Lazer Guided Melody – Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records
Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records
“I think I’ve reached that point, where giving up and going on, are both the same dead end to me, are both the same old song…” It’s a well-worn argument. Robert Smith should have called it a day after Disintegration and the subsequent “Prayer” tour. Because as an entity The Cure had nothing left to … Continue reading Anatomy of a Track: ‘End’ by The Cure
November. Daylight the colour of slate, dark hours to brew a wanton fog, something lurking, just out of sight… Which is cliché writ large, for sure. As if the world needs a dodgy music blog to start pontificating on how autumn into winter appeals to the darker side of the human psyche. … Continue reading The Looks and the Lifestyle – Exploring the Sounds of Autumn Goth
<<<<< #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
When we’re on our death beds I somehow doubt that the biggest regret arriving to mind will be “I wish I’d spent more time dicking about on Twitter”. But in the meantime, words (and thus the music) continue to flow in enticing patterns, and all is well with the world. What began as a disposable … Continue reading The Twitter Hive Mind Cure Album Breakdown
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
Let’s all meet up in the year 2000. Felt terribly futuristic at the time, what with us all whooshing around on jetpacks, and turning up at the opera tastefully attired in tin foil underwear. The records of this year weren’t bad, either. Take Elastica, for instance – who released one horrifically pedestrian LP back when … Continue reading Yes, We Have Jetpacks: The Most Significant Albums Of 2000, Part One
Having vaguely dismissed the musical pedigree of 1996 in part one of this – something to do with not having been sonically ambushed in the dead of night by anything in that year’s armoury, and feeling somewhat regretful about such an oversight – there’s still a weighty number of significant records to ruminate upon. So … Continue reading Tunes On The Edge Of Seat: The Most Significant Albums Of 1996, Part Two
A time of frenzy. Grainy and frayed about the edges perhaps, all those memories of snakebite nights in sweaty clubs and flea-pit venues, the fuzzy, fuggy music an urgency of soundtrack colours, a scrapbook filled with clear, sharp image. And maybe it’s just a kink in perception; that all those hours spent in record stores … Continue reading At The Behest Of The Record Gods: The Most Significant Albums Of 1992, Part One
Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines, or dates by which bills must be paid – Frank Zappa And whist Zappa wasn’t specifically speaking about 1989, I’ve always been terribly smitten with the concept of recorded sound as punctuation. As some sort of definite context; the significant albums … Continue reading The Deliberate Omission Of The Stone Roses: The Most Significant Albums Of 1989
It’s impossible to fully quantify why something works to the detriment of something else – and that’s if you’re a protagonist, an intrinsic component in any creative process. From our perspective – that’ll be on the outside gazing in, like Dan Ackroyd’s drunk and destitute Santa staring forlornly into the window of the yuppie restaurant … Continue reading The Very Definition Of Swoon: The Most Significant Albums Of 1987 – Part Two
That promotional copy of your chronological album trawl. The culture-shock of having ’80’s albums genuflect exclusively from the stereo speakers; I once spent something like eight hours straight listening to ‘The Chauffeur’ by Duran Duran on a constant loop, chain-smoking cigarettes whilst the light flickered from blue to green to ultraviolet… but I’m better now. … Continue reading Ultraviolet Evenings, And A Smiths Demo: The Most Significant Albums Of 1985
Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the … Continue reading Live From The Chestnut Tree Café: The Most Significant Albums Of 1984
1982. A year when a stramash between tinpot dictatorship and eighteenth century imperialism over a rock and some sheep in the South Atlantic forced the UK government to introduce a musical blacklist, by which any song with even tenuous references to war and conflict was formally denied radio airplay. Combat Rock by The Clash wasn’t … Continue reading Stramash! The Most Significant Albums Of 1982
If 1980 was a rich harvest, 1981 was the year the rains failed. Plague and pestilence writ large across the landscape, hand-tilled fields salted in the dead of night. And whilst I’m letting my apocalyptic medieval metaphor run away with itself, it’s certainly true that in terms of significant albums, you have to dig that … Continue reading From Peepshow To TV Show: The Most Significant Albums Of 1981
1980, and I wasn’t buying records. Sure, there would be the occasional, possibly vociferous, predominately unsuccessful cooing and cajoling noises thrown in parental directions, as if they genuinely knew their way around a record store (one day I’ll forgive them for not furnishing me with that ‘Wuthering Heights’ 7”, whose importance at the time was … Continue reading From Moscow To Pared-Back, Retro-Futurism: The Most Significant Albums Of 1980
