Lazer Guided Melody – Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records
Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records
<<<<< #50 to #41 <<<<< #40 to #31 Label this the “Hello, you – that’s a smashing blouse” introduction. I’ve spent far too long wading through this début albums thing. I have a life, you know. Things to do, people to meet, shins to kick. The publisher who showed interest in my novel now thinks … Continue reading LGM’s 50 Favourite Début Albums Part Three: #30 to #21
Oh 2004, you cold, hard seductress. Heightened emotions, and the musical pilings to go with them. These were strange days, backlit by a flicker-bug glow of aural enticement. Except that it feels counter-intuitive to be writing about Funeral – the début album by The Arcade Fire – in a 2004 context. Because it wasn’t released … Continue reading It’s The Records That Make Us Who We Are: The Most Significant Albums Of 2004
1999. A playlist shaped and sculpted by statements of familiarity. Albums by Arab Strap (Elephant Shoe). By The Auteurs (How I Learned To Love The Bootboys) and Belle And Sebastian (Tigermilk); acts this blog is forever banging on about. In my day job, I’m a spokesperson for The Dawn Of The Replicants Appreciation Society (Wrong … Continue reading From Sleazy To The Stratosphere: The Most Significant Albums Of 1999
Update: LGM’s Album Of The Year here 2012. Another clock hand flickers, another outlet of dubious provenance peddles an end-of-year album list. Even placing ubiquity aside for the moment, it’s easy to be cynical about these kind of things. To quote American novelist Harry Ramble, the flaw endemic with best-of collections is the propensity to: … Continue reading Lazer Guided Melody’s Best Albums Of 2012: #10 – #2
Nostalgia. It’s a weird beast, phoney and shallow and too liberal with its affections. This series of posts concerns itself with records that are intrinsically relevant today as well as back in the day – any nostalgic traits present are purely a by-product. Yet there are occasions when this force can be harnessed for good … Continue reading Turntable Tenement Highs: The Most Significant Albums Of 1992, Part Two
I fully expect, in fifty or so years time, to have great-grandchildren gathering round my fireside chair, and for them to ask: “What did you buy in the great 1991 record k’pow, old man?” And I’ll nod sagely, oblivious the the drool leaking gently down my chin, and what I’ll come out with is something … Continue reading And A Swoon, Gladly: The Most Significant Albums Of 1991, Part Two
#44: The Magnetic Fields – 100,000 Fireflies (1991) Words about music. It’s an instinctive, compulsive habit, as if the act of banging away at the keyboard is intrinsically and irrevocably linked to the art of playing a record. Because it isn’t simply about the music. This isn’t a construct that sits in isolation, quarantined in … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #44: The Magnetic Fields
‘You listen to nothing but twee,’ said the lone voice, a long-ago kind of affair, a gig’s back room or the stereo’s front parlour, back when we affixed the framed cover of The Boy With The Arab Strap to the rustic, stripped-brick walls of our pretend loft apartments, then played early Magnetic Fields vinyl on … Continue reading Twee Is A Four Letter Word
A postscript to yesterday’s words, for there’s another link between the Magnetic Fields and Saint Etienne beyond music geekery. A few years back, Time Out New York asked Stephin Merritt to come up with one of those ‘best of’ lists that hung about the millennium like a groupie around an LA hair metal band; something … Continue reading Love Not Lust or Foxbase Alpha
Tangential music blog has tangents. Tangential music blog is sitting at a pavement café with a glass of beer and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” by Saint Etienne wafting in on a gentle breeze. Tangential music blog tries terribly hard not to repeat itself… Shoegaze, blah blah, I’m drunk, blah blah. Saturn’s ring system … Continue reading Desert Island Disco
Jovian nanotech and cheap, bawdy liquor. Event horizons and guitars with vigour. The bit in that movie where Stephin Merritt sings; these are a few of my favourite things… By which, to translate: 1) I’m reading too many science fiction novels, Richard Morgan’s trashy, futuristic noir being a particular, fickle favourite (even if I should … Continue reading Strange Powers; The Magnetic Fields (with a wee bit of sci-fi thrown in)
Lazer Guided Melody - Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records 