Reviews by socksonfire

I saw Femi play way back in about 1998 or so, around when Shoki Shoki came out. I remember an about 10-piece band and about 10 dancers all on stage, everyone smiling and having a great time. The crowd was ecstatic. Very memorable and joyful communal experience.

This album is very fine. Not a 5-star masterpiece, but generally highly-likeable.

In the warm carousel of madness this endeavour represents, it is incredible to have Sgt. Peppers and Pet Sounds land within a a few days of each other. Wouldn’t it Be Nice has been my favourite Beach Boys song since I was 12 hrs old. It haunted my puberty crush fantasies, the most profound emotional crises a boy ever experiences. The surfer dude doo-wops become utterly shrouded in shadow on these tracks.

And, taken as a whole, Pet Sounds is one of the best records I know. Knowing what happened to all these guys afterward makes it even more shattering.

There are a perfect number of tracks for any user-created setlist, and that number is 10. After oh, about 6 or 7 years of making 10-track sets, a key contributor hit upon the brilliant idea of running stats on the sets, so we could better understand our own humanity. after some shit-talk about repeated tracks and bitten swipes I realized, with horror, that I had put the same track on two consecutive sets, and the worse, that it was the most recent two sets I had made. Adding insult to injury, I hadn't included the track either time because it was good, but only because it featured the unfunny novelty of featuring unexpected swearing.

Yes, Marianne Faithfull track.

I am now repelled by the track and somewhat also repelled by Marianne Faithfull. It isn't her fault . It's my fault. Only my fault. This is a review of me, not of her.

After Here Come The Warm Jets I was pretty happy to see this pop up. I’ve never given Eno’s solo output he time of day before this project, but Warm Jets really blew me away.

This is another solid album. It suffered in comparison though. Where I heard real vision on Warm Jets, this one seemed more like a game experimenter using trial and error. I heard Talking Heads AND U2 styles so really wasn’t breaking new ground in the same way. But, wait a minute. This album predates those other bands by half a decade!

The whole this is wonderfully fascinating. Less than Warm Jets, but still pretty awesome.

As I was driving along on a sunny day, window down, Our Aim is To Satisfy playing at a healthy (unhealthy) volume, and as I was enjoying the music way more than I expected to from the description, my mind wandered down a dismaying path that ultimately revealed a deeply disturbing trend. My musical evolution from naive child to now could be be broken down as follows:
1) Music made with acoustic instruments is real, and electricity music is fake.
2) Electric instruments add epic dynamism, and sampling is lazy theft from true creatives.
3) Sampling creates a diverse buffet of musical possibilities, and pure electronic music has no soul.
4) Electronic music done well can be truly inspired, and A.I.-generated music is an abhorrent rejection of God.

Well...you get the picture.

Sgt. Pepper's is not a favourite Beatles album to me. It's more intellectually impressive than impactful to my heart. Because of this it actually overall ranks a bit low in the tapestry of all of The Beatles albums if I'm being honest.
And...AND...and Sgt' Pepper's still f'ck'n rules.

Hip hop does not get funkier than this. Atlanta must have been a wild party with Arrested Development and OutKast kicking around town at the same time.

When the Solesides/Quannum crew were doing their thing I was good friends with a massive hip hip head, and he was obsessed with all the Quannum artists. It was an infectious passion, given the quality of the music. DJ Shadow being foundational makes Endtroducing.... one of of the very very few DJ album I ever picked up on wax.

Now, how does it hold up? The style is so tied to that time and place for me. I would say still good. But I kept wanting Gift of Gab or Latyrx to start spitting some smooth bars. A bit of a long hour of music.

Yes! I'd forgotten how joyfully loopy Frank Zappa albums are. I went through a definite phase in my 20's, but it has been a very long while. I had a blast revisiting this gem.

I suppose he called it The Healer because white people like him? All I know is that JLH had a lot of work to do to dig himself out the deep hole created by:
A) Naming the album The Healer.
B) Calling the atrocious first track The Healer.
C) Littering that atrocious first track with what I can only describe as "Peter Gabriel toots".

Thankfully it got better, but it was nowhere near enough to counteract the conclusion that I will never spin this album again.

A damn lot to love here. I didn’t realize he had to completely rebuild the band for this, they sound great.

Not sure if it was purely my mood or if it was something intrinsic to the album, but I think I rate this one higher than the last The Fall album. Hell, I loved it! even though I probably couldn’t tell the albums apart if you put a gun to my head.

Pass the epidural and sign me up.

I was expecting a grimier piece of trash. Instead, some decent tracks I liked a lot mixed with plenty uninspiring tracks I had trouble caring about.

Delightful for the whole family. DELIGHTFUL, I SAY!

Dang, the samples on this thing. Enough to make you dizzy. Chuck Ds inexorable flow style wears on me after awhile, but those samples. Dang.

Mmm mm mm mm mm. My first experiences with D’Angelo were offputting. He figured out the chemistry of creating the blackest, souliest, sexiest, funkiest, R&Biest sounds to be found anywhere in nature, like a pure distilled extract of those things; it was overwhelming for skinny white boys! So smooth soft it becomes hard as fuck.

But over the years my love for his albums has steadily grown and grown and grown and grown. It’s feeding something in my soul, that’s for sure. And while hate to speculate what that something may be, it’s definitely my ability if make love.

I really just know Ruben Blades from Predator 2. Heard Willie around. In North America plenty of 20s-30s vacations are to places with this Latin American vibe. To say this album was transportive to a very fun place in my mind would be an understatement.

I've never felt less respected.

A very pleasant MAB entry that, perhaps similar to the legendary MAB himself, has an air of fragility...maybe one should not dig too deep on this one. Maybe somethings fall apart when challenged. Let it flower and observe, but engage at your own risk.