Reviews by ryzgee

It's clearly a high quality example of something I wouldn't ever actively reach for, and at 72 minutes, staying the course was a bit of a test, but there is a palpable tension and dark atmosphere flowing throughout this. One of my first points of reference was the earlier works of Tom Waits before he (presumably) underwent a frontal lobotomy. There is some lovely instrumentation here, and Bob Dylan captures quite the presence with his raspy, nicotine-ravaged voice. Perhaps a good one for a gloomy winter evening with some mulled wine.

I'm only familiar with Machine Head from Deep Purple, which I do happen to own on vinyl. On balance, though, I might prefer this one after just one listen.

Despite being released earlier than the aforementioned Machine Head, this album feels more ambitious, experimental, and has a very observable progressive rock thread running throughout. "Child in Time" in particular has blown me away as a sprawling centre-piece of the album, but there isn't a dud to be had either side of it. I would say that I can see this being less immediate for many, despite still containing an abundance of top tier hazy, fuzzy riffage, but it's more closely aligned to my tastes and as such has clicked in a big way from the off.

Deep Purple absolutely deserve to be in the conversation alongside Black Sabbath in terms of shaping the genre of heavy metal as we know it today.

I didn't expect to get much out of this at all, but I'm pleased to say that I did. Some people just have an aura, and Aretha Franklin sure as hell does. Really enjoyed the playful bass licks throughout this, and it turns out I wasn't entirely unfamiliar with Aretha Franklin as I did recognise a handful of tracks, without knowing of the artist. An empowering and passionate, yet quite intimate listening experience. I'll be exploring further.

Very apt album title here which echoes my thoughts on it. It's an inoffensive enough, but wholly unremarkable and attributable to its time moody pop rock / singer songwriter album. She has a good, pleasant voice, and to its credit, in a lyrical sense, this avoids being as sappy as I was worried it could have been.

Ultimately though, and maybe I'm just being a miserable bastard of late, but I can't fathom any existence or parallel universe which would necessitate this album's inclusion. At least I've broken away from the one-star rut (briefly? Who knows).

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…wait, you're telling me I haven't just spent an hour indulging myself into a barrage of car adverts that someone with a deep seated self-hatred assembled into a YouTube playlist? Does anyone seriously care about these soulless hacks? This is the definition of “live, laugh, love” blues rock for people whose greatest sense of danger and excitement in their life was mixing cider and beer on a night out once. Music for people who don't like music. Thoroughly depressing stuff.

The title track is iconic - of course everyone knows it (even if they can't immediately recall its name - I couldn't for the longest time).

As for the rest of the album though, I imagine discussions in the studio went something along these lines:

"Alright, we've got one banger we can market this with. How about we fill the rest of the album with dull as dishwater, lift music-esque covers of rock and roll songs? We can make a killing doing that because who cares? People will lap it up as long as we've got one decent song."

"The kids aren't that stupid though, right? Surely we've got a bit more in our locker to make this stand test of time?"

"Hmmm fair point. Suppose we could tweak "Green Onions" slightly, slow it down a bit and call it "Mo' Onions" so it sounds like we tried. Then we'll call it a day and lull everyone into submission by just doing whatever the fuck else on the other nine tracks. You with me?"

"Yeah I'm down, what about the artwork though?"

"On the off chance that any divvies out there will think they've popped into Morrisons instead, we'll make it look like a supermarket advertising hoarding."

"Genius! Some random bloke in 40 years will put this on a shrine and deem it worthy of everyone's time".

Hahahaha hahahaha! Nope. Get in the bin you freak. Annual leave request from this monolithic undertaking has been put in.

The album cover reminds me of a Pampers advert. That's just about the only constructive slant I can put towards this. Just light-years away from being anything I'd ever choose to listen to, although the international aspect is again appreciated.

Nothing about The Smashing Pumpkins has ever been for me. The garishness, the whiny nonsense and self importance of it all leaves me feeling nauseous at the best of times. Minus the vocals, I can get with a few tracks here in an instrumental sense, but two hours of this was an experience that never bears repeating.

My Beatles knowledge is patchy at best - I believe I've only ever listened to the "1" compilation album, so I know of their obvious hits via that.

This one didn't blow me away. It's a reasonable enough listen, but it offers little explanation towards the revered, global mega-entity that they would go on to become, and I would suggest that it is by no means essential. It's one that you'd put on to gain a greater understanding of the band's early trajectory, but there's little in the way of replay value for me here as it just felt a bit too simplistic.

Orbital have two entries in the 1001 - this album and the immediately preceding, much heralded Orbital 2 (Brown Album). If it were me compiling the 1001, I'd have personally made a stronger case for the following In Sides to feature over this one. However, Snivilisation is still a very enjoyable and thoroughly interesting ambient techno sprawler at 75 minutes in length, although it is a much less digestible and accessible release owing to its stronger sense of eclecticism and complexity.

It tends to be the somewhat overshadowed middle child, perhaps also not helped by being released in 1994, which was a particularly strong year for electronic music. You had Aphex Twin / Caustic Window, Autechre, The Future Sound of London, Global Communication, Massive Attack, Oval, Portishead, The Prodigy, Underworld et al. releasing some of their very best material that year, the majority of those leaning into friendlier takes on ambient, IDM, techno, trip hop and other stylings which were making waves at the time.

You could leave me on a desert island with nothing to listen to but a curation of 1994 electronic albums for a month, this included, and I'd be quite content with that, although this one would probably be one of the last from that crop that I'd be actively reaching for.

I've found myself slipping into an electro-rabbit hole over these last few months, making some amazing discoveries along the way, although Orbital are an act I've always been familiar with and have had an appreciation of, owing to my Dad's tastes.

Now we're talking again. What a find this has been. From the entrancing 10 minute psychy, proggy epic which ushers in proceedings, to the bouncy, soul-infused funky bops which follow and never really degrade much in quality from there on in, this comes in at a tight 36 minutes and it breezed by for me. "Back In Our Minds" is perhaps the one track here which didn't immediately blow me away, but it was still a pleasure to listen to nonetheless.

This is absolutely the type of funk I can get behind rather than the self important, overwrought exploits of later bands which I've never warmed to. At its core, it just wants to rock out and have a great time, and that really shines through in the compositions.

That solo (you know the one I'm on about) in that title track is truly mind-bending.

Onto the vinyl wishlist this goes, and I will be investigating these further.

It's Aerosmith, you know exactly what you're going to get. I've always found them a bit overrated though if I'm being honest, and this album is a fairly middling effort from them. Nothing wrong with it really - I don't mind a bit of cock rock once every so often, but there's not enough right with it either to even vaguely justify its inclusion in the 1001.

I think this may be the most contemporary album I've received up until now, but you'd be hard pressed to believe that when listening to it. This really hasn't aged well at all, and honestly I found the bulk of it absolutely insufferable.

MGMT attempt to mask what is a fairly rudimentary of the time indie album with a heaping of disorientating electronica warpage, going for a psychedelic vibe, but it ultimately culminates in an unconvincing and grating listen in the main. I was of course familiar with a couple of the singles ("Electric Feel" and "Kids", the latter of which in particular was unavoidable for a time in the 2000s to early 10s), and both are admittedly catchy, but they come nowhere close to compensating for much of the dross on offer either side of them. "Of Moons, Birds and Monsters" is also passable in that it is afforded more breathing room than the other unfocused tracks, and it offers a more tasteful ratio between the 'tronica and the indie, but it's hardly anything exemplary.

Overrated, overstated, overwrought and overindulgent. This is the sort of album, for those of this era, that your mate from secondary school / college who tried acid at a party once, and thought he was the dog's bollocks, would probably have had screeching out of his Sony Ericsson push up phone.

It became clear to me around a third of the way through this one that I was fighting a lost cause, and the remaining 20 minutes or so felt like an eternity. It's clearly a respectable enough bandit country album with more nuance to it than I expected, but for my tastes, that's like giving a bad pizza takeout props for at least not leaving you toilet bound throughout the night.

Taking in the first track, I was lulled into a false sense of security that this would perhaps be a lovely, pioneering ambient / world music album. However, my hopes were quickly shunted by how disparate and haphazard each of these tracks are when stacked up next to each other.

RateYourMusic lists subgenres of: New Wave, Southern African Music,
Turntablism, Hip Hop, Merengue, Tribal Ambient, Electro, Country Pop, Plunderphonics, Afrobeat, Soukous, Marabi, and Mbaqanga. All of these go some way to describing the overall experience, and I can at least see how it would have been influential towards the plunderphonics subgenre through its unrelenting mishmashing of collated samples and juxtaposing sounds. However, one can't shake the feeling that it all feels a bit appropriated and plagiarised from other cultures in a calculated way, perhaps with the intention of manufacturing success by McLaren in being seen as this "revolutionary artist". A cynical business ploy rather than an artistic statement from the heart, in true McLaren fashion.

It's of course an extremely fluid album in terms of the territories it explores, but in execution, much of it sounds incredibly dated and a bit pretentious. Without immediately recognising them, I had heard (and couldn't stand) the tracks "Double Dutch" and "Buffalo Gals" prior to diving into this album, with other tracks ranging from "interesting, but really?" to "this is just shite".

"Punk It Up" and "Soweto" sound like ideas that even Sandinista-era The Clash would have left on the cutting room floor, and others such as "Jive My Baby" and "Duck for the Oyster" just got on my nerves.

[RATING REVISION: 1 star to 2 star. McLaren is still undoubtedly a cunt, and his grubbiness does give me the ick when listening to this, but purely on its own merits I was being unduly harsh on reflection]

The next step of my journey exploring Joni Mitchell, and after the sample size of a singular listen to both albums, I think I'd have this over Hejira as the one I'd be more likely to reach for at the moment. Whilst I very much enjoyed the latter as well, this one felt a bit more accessible and optimistic in tone, with the folk and pop elements of her sound taking greater urgency.

There are still hints of the jazzy direction which would be amplified on Hejira, particularly channeled through the bass arrangements, but whilst the latter gave off the vibe of an album that you'd chuck on as an accompaniment to a cozy winter evening indoors, this is the Yang to Hejira's Yin as one more suited for a stroll in the summer.

Consider me a newly enlightened fan.

A band I've always been aware of, but up until now my familiarity with their music never extended beyond "Sweet Home Alabama" (which is an absolute bop, albeit has been overplayed into the ground).

What the hell have I been playing at? This is really good. Irritatingly, I couldn't find a version of this on Spotify without the silly demo tracks tacked on at the end, but the album itself breezed by and immediately felt homely to me. That Lynyrd Skynyrd sounded this assured and fully realised on their debut is mightily impressive, and a clear blueprint exists here for the formation of the southern rock subgenre. Definitely a fully warranted inclusion in the 1001.

A solid release from an undoubtedly classic, integral band within the timeline of hardcore punk. However, despite this being Minor Threat's longest effort, clocking in at 21 minutes, I've seen Out of Step being described as an EP far more often than I have as an album, and therefore it is a somewhat debatable inclusion in a list of 1001 Albums.

I'd also argue, if you're going to acknowledge Minor Threat in this list, that the debut S/T EP was more of a landmark statement and of greater importance to the development of hardcore, as to render it essential listening. Out of Step takes the band's sound into a more measured, less seething direction, hinting towards the later post-hardcore of Fugazi in patches. However, is it quite as enduring as the debut EP? I'm not so sure.

I will say that I didn't hate this anywhere near as much as I expected to. It's an easygoing listen, with a handful of decent offerings and a jubilant cheer pulsing throughout, but on the whole, this one became tiresome quickly for me. I found my attention ebbing and flowing between the busier, more "rock" oriented passages and the relatively non-descript folk ones.

After about 5 tracks, I thought I was on for the home stretch, only to realise that there were nine left to go. "49 Bye-Byes" is the final track proper, which is an appropriate note to wrap things up on, but the Spotify version of the album adds four superfluous, dirging acoustic tracks into the mix.