Speaker 1I didn't think the pain from the shingles rash would affect simple, everyday tasks like bathing, getting dressed, or even walking around. I was wrong. Though not everyone at risk will develop it, 99% of people over the age of 50 already have the virus that causes shingles, and it could reactivate at any time. I developed it, and the blistering rash lasted for weeks. Don't learn the hard way, like I did. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today. Sponsored by GSK. Welcome back to The Album Years, and this is
Speaker 2quite quick for us, Tim. It's a mere two months since we last did one of these, so we're speeding up. So, we should say that this is the end of January, and as befits this time of year, I have a stinking cold. So, those of you old, like me and Tim, that remember late 70s British TV commercials, remember the commercial about Malcolm ordering his return to Dottingham? Dottingham, and that's me. So, I'm going to, all my L's are going to sound like D's today. Dottingham. Excellent. And Tim, you're chomping on some biscuits.
Speaker 3I am. Chomping on sandwiches. I am drinking coffee, yeah, because we're doing this at lunchtime as well.
Speaker 2Because we're so professional. We started out with such great intentions when we started this podcast. Two and a half years ago, can you believe it's two and a half years ago we started doing this? We were so professional then. We went away and we listened to all the albums beforehand. We made sure that we'd eaten, that there was no, going to be no sonic anomalies invading the podcast. Now, here we are. I've got a stinking cold. Tim's chomping on his cookies, and I personally haven't even looked at the list of what we're going to be covering today. That's how unprofessional I am. But I think that's good. I think it means that this is going to be very fresh and off the cuff.
Speaker 3I was about to say, we sort of did that the last time, really. And I was kind of amazed by how my memory of most of the things was pretty accurate. So, some of the things I'd not heard since 1983. And the ABC album, for example, which I think we've probably edited out in the end. But I was amazed at how accurate. The description was. And it was just on one play. I'd have heard this in 1983. And similarly, I had one reader's letter where they were convinced that I was wrong about Joe Brown doing the Woolworths 1983 advert. They thought it was Roy Hud. But, of course, it turned out it was Joe Brown going, All
Speaker 2I'll say is, listeners, more fool you if you challenge Tim on his memory of 1983. But, of course, it turned out that I was wrong about Joe Brown going, All I'll say is, listeners, more fool you if you challenge Tim on his memory of 1983. It is true, yeah. Now, we're doing 1995. No, 1995 we're doing today. And it's funny because we did a 90s year before. And I think we struggled, didn't we? Was it 93 we did?
Speaker 3We did 1992. And we forgot a couple of great albums from that year. You know, one of them, Suzanne Vega, 99.9 Fahrenheit Degrees, which I thought was brilliant. We, for some reason, forgot it. But, yeah, it was looking over that list and looking at that year now on Rate Your Music. I'm really struggling to find anything that I find exciting. It just seems to be like the death of an era, really, though there were a couple of good albums. This year, for me, 1995, it's as exciting as any we've done in the 70s, 60s or 80s.
Speaker 2Clearly, the best album of 1992 was The Day. The debut Do-Bad, the debut Do-Bad release, Love Size. But 1995, I think you're right. Something happened, didn't it? Something happened around this time. So there's a whole burst of interesting electronic music. There seems to be a revitalisation in terms of guitar bands as well and guitar music with Britpop. And also there's the whole sort of trip-hop movement, isn't there, that's really coming of age here. And we're going to come on to that, obviously. We talk about a lot of the trip-hop artists. Yeah, well, it's sort of fascinating.
Speaker 3There are lots of sort of fresh directions. I think 1992, I think it's kind of the hangover from the indie dance late 80s, very early 90s. That didn't go into too many exciting places, although you could argue trip-hop came out of that. But yeah, I guess 92 was the tail end of indie dance and the beginning or at least the successful stage for grunge, which I don't. I don't think you and I were really great fans of. Although, of course, some of the Britpop bands were very inspired by the guitar-based grunge bands.
Speaker 2Yeah, so it seems to be. Maybe that's it. There's a kind of return to more homegrown. Certainly from our perspective as British people, there's a more homegrown sort of wave of interesting music. We're not going to talk about grunge music today. As you kind of suggested, it's never really our thing. We're quite honest. We nail our colours to the mast. We say this is not the kind of music we prefer. We say this is not the kind of music we personally like. So we're not going to try and talk about it. But there is a lot of music that you and I both love from this year that we can talk about. So let's start. Top of the list here. This is a great year for electronic music in all its various guises. So let's start with drum and bass going mainstream. And I think this might be about the time that I became aware of it, I guess along with a lot of people. I guess there are people out there that were more immersed in the underground scene. It was. Were aware of drum and bass as it was initially, it was called Jungle, wasn't it? But for me, and perhaps for you, when we first became aware of it was when Goldie signed to a major label and released his debut album, Timeless. And I remember buying this record at the time. And it's a great record, isn't it? So tell us about Goldie and Timeless, Tim, in your experience.
Speaker 3Well, for me, drum and bass, I'd actually heard it about a year or two before because a friend of mine. Oh, good for you. Good for you. I heard it in 1982. Actually, I did. To be fair, I heard it in 1980 on Darkroom by Paul McCartney. That's when I first heard Jungle or drum and bass, when the master had invented the form. But yeah, a friend of mine, Paul, he bought a couple of really cheap CD Jungle compilations as they were being marketed then. So I heard it quite early on and thought it was interesting. But like you, the first time I really bought it was probably Goldie's Timeless. And I loved it. I mean, it's. A great prelude, obviously, to the masterpiece Saturn's Return, which is the ultimate drum and bass statement, as everybody knows, obviously.
Speaker 2A colossal folly that I personally don't like, but you do like. And I understand that one of the things we talk about on this show are these albums that most people would consider to be follies or failures. But sometimes we love those records, you know, the Tales from the Topographic Oceans kind of syndrome. You loved that one, didn't you? I did. This is. This is. To me, this is a much better record. Timelessism is a much better record. But what's interesting about drum and bass, isn't it, is that there were certain elements about drum and bass that were extraordinarily unfashionable, even at the time. Yeah, yeah. The sort of. The reliance on almost a jazz fusion-esque sort of quality. And this is straightaway apparent on the opening track on this record. It's a 22-minute long suite, Inner City Life, which does sort of, you know, nod towards. Jazz funk and jazz fusion, doesn't it, at times?
Speaker 3What I really like about it is, partly, that it echoes that music, but in such a distinctive and unusual way. And I'm not sure whether it's because Goldie wasn't a conventional musician at that point, but there are so many dissonances in this. So you've almost got this kind of echo of the Quiet Storm R&B, you know, Roy Ayres, for sure. And it's horribly out of tune at times. The singing isn't out of tune. But the chords are completely wrong for the melodies. And that's one of the things I like about it. So, yeah, it's symphonic, it's ambient, it's got some really unfashionable pad sounds. The rhythms are fantastic. And you're right, there's an incredible fusion influence. And I was going to say that two of the musics that really seem to reoccur a lot in a lot of these releases we're going to talk about, dub music and fusion music, seem to have come back. It came back into the spotlight in 1995 for some bizarre reason.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it was interesting that it was almost like this was the peak of drum and bass in the mainstream. This was the beginning of drum and bass in the mainstream, but it was also the peak of drum and bass in the mainstream. At least certainly this album and the Ronnie Sires Represent New Forms album.
Speaker 3You're forgetting 1997's Earthling by David Bowie. That was obviously an artistic peak of drum and bass as well.
Speaker 2Yeah, if you say so. So these two albums kind of represent the peak of drum and bass in the mainstream. And obviously the Ronnie Sires album went on to win the Mercury Music Prize here in England. And then it kind of disappeared. It's still around, you know, drum and bass is still around. There are still people making drum and bass music, but it's kind of returned from whence it came, isn't it? After this sort of very brief sort of dalliance with mainstream pop culture. And Timeless is kind of the beginning and virtually the end of that too. But I think it still holds up. I still think it's a great record. It is, you know, it is mad. Not as mad as the follow-up album, which you could argue was probably the nail in the coffin of drum and bass. I love drum and bass. I love drum and bass rhythms, you know. I found myself going down a little bit of a rabbit hole in the follow-up album. few years after this and discovering some very dark drum and bass you know as as always there is this kind of dark side to the light side and if goldie and ronnie's size represented the light side there was things like panacea which were extremely aggressive brutal brutal music but but also using drum and bass rhythms but one of the things
Speaker 3kind of interesting is that as you said it kind of gradually appeared in the early 90s then suddenly had its day in the sun and very quickly faded out but it had a massive impact on a few more mainstream performers so bill nelson did a drum and bass album in 96 which was pretty good and everything but the girls walking wounded was loaded with you know glorious album of course that was as musical as maybe timeless isn't in some ways a lovely album but that was the mainstream light flip side of drum and bass so so that's goldie's
Speaker 2time so there's a lot of great electronic music coming out at this time and electronic music which has kind of evolved shall we say from the dance floor into something much more cerebral you know which started with you know things like apex twin selected ambient works 85 92 which came out two or three years before this but now we have a whole generation of a lot of these artists were recording for the the british label warp records so apex twin released uh his album i care because you do and ortega released their third album try repertoire i'm a massive fan of both of these artists these are definitive records in their catalog because they catch both of the artists now we've talked about this on the podcast many many times catching artists at a point where they're in transition sometimes they're in transition most often they're in transition from a more populist sound to a more avant-garde experimental sound we talked about scott walker for example who you know has this gradual transition from sort of you know tv crooner to avant-garde neoclassicist composer and the records we tend to like the most are the ones that kind of fall somewhere between the he's kind of on the way and i think this is true also of of ortega that i mean they've become one of the most experimental i mean they're almost now that the albums they make now are almost you could you could put them in the same category as what karlheinz stockhausen was doing you know in terms of there's definitely a lineage there from 20th century experimental electronic music to what ortega do now but they came from techno music dance music club music and try repertoire catches them at a point where they're somehow they're somewhere in between that transition so it's still very accessible there's still melodies there they're still recognizably uh dance rhythms there their rhythms these days are so abstract you couldn't possibly dance to them um but there are still there are still elements of dance culture uh in there in this record and i think it's one of their great rocks i don't know how familiar you are with this this kind
Speaker 3of music i sort of listen to it a little bit at the time and i refresh my memory of a lot of these albums um a couple of days ago and it's funny because i know you always had a great deal of enthusiasm for this and i always kind of found it sonically really interesting and sometimes i think oh that's an idea i want to take because obviously i think we were in the to anything and everything and kind of enjoying it but it's an interesting thing and we'll come on to the artists that i did really like in this field but generally speaking though i could see the talent think it was good it kind of left me cold so when i was listening to the afx twin i really liked icht hedrel for example great absolutely loved it but i just can't say i felt very much of it if it makes any sense to you just kind of you know yeah that's all right no it does
Speaker 2i mean i think you know you're you're a singer and you know obviously you love a lot of instrumental music before before you correct me you're a singer but i think so i think ultimately your focus is all on melody always on melody and perhaps slightly less on music which is purely about rhythmic rhythm and texture now obviously as i say there are exceptions to that rule and you know you do like some records like that but generally speaking i generally speaking i think i would veer more towards that than you would i think you're always looking you're always looking for the the sort of emotional heart of of a performance of a sung performance or a melodic aspect to the music and and the music of ortega and afx twin isn't about that it's about texture it's about rhythm you know my favorite track on i care because you do is is ventolin which is a very brutal track and perversely it was the song chosen to be the single from the record even though it hadn't zero uh you know radio or commercial potential it's very aggressive it's very brutal it's all about the rhythm and the way the rhythm is processed i love that i'm still fascinated by that but then that's because i come at these records more from the perspective of uh someone who you know produces music rather than tries to think about myself as a singer songwriter uh and i think that's true a lot of some of the other things on this list the muslim i mean i'm a massive fan of muslim gauze many of his tracks are nothing more than taking a rhythm or a loop and processing it that's all there is to a lot of it so it's a lot of it and i think that's a lot of the things that i'm fascinated by it's all about that kind of hypnotic rhythmic groove and if you if you kind of relate to that too or not you know i don't know what he was doing but there was always a sense that he was just basically letting a loop run and then just playing with the possibilities of how he would process it over two five ten minutes and for a lot of people that made for a very boring listening experience but to me i completely fell you know under the spell of muslim gauze one of the most prolific artists of all time as well i mean even though he passed away you know after only 20 years of making music he still produced a lot of music and i think that's a lot of the things that i'm fascinated by to discography that still to this day uh the record labels are catching up with you know with his his prodigious output i think it's like 200 albums out there now i mean
Speaker 3there's a sort of connection i made you know when i was listening to this one because his album from this year um let's have a look what was it so i had it written down and now obviously to lease it no islamophobia
Speaker 2unprofessional islamophobia it
Speaker 3reminded me partly of some of bill laswell's experiments with voices in particular and even my life in the bush of ghosts it's got some of that feel in there although it's a very different process yeah
Speaker 2no he's he's definitely tapping into that same kind of exotica there's also a strong aspect of industrial culture in in what he does too as indeed there is in a couple of other artists on this list uh both british artists scorn and techno animal again i'm massive fans a massive fan of both of these artists scorn some of the grumpiest electronic music ever made i can't i can't think of any other way to describe it it's like the most depressing grumpy angry trip hop breakbeat industrial hip hop however you want to describe it and a kind of subterranean quality it's all about the low end uh and of course this is mick harris who started his career as the drummer in napalm death so this is this was a real career shift for him except that still has a sense of some of that aggression and anger still comes through in the music what's your take on scorn
Speaker 3well yeah i was gonna say that absolutely you know because autekra afix twin really didn't do anything for me whereas scorn i got straight away it's almost like some kind of ominous dub it's quite gripping it's quite intense um and you're hearing influences from club culture but it's anything but club culture music no
Speaker 2it's completely come down it's feel bad music if club music is feel good music scorn i mean what a brilliant name for this production project as well it's the perfect name i think because of
Speaker 3the production because it's got this kind of quite gritty lo-fi production the one thing it has which a lot of this music doesn't is immediately on first hearing it there's an attitude i would say that you're plunged into this darkness this attitude and it doesn't let go of you for the entire album duration
Speaker 2yeah i think the word you used ominous is the best i mean i use the word grumpy there's something about the music that always seems slightly angry but i think ominous is the better word it's it's definitely got that sense of foreboding all the time hasn't it the beats are very clipped very slow the bass is almost is almost so subby you wouldn't hear it if you were listening on a on a telephone you have to hear it on a good system you know it's it's incredibly overpowering i i love it and and interesting the techno animal record has a similar yeah it's in a similar milieu isn't it it's it has but it's a little bit it's a little bit less ominous um interestingly is this this is a record where we can perhaps point what we started talking about with the goldie record point to another influence say of jazz funk fusion particularly i would say miles sort of dark magus era that kind of dissonant jazz funk jazz fusion scorched earth fusion and of course no coincidence that john hassell is the trumpet player john hassell is one of the guests on this record this is a massive sprawling two and a half hour record with 20 minute long unbroken tracks sequences where really there's a lot of repetition and again it's just about letting the loops play out and letting the processing take over well
Speaker 3this is a lot cleaner the techno animal i remember actually always being a little disappointed that it wasn't quite as dark and gritty as the name suggested it's pretty dark you know it's good it's quite pretty in some ways you know at times it's kind of pretty ambient drones it sounds very nicely produced actually i like it you know i like the album i'm just saying whereas scorn immediately does it for me this is kind of a little cleaner in some ways um and actually i've got the genre that they both can work in it's apocalypse dub
Speaker 2yes That's a good way of putting it. Did you just make that up or is that actually a genre?
Speaker 3No, I just made it up.
Speaker 2That's very good. I like that. Apocalypse Dub, yeah. And what's interesting about Techno Animals' re-entry is that this was released on Virgin Records, lest we forget. During a very brief time when Virgin Records launched a kind of ambient imprint, except they didn't go and sign pretty ambient artists. They went and signed all the grumpiest, darkest ones. And another record they released at this time, which I think you and I both agree is a little bit of a masterpiece, another double LP released by Virgin, a big mainstream frontline release, Paul Schutz's Apart, which again, in its own way, it's very dark. This is not Eno-style ambient music, is it? It's something about. Paul Schutz always had that sort of gamelan aspect to his sonorities, didn't he? His sounds and his tones, sort of atonal, microtonal aspects to this music. This is not pretty music. But at the same time, perhaps it's got more of an emotional heart to it than the Techno Animals scored. Because you like it, so it must be.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's my evidence. Well, this one, I remember being really excited by at the time, and I still think it's a great album. And you're right, there's a gamelan quality, so it has this kind of tonality which is quite alien. But the other thing it has, for me, it's a bit like the skeleton of, or the ghost of, the most experimental early 70s fusion music. So you can hear harmonies from Miles Davis or Herbie Hancock's Sexton in there, but it sounds nothing like them. Yet, if you know that music, you're thinking, you know what, this is somebody who has, you know, this is where he's coming from. But it's so abstracted, it's really divorced from its source inspirations. It's a very original sound, so it's somewhere between, I'd say, the ghost of fusion music and gamelan. And why? I think I quite like it is, accidents happen with a lot of loop music and a lot of the electronic music we're talking about. There's a certain kind of predictability. With this, every single bar produces a different harmony.
Speaker 2I think the difference between Paul Schutz and, say, the techno animal and the scorn is there's much more of a sense of intellectual kind of rigour applied to the music, isn't there? It seems like he's almost approaching it like a quote-unquote serious composer. And as you say, there is this sense, when you listen to that music, that every single event is considered and has been sort of pared down to create exactly the effect that he wants to create, but not at the expense of the emotional quality that the music definitely has. I mean, it's quite a beautiful, uplifting experience. At the same time, it is inhabiting this quite subterranean electronic world, isn't it? Let's move on now. So we've talked about purely instrumental electronic music. Let's move on now to the rest. Game-changing music, wasn't it? This is one of those records, isn't it? Tricky's Max and Kay.
Speaker 3I think Tricky had that goldy quality where there's a lot of accent. This, I think, is probably the most mainstream and accessible album he ever did. And that does not do it down because it's still very experimental. It's still really interesting. There's still a haunted quality. One of the things, again, if you're thinking about 1995, you don't know what it is, but a lot of the albums coming out, even the mainstream ones, are very haunted. There's something quite dark. Again, that word ominous. And that really comes to this. There's a post-punk darkness in some of Max and Kay as much as there's a dub element, as much as there's an R&B element.
Speaker 2That's interesting. I think you're right. There's almost like a sense that this is hauntological music before people started talking about hauntology. And obviously, artists like Boards of Canada were about to come the next two or three years, were about to emerge. And this whole notion of electronic music somehow reflecting also the past, having a kind of gauzy, sort of nostalgic look into, you know, childhood and nostalgia and loss and all these things. And you're right. It actually really does start here, doesn't it? Even before people started talking about this, you definitely hear it in records like Max and Kay. And you hear it in, certainly in Portishead's Dummy as well, that they're almost referencing the past as much as the future. There's this kind of retro-futurism going on. And I think it's perfectly encapsulated by Max and Kay. And you're right. Again, also, I think there's a sense that this is a guy that doesn't really know what he's doing. And that's what makes it special. That he's kind of, there's this collision of things that a quote-unquote proper musician would never put together. And I think we see that time and time again, don't we? That the real mavericks very often are people that aren't necessarily aware of what makes them special and sometimes struggle. I mean, I think Tricky's a great example. Max and Kay, in many ways, was something he struggled, it's his debut album, something he struggled, certainly in commercial terms, he struggled to ever match it again. And part of that, perhaps, is not quite understanding what it is you did in the first place.
Speaker 3Yeah, I totally agree with you. I mean, I think this possibly is his definitive statement. My favourite Tricky album is probably his second album. But after this, it became a little more difficult. It became a little more indulgent to the point where I found it almost impossible to listen to some of the music as good as it was. And there's also a kind of influence in his music, which doesn't appear in any of the other trip-hop artists and not anyone else in the Bristol scene. But he's got this kind of clattering tin can rhythm that is very Swordfish Trombone's Tom Waits on this album at times.
Speaker 2I think what I feel like the Tricky album has in common with something like the Specials, for example, is that sense of this music almost coming from an inner-city housing estate. It's very gritty.
Speaker 3Yeah, and I think actually that also comes across in Goldie, even though the Goldie music is aspirational and beautiful. I think that comes from quite a dark place and an authentic place. So I kind of, in my mind, I always sort of link Goldie and Tricky in some ways. I know they're very different artists and produce very different albums, but I think there's a certain kind of modus operandi and a certain kind of sensibility that links them.
Speaker 2It's also quintessentially British, isn't it? So whereas a lot of American music that's come out of hip-hop culture would be more gangster-y, you know, this music, this music is not about that. It's more depressing in a way that I actually really like, you know. It's certainly got more of a sense of the dour and depressing. So there are some other great electronic albums that came out this year. We can't talk about them all, but just to sort of list some of the other ones that came out this year. We had some great albums by Leftfield, The Orb, Chemical Brothers, Wagon Christ, Panasonic, and Oval. Oval being the artist that kind of made skipping CDs somehow into, beautiful electronic music. If you've never heard it, it's fascinating. Let's move on to your next category. You've got a category here just called Eno. Testaments of the fact that the Enes was as prolific as ever. And he was involved in a lot of collaborations this year. A collaboration with U2 under the name of Passengers. A collaboration with Yara Wobble. Great album, Spinner. I really like that record. But I think the one that we should probably dwell on here, the most, is the Bowser. The Bowser's album. Now this was very much a, I mean, I hate to use the word because it's such a cliche, isn't it? Return to form. But it was, wasn't it? It was a real return to, this was a return to the kind of edgy Bowie that I think a lot of us hankered after. And no coincidence that this was, I think I'm right in saying the first time he collaborated with the Enes since the Berlin Trilogy.
Speaker 3Yeah, it was. And, I think the thing is with Bowie, he had done some good stuff in the early 90s. I mean, you know, my view of Bowie is, I think, Scary Monsters, utter classic. Let's Dance is brilliant for what it is. And I think that, Agreed. While Tonight and Never Let Me Down are not very good, you kind of felt that his heart wasn't in it so he wasn't there. So I always felt the great disappointment was Tin Machine. As okay as that album is, and obviously I can't read as a classic piece from that, this was Bowie attempting to access the spirit of the up-and-coming radical American bands like Pixies and slightly failing.
Speaker 2And this is kind of Bowie channeling Nine Inch Nails, isn't it? So what makes this better? What makes this a more successful project? I think there's,
Speaker 3I think there's an element of Nine Inch Nails in there and there's also an element of Scott Walker. I mean, obviously Scott Walker, which we may come on to later, did his album Tilt this year and this is, you know, one of the few albums that can be compared to Outside One. I think there's a lot more going on because he brings back Mike Garson as well as Brian Eno. So there's a very strong jazz element in this music that you'd never hear in Nine Inch Nails.
Speaker 2You know. That's not true, Tim. That's not true because Mike Garson is all over the fragile.
Speaker 3But rhythmically, rhythmically, this is quite jazz. Also, Reeves Gabrels suddenly reveals himself as an amazing guitarist in a Terry Ripdle style at times. You know, he's bringing in, you know, this is another There's another album that actually has fusion elements It also has aspects of Bowie's Berlin Trilogy, even sort of early 80s King Crimson and minimalist composers Philip Glass, Steve Reich and a lot of the interlocking rhythms. There's quite a lot going on. I think it's a remarkable album. And the only disappointment is the last track, which is a great track, but it's just taken from the Buddha of Suburbia soundtrack. And it's a conventional ending to a very unconventional album.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, I think it's Bowie. So it's always going to be worth listening to. It's definitely one of his more successful records of this era, if not the most successful record of this era. To me, it's far too long. Yeah, I agree with that. It's 70, 75 minutes, 17 tracks. It doesn't quite sustain the attention for that long. What could? What could? You know, but definitely when I hear tracks like Heart's Filthy Lesson, I'm like, oh, he's listened to Nine Inch Nails, you know, which is fine, which is fine. You know, that's what Bowie was always very good at, you know, kind of being a little bit of a magpie. And listening to what was around him and kind of bringing it into his world, filtering it through his own personality. And I think perhaps if there was a problem with Tim Machine is it didn't transcend. And it's the same problem with Earthling, the follow up record, the drum and bass record. It didn't transcend the influences that it was taking in. This one does, I think. And I think that's the difference. It pulls it off. It sounds like Bowie.
Speaker 3His voice is magnificent on this as well. It's really diverse. You know, the styles he's singing in, you know, have Bowie the balladeer, Bowie the walker. Bowie the rock singer. Everything's on this album. I mean, like you, I think I agree this album is way too long. I mean, my personal view is it's probably in my top five Bowie albums. But if it was my curated 35 minute Bowie album or 40 minute Bowie album, it might be in my top two or three Bowie albums. I think it's that good. But a lot of the albums of this year are overlong. It is the ultimate CD age excess. Yeah, the not only is the goal of the album. Too long. It's two CDs of too long. But I can, you know, live with that to a degree. And as we as we mentioned, the techno animal and the Paul Schutz albums, they're double albums.
Speaker 2I think it's easier with electronic music to kind of just I mean, I don't want to suggest that this is these records are background music records, but it's easier to kind of put them on in the background and then the duration doesn't become such an issue. But when it's music, which is obviously vocal, it's lyrical, you're supposed to engage with it. It's hard to concentrate on it for a long time, I find. So I always think vocal music, particularly song orientated music, is better in shorter bursts. Instrumental music, ambient music, music about texture, about repetition. It's easier. You know, it's fine if you want to make a double album. I'm just going to put it on in the background and it's just going to be there, you know, like a perfume filling the room. But you can't say that about an album like the outside record. It demands your attention and therefore it's very hard. And I mean, I can't listen to it in one go. It would have been better as two. I think I think what you're saying is it would have been better almost split into two 35 minute records. I think they would have been they would have been absolute masterpieces. And I'm not suggesting that this isn't a masterpiece, but it's a masterpiece that I personally don't want to listen to very often because of the sort of draining length.
Speaker 3I absolutely agree with that. And also there's the overriding concept. The one thing we've not mentioned really the elephant in the room. This album where it's a kind of cyber detective mystery that's running through with Bowie using a variety of processed voices. And and sometimes I think I'm really glad he did that. It's so ridiculous and it's so unselfconsciously ridiculous. I love it. On another level, it sort of breaks the mood of some of the best and darkest music he's ever made. And again, talking of this hauntology in this haunted, ominous atmosphere of 1995. This has got some of Bowie's darkest music.
Speaker 2Now, we need to acknowledge that 1995 is also the peak year. I think I can say that without fear of contradiction is the peak year of Britpop. And I think the reason is the peak year is that it was the year that the so-called battle of the bands took place. The two leading kind of figures in Britpop. Although they. Probably both despise the term blur and Oasis went head to head, at least certainly in media terms with releasing new singles and new albums this year. And Oasis's album has become in many ways their definitive album. It certainly has their most the most well-known song they ever released on it. Wonderwall Blur's album has kind of faded a little bit. I don't think it was their best work. I don't think they would consider it their best work. So in that sense, Oasis definitely seemed to have won. The war. But the battle at the time was won by Blur, who had the number one single. This is a story that many of you will know. But Tim, how do we assess the music? 28 years later, how do we assess this music? I quite liked some of it. I think you were always a lot more suspicious of it than I was. For example, I love the Supergrass album from this year. I should cocoa. It's a really fun, inventive record, which did seem to reclaim a lot of the Britishness. that had gone missing in the sort of grunge era of rock music. And Pulp's different class, of course, the great single, which I can't even remember the name of. The great single, Tim. The great single, different class.
Speaker 3I'll tell you in a second. You've forgotten it too. What's it called? I think what it is, it's contagious at the moment. It's a contagious amnesia, which I think, again, that could be another musical genre, contagious amnesia.
Speaker 2Contagious middle age, that's what it is. Is it called Other People or something? Common People. Common People, thank you. What a great single. What a great single. Anyway, so Britpop. So we have Blur, Oasis. We have Pulp's fantastic single, Common People. I was less keen on the album. And Supergrass's debut album. So this is a real peak year for Britpop. We also had bands like Gene and Charlatans releasing records this year. How do you feel about the whole notion of Britpop with this distance now, Tim?
Speaker 3I was never keen. I mean, I loved Tripop. I loved Britpop. I loved drum and bass. Obviously, I was still keeping tabs on older artists that I really admired, some of whom we'll discuss later. It seemed a bit retro in the same way that I think that Suede, who obviously had very strong influences from the 1980s with the Smiths and obviously David Bowie's 70s work. I think Suede, in some ways, are the unsung progenitors of Britpop. And they deserved a lot more success as a result of that. And in some ways, they were slightly more perverse and slightly more interesting. I think in Brett Anderson, they had quite a distinctive and emotional singer. Blur, I think, very clever. I've actually come to really like some Blur. So Parklife, quite liked a few tracks on it. Great Escape sort of left me cold. Subsequently, I think they've done some great stuff. Stuff like Think Tank, where they're using Moroccan rhythms. And I think Damon Albarn's solo work has been brilliant. And I really like Gorillaz. So I think that he's developed into a major artist, which I didn't necessarily hear on the likes of The Great Escape. Oasis, very good at what they do. But, you know, I always remember at the time, somebody saying that they were like a cross between the Rutles and Status Quo.
Speaker 2No, I know what you mean. I think it's, again, a bit like you two. It's very easy to pick holes in Oasis and to criticise them because on the surface, there's nothing particularly special about what they do. It is very meat and potatoes, indie rock. I think what made the difference, a couple of things that made the difference is Noel's songwriting always sounded, instantly, it sounded familiar to you in that way that a great melody instantly kind of insinuates it in your brain and sounds like the sort of melody that must have been written a hundred times before. In his case, they probably had. I think Liam had a great voice, a kind of sort of slightly sneering, but very appealing, very exciting. Accessible pop rock voice. And they wrote a couple of songs, I think, which sounded instantly anthemic and had mass appeal. And that seemed to do it for them. That seemed to do it for them. Of course, history has proved, in terms of Blur and Oasis, history has proved which band actually had the flair and the talent to go on and develop what they did. So, in that sense, you know, I quite like Oasis. I bought the album at the time. I quite enjoyed it. I haven't listened to it for many years. If Wonderwall comes on the radio, I always think, yeah, that's a very pleasant song. Don't look back in anger. They all seem like somehow they are. It's interesting. It's almost like if you'd. These days, of course, there are artificial intelligence programs that you can feed in a bunch of songs and it will come up with a kind of, you know, gestalt song that sounds like what you fed into it.
Speaker 3Yeah, they were likeable. You know, I say likeable despite the conflicts between them. But if you. If you saw the interviews at the time, they were witty in a way that the Beatles had been witty in the 60s. They brought back a kind of playfulness that I guess the scene was missing. You know, we're talking about darkness elsewhere. Oasis was the opposite of that. You know, they were lads. They were bantering and they were very good at it.
Speaker 2They seemed very unpretentious. They seemed very. And one of the funniest things on the internet, I don't know if I've mentioned this to you before on the show, one of the funniest things on the internet is Noel Gallagher doing a commentary to the Oasis. compilation of Oasis videos because he fucking hated videos he hated every single video and it's it's so funny Britpop so you know this is the peak year it didn't last very long I think it was a bit of a shot in the arm wasn't it it was a bit it was there was a sense about the British reclaiming rock music after grunge and whether you whether you like it or not that's that's it kind of it was mission accomplished in a sense wasn't
Speaker 3it well I guess what it did is what a lot of movements do you know we talked about punk and we talked about progressive rock we talk about psychedelia that sometimes when things become fashionable record companies sign a dozen bands and out of those dozen bands you're going to find one or two talents you know this was the way of the 60s the 70s the 80s and as we found out the 90s as well you know anything that looked and sounded the part got signed so you did as a result of Britpop get major future talents like Damon Albarn and to be fair Jarvis Cocker you know when you're talking about pulp they were probably the Britpop band I liked the most partly because he was a great lyricist and they had a kind of ambition an art pop ambition that was clearly influenced by Roxy music that I sort of responded to and I agree with you on Supergrass that Supergrass actually were the Britpop band where it wasn't obvious you know whereas you could really see in a self-conscious way influences that Damon Albarn was drawing on influences that Noel Gallagher was drawing on however well they were drawing on them they were drawing on influences obviously in the case of Supergrass they very much seem like their own band actually it's just like they were like a band having fun in the studio making a noise and you couldn't say oh that's the Kinks that's the Beatles that's I think
Speaker 2there's a degree of that with Oasis too there would there definitely was an Oasis sound for all of the sort of accusations of plagiarism of the Beatles catalogue or the T-Rex catalogue or whatever it was there was a sense that they had their own sound that kind of sneering Liam Gallagher approach did seem quite fresh at the time although to diminishing returns as the years went on and you're right there was that sense that they were very irreverent in interviews the downside of that was it was the kind of heyday of lad culture again in Britain wasn't it which I felt you know completely alienated from let's move on so we we also have a few records in in the sad core genre now sad core is almost a style of music that's designed to appeal to you and me Tim we love sad spacious slow lugubrious you know pick your adjective uh we love this kind of music don't we uh we've talked about Red House Painters on the show before haven't we I think um one of my favourite bands of all time I think the first five Red House Painters they kind of mined a scene but did it in such a divine divine way and I think that's something that I think is really important ocean beach sometimes I think this might be my red favourite Red House Painters album um it's such a beautifully out of time transcendent spiritual honest and there's a sort of there's a slight London feel to this album isn't there I think he spent a lot of time in England being signed to a British label this album seemed to have a more of a there's a lot of references to place is it Brockwell Park isn't that somewhere
Speaker 3in uh Brockwell Park yeah South South East London well I live quite there at the time and uh yeah it does evoke something of a kind of hopeful melancholy if that makes any sense that there's a an overall sense of sadness and yet there are some kind of hopes for the future or hopes for a relationship and he was searingly honest in the way in which he depicted relationships he was in and quite evocative in terms of describing places so you know his descriptions of San Francisco and earlier albums and then on this you're right there's a kind of a London quality I was going to say it's my favourite Red House Painters album I think the first four albums are amazing this is the fourth and it's my favourite it's probably the most musical and the most beautifully produced um but there's something about it's just the overall quality of this collection for me it's the one that I keep on coming back to and it might have even been my favourite album of the year at the time it's
Speaker 2funny isn't it because it you know you you mentioned that thing that there's a slightly hopeful quality to some of this music but it still ends up being slightly I don't know it's a funny the album starts with this beautiful instrumental called Cabezon I think it's called yeah which is very major key very melodic it feels very kind of summery and uplifting but there's still something about it that's drenched in sadness and I don't know how else to articulate that but there's something that just permeates all of his music all of Red House Painters maybe the production there's a sense of disappointment about about all of his songs I think you know about loss and regret and disappointment maybe it's also that this album is a little bit more compact it hasn't got the sort of um gigantism of of some of the other records it's about 55 minutes long isn't it I think and there's also there's also that feeling that a lot of this music has existed for a long time before he's put it down and I think songs like Drop actually he did write years and years before and maybe there's also a sense that he's arrived at a point where he understands that he's got to do something about it and I think that's one of the things that I think is really important is that he understands the studio a bit better now he's able to record things uh in a slightly more professional way without kind of neutering the quality of the music and the honesty of the music this feels like one of the most beautiful sounding Red House Painters very
Speaker 3much so yeah and I think as well that kind of hopeful melancholy and the major key instrumental it reminds me a bit of Nick Drake this is one of the albums where there's a different influence perhaps it's got a more natural 60s and 90s feel to it and I think it's a really good album and I think it's a really good album 70s singer-songwriter quality that's been added to the production as well let's talk about another
Speaker 2band that kind of fit beautifully into this I don't think we've ever talked about on the show before which is the American band Lowe you know and and Lowe unfortunately a husband and wife team Mimi has just passed away very sadly um this is a band that have made a long string of albums that almost define the term sadcore and the song something about the way the voices worked together the male and the female voice something about the space the tempos the the even the artwork everything about this band is sad but uplifting you know you use that phrase a moment ago with with reference to Red House Painters hopeful melancholy this is kind of the embodiment of that also isn't it Lowe yeah
Speaker 3whereas Red House Painters were much more all enveloping for me as a passion and I think it's a really good album and I think Lowe are a band I'm quite happy to dip into and think that's beautiful so I'm not quite as familiar with the back catalogue as I am many of the other artists we're talking about
Speaker 2it is big I mean it is a vast I think the difference between Red House Painters and Lowe is that Red House Red House Painters only made you know five or six records Lowe Lowe there is you know there's a lot of records and a lot of them are I'm being perfectly honest as a fan here a lot of them are difficult to differentiate in my mind I mean the album from this year is called Long Division I know I have it I couldn't honestly tell you which songs were on that record see I
Speaker 3can tell you the low Christmas album I can tell that one apart from the rest of them
Speaker 2that's a lovely record that's probably the low record I break out the most although the record from a couple of years ago uh I forget the name of it now I get middle age onset now where they worked with an experimental producer it's called Double Negative Double Negative that's an incredible record I would urge you to listen to Double Negative very very experimental as a use of noise electronic processing it's almost like they handed over their archetype their sound to this guy and basically said right completely fuck our sound up make it completely unrecognizable make it abrasive Muslim gauze on us basically make it abrasive and ugly but still somehow keep what's special about us and that's exactly what this record does but this this era Long Division maybe it's one of the maybe they're an example of one of those bands that just has a sound that is so beautiful the idea that they make songs and they make albums almost loses its relevance it's almost just like you you you lose yourself in their sound it's so it's so distinctive it is like a continuum for
Speaker 3me they're one of those bands a bit like Stereolab and I've always liked Stereolab but again there are so many releases that sometimes sound so samey that it blurs into one for me and I think they've been a bit like that where they're groups that I really like really admire but I find it difficult to understand the minutiae of the work really I see it as an overall picture whereas you know there's one of the sadcore albums this year which I really like was the Spain album which was I think Charlie Hayden's son Josh
Speaker 2Hayden tell us about
Speaker 3this one well this one it's a beautiful sounding record and it's very very spot on I mean in terms of its sound where as low I think all of the songs in the album have a slightly dreamy lo-fi quality and of course a lot of the red house painters earlier albums did this one sounds amazing but there's very very little going on spartan guitar bass brush drums and voice so it has a kind of clarity sonically that you sort of associate with late 50s Miles Davis or Dave Brubeck albums that's one of the differences between it and most of the sadcore releases it's just a kind of clarity and it's a kind of collection of very sad very slow very pretty songs and um really nice complete package and i suppose what they did what of course low didn't do was um didn't really produce very much
Speaker 2after this let's talk about um baby bird you know this this was quite an anomaly uh in in the music scene at the time wasn't it because brit pop sort of lad culture was becoming very dominant and along comes this guy who basically had spent the previous several years writing songs in his bedroom on a porter studio and started releasing these very low profile records compiling you know songs from this massive cache of songs that he'd amassed a hundred songs or something he'd recorded over this uh previous years and started to release these albums and became a bit of a cause celebrity didn't he and i remember discovering him just a random review of one of these what's what later became known as the original lo-fi albums because he later on got a major record deal and had big hit singles in the uk and i actually completely lost interest in his music at that point i i love i love the lo-fi aesthetic and the honesty and the i'm making these i'm making this music for no one but myself and the four walls of the room i'm sitting in kind of quality that these albums have something wonderfully 10 now it's something that i've never really engaged completely with that band is it that there wasn't a strong personality there as there was with red house painters i'm listening to someone like baby bird and there's a very strong personality there isn't there which immediately kind of grabs you and pulls you in the lyrics the voice you're entering someone's world in the way that the first time you heard morrissey whether you loved him or hated him you completely got sucked into his world um all his lyrics his references his personality his visual kind of
Speaker 3ticks yeah i think you might be right i mean i loved these albums like you i probably discovered on the third or fourth and it was exactly the same i'd read a review sounded interesting bought it and it was one of those rare cases where i'd read the review and the review hadn't said enough good things you know i like the music more than the review suggested i would and um it was full of personality one of the things i really like about this this set is that they were all recorded on this porter studio sometime between sort of 80s and early 90s and i loved that porter studio sound there's kind of a crackle and a fizz about it there's a kind of a really attractive lo-fi sound that that i always liked and i've always i'm a big fan of the porter studio and was at the time and um there's some lovely songs i mean and and when i say songs you know these are things what he's great at and i guess this is why i'm maybe we sensed a kindred spirit he's drawing influences from experimental and accessible you know this is a guy who clearly would like burt baccarat you to annoy he just seems quite a natural magpie with a very eclectic taste and although he's filtering it through you know relatively simple three and four chord pieces occasionally he hits on rare beauty with some of the rare noise with some of his pummeling rhythm tracks and the other thing he had as you said there's a strong personality and he was extremely witty and i think this is what maybe went against him he's got a kind of zapper-esque sense of humor which i think whereas it doesn't put people off zapper as a part of his brand it may be wrong-footed people because he had gorgeous ballads that could be undercut by a savage joke um there was an odd quality um which i think is which i said personally i i really quite like so i think as i said the music could have glorious soaring melodies which of course came to the fore on his mainstream album that's released about a year after this it was a huge hit i think it was 95 96 he had a couple of massive hits um and subsequently he's gone back into lo-fi territory um and he's been making some really interesting music and actually i'd say that some of his major work was also interesting you know you'd always have um very poignant pieces that would undercut the anthems and i think that's the thing with him you know you go from anthems to poignant ballads to pure noise rhythm experiments there's kind of a lot going on there yeah and i
Speaker 2think that's why the morrissey comparison is valid because morrissey would always have sort of a sort of joke in the middle of what appeared to be you know a very a very dour northern lyric about you know unemployment or whatever it was or the end of a they'd always be a classic morrissey gag you know that would make you smile couldn't help make you smile and i think that's definitely here too there's definitely a northern a northern aspect to this music i i think you know i i think it's hard i i struggle to hear what his influences might have been i mean you've you've talked about you picking up on some of his influences i think he he definitely created his own little world there and one of the i say one of the things i love about these records is that they were made for no one there was no one listening um this is the sound of no one listening to coin a porcupine tree track title let's let's move on tim to another sort of maverick that perhaps was a little bit out of out of time was he ever was he ever a part of his time momus because momus we love the momes but he released a bit of a strange record this year he decided to re-record some of his most sublime in a more jaunty way and and released this album called slender sherbert now if ever a if ever an album title gave the game away this is it slender sherbert you know you we use that word on you use the word ominous with regard to school and i think a lot of the great momus tracks also have that sense of being on the edge of what's acceptable a slightly ominous quality and how can you take these amazing intense pieces and turn them into froth what was he thinking and has this been a the way his career has gone subsequently yeah
Speaker 3sadly i think it is i mean obviously momus was an artist that i discovered very early on absolutely adored his work and some of his early work you know his mid-80s material it's beautifully played beautifully sung and his work did get progressively more diy in a way and i sort of went on that journey and some of those albums are great you know voyager is really good yeah one of the albums just before this time lord there's some and i don't know he just seemingly came apart this year so you've got slender sherbert which obviously as you well know we used to use as an example of what we did not want to become we almost painted on our walls slender sherbert as if we cannot become this because he took his best work and i guess it's it was the thing of owning copyright owning the license that he'd gone to a new label and it was almost like he got the cheapest farfisa organ and sample keyboard and he pissed on his great work it was almost like you know it's what i'm going to do you're actually
Speaker 2making it sound more appealing this is a record i would actually like to go in here and you have to understand that from myself and tim's point of view we worshipped the momes and he could do no wrong until slender sherbert and 20 vodka jellies so the titles kind of say it all don't they really this is almost trivializing something that until that well having said that he made an album called
Speaker 3hippopotamomous hippopotamomous at least had a really kind of strong sonic identity influenced by you know serge gansberg um it was almost it was a cd serge gansberg very cd but
Speaker 2cd electronic pop
Speaker 3yeah but it worked you know cd electronica fantastic new genre that the momes created i think yeah you know part of this were tempering because it was great disappointment because we anticipated every release and maybe as well in some artists lives and i can see this you know i know a couple where they don't like the fact that people are hanging on through every word and sometimes you know obviously one of the great examples of this is genius which is straw be feels forever that you know lennon hated the fact that the school that had um despised him they were studying beatles lyrics and he partly wrote straw be feels forever almost as an impenetrable joke but of course it's a masterpiece yeah that didn't work did it but i'm afraid that 20 vodka jellies and robert really did kind of you know make me reconsider my my interest in his work and of course he did do a proper album this year i think was it this year as well the philosophy of yeah
Speaker 2philosophy of moments which is again we were talking earlier about albums that are far too long 17 tracks 80 minutes whereas before that we'd kind of got used to these very compact 40 i mean i think hippopotamoma's time lord is like eight tracks 36 minutes perfect you know you could engage with every song and come to love every song that album is an album i just never and i never could be bothered to to kind of find my way into
Speaker 3it it was exhausting you know and uh you know like robert wyatt somebody who i absolutely adore his last couple of albums were overlong in the cdh and he even had a pause at one point you know as if he knows that the audience will be slightly exhausted at a certain point but philosophy of moments i think had it been edited down probably would have been as good yeah yeah yeah that's right there's some wonderful tracks in that so the thing is that in 95 moments is still displaying a rare sensitivity and a rare genius but i don't think that can be heard on slender show but and it really does you know what i'm saying farfisa organ it is like these really jaunty cheaply recorded it's almost as if he's done it in two hours when he's very drunk one night it does seem
Speaker 2like an almost deliberate act of sabotage doesn't it you know it's imagine it's almost like if nick drake had lived a few few more years and gone back and recorded this material from pink moon with a sort of jaunty cassio vl tone backing and sort of sung it in a mock cockney accent
Speaker 3and of course he has you know over the years he's reclaimed aspects of uh what we like in his work and he's continued to progress and continue to make strange albums you know he is one of those artists he's a real outlier real outsider artist who has created his own universe of sound
Speaker 2let's move from the the very obscure lo-fi aesthetic of baby bird and moments to what were the big boys doing this year the major the major labels what what were the major mainstream artists releasing this year so we have garbage released their debut album foo fighters released their debut album uh i know nothing about foo fighters except that they're massive that is all i know about i know
Speaker 3nothing about them except dave grohl seems like a nice guy
Speaker 2dave grohl sings with them and the occasional songs i've heard it's just vapor to me scott tilt now we've talked about scott before on the show but tilt is one of the other albums along with climate of hunter and three and four that i think of as the as the definitive scott records and this is before he disappeared completely into the sort of theatrical avant-garde world of albums like bish bosh and the drift which i admire we talked about talked about this before i think i admire records like the drift i genuinely love tilt this is an album which is definitely up there with climate of hunter for me as as the perfect encapsulation of scott the crooner allied with scott the avant-gardist would you agree with me
Speaker 3completely this hits the sweet spot it's experimental yet it's still thrilling and beautiful and dramatic and it's a companion album in a sense to climate of hunter although it goes far further it's got probably a nicer sound i mean i really like climate of hunter you know i adore the album um this one i think doesn't have the 80s trappings i mean i like those 80s trappings but in a way this is a more timeless version of climate of hunter it's just it's astonishing and weirdly one of the things you said earlier was um if bowie was drawing on scott walker bowie was also drawing on nine inch nails you were saying i think there's on occasion the dramatic twists between moments of quiet beauty and then pummeling noise there's a kind of nine inch nails influence on tilt as well maybe
Speaker 2possibly yeah it's funny though it's almost like he takes it even further i mean like on you know that that sequence on the cock fighter which is almost pure white noise for about a minute and a half or something it's difficult to imagine even trent resna having the balls to put that at least on one of the records you know from from the the mainstream heyday of the band and
Speaker 3it's got a great band there's you know david rhodes is on guitar as well it's got a fantastic art rock ensemble and uh and i think isn't it bambo gas coin's brother is still doing the orchestration gas going yeah what orchestration
Speaker 2what orchestrations they are yeah so there's a couple of records actually i mean i'm you know i'm actually a fan of of all the grunge bands i'm probably a fan most of all of smashing pumpkins i think they were the most unpredictable most experimental of the bands here's an album we talk about albums that are overlong melancholy and the infinite sadness two and a half hours of music that is all over the place you know um it's this is certainly not a conventional grunge album this is this is all over the place stylistically and and i do admire this record it's one of those records that i i enjoy dipping into i don't enjoy every track i don't think every track succeeds his voice is definitely an acquired taste it's it's it's kind of whining quality can kind of begin to grate after a while billy corgan's voice but definitely uh this was obviously a very clear mark in the sand in the sense we're going to create our masterpiece we're going to create our massive statement here um and i like it sometimes when when bands do that it's almost like you can sense their ambitions are getting out of control they're going to do they're going to make their glorious folly the goldie saturn's return syndrome here but this is a this was obviously a more successful attempt at doing some grand folly are you familiar with this record tim it's definitely a i've only
Speaker 3really yeah i've only ever heard it probably once or twice and that was at the time because a couple of friends really rated it um i could see the quality in it but it never again personally yeah but it's ambitious ambition
Speaker 2yeah it's got everything from orchestrated piano instrumentals to new wave electronic pieces to shoegaze music it's all over the place but i think they are definitely one of the more interesting example this album is one of the more interesting examples of music that came out of that kind of grunge crucible and then we have radiohead second album the bells uh talk about picking yourself up from what essentially is is not the the most auspicious debut record pablo honey uh one great song creep and uh i think otherwise they were very much seen as brit pop also rands weren't they and what a turnaround well yeah
Speaker 3no the bends i really liked it when it came out still really like it i mean i thought as we say you know creep was magnificent and they released a couple of singles i thought were pretty good you could hear there was something but definitely pablo honey didn't really kind of fulfill the potential of the band but this did i mean it's so accomplished and mature you know this is a great rock album for the ages you know it has poignant singer songwriter tracks that compare with the best roy harper and roger waters for me it has contemporary rock pieces that for me slightly transcend grace and i guess that jeff buckley's grace would have been one of the big influences for this album but i think that there's um there's a kind of gritty britishness in this that you don't hear in grace um so i thought it's a fantastic fusion of of the weighty and the beautiful and um really nicely balanced album as well yeah
Speaker 2i suppose what we don't hear yet we haven't yet got to the unleashing of the more experimental tendencies which would come sure increasingly with the next few records and records i personally prefer to the bends but there's no denying the quality of songs like street spirit uh fake plastic trees of course is is absolutely sublime uh uh anthem and in some senses this is radiohead just sort of like transcending all of the other bands that came out um of the sort of post crunch post grunge british brit pop scene they've just almost instantly you know elevated themselves above the pack with this record and set themselves up for what will come but even if they hadn't ever even if they hadn't ever made another record i think this would still be seen as a classic record alongside you know the jeff buckley record
Speaker 3in that sense totally i think it's one of those albums that you know we've we've often said this you know had jeff buckley well and he pretty much did leave grace he'd still be remembered he is still remembered had radiohead just left us with the bends this would be considered one of the greatest albums of that period and justifiably so you know it's a very strong piece of work and i think that there's something in the harmonies now york's voice was always quite unique but also i think um some of greenwood's guitar tonalities and harmonies are quite unusual there's a scope that kind of goes beyond most of the bands that are surrounding yeah for sure
Speaker 2he's just beginning i think to to be to be what he will become um if that's not if that's not too patronizing of way of saying it i think he's he's yet to become the johnny greenwood that we know but definitely he's beginning to stretch out here um some other albums that came out this year that we like i really love the tears for fear of death and the tears for fear of death and the tears for fear's album from this year rowland the kings of spain which at the time felt really out of time it felt like a throwback almost to to um sort of 80s stadium pop anthemic stadium pop production uh but interestingly it's really stood the test of time because now of course it's it's it's not relevant to talk about it in the context of when it came out i mean it is relevant but it's no longer important to listen to it in that context and it just it's just a great tears for fears record and i just love roland's voice
Speaker 3i was gonna say what's kind of interesting here is that you know we're talking about this year for some artists um it's important they're almost lost so moments sound slightly lost and the music sounds slightly lost now tears for fears at this stage were as unfashionable as they've ever been and they were lost in the scheme of things and this album got really unfair reviews but the interesting thing with this album is it is brilliantly played brilliantly produced really confident and what i really liked about it was was it's almost as if regardless of whether they're slightly unfashionable they're slightly lost in the scheme of things he's still gonna make ambitious music as well as he can and i sort of like that and i really like the mid 90s tears for fear
Speaker 2Me too. Me too. Elemental and Raoul, I think, are fantastic records. Never made a bad record. I'm guessing that Raoul and the Kings of Spain was probably a lot better than 10cc's Mirror Mirror album from this year, which I've never heard. I've never heard of it, in fact. But you probably have.
Speaker 3I've never said about that. I have heard it. Of course I've heard it. It's 10cc. God damn it. I've heard everything they've ever done.
Speaker 2Is it absolutely wrong?
Speaker 3It's not. The last couple of albums are a chore to get through. They're not badly done. You know, they're well produced, well sung. But this one really was a case of the two main members at this stage were barely communicating. It's solo tracks, in effect. It just doesn't have much of a feel. And again, like Raoul and like Momus. It seems hopelessly lost in 1995.
Speaker 2Okay, Tim, I think we'll wrap up there. There's a few other records we, you know, we might just sort of name check here. Seafield's Sucker, the second album, that's a great record. King Crimson's Thrak. The Beatles' Anthology, Volume 1. Julian Cope's 20 Mothers. KD Lang's All You Can Eat. Pram, Sargasso Sea. Swans, The Great Annihilator. Brian Wilson's I Just Wasn't Made For These Times. And Frank Zappa's The Great Annihilator. Frank Zappa's Civilization Phase 3, which is one of his Sinclavia records. By the way, just to correct you there, Tim, you mentioned earlier, you said people don't take Frank Zappa to task for the sort of lascivious humour in his music. Actually, they do. There are a lot of people. I think we were talking about, who were we talking about? Baby Bird, weren't we? Who's, you know, undercutting his music with comedy. I think a lot of people actually are put off by Zappa for the very, very same reason. It's something I hear quite a lot when I talk about Zappa. For example, Richard Barbieri has got no time for Frank Zappa. He just thinks it's silly, puerile comedy music. And he's got a point. You know, there is a lot of that in Zappa. So just to slightly pick you up on.
Speaker 3All right. Yeah.
Speaker 2Right. Let's cut to the chase, Tim. Best album of the year. No, personal favourite album of the year. And the album you feel has had the most influence in the longer term.
Speaker 3Over to you. Oh, my God. Well, my favourite. I've got to go with so many, actually, but I've got to go with Tilt. yeah but this one there's a lot tilt and outside one and because it's madder i'm going to go with outside one as my favorite over tilt but those are two but then i'm missing out red house painters ocean beach which is one of my favorite albums of all time so what can i do i'm going to go with outside one by david bowie okay
Speaker 2i'm also going to go with uh a selection a potpourri oh wow this is hard tilt is is amazing you're you're absolutely right when you say that uh ocean beach many ways might be the definitive red house painters out one of my favorite bands of all time techno animals re-entry scorns gyral and so many great electronic records this year or techers try repeta okay we've done that what do you feel is the longest in terms of uh what do you feel has had the most long-term influence i'm
Speaker 3going to go with tricky's max and k for the simple reason that it has a kind of me that you still hear on albums now okay so you're looking
Speaker 2at this list i think probably the bends has cast the largest shadow over music since there's been so many bands you know coldplay being perhaps the most famous example it's difficult to imagine a band like coldplay having existed without an album like the bends sort of setting the template i i hear that in so many bands which actually a lot of them are really despised but
Speaker 3actually i think 100 i think the radio had influence especially on the early 2000s i'd say that you know maybe 2000 to 2010 was massive so the bends okay computer so many bands formed in the wake of that that sounded like you know that what is quite affecting in york's case he has this very high-pitched voice on occasion became quite irritating in many of the imitators because you kind of felt that they're just doing a york um or a yorkie boy as a we used to refer to it um so i think you're right it had a massive massive impact probably for about sort of 15 years i'm not sure i hear it as much now which is probably not yeah tricky no that's
Speaker 2fair enough fair dues yeah i mean rock music generally speaking rock music has very much disappeared from the mainstream anyway but you're right i think there was a period when there was a lot of bands that were very much cast in the image of radio head on the bends and okay computer it's hard to imagine bands like muse for example muse being you know one of the more well-known examples uh you know and a good band in their own right but but definitely they seem like a post-bends kind of uh artists a band in that sense okay so there we go 1995 a year that we have a lot a lot that we love about about 95 who'd have thunk it who'd have thunk it um but uh no i certainly enjoyed revisiting this year and actually i feel like i want to go and listen to some of these i want to go and listen to paul schutz album again there's another record i absolutely love from this from this year fantastic record yeah and and probably i haven't listened to it for a couple of years but i'm going to go and listen to it now i bet it still sounds as good as ever
Speaker 3i listened to it last night sounds
Speaker 2good there you go fantastic all right we shall return with another year what are we going to do next time tim pick a year you've always got the hunch in your mind about what we should cover next what's your hunch
Speaker 3well strangely we could go back to 1985 or we could do the biggie you know this one that we've always wanted to do 1977 which is a really important year
Speaker 2it's the year of punk rock isn't it 77
Speaker 3unless you count 76 as being that okay but in
Speaker 2terms of records release 77 would have been a lot of yeah yeah punk records yeah the punk
Speaker 3explosion yeah yeah it'd be one
Speaker 2of those two years listeners okay thank you very much for listening i hope you enjoyed if you did as always uh go and give us a wonderful five-star review on the podcast platform of your choice and we will return sporadic but we do thank you very much for listening and goodbye from me and goodbye from tim bye-bye you
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