Just listened to an album from 1991 that I had forgotten about, Culture Beat’s Horizon.
I got the cassette as a promo from a record store I worked at. Clearly it was in-store play, because it had one of the stickers we used. And it was something I liked enough to put my initial on, to claim once it was rotated out in favor of something newer.
That’s the main reason I looked it up to stream. Because back then, I had to wait for it. And I kept it after a lot of exposure to it.
It’s super much a statement of the time, with several tracks leaning heavily on other popular tracks and popular samples. One of the tracks was so much like Pump Up the Jam that a decent DJ could probably have faded between the two tracks very easily.
I did not buy the whole album digitally, but a few tracks stood out. Namely No Deeper Meaning, due to the sampling of Change by Tears for Fears, which still makes me squee.
The second half of the album, roughly Side 2, is much less caught in 1991, if still referential (if not reverential). The drums from Running Up that Hill in the outro was a nice touch.
Inaugurating the movement of my Den to the main floor of my house with a viewing of the R40 concert film. Playback started before wiring was complete, but halfway through everything seems well dialed in.
A playlist I’m developing. Track order needs sorting. Linking or uniting the tracks is what I would call a rhythmic complexity, even if the time signatures aren’t unusual. If you get lost, the beat will bring you back. You’ll need a tolerance for ‘90’s and 2000’s Electronica, but other genres are included.
There are some low notes. I recommend over-the-ear cans or a place you can feel the noise.
Apologies to Gaping Void for the theft of his artwork. Art on the back of business cards was a thing when I needed it.
I always wanted to be a DJ, from the days I listened to my Radio Shack FM radio all day long as a boy. The people pushing out the sounds always seemed to have a finger on a pulse. They seemed to connect to something. I imagined a depth and breadth of knowledge and a currency that I’m sure was impossible to attain in reality.
In the 90s I took a job at a record store, which in some ways was a sort of dream come true. I thought I knew about music. I was an avid consumer of what radio and MTV fed me. But it was then that my education began.
When techno and electronica hit, my DJ dream shifted. I wanted to play the records that moved the people in the moment. I have played with decks and mixers a teensy bit. I played with a friend’s collection of vinyl and did my best to beat-match records during a small gathering.
I’ve made lots and lots of mix tapes, that mostly no one has ever heard, but me.
What’s happened is I’ve collected a lot of music over time. I am infected by people who are enthusiastic about a genre or a scene.
Music is so powerful.
It is a giant river, life-giving and fertile like the Amazon or the Nile. Some of it is written down or recorded, where it lives in the vast ocean.
Just like I can’t read every book, I can’t hear every record.
I have been listening to a series of playlists generated by someone close to my own age, that span years including the four that I spent at the record store.
Boy, is it resurfacing old thoughts and ideas and dreams.
The cool part is I agree with many of the selections.
The cool part is I’m hearing songs I would have never heard, otherwise.
The cool part is there is always such good music.
If you do the Apple Music thing, I’m here and I like to share.
The author of a sub-blog I follow produced a series of posts called Insanely Great Nineties Songs You Aren’t Sick Of. Start here if that speaks to you… He has a post per-year and links to YouTube videos of all of the songs he mentions.
I worked for a record store from the summer of 1990 to the summer of 1994 and these hit home for me. But fair warning, these are mostly not Top 40 song lists.
So there’s a music project called Lost Horizons—that I didn’t know about 30 minutes ago—that features former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde and Richard Thomas who has drummed with Dif Jus and Jesus and Mary Chain. Their In Quiet Moments album includes a track called Every Beat that Passed which is the most Cocteau-Twins-like music I have heard since… Cocteau Twins. This project is no attempt to return to that sound, but that track is spectacular. The tracks I have heard from the same album have a Saint Etienne vibe, in that the tracks recall the 60s and 70s.
Picked up the new Echodrone album Resurgence this morning. Their name describes elements I love from the shoegaze sound. Possibly a signature for them are the vocal harmonies that harken back to groups like The Byrds, or Ride, but of course nothing like either.
Blast from the past: it was fun to hear music from The 5th Dimension on CBS Sunday Morning. I was born after they were already popular, but I heard a lot of their songs before I know it was them.
The Winter Chill playlist on Apple Music has a vibe very similar to the HED Kandi Winter Chill series from the late 90s and 2000s. It’s downtempo indie and electronica. I’m a fan!
I recently relistened to Feels So Good by Chuck Mangione. I was in search of the source of a sample. I was in the right era and close to my target, but this was a miss. Except, listening to the full album track, I really enjoyed the musicianship—not only of The Man Himself, but also of the full accompanying band. Now, of course, it’s my current ear worm.
Listened to Ulrich Schnauss' single Asteroid 2467 and I was struck by how much it sounded like something Robin Guthrie might compose. If you agree with me or if you don’t, I’m thrilled because that is a frame of reference I’m happy to learn others share.
They are a retro-looking blend of 70’s hard-rock, prog-rock and a little punk-rock. But with the vocal strength and musicianship to back it up. Not to mention cowbell and distorted organ.
I wish I could say I have been listening to them for a long time, but they came to me via a compilation from a friend. Today, I have been mining Apple Music for their back catalog.
I don’t know to which deity I owe the most thanks and praise, but I am grateful for the shoegaze genre and for Apple’s recommendation engine. I listened to a group called SPC-ECO on my commute this evening and loved it.
Do I start by genuflecting toward Grangemouth, Scotland?
My love affair with Danse Macabre began in elementary school. Mrs. Otten played Halloween songs on the piano and we sang from mimeographed lyric sheets.
I was introduced to parts of the melody via a song called the Halloween Song, which has stuck in my head ever since, because the refrain includes singing the letters that spell the holiday.
In music classes in later years we listened to the symphonic version while watching filmstrips of artistic conceptions of what the various parts of the music could represent.
Here’s a great article from CBC which includes some great background on the piece and some really enjoyable renditions including one for two pianos.
For me the piece is tied to Autumn and to All Hallow’s Evening, even though it wasn’t the intent of the composer.
Schools don’t track holidays the same way as they did, a long time ago. So for my daughter, I have work to do If I want this to stick.
