Lazer Guided Melody – Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records
Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records
#51: Spiritualized – If I Were With Her Now (1992) #51. The final entry in this series. Low cloud scudding overhead; disparate promises of lost springs, forgotten summers. Because this is what music does. It segues into who you are, sets up camp in the spaces between immediate consciousness and the mechanics of recollection. And … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #51: Spiritualized
#50: Pulp – This Is Hardcore (1998) The city, its night, and the been here before. The view from the wraparound windows on the eleventh floor are cauterised by rain. The view from the wraparound windows is indistinct, unfamiliar in make up yet generic by context; it’s something left unsaid, hustled between each street-light, each … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #50: Pulp
#49: The Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter (1969) In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine gave over an issue to (yawn) their list of the 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time – because we all know that this particular organ is the ultimate arbiter of musical taste. This track was at #38, sandwiched between a Debbie Gibson … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #49: The Rolling Stones
#48: TV On The Radio – Staring At The Sun (2002) For the past year or so I’ve been attempting to drill through fifty tracks of sizeable meaning. As if such a collection can be easily calibrated. Compartmentalised into a precise, tidy array. A fool’s game, to be honest; the world’s hardly lacking in arbitrary … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #48: TV On The Radio
#47: Stereolab – French Disko (1993) Staggering home through the fog. This lecherous rain, sunset with reverb. And yes, just as soon as ‘French Disko’ arrives on the turntable – the stylus grip, the crackle and thrum, then the fourth and final track from the Jenny Ondioline EP – I decide that my jaded ears … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #47: Stereolab
#46: Clinic – Monkey On Your Back (1998) Upon checking release date appended to a somewhat worn record sleeve… as if the drip-fed, pre-millennial lead-in is reflexively characterised in the collective hive mind as the summer of Scouse psychedelia. Not so much upstairs at Eric’s as hanging out the windows, idly regarding the fog creeping … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #46: Clinic
#45: Scott Walker – The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated To The Neo-Stalinist Regime) (1969) Listening to Saint Scott Walker, on headphones, on the bus is not a Scott Walker lyric (it’s actually a line from this song), but it does convey the layers of intimacy that comes with listening to Hamilton, Ohio’s finest export. … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #45: Scott Walker
#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
#43: My Bloody Valentine – I Only Said (1991) Certain things in life ghost into view with quivers stuffed full with surprise. Items such as: music blog with a penchant for the whole shoegazing aesthetic – a music blog that happens to be simultaneously compiling a list of fifty favourite tracks – ends up lauding … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #43: My Bloody Valentine
#42: The Shortwave Set – Glitches ‘N’ Bugs (2008) From certain angles there’s possibly something a shade insubstantial to all this. Traces of innocuous indie; not college rock by numbers, exactly – more subtle insinuations, rippling across the body of the melody as if justifying some bad mood. Which I mention because this is very … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #42: The Shortwave Set
#41: Dawn Of The Replicants – Ten Sea Birds (1997) The majority of tracks on this list – records hauled from the ether like that fairground stall where we’re all grim-faced children attempting to snare a rubber duck with a hook on a stick – are singles. Because singles – 7” vinyl spun on your … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #41: Dawn Of The Replicants
#40: Lush – Superblast! (1992) It’s all about a certain standing, something from the wink of an eye, perhaps. Sounds that resonate against specific backdrops – that element that confirms you were there; that night in nineteen eighty-whatever, or ninety-whatever, or two-thousand and x (it’s your memory – you choose) when the record you were … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #40: Lush
#39: Can – Don’t Leave The Light On, Leave Me Alone (1970) From the 1970 album Soundtracks, and a confession: this track has appeared on this site before, albeit uncontextually appended to some kind of a Julian Cope piece – no words previously proffered; label this rectification. As the album title suggests, this is less … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #39: Can
#38: Add N To (X) – Revenge Of The Black Regent (1999) A great, hulking slab of record. Something as if recorded by wasps, or perhaps a retinue of pissed-off samurai who fell upon a cache of obsolete, analogue synths in the antechamber of some geisha holding pen, purely by chance. Often dismissed – horribly … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #38: Add N To (X)
#37: The Pastels – Truck Train Tractor (1986) Don’t tell Mrs LGM, but I think I have a slight, weird crush on Stephen Pastel. I love his effete, down to earth nonchalance, the air of chaos that permeates his band’s records, my suspicions that – in the most affectionate way possible – he still thinks … Continue reading FuckedUpFestiveFifty #37: The Pastels
Lazer Guided Melody - Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records 