

I have to admit that I thought everyone agreed that Myths of the Near Future was a fantastic album. It might be because it arrived just as I was getting into music at 14 years old, but all I hear is a series of extremely fun, high energy, off kilter dance-punk songs with an interesting "nu rave" aesthetic. I love the fat, low bit-rate synths that are surely the same Casio keyboards I grew up with in school ("dig it!") The absurdist lyrics and falsetto delivery are unusual and iconically theirs. I love the fact that they are always in search of a new hook.

It’s a shame that when they came to write album two they ended up taking too many drugs in a cabin in the forest. Everything they'd developed ultimately had to be scrapped when the labels were displeased, the eventual follow up album was not much to write home about either. They never quite recovered from that!

The Monks are a manic ride, creating a new kind of raw, loose and fuzzy music which breaks out of the confines of standard mid-1960s fare. Nothing quite tops the opener "its monk time!" but they are suitably crazed and creative for the entire runtime, continually finding new tricks to play. They are like a more humorous Velvet Underground which, given it pre-dates VU by a year, is impressive.

Figure 8 is the most different sounding of Elliott Smith's five complete studio albums. On his first major label effort XO you could hear him benefit from a more expansive (/expensive) production and broader instrumental pallet. On Figure 8 he continues down this path but where the writing on XO was pretty much unchanged, the follow up is a big departure at points sounding far removed from a guy with a steel string guitar muttering into a microphone.

In my opinion there is too much going on and while there are some great songs (some of his best!) across the opening tracks, it runs out of steam at about the halfway point. There is not the abundance of indie folk anthems that typified his previous three albums. At 52 minutes it's also easily his longest LP so the material feels stretched extra thin.

Of course, this is not quite his last release as we have some archival material, but it’s a shame he didn't quite stick the landing with this final full album. Somebody That I Used To Know; Everything Reminds Me Of Her and Everything Means Nothing To Me are out and out classics though that no Elliott Smith playlist could do without and prove that he was an artist with plenty more fuel in the tank that should have had many more years in him.

The crunchy synths, millennial woah-oh-ah-oh-ohs and vocoders earmark The Bones of What You Believe as very of its time, but you have to love the extent to which they embrace the big fab pop moments in favour of everything else. They are courting DRAMA and producing the sound that early era Ellie Goulding promised but never delivered.

It’s not until Science/Visions where they get into something darker and weirder, like they dropped a trace of These New Puritans into the mix. It would have been nice to have more variety like this but you can’t deny that they're bundles of fun.

An agreeable, pretty record with interesting production and orchestral arrangements as well as a creative approach to vocals. It passed the time nicely but despite its ambition did not have a huge impact on me beyond that pleasant scene setting.