Speaker 1Hello and welcome to another fun-packed edition of The Album Years with myself, Stephen Wilson and Tim Bowness. And Tim, at the end of the last episode, I rather facetiously suggested that rather than doing one of our marathon sort of years when we couldn't get the list down sort of somewhere below a thousand albums we wanted to talk about, maybe we should pick a year where there actually wasn't a lot of stuff that we particularly liked so that we could keep it a little bit more brief. So we've kind of attempted to do that with this year, haven't we? So we picked 2001 or you've picked.
Speaker 2Well, I picked 2001 randomly, I thought we're not going to find anything there of value for us. And then it turns out I was completely wrong. I was amazed at how many albums that I owned from the year, had listened to from the year. And by the end of it, I was coming to the conclusion, a conclusion that you are going to disagree with, that it was a golden age.
Speaker 1Now, I have to admit, I've been very lazy again, and I've let you do all of the hard work in putting together the shortlist. And as we've kind of already mentioned, it's much longer than I expected it to be, which tells me that in 2001, I was still very engaged with new music. And I was still buying a lot of the new records that were coming out. There's a lot of things on this list that I still love, still own, or certainly things that I bought at the time. Maybe I don't own them anymore, but I certainly did buy them at the time. So I was definitely very much immersed in the world of new music, as I'm sure you were. So which kind of begs the question, when did the rot really set in then? Maybe it is the fact that so much music now, is kind of, we're bombarded all the time by so much music these days, aren't we? Probably more so than ever before.
Speaker 2Well, on one level, yes, but I suppose we're not bombarded with the eclectic selection that we were about when we were younger. And I've said this many times before that, you know, during the 80s and 70s, you had very few TV programs, very few music radio programs that really dealt with new music, yet they dealt with a tremendous range of material. Whereas I think part of the problem, perhaps, is the X factor. The factor that suddenly music became very much more pure entertainment, pure mainstream. You weren't getting the sort of diversity of releases, even on things like VH1. Because if you actually think of this period, you know, VH1 and MTV were at one point proper music channels, and very much over the last sort of 20 years, they evolved into reality television channels. So, you know, sometimes I think it's about the absence of music being
Speaker 1exposed. I think it's also to do with listening to music through the computer. You're kind of subject very often to the whims of algorithms, not tastemakers, but algorithms. So they're kind of analyzing what you listen to, and they're presenting you all the time with more of the same, more of the same, more of the same. So those kind of outliers, the things that you didn't know that you liked, or you didn't like until you kind of, you know, forced yourself in a way to listen to them, those kind of things don't happen so much now, do they? Because you're kind of kept within this little bubble of your own tastes by algorithms on YouTube and Spotify.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think, you know, perhaps the only equivalent of that, which happened at the time as well, is just Friends recommending releases to Friends. I mean, that still happens.
Speaker 1Let's start with, you know, the first category in your list is a substantial one this time, which is mainstream slash pop music. And again, kind of testament to the fact that there was a lot of different and interesting things going on. In the mainstream pop world in 2001. The first two on the list, which I think we want to talk about, maybe we can talk about these, you know, in conjunction with each other is Bjork, Vespertine and Radiohead's Amnesiac. And two artists really that had kind of come through over the previous 10 years and become very much hugely respected by both tastemakers and a substantial audience alike, at least, you know, certainly at the time, and arguably making some of their most innovative, and interesting music. And, you know, again, we've talked so often about how bands are kind of in a transitional stage. When they're in a transitional stage, sometimes they make their more interesting music, their most interesting music. And I'd be the first to say that I've, you know, over the last 10 years, I've kind of lost interest in Bjork. I did keep buying her records for a while after this, but I just didn't hear any tunes after a while. And Vespertine is a great example of an album that is very strong melodically, but also she's creating a completely, unique musical world for herself on this record, almost like a chamber electronic music, if such a thing is possible.
Speaker 2Well, I think you're right. I think it's kind of chamber electronica really, isn't it? It's kind of chamber classical meets cutting edge electronica. And at the time, she still had a tremendous flair for melody. And there's a real emotion in this album. There's a real sense of loss and melancholy. And sort of like you, I've kind of lost interest over the last decade or so in Bjork's work. And I think partly it's because it blows. I think partly it's because it burs into one, for me. After this album, they seem to be more experimental or more commercial excursions, but nothing seemed quite as different. You know, up to this point, I think she's progressing with each album, doing something radically different. And each album is kind of a vital sound world. And it's an odd thing with Bjork, because obviously, I still think she's one of the most important artists of the last, you know, three or four decades. But weirdly enough, I do often go, back to the Sugar Cubes debut, which I think is a really fresh statement. It's full of energy, and there's nothing cynical about it.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's a wonderful record. Yeah, I agree. Life's too good. Yeah. So, and I think you can say something similar about Radiohead in a way, can't you? Although I still am very much engaged with Radiohead, because I think they have, they have kind of got that trick down of almost wrong footing the audience. They don't just give you always what you expect. You know, they're going to do something a bit different. They're going to do something a bit different. And I think this was no exception, this record, Amnesia. I mean, when I heard Pyramid's song, I was just destroyed by how good it was, you know, I mean, in a good way.
Speaker 2Yeah, no, I think it's fantastic. I mean, I think the interesting thing about Radiohead, you know, we discussed them in a previous show, was that I always felt that, you know, I discovered the band on the very, very early singles. And in fact, they were on a TV show with No Man, you probably don't remember this, we were on a show called The Beat. And Radiohead, I think, were doing some of their earliest, if not earliest, TV performances as well. And they performed Creep. And it was fantastic. And I sort of followed their career from early on. And I kind of felt they were evolving in a really interesting way. But when OK Computer came out, which I think is a wonderful album, I've got to say this before I go on to say what I'm going to say. I didn't think it was rock music of the 21st century. I thought that an awful lot of the praise wasn't right for that particular album. It's a wonderful album, but it was certainly not the most progressive or forward-thinking rock album, of the day. Whereas with Kid A, they became everything that the critics had said OK Computer was. And for me, Amnesiac, which I know kind of came out the same sessions as Kid A, was even more reinforcement of that. And I think, yes, listening to Pyramid Song, fantastic piece of music. But the album as a whole constantly flits between very experimental, glitchy electronic pieces, totally redefining what a rock band can be. And then obviously bringing in really unusual influences from the likes of Alice Coltrane or even sort of trad jazz. You know, there's some wonderful about turns. And what I kind of liked about it as well is that we were living in a period when Radiohead's OK Computer had influenced a whole generation of bands, Coldplay, Muse, Elbow. And Radiohead themselves were doing something completely different rather than capitalising on it. And they weren't doing what I always used to refer to as a U2. You know, U2 would occasionally wrong foot, but it was never that different. You know, pop is really interesting, so is acting baby, but it isn't fundamentally that different from Unforgettable Fire or War. I always kind of felt that the blueprint of U2 remained very clear in everything they did. Whereas actually with Radiohead, they ripped up the rule book completely.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Amnesiac was almost like The Leftovers from Kid A, but I much prefer it personally. I know Kid A is seen as the seminal record, one of the greatest records of all time. And I've never quite liked it as much as Amnesiac. And I think it's partly because there's just three or four songs on Amnesiac that I think are just completely outstanding. Knives Out and Pyramid Song being my two favourites. And of course, the band have gone on to become almost national treasures in that sense, haven't they? They seem, I think, I can't remember if we talked about this before, but they seem to have that thing, which I love. In fact, we're going to talk about another artist later who has it also, Apex Twin. They don't appear to give a shit what people expect of them. They really don't. And in many ways that equals integrity. You know, when an artist doesn't really care what the audience is expecting or what the audience wants, that equals integrity, doesn't it? And that's when you get people that kind of have longevity in their career. They're chasing their fans quite the opposite.
Speaker 2Yeah, I completely agree. And they've never gone back. on that either you know one of the things with bjork we were talking earlier is that from vespertine she has had the occasional backtrack where she's almost recalling the sort of heyday commercial heyday of the mid 90s of her work and radiohead have never gone back on themselves and you know one of the things that's kind of interesting about this year and this album is that if memory serves this was a huge album and it was incredibly uncompromising and this is why i'm kind of saying that 2001 in a way was a bit of a golden age that you had albums like tool lateralis and um amnesiac that were not making any concessions to commerciality and they were getting to number one you know they were selling in vast quantities and you're quite right they've kind of um gone on and pursued a very singular path ever since and and luckily for us you know they've remained successful because a bit like pink floyd they are one of those bands that are kind of global colossi who have integrity who you can look up to and um still see as a role model we better
Speaker 1move on um obviously talk about radiohead all all episodes yeah so some other mainstream stroke pop records from this year you've already mentioned muse uh second album uh origin of symmetry definitely one of the sort of post one of the bands that came through in the wake of of the success of uh of radiohead a lot along with coldplay as you say um uh nick cave in the bad seeds no more shall we part now there's a you wanted to talk about which i don't know so i'm gonna in fact there's four records here i'm gonna hand over to you yeah so obviously i didn't buy any of these at the time so this is where i have to defer to you the divine divine comedies regeneration uh kings of convenience quiet is the new loud mercury revs all his dream and elbow asleep in the back so i don't know any of these records so tell us about these records tim can we can we lump them together or not
Speaker 2it is no we can't really i mean this is going to be like a like an extended drum solo now of course as i go on about these albums but divine comedy regeneration um very different album for the band because i think that their earlier work which is magnificent had an incredible flair pop sensibility scott walker s grandeur and so on this was the band almost kind of cowed down they sounded depressed and an interesting thing is that they brought in nigel godrich the radiohead producer to produce this album and this is the only divine comedy album where you can say it ties in with the zeitgeist because the exciting thing about divine comedy in some ways in the 90s was that they didn't sound like anything around them and a lot of their influences seem to come from elsewhere you know different decades different genres whereas this one in some ways was almost their response to okay computer it's a very down at heel more rock oriented album but because of his voice which is is you know it's a wonderful instrument in itself um it distinguished itself as something different and i know that it's now i think that um hannon has kind of felt is is one of his weakest in retrospect but i think it's still a very strong piece of work because it shows this confident witty performer almost in a low moment and um so therefore it kind of reveals something different about divine comedy and um i think you know it's an interesting addition to the catalog um elbow where another band i guess kind of signed in the wake of radiohead and you can sort of hear elements of okay computers production in asleep at the back but for me it's sort of a very open-hearted very emotional album that is quite honest with its influences you hear a lot of blue nile a lot of talk talk even a lot of early genesis in there and i think that um you know guy garvey has an incredibly expressive voice and this album a lot of which was written before they were signed before they were known a little like the sugar cubes album we were talking about there's no self-consciousness this is music that they wanted to put out there and in some ways although they've done some tremendous stuff since this is the album that i would rate as elbows strongest um kings of convenience um they were an unusual norwegian duo and very influenced by simon and garfunkel it was a bizarre sound to be fashionable at the time but they produced a couple of incredibly pretty albums um that were just harmony vocal with acoustic guitars and and they did it extremely well mercury rev this was the album after deserters songs and basically found the band stretching that you know the kind of disnification that they had in the production was uh in overdrive on this album and it's um quite an unusual piece of work because in some ways it's a far more excessive variation on the more discreet and ethereal moments on deserter songs and i've always liked it through as an
Speaker 1underrated release okay uh well done that was uh very succinctly put for four albums in uh in about as many minutes as as that i think so uh well done okay i said i don't know any of those records but i have to go and check them out so also on the list we have pulp we love life didn't buy that one either uh depeche mode exciter did buy that one not their best were you excited by it were you not really no i mean i love depeche mode but this was like this is the beginning of a little bit of a slide it has to be said rem revealed you you are our our veteran rem expert i i've never listened to an rem album all the way in your life i don't know i
Speaker 2bought it yeah but you
Speaker 1can't remember anything
Speaker 2i i honestly i remember being disappointed because i thought up was a very unusual album and very underrated and this seemed to be more rem a tempting to sort of revive biggest rock band on the planet identity and it wasn't for me
Speaker 1gorillas first album um i don't again i don't know much about very good very enjoyable i mean
Speaker 2yeah i do yeah i mean had it liked it um this was damon alban in a kind of invented pop band guys it was allowing him to do things that he couldn't do in blur and blur to be fair we're getting more interesting with each album and developing influences from you know rockin music as much as anything else they had some really interesting rhythms in the later blur albums probably influenced a little by talking heads as well i think and gorillas was his pure pop guys and they created a cartoon band to front it and um yeah it was very inventive and
Speaker 1it was fun clearly you bought a lot more records this year than i did although i'm looking um i'm actually looking down at the the electronic category to come and i've bought pretty much every single record on that list see this is it this is where i've got the zero yeah okay so so because i i say that because i'm going to defer to you again on the next two you've got on the list bridget fontaine keekland is that how you say keekland and and noir desire which is a an album a band i've never heard of but also apparently has bridget fontaine as a guest on so tell us about these albums well you know you know bridget
Speaker 2fontaine bridget fontaine i know of her yes i know of her french singer-songwriter who kind of experimented with world music and beats well before other people it's one of those interesting stories like batty arto of somebody who's huge in her own country france pretty much unknown outside of that and has made some genuinely innovative albums and keekland was kind of her album in the era post britpop post trip hop post drum and bass and she's experimenting with all of those things she's a bit like um a french marianne faithful in that she kind of keeps up with what's happening around her and always manages to forge the music in in her identity and um desire noir were a french band who were very big in the um 90s one of those stories were a little like roy harper um don't look it up with the noir desire lead singer but um this was a bit like that yeah don't look it up don't go onto wikipedia and look up don't look
Speaker 1it's a definitely don't look whatever you do don't
Speaker 2look just don't do it you won't like what you read and um this was their last album before the incident not porcupine trees the incident but the incident that we dare not speak of and um it was really really interesting you know this was a band that were kind of mainstream french pop rock yet experimenting with um blues and trip hop in really odd ways and they did one track with um brigitte fontaine on it and they did one track with um brigitte fontaine on it this is 24 minutes long and it's almost got this kind of metronomic can quality to it so again you know to have an album that was top 10 and winning awards in france that's got a 24 minute can-esque experimental groove piece um it speaks to me once more that this was an age in which people could take risks and that those risks would pay off
Speaker 1white stripes white blood cells uh the strokes is this it i suppose both both kind of exponents of the sort of new generation of uh american yeah alternative rock music i was never particularly into either myself uh no same here i
Speaker 2mean you know a little like with the the grunge wave before it i could see that it was interesting i could see they were doing something different with rock music bringing back you know some post-punk attitudes in in certain respects but it didn't really um communicate to me. I probably had more time for White Stripes than the strokes but you know yeah
Speaker 1and then the final final entry in the mainstream pop categories is prince the rainbow children which was a bit of a return to form but uh it's definitely in in that sort of era of prince it's one of the better albums but the problem is i'm not sure anyone was listening by that point he was putting out too
Speaker 2much wasn't he really and the
Speaker 1rainbow children actually is a really good one but it had come off the back of two or three that i think a lot of his fans had including myself at the time actually i didn't hear rainbow children until until comparatively recently um so i had also drifted away things like the three disc emancipation set where i was struggling to find you know two or three songs that i felt were up there with the best of prince across 36 songs and then following that up with a four disc set the crystal ball set with ditto really yeah i'd kind of been put off a little bit so i wasn't hearing at the time records like rainbow children but actually in retrospect it is a it is a it is a good record it's it's obviously right in the middle of his religious zeal peak so let's move on to something that a category that i can talk about with some authority because i did buy almost all of these records on this list uh the electronic category so there was some great stuff going on in the world of electronic music uh at the turn of the millennium probably the ones that i think we want to talk about or focus on the most are the apex twin record from from 2001 which as as we talk is is only i think the first of two albums two full-length albums he's released in the 21st century so there was this album called drugs i don't know how you exactly how you pronounce it but it's spelt d-r-u-k-q-s i think it's pronounced drugs and then cyro which came out three or four years ago um so he hasn't been the most prolific although there's been various eps and side projects but this was a grand statement this was a double cd after about four or five years of not releasing anything exploring a style of music which came to be known as drill and bass which is this very kind of frenetic programming style and the reason i say that is because i want to talk about another record in conjunction with this which is the venetian snares record from this year doll doll doll and venetian snares is like apex twin on steroids i mean it's just it's like having your head kicked in it's almost noise in the sense that it's so brutal and so relentless but the programming style is ridiculously off the charts and it's scale i mean these are people that just sound like they've spent days and days and days just programming the beats cutting them up reconstructing them and apex twins drugs was kind of the the sort of popular face of this style which a lot of other artists were exploring this year square pusher also released you know an album this year called go plastic and orteca released one of their most difficult records confailed this year which are kind of all exploring this idea of taking electronic music almost into the world of abstract the abstract noise world it's difficult it's almost impossible to imagine you could dance to this music and of course we you know we have to remember that a lot of electronic music came out of dj culture yeah and the idea that you could dance to electronic music and then you hear albums like apex twins drugs and venetian stairs venetian snares and square pusher album you think well you couldn't possibly dance this this is the electronic music that's intended purely for for listening rather than dancing this is kind of the poster child for that kind of approach and of course the apex twin album is very varied isn't it isn't it so it has these kind of very beautiful um prepared piano pieces on it as well
Speaker 2yeah well he was supposedly influenced by john cage and eric sati on some of it and you can hear the sati certainly because there's a lot of sort of computer generated acoustic minimalist pieces that are very very beautiful um so it's quite unexpected in a way isn't it and it you know lest we forget it didn't particularly get great reviews at the time did it it was sort of
Speaker 1i think it's i do think it's a classic record it's a very it's a very schizophrenic record because you do have these two extremes of the very very beautiful player piano pieces and then the very very frenetic drill and bass uh electronica it's almost hard to imagine somebody being able to appreciate both and i do but maybe a lot of people didn't you know so probably in that sense it would have been seen as very protected very willful and very self-indulgent and remember it's a almost a two hour long record as well it's a double cd it's a lot to take in i think
Speaker 2that's part of the problem it's a double album and it is relentless really um i mean i think that even some of the electronic that you know the more um vicious pieces have sort of quite pretty detuned synths so there was always something quite pretty and heartfelt even in the midst of the chaos of the more aggressive apex twin pieces i thought but yeah some of the reviews at the time i remember suggesting that it was um oh yes he's just doing what he did five years earlier which um was not true at all really you know the player piano player piano stuff alone was a completely fresh direction for him yeah i mean
Speaker 1you could say that i you could say that about cyro the last album we put out four years ago it definitely felt a little bit familiar but certainly at the time of drugs it was quite i think it was you know it came off the back of two massive singles not massive in a commercial sense but two very very high profile experiments and i think it was a very very high profile electronic singles in come to daddy and window liquor obviously both of which had those just amazing chris cunningham videos that were unforgettable if you saw them and so perhaps drugs felt slightly anticlimactic um coming off the back of those singles i think no it's a really
Speaker 2good point because i think that there was a lot of anticipation for this really and and perhaps that was it that people were expecting more ironically despite the reviews saying there's more of the same i think people were wanting more of the same thing and i think that's a that the two singles had sort of carved a new audience for him and as you say particularly those videos were just astonishing at the time but the music also was really interesting you know this was apex twin i think really coming into his own so let's
Speaker 1move on so another one that i think this is not the best example of of what he does but actually in a sense everything he does is very similar anyway yeah so i'm talking about the caretaker now and he's still making records which basically sound pretty much the same as the one he's making right now and i think that's a he made this year so he i think it's fair to say this is an artist that has a gag doesn't he he has a gag it's a brilliant gag and he minds it kind of relentlessly doesn't he so i mean how to describe i mean the clue is in the name isn't it yeah
Speaker 2yeah yeah well this is two there's two i'd say he's got two gags really um so the caretaker he got his name from the caretaker in the film this kubrick film version of the shining stephen king's novel said originally that he was very influenced by the fact that they were playing 20s music in the background during some of the scenes with the caretaker and jack nicholson so that was part of the inspiration wasn't it
Speaker 1yeah but it's this idea that when you hear those 20 songs in the film you're hearing them in the ambience of this big ballroom so yes yeah yeah almost like it's beaming in from from another time from you know almost coming through from a time machine or something so he's using old 78 r p.m records you can hear all the surface noise but it's drenched in reverb so it's sound it sounds like it's echoing from the bottom of a well or from another time well this is it and it has got this very haunting quality to it in that respect
Speaker 2hasn't it completely and i think that what's interesting is you know i believe he went around the sort of um secondhand stores of southport or wherever and was just buying up old 78s and sampling them and these pieces would have been during their day but divorced from that and as you say with this really haunting ambience that he applies to everything um it takes it into another dimension i was kind of wondering that it's like you know could you actually be taking the libertines and ronan keating processing this and making them sound like the hauntology for tomorrow you know um but yeah it's it's a wonderful effect and this is the beginning of what he does because of course his first idea was that it was this 20s music in a big ballroom and over the recent period he's developed this notion that it's somebody it's a man the caretaker who is dissolving into dementia so the samples are getting even stranger even more drawn out even more atmospheric and at times pretty heartbreaking
Speaker 1yes in fact that's fair to say i mean the last cycle of music he released everywhere at the end of time as you say six albums that gradually document the descent into dementia so the music starts off relatively untreated you're hearing these kind of old records from the 20 old jazz standards from the 20s a little bit of reverb a little bit of texture added to them but nothing too radical and then by the time of the sixth lp you cannot hear the music at all it's become so abstracted so processed slowed down speeded up reversed drenched in reverb echo overlayed so you get several pieces of music playing at the same time it's very reminiscent in a way of william loops isn't it this idea that you can kind of give this this suggestion of decay through processing and recycling old records and allowing that process of of breakdown the musical most dissolving to kind of be analogous with this idea of civilization breaking down in the case of the basinski or somebody's mental state breaking down in the case of the caretaker which of course is what happens in the shining movie itself isn't it this is a kind of document a document of someone's mental breakdown so it's in many ways it's a it's a very obvious idea but again he's the guy that had it and he's done it over the last 20 years very well um it's almost a case of you don't really need to own more than one album though isn't it of this you know probably
Speaker 2yeah i mean maybe get the last cycle and you've got the two gags really um everything he does but it's great and i think that a bit like the basinski it does bear listening to in that it can be quite an emotional experience or quite an interesting experience just losing yourself in the music of the caretaker everyone
Speaker 1should have one caretaker record in their collection that's awesome a no risk disc a no risk disc yeah it could be any of them so other records that came out this year um four texts pause plaid double figure zero seven simple things christian finesse endless summer daft punk discovery monolake cinemascope tim hecker haunt me haunt me do it again but the one actually the other one i would like to talk about briefly which was a late addition to the list i didn't realize it was 2001 until i was spinning it the other day and i and i kind of had to drop tim a line and say this album came out this year we need to speak about it is pre-fuse 73 vocal studies and uprock narratives now i immediately got you interested in this artist tim just because the name that's true because yeah because he calls himself pre-fuse 73 as i understand it because he thinks jazz fusion music was only good before 1973 which i think is something we can kind of concur with isn't it or certainly have some sympathy with yeah i go for sympathy
Speaker 2because you know i quite like some of the stuff after that especially weather report and herbie hancock but you know
Speaker 1yeah there is some good music but certainly there is a golden age of jazz fusion music isn't there that kind of existed up until about 73 we've even talked about that that's nothing to do with the artist at all because he doesn't make jazz music he doesn't make fusion music he makes essentially a very very abstracted experimental form of hip-hop music and this was his first album guy called scott heron and the story of this album is he was a producer engineer he was working with a lot of fairly generic hip-hop artists at the time creating beats for them to rap over and in his spare time he started to chop up the vocals and almost begin to incorporate them into the fabric of the music into the fabric of the beats cutting up the voices using the voices as almost rhythmical devices and it's a it's a fascinating kind of hip-hop record it's kind of an instrumental hip-hop record except the irony there is of course a lot of the main components come from processing voices yeah i didn't did you did you listen to the album tim i did
Speaker 2listen to it yeah i mean i thought it was interesting it's it's one of those albums where um a bit like the boards of canada i could see it was interesting but it didn't necessarily move me beyond thinking okay i quite like that i mean it
Speaker 1kind of blew me away in 2001 i don't know and i still like it now but at the time it was really fresh i'd never heard anything quite like it so possibly it's one of those albums i have a nostalgic attachment to because i heard it at the time when it was fresh so it still seems fresh to me now but it felt like a really revolutionary record at the time and it was released on warp records a you know a label that were known for you know idm and electronic music but it was essentially coming from more from the hip-hop tradition so for someone like myself who wasn't so immersed in the world of hip-hop you know i was familiar with things like dj shadow and dj crush but but not much beyond that at the time this was kind of an interesting doorway into that world it was like halfway between say what apex twin was doing and the world of traditional hip-hop music yeah well
Speaker 2i think you're right it's like you when things hit you because like obviously with um you know the tim hecker album release this year it's all about the hip-hop music and it's all about the it's often described as boards of canada-esque and when we're discussing boards of canada before for me um perhaps because i didn't hear it at the time it always seemed quite pretty rather than revolutionary whereas the the hecker album i kind of thought was quite um a deep investigation into that genre that became known as as hauntology so sometimes when you're sort of introduced to music you know it can have a greater impact for sure
Speaker 1although i do think boards of canada that's that first album is a stone cold and i think it's a great album and i think it's a great album and old classic but anyway uh we'll agree to disagree then so let let's move on to um well heavy heavy in fact you've already mentioned one of the heavy records from this year that stand that definitely stands out is the tool album lateralis uh i suppose when many people they would think of tool as almost like the radio head of metal in a way aren't they they almost seem to have this respect as experimental artists forward-looking artists whilst at the same time being firmly rooted in a a genre uh in this case metal or heavy metal or heavy rock
Speaker 2there's also a lot of king crimson in there in terms of their rhythms their time signatures and some of the soundscape you know you can hear that sort of 80s minimalist classical influence king crimson in what tool do the one thing i kind of think is interesting about lateralis is that a little like amnesiac and i guess this is why it's it's the radio head of metal it's not full of tunes it's not full of showboating it's not full of anything that would make it an obvious hit with anybody yet this was again number one in the states you know this was a band making a 70 minute plus album with often 10 minute pieces that went into bizarre time signatures or time signature grooves it didn't make any concessions yet was hugely influential and popular and for that alone i kind of really respect tool i did buy
Speaker 1at the time i remember thinking at the time it was far too long far too long and i know there are tall fans will be up in arms about me saying that it's 75 minutes and it's not a particularly varied musical vocabulary is it i mean that i think that's the problem i think that's the problem for me is if you have a fairly focused musical vocabulary for me it always works better if your albums are about 40 minutes long and here was like an almost 80 minute album and i i can't say i ever got through it more than once or twice it was just really it's just such a kind but i mean brilliant i mean absolutely brilliant what they what they were doing was phenomenal i just didn't need 80 minutes of it i agree and i think
Speaker 2one of the reasons why amnesiac is one of the greatest radiohead statements is that it's so diverse but it's also really succinct it's about 40 to 44 minutes long isn't it you know it's a great album in the classic sense but it's also a great album in the truly progressive sense yeah
Speaker 1so talking of progressive i think the other major metal arguably the most influential metal album this year was one that i'm ashamed to say i had some hand in i'm actually very proud to say i hadn't had some hand in it wrote the
Speaker 2album sang the album produced the album
Speaker 1uh it's the opeth record uh blackwater park which i think among opeth's oeuvre seems to be the one that people unanimously say is a bit of a landmark you know a bit of a classic record and in retrospect i can see that what we did on that record was something quite new because it was bringing a kind of almost sound design aesthetic a very sort of deep layered production aesthetic to the world of extreme metal and it's interesting because um you know we just talked about the tool record having a kind of uniformity of sound and i think that's why i was never completely able to give myself to it there wasn't enough going on and what i think we were able to do on blackwater park michael's behest i mean michael invited me to work on the record with him and i just kind of got a bit of a sense of what it was like to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to
Speaker 2work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm very proud to be able to work on the record with him and i'm sure you brought ideas that maybe they weren't able to realize before your involvement in some
Speaker 1way well i remember the first thing i did was uh he played a lead guitar part and i said let's reverse that you know and i literally just took the file it was on protools and i flipped it over and and i could see the big grin on his face straight away he's like this is what i brought you in for you know this is not stuff we would have done ourselves and i have to say since then michael has learned all of my tricks and does them much better than i do even but but at the time i think he was he was still that that was kind of new to him sort of doing those kind of things and i'd been doing those things so we we had a lot of fun making that record and and um it's still got something to it i think which sounds like sounds like the future in in 2001
Speaker 2well i think it's an interesting period wasn't it for metal because i guess opeth anathema my dying bride were bands that started off as pretty raw almost death metal bands with the sort of grunt growl vocals and became something very different and and yeah you know i can say i think opeth was was arguably far bigger than my dying bride and the um anathema albums but all of those bands were kind of finding something certainly more openly emotional certainly more openly beautiful and it's kind of interesting that you know bands who come from such an uncompromising background of brutality um opening themselves to other very different influences whether that be you know chamber classical or sound world that you brought to to opeth and so in that sense you know i can imagine it introducing new ideas and new feelings to generations of people who perhaps you know were expecting something a lot more uniform
Speaker 1yeah and i i had uh i had death threats uh for a couple of years after no seriously i had death threats um there are there are a number of people out there what you might call fundamentalist metal fans who hated what i did to open what they perceived i did to i take that as a badge of honor i continue to this day to take it as a badge of honor when i upset anyone that has a kind of fundamental value view of of how music should be or you know or listens within a very specific set of parameters i mean that to me that's kind of anathema no pun intended so um but i think the elephant in the room here is that michael was very open and very curious about the possibilities of music and that's why that's why it was possible he was also a very very convincing brilliant singer and that enabled him to flip from the sort of death metal cookie monster you know vocal style to almost jeff buckley-esque flights of vocal fancy and a great songwriter as well and and you know those things i think just made him stand out from the pack and ultimately therefore made opeth and have made opeth stand out well well i think
Speaker 2you're saying i think your presence was important because i think you probably allowed the band to become more of what they always wanted to become and i think sometimes you know we kind of need external catalysts to help us realize who we are and what we really want to do sometimes
Speaker 1yes i mean in that sense i just i guess i would have been someone that would have certainly encouraged him i mean i was coming to that scenario having not much interest in you know in metal i mean i liked a bit of metal i was into my sugar and that kind of thing at the time so i had enough of an interest to want to do the project but i certainly wasn't coming at it from a fundamentalist metal fans point of view quite the opposite you know i'm coming at it from the mental point of view of what can we do you know to make this music work on other levels too and it was almost like a perfect storm in the sense that michael was someone who was kind of becoming tired himself of the sort of parameters of extreme metal wanted to break out of that so in that sense it was almost like encouraging each other you know so having someone like me in the room saying well that's a bit generic metal why don't we do something weird instead like you know and in
Speaker 2some ways as well that metal aspect might have seeped into some of you work with porcupine tree around that time as well that there could have been a two-way influence yeah completely
Speaker 1yeah totally i mean in absentia which i was writing at the time was was the first time porcupine tree had really embraced metal in a big way far cry from being a metal band but certainly became a big part of the musical vocabulary at that point in the same way that perhaps some of the more porcupine tree uh sounding aspects became a part of the opeth musical vocabulary so it's almost like we were coming from completely different directions yeah at a similar you know and a couple years later we actually went on tour together you know that's how close we kind of become uh in that sense interesting interesting i mean opeth i mean michael's still one of my very best friends he's a he's a fantastic uh artist and by the way another artist that does not give a fuck does not give a fuck what his fans expect and i believe that is why he is one of the greats he's i think he will be seen as one of the greats because he's never tried to cater for his audience he's never tried to cater for his audience he's never tried to cater for his audience and again most of the metal scene do i suppose
Speaker 2metallica are one exception to that aren't they in terms of sort of huge metal bands they have taken a few left turns you know they
Speaker 1have although they've backtracked haven't they a little bit i think i think they they had a really tough time when they did that record with lou
Speaker 2reed which is the one metallica album i've got
Speaker 1yeah which is which the metal fans really really kick back on and it's a shame in a way because i guess they they panicked uh and it's you know it's understandable it's an understandable response no i think
Speaker 2you're entirely right because i was going to say that you know maybe that's it with you know i think bjork has backtracked metallica have backtracked and when we're talking maybe about say opeth radiohead there are artists who haven't backtracked you know and and obviously you can take it further with people like um you know mark hollis um certainly scott walker david sylvie and other artists who just went out and never returned don't care if
Speaker 1they sell you know they're not backtracked they're not backtracked they're not backtracked 10 million records or a thousand records don't care uh and and it comes through in it does come through in the art doesn't it um you can hear the integrity absolutely i think you know you
Speaker 2can come back because obviously i mean you and i to a certain extent have come back to a more brash or electronic sound occasionally in recent years you know future bites and love you to bits for example but i think we came back to that out of pure enthusiasm it was just something i think dhd that we get to a certain state with music and then we've got to do something else almost as a release and relief you know
Speaker 1yeah yeah yeah i don't see any problem with you know with revisiting things from your past it's why you do it it's the motivation for doing it it's is it desperation is it panic or is it because you know what i enjoyed doing that a few years ago i'd like to do something else in that style again i mean that's neil young isn't it let's move on talking of neil young let's move on to the next one and we're going to talk about the next one and we're on to singer-songwriters some great records from this year unfortunately the red house painters album isn't one of them it
Speaker 2certainly is not now we both
Speaker 1and i wonder if mark kosilek himself would kind of acknowledge this because this was the last red house painters record and you and i are massive red house painters fans i think it's fair to say we're about as big as they come um those first three or four records are so important to us aren't they it's phenomenal records phenomenal records song from a song from a blue guitar also great record so this is this is the sixth and final red house painters records and it's like the gag has just run out of steam isn't it well it's
Speaker 2almost as gray and colorless as the cover really isn't it there's just something about this which has no light and shade very little melody i mean you know kosilek continues to have an amazing and fascinating career but um he seems to reach a certain point in his life as a kind of new version of very early red house painters using a lot more acoustic instrumentation a lot more melody and now it's become almost um a bizarre sort of vehicle for autobiographical raps oh which i quite like some
Speaker 1of those yeah no some it's
Speaker 2really no it's really interesting he finds himself in new territory but i'm saying that you know he's another artist who you know kind of occasionally backtracks and um you know rediscovers his voice so that kind of voice that we liked in red house painters i'd say he sort of had again in some of the early sun kill moon albums and now he's once more gone into you know a different type of sort of noise territory but you know certainly melody is of less importance to him again
Speaker 1yeah so so let's not talk about an album that we don't rate let's talk about albums that we do rate uh i did i mean i only wanted to mention that in passing because you and i both historically are such massive red house painters fans this was definitely there's definitely a letdown wasn't it
Speaker 2yeah well mark eitzel also you know another one of the most important artists in the world and i think it's a really important one of the other artists you know i was a huge american music club and still the record from this year yeah yeah and and unfortunately you know i think it is probably a comment on where his career was at that point and as the eitzel albums go it's not bad but it just blurs into the releases you know whereas eitzel again has released some fantastic material over the last decade and has certainly rediscovered his enthusiasm and his sense of melody but you know what i think it's a really important album and i think it's a really important album and i think it's a really important album and i think it's a really important album and i think it's a important statement in the previous decade suddenly seemed lost and for whatever reason eitzel kozilek and to a degree divine comedy although i really rate the album almost seemed lost in this new decade well let's talk about a
Speaker 1couple of albums that both of us do really like vincent gallo when i mean i've kind of put this in singer-songwriter it kind of is isn't it um yeah yeah a very strange take on the genre but so vincent gallo for those of you don't know was was a filmmaker i mean he kind of established himself as a filmmaker by this point yeah buffalo 66 buffalo 66 yeah but then he signed to warp records and made this incredibly beautiful lo-fi it's he's got a kind of chet baker-esque quality hasn't he to his voice but very affecting and very beautiful i mean in some ways i think you're
Speaker 2right the voice has got that real fragile smooth chet baker quality the songs themselves the production it's kind of lo-fi in a way that reminds me of early rock and roll and blues production but also things like young marble giants that's sort of very primitive post very bedroomy very yeah this is music in the bedroom you're right but melodically he's again he's got he's actually got a beautiful gift for affecting melodies so it almost has that kind of king crimson moon child the opening of the album and the opening of the album and the opening of the section of king crimson moon child where there's this fragile beautiful song with arpeggiated guitars it reminds me of that as well so i hear all of these things from sort of blues rock and roll post-punk chet baker early king crimson in the mix um and it's just quite a haunting and beguiling album that's that's pretty consistent and pretty
Speaker 1short yeah it's very very intimate sounding isn't it almost almost like you're sitting there with him in his bedroom while he plays you his demos it's kind of yeah it's very that kind of quality isn't it yeah which which again so you know we've talked about this before i suppose sometimes in a world where so much pop music now is very produced very tweezed very homogenized and very glossy sounding it's lovely sometimes to hear something you know almost kind of lo-fi unachieving in a way but but has got that emotional quality that just bypasses all that just gets straight to the nub of the matter in that respect
Speaker 2yeah and i think in some ways you know this is the album for this year that that somehow fulfills the sort of function that albums like Virginia Astley's From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, fulfilled in the years that was released. Was that 1983, I think? You know, where it's this kind of fragile, homemade, unexpected beauty. You know, again, the John G. Perry album, Sunset Wading. It's one of those very unexpected, very honest peculiarities that is out there that I would very strongly rate.
Speaker 1Yeah, almost like the notion that it had been produced is absurd. You know, it sounds like it's unproduced music. It just came out. It's just there. It sits there. Everything has that kind of very almost idiot, savant kind of naturalism to it. It doesn't sound like it's been contrived in any respect. Yeah, it's an absolutely beautiful, beautiful record. Yeah, so that's definitely one of our top tips from this year, isn't it? Now, what about The Padster? We keep talking about The Padster. No, The Padster. Yeah, The Macca. Macca, yeah. Macca number two. The Padster. We keep talking about The Padster and then cutting it out. Poor old Padster. He's ended up. Because we love everything he's done, don't we? We love everything Paddy Macalloon and Professor Brown have done.
Speaker 2We love everything about his music, his beard, his being.
Speaker 1We love everything. His songwriting, his voice, everything. The Gunman and Other Stories. A bit of an underrated one, this. I think it's a terrific record. It's a bit of a late career, you know, classic for me. Produced by Tony Visconti. Some of the music he'd written for a BBC TV show called Crocodile Shoes. Some of the music he'd written for a BBC TV show I mean, the guy isn't capable of writing a bad song, let's face it. Do you rate this album, Tim? I wouldn't rate it as my favourite,
Speaker 2but I still rate it, you know, like you, that everything he's done, I love. You know, from Swoon, which was much more of a raw sort of indie pop album in some ways, but a very sophisticated indie pop album, you know, to I Trawl the Megahertz, which is one of my favourite albums of all time, which came a couple of years after this. And I think in some ways, maybe this album is slightly, slightly overshadowed by my love of I Trawl the Megahertz, which I think is a wonderful piece of work. And also by the fact that I'm one of the few people who defends Andromeda Heights. I think that's got its own. I love that record. I love it. It's a great. A lot of people, this is a bit of a face value, really, amongst people I know, that they will criticise it, think that he'd lost his flair lyrically. I think it's a very beautiful record, which has a very specific soundscape, as does I Trawl the Megahertz. Whereas this album, Gum and Other Stories, produced by Tony Visconti, has much more of an organic band approach. But yeah, it's a really strong album. Some very affecting pieces, a bit of a cowboy theme going on, partly because of the songs that were written for the TV show. So you've got his version of Cowboy Dreams that was a hit for Jimmy Nail. You've also got his astonishingly pretty version of Streets of Laredo, the old country classic. So yeah, I really, I like it a lot. And it's an album. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, like you, I wouldn't say it's in my top two Prefab Sprout albums, but in the sense that if this is one of the weaker entries in his catalogue, then that's a pretty amazing catalogue because I still really, really, really like it. I totally agree. And a ditto Andromeda Heights. I didn't know that was, I mean, the title track, Swans, you know, oh, wow, just gorgeous. I mean, it's a very syrupy record, isn't it, Andromeda Heights? Yeah. Maybe some people object to the sort of the syrupy, keyboard sounds, but they're so syrupy. You used that word earlier, Disney-fied. They're almost Disney-fied,
Speaker 2aren't they? That's one of the things, I guess, that this album hasn't got, actually, because I think that a lot of Sprout's albums, It's more organic. Yeah. You know, Swoon doesn't have it and this doesn't have it. And I quite like that quality in their music. There's almost an otherworldly quality that I think kind of comes to a peak on Andromeda Heights, but also from Langley Park to Memphis has it by the, by the bucket load. I mean, it is almost like 10 buckets of syrup poured on your head and it's a beautiful experience. I love it. I love that. Licking that syrup off your face.
Speaker 1Anyway, Gillian Welch, Time, these are other albums that came out this year in the Singer-Songwriter category. Gillian Welch, Time, Mark Lanigan, Field Songs, Richard Hawley, Late Night Final. That must be one of his very early ones. I think it is,
Speaker 2yeah. And he, you know, carved a really interesting career for himself, almost sounding like some kind of latter-day Roy Orbison, which, which, which, which, which, which is impressive,
Speaker 1you know. A couple of other records I really, really like from this year. Jim O'Rourke's Insignificance, which is almost his Lynyrd Skynyrd homage, if you can imagine such a thing from Jim O'Rourke. And the Bonnie Prince-Billy record Ease Down the Road is another great record follow-up to his masterpiece I See a Darkness, but not much of a step down. It's still pretty much up there, consistently brilliant. I think
Speaker 2it's a really good year for a lot of bands, actually. You know, there seems to be tremendous focus and fearlessness and these albums are getting released by major companies in a lot of cases as well. You know, I know that the indie scene is also very healthy, but yeah, I'm surprised in retrospect at how healthy and diverse a scene it seems to be,
Speaker 1really. Also from this year, Lowe made Things We Lost in the Fire, which is a good record. I mean, Lowe is a band that have, you know, never made a bad record. I think all in all, Tim, what we're saying is 2001 pop music and rock music is in pretty rude health. Isn't it? Which surprises me to discover that in a way.
Speaker 2Well, it's not only that pop and rock music is in rude health. It's the number of bands that are out there kind of producing their best work or doing something different. You know, when we're talking about Lowe, it's almost like Lowe were coming into their own during this period. I know they'd been around before then, but, you know, these are people with guitars doing fresh things. And I think that kind of surprised me really that that particular culture of the rock band was incredible. It was incredibly rude health. Whereas, you know, in some ways I sort of saw that as perhaps being over with the era of grunge and it clearly wasn't.
Speaker 1So, 2001. Let's now pick, as is customary at this moment, let's now pick our favourite album of the year and the album that we felt was perhaps the most influential in the longer term or seminal in that sense. So you go first, Tim. What would be your favourite of the year and what would be your most influential of the year?
Speaker 2Oh my God. Well, you know what I'm going to say, don't you? What am I going to say? I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I don't know. It could be so many of them is what I'm going to say. I'll tell you what I'm going to go for. I'm going to go for Radiohead's Amnesiac because I think that was both a powerful statement, an emotional statement and quite an innovative indication of what a rock band could be and where they could go. So that's my choice for the year.
Speaker 1I think that's a very good choice. I would struggle to argue. I think that album is a game changer. It was a game changer. It was the first time we'd really heard a rock band successfully integrate electronica into their sound. At least it was the most convincing example of it to me at that point. So I'd go with that. My favourite, I think also Amnesiac 2, although I'm going to put in an extra vote for Apex Twins Drugs and I think Opeth's Blackwater Park and Tool's Lateral as well. But they were both very influential on the more extreme heavy rock side of the music industry. So shout out to those two records too. Okay. Well, comparatively succinct compared to some of our previous episodes, Tim. So mission accomplished and all that stuff. So if you have enjoyed this podcast, please do, as always, go and leave us a nice review on whichever platform you're using to listen to. Give us some feedback. Feel free to point out any schoolboy errors we've made and we'll have hopefully be back with another episode fairly soon. 1881. 1881. Okay. I'll give it a go. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.
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