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Speaker 2Welcome back to another episode of The Album Years with myself, Stephen Wilson, and Tim Bowness. Tim, sadly. Now, Tim, I've got a bone to pick with you straight away. Off-air, you've just admitted to me that in the early days of The Album Years, you used to edit it to make it sound like I was constantly interrupting you and dominating the conversation.
Speaker 3Well, what it was, it was actually the first couple of episodes where you were constantly interrupting me.
Speaker 2I was not.
Speaker 3And so I deliberately. I was not constantly. I deliberately cut your voice in a second or two earlier to make you sound even ruder. And what, in fact, was a delight for me was when at least one person did say, you know, Stephen, just let Tim speak a little bit. You're really rude, actually. So I succeeded.
Speaker 2Yeah, but you also said you used to cut out most of what you'd said to make it sound like I was the only one dominating the conversation.
Speaker 3I did cut out very long monologues. Yeah, so in fact, it did sound like you were the one with verbal diarrhoea and I was concise.
Speaker 2OK, on a serious note, guys, welcome back. We promised last time, didn't we, Tim, that we would do a year from the current millennium, so.
Speaker 3We did, foolishly.
Speaker 2Well, we haven't gone against our promise, have we?
Speaker 3We nearly did. In fact, when I presented it to you, I think we had about three or four emails where we were almost contemplating, just hoping that no one had heard it.
Speaker 2Well, I thought you were going to say that we had three or four albums from the entire 21st century between us.
Speaker 3Well, we had three or four albums from the entire 21st century that we liked, that was it. That was problem number one. And then, obviously, problem number two, you know, how do you fill an episode with those three or four albums spaced over 24 years? So we've kind of.
Speaker 2We've just about scraped in, haven't we? We're doing 2,000, folks. Technically, is that part of the current millennium or is that part of the previous? I'm never quite sure of the rules here. I think technically they say it isn't, but for our purposes, it certainly is. That's the best you're going to get from us anyway, guys. Now, this could be a short episode, having said that, even then, because I've got to say, Tim, I've probably got about. Of the albums on the list, I've probably got about 10% and I've maybe heard, at least until I did the research for this episode, because I have listened to some of these albums subsequently, but probably until then, I've probably only heard about 20% of the albums on this list. What about you?
Speaker 3Well, I think for me, I've probably kept about 5% on the list, but I've probably owned or listened to 40, 50, 60%. Really? Okay, so
Speaker 2you know a lot of these records. At least you've heard a lot of these records.
Speaker 3Well, yeah, you know, something that, you know, we should discuss at some point. Is there a cutoff point of where our enthusiasm is for contemporary music? But, you know, for me, looking at this list, I'm still really excited. I think, you know, we're entering the new century and there's a lot of very fresh, very interesting music. I don't think the album years are dead at this stage.
Speaker 2Okay, I mean, I would agree with you. I think there are some tremendous records on this list, but there's also the beginnings of what I can see is going to ultimately turn me away from exploring and being curious about a lot of contemporary music as well. And I'm sure we'll come on to that. Let's start off with The Elephant in the Room, the album that kind of casts a shadow over the whole year. This is the album that was almost unanimously voted the best album of the year by all the tastemakers. It's a band that emerged in the 90s and have gone on to become arguably, you know, the equivalent to what the progressive rock bands of the 70s were, a band that constantly reimagined themselves and have managed to appeal, I guess, across a very wide demographic. And we're talking, of course, about Radiohead here. And this was a watershed year for Radiohead because this was the kind of moment that we all realised, when I say we all, myself and Tim, we kind of realised that Radiohead were going to be more than just, quote unquote, the new U2. Sure. They were going to shake things up. Now, it's interesting because you've put this in the category of electronica, but this album is much more than electronica, isn't it? I mean, it's got everything. It's got jazz. It's got kraut rock. It's got avant-garde classical music. It's got ambient pieces. And there's still a lot of guitars on it too, isn't there? So it's not like they've completely abandoned their sort of guitar sound. But there is something about it overall that feels like a complete reinvention. The fact they released no singles from the album. The fact that it feels like a complete reinvention feels almost like a complete rejection of everything that Britpop had kind of stood for over the previous, you know, the heyday of Britpop was probably the mid-90s through to this point. And suddenly Radiohead are like saying, OK, that's over, you know, and this is like a moment where possibilities open up for guitar bands, I guess, doesn't it?
Speaker 3Well, I think, you know, there's so many interesting things about this album. One of them, for me, is that I think that OK Computer which I do think is a great album, I thought was overrated in the sense that a lot of people said this is the first rock album of the 21st century. And for me, I heard a lot of experimental 80s guitar music in OK Computer. I mean, I loved the Bends and I felt OK Computer was, you know, a relatively logical, relatively safe follow-up. And suddenly on this album, Kid A, and then Amnesiac that follows it, they genuinely are a rock band for the 21st century. It's almost like. Kid A is what people said OK Computer was for me. So I like OK Computer, think it's a great album, love some of the music, but it was never to me that revolutionary statement as I could hear anything from Crimson to U2 to Cocteau Twins to Dylan to John Lennon. There were all sorts of 20th century reference points in the album.
Speaker 2Yeah, and also OK Computer is still kind of allied to the idea of the conventional pop song structure, isn't it? And suddenly on Kid A, we don't care about structure. We don't care about those pop song structures anymore. And the U2 thing you're saying is interesting
Speaker 3because I think U2 obviously tried this trick in the sense that, you know, in the early 90s, they decided to completely reject what people perceived as their pompous, anthemic rock music. But when you listen to that, you know, when you listen to Acton Baby, which is a really strong album, I think, it's a bit like U2 with a Frankenstein mask on. You know, actually the body of it hasn't changed very much. Whereas you listen to Kid A, and they really have shifted shape. You know, U2 were always U2 on pop, on Acton Baby. It was the unforgettable fire band ever so slightly transformed, as I've said, almost with a mask on. Whereas with Kid A, this is absolutely revolutionising the idea of what a rock band can be in the 21st century. And you feel that when they're entering electronica or ambient, these are 100% immersions into it.
Speaker 2And isn't that the magic trick that, that Radiohead have managed to pull off? And now, you know, Tom and Johnny are working as The Smile, essentially an extension, it feels like an extension of Radiohead to me. Isn't that the magic trick that they've pulled off really, which is to be able to make this, what is ultimately very experimental music, but almost like in a kind of Trojan horse way, sneak it under the noses of people that don't listen to experimental electronic music or experimental classical music. - Yeah. - You know, I've just been listening to the new Smile album, which I really love, but there's some, I mean, it's funny thing with Tom and Johnny. I always feel like, oh, I can hear what they've been listening to. Do you know what I mean? But that's not to say that they're kind of like, they're not pastiche-ing that music. They definitely make it their own and they definitely filter it through their own personality. But I feel like I can always hear, oh, they've been listening to this. They've been listening to Penderecki or they've been listening to Orteca or they've been listening to Alice Cole. - Or Scott Walker. - Or Scott Walker, yeah. -
Speaker 3Or this album, the Scott Walker, is that a chord? Is it running through "How To Disappear"? I'm not quite sure, but. -
Speaker 2It's been a while since I listened to it, to be fair. It's one of the albums I didn't go back and listen to again for this because I felt like I knew it well enough already. But there's definitely a sense that you can kind of hear magpie-like what they've kind of been borrowing from. There's the one track which is very krautrock influenced, very obviously krautrock influenced, but it doesn't sound like Cannes or Faust or Neue. It sounds like Radiohead, but you can hear, oh yeah, they've been listening to that. And I think, just coming back to my original point, isn't that in a sense the magic trick that they've managed to pull off? Because they've been a band coming off the back of OK Computer, which sold whatever, 10 million copies or whatever. They've been able, a bit like the Beatles were with Revolution 9 on the White Album, introducing music concrete to people that never knew they liked or were interested in music concrete. Radiohead have done a similar thing with very esoteric electronic music, avant-garde classical music, avant-garde jazz music. Somehow they always have this luminous, strange beauty, don't they? Whenever they take these so-called ugly sounds and these atonal sounds, they somehow manage to make them sound beautiful. -
Speaker 3National Anthem has that free jazz explosion. The groove, then the free jazz. And you're right, they're taking avant-garde ideas into the mainstream. And it's one of the few things I'm kind of really envious of, that there's no compromise on this. And yet it was number one globally. you know, go back to one of our previous editions 1977 and we were talking about rumors and when tusk came out which was vaguely experimental compared to this fleetwood max suffered you know they suffered sales-wise pink floyd suffered on the final cut from the wall kid a takes the experimental template even further and it pays dividends they're number one globally they managed to get away well to be fair
Speaker 2the final cut and tusk were also number one albums i think you're talking more about the critical not necessarily the critical reaction but the public's region now to be fair i'm looking at the wikipedia page for kid a um at the time allegedly apparently according to this it had very mixed reviews and a very mixed response but i think its stature because it was a shock it was a shock i remember speaking to a very good friend of mine who'd been massively massively into ok computer almost to the point of obsession and i said to him oh have you bought kid out so yeah it sounds like a lot of b-sides and there had been a sense that that radio had had been hinted at and i said yeah it sounds like a lot of b-sides and i said yeah it sounds like a lot of at what they were going to do on kid a on the b-sides for ok computer i don't know if you're familiar with some of those b-sides yeah yeah and they're great and suddenly kid has a whole album of these quote unquote b-sides and he didn't get it at all but i think its stature has grown and grown because it's now seen as i mean you kind of alluded to this in a way you know in your in your kind of intro about the album it's seen as the first album that indicates where rock music can go in the 21st century and it's seen as the first album that indicates where rock music can go in the 21st century and part of me slightly disappointed that it hasn't been more of an influence on rock music in the 21st century well i think as well i
Speaker 3think one of the reasons how it worked is that amnesiac reinforced it came relatively quickly afterwards arguably was a slightly better album yeah i was gonna say personally i prefer it and i think it reinforced all of the positive elements of kid a and of course soul just as well so you know it wasn't a one-off this was a serious change and what of course is fascinating because i remember you know late 90s as you say not only fans but bands were kind of obsessed with ok computer i remember having to be a part of a kind of a battle the bands a judge in norwich all of the new bands were sounding like they'd come out of the bends or they come out of ok computer just at the point when radiohead absolutely shifted gear and became something else and of course what we're going to see and maybe talk about later is a few of the bands who really do make a mark on 2000 coldplay they've listened to radiohead yeah muse who are about to become massive obviously another sort of radiohead derivative but radiohead themselves aren't listening to radiohead they're just
Speaker 2steaming so maybe let's jump a little bit ahead to that because i've got a category here called the brit pop fallout and um in this category i i have put some of the albums um that you could argue were closer to the most popular ones and i've talked about you mentioned coldplay there now parachutes which i think is a brilliant record one of the great debut records but there's almost a sense isn't there that this was the album from for the disenchanted radiohead exactly that
Speaker 3yeah well it is it's the most accessible elements of the bends and ok computer with a with a very very pretty production sheen and i think you know chris martin has probably got a more accessible voice as well than tom yes but they're great songs the point is it's beautifully produced they're great songs and there's a real real confidence about that album as well for a debut but it probably wouldn't
Speaker 2have got signed if it hadn't been for the success of exactly of radiohead and so in this category brit pop fallout i've also got oasis released an album um the the the kind of spell of oasis has kind of worn off hasn't it by this point i think it's fair to say the previous record be here now i damaged their critical and commercial standing probably to the point of i've never been able to come back from it really standing on the shoulder of giants i mean i bought the first couple of oasis records and i quite enjoyed them i know you weren't such a fan um great great melodicist noel gallagher great traditional songwriter i'd stop listening by this point i i never heard this record i still haven't heard this record see i have okay you have go on then for the podcast
Speaker 3weirdly enough i don't mind it no i know i was aware of it at the time i mean once more oasis were never ever going to be my favorite band but i think they did what they did with real skill and detail there are some great songs great melodies and they're both strong vocalists actually you know this is something that i feel is missing from say doves that we're going to discuss and um and stone roses you know the thing is that oasis had a great front person with a really strong quality of voice so though they're never necessarily going to hear a band i've always got respect for them and this album actually i kind of like because it's them slightly going off the rails there's a lot of people who are going to like them and there's a lot of people there's a lot of beatles psychedelia in it there's maybe even a lot of okay computer kind of psychedelic well that well that so that's kind of
Speaker 2what i was getting at here i think it's you know again you kind of mentioned this in a way that a lot of bands were listening to radiohead except radiohead had already moved on and radiohead in a sense were redefining what rock music would be two three four years later yeah while bands like oasis had just discovered okay computer and parachutes coldplay definitely seems like something born out of that that kind of approach um let's talk about the doves albums lost souls i didn't know this record i listened to it i thought it was really good i've got to say um the the worst thing i can say about it and this is again what you you just alluded to a minute ago is the vocals are a little bit nondescript uh and perhaps that was the reason why because they didn't have a chris martin or a liam gallagher that's why it's not a better known record but it seems like a very very creative um you know it's a very creative album and it's a very creative album and it's a very creative album extension of again the the sort of post the post radiohead climate it's definitely got that kind of stadium filling rock sound to it but there's some very interesting things going on in the production yeah there are clever things going on in the production sonically clever things there are clever things going on in the time signatures um it seems like it's also harking back a little bit to post-punk in a way yeah too and i was quite impressed although i can see that for you the vocals would probably be the problem i think
Speaker 3they're good i mean actually i've always quite liked doves i think there is this kind of atmospheric goth quality and there's almost a kind of progressive ambition in the music and i think they come from a dance music background they come from sort of manchester dance music background and then became a rock band so it's an interesting birth oh okay so yeah musically i i like them quite a lot and i don't dislike it vocally i think vocally he's up it's absolutely fine right but it's not one of those voices that i'm gonna you're not gonna fall in love with with or hate yeah yeah so that's the thing neutral there are some great melodies and some great guitar plays i think sea song is one of the pieces on this is yes i love that one which i think is really powerful one in six eight isn't it yeah yeah so there's some music on this side i think is tremendously strong i suppose it's that thing where for me there are sort of 70 80 percent there and it doesn't quite burn with the ferocity of a my bloody valentine or what have you when you maybe want it to but it's really good i mean it's yeah i was impressed i mean
Speaker 2as someone myself that has a very mere sort of neutral voice you know i understand the issues sometimes not everyone can be jeff buckley or chris martin or tom york or whatever we have to you know we have to deal with what we're given by mother nature and all that stuff but i i was um i was impressed by this record it's something i missed at the time um i can see why it's regarded as a little bit of a sort of a lost classic uh
Speaker 3of the period well you'll like what follows as well i think okay there's a couple more albums that kind of develop this even further and i think we were talking about the time signature and even progressive for reference weirdly i think it's the next album they do a kind of a cover of king crimson's moon child
Speaker 2so also in the brit pop fallout i've got placebos black market music and black box recorder the facts of life which has just been given a new lease of life by billy i know less than billy eilish oh really who apparently was see did an instagram clip where she was listening to that is it the title track the one that goes that life sucks get over it kill yourself and get over it is that the fact i don't know to be honest apparently it went from like 1 million streams on spotify to something like 20 billion overnight or something because billy eilish had been have you got contact for her no no um anyway but let's let's go back to so radiohead nominally you kind of put in the in the electronic section yeah so i think
Speaker 3listening to it again you could you know i do think it's a it's a massive reinvention but there are tracks like optimism where actually they are still in effect a u2 template rock band you know a rock band with interesting textures and that tribal rhythm so there were maybe more echoes of what radiohead were before then then i remember yeah i think
Speaker 2that's the thing because a lot of people talk about this as the right the moment radiohead go electronic yeah i think what they mean by that is this is the moment radiohead start to display their influences from listening to electronic music so i can hear they've listened to orteca and i can hear they've listened to you know boards of canada or whatever but actually they've absorbed it into the yeah into their vocabulary as a rock band an album like king of limbs for example 10 years later is much more electronic than this record this record seems seems more transitional than perhaps it did at the time i think it was such a shock to to hear it at the time based on what had gone before and given
Speaker 3they're a great band you know it's like it's got a great rhythm section that rhythm section maybe only play on about half of it right so i think it is different in that sense you know every other album they've done previously they are a band almost even those b-side you're talking about from ok computer it's a band filtered through effects units and sounding quite alien it's still a band this time round there were pure electronica pieces there
Speaker 2certainly were the title track for one
Speaker 3yeah yeah
Speaker 2so let's go back to the electronic section and just talk a little bit more about some of the other electronic music from this year now blue jam by chris morris another one that's sort of only nominally electronic quote-unquote this is this is um chris morris is a comedian a very very satirical comedian um whose influence on british comedy is widely felt i think um as a kind of very satirical sort of guy and this i almost described this this is an album of some of the sketches from his show blue jam where where the music is a very important part of the the sort of effect isn't it it kind of all adds to this slightly surreal absurdist um : quality that the comedy has and i kind of call this ambient comedy because this is very queasy electronic ambient music very often which he's he's taking from the warp artists yeah um so he's using tracks from apex twins selected ambient works too for example to kind of add to this sense of unease you feel when you're listening to these sketches which are i mean i say they're comedy but i mean they're they're the blackest comedy you could possibly yeah imagine but would it be fair to say that he's doing something very new here in the way that he's using music it's difficult to
Speaker 3say i mean it sustains a really kind of woozy and as you said queasy atmosphere and i kind of almost find it um and not in a bad way it's almost sleep inducing because you're lost in that world of sound and it's only when you start to concentrate on the language that you realize how strange and how um uncomfortable it can make you feel on occasion really and i think you know the music does a good job of that yeah it's it's it's a fantastically curated ambient collection in that it suits the narrative so well and as you said on one level it's kind of quite seductive quite woozy quite sleep inducing but on another level it kind of almost makes you want to
Speaker 2vomit i mean it's it's extremely confrontational comedy and some of it you would barely say is comedy at all but it's it's just absurd yeah and it's it's almost like in some ways it's a very british thing because it's all about dismantling this idea of social graces and political correctness and i think he was one of the first comedian or comic writers i mean to be fair chris morris himself doesn't appear in a lot of of blue jam it's um it's other people like uh julia davis and uh mark heap yeah and he's one of the first comic writers that almost does that thing where you can't say that you can't you can't say that but he does he goes ahead and you kind of laugh despite yourself well it followed brass eye wasn't it his first project after brass eye i think it might have been yeah but then there was the day-to-day before that which is the kind of satirical news show and he says things that you kind of you laugh at and you find yourself thinking yourself i shouldn't be laughing at that which is why i think he's been so influential on a generation of comedians since like ricky gervais or like jimmy uh what's his guy jimmy carr yeah um that say these things that you find yourself laughing at and then realize they're so unpolitically correct it's all but i think to be fair to no disrespect to chris morris and ricky gervais i think chris morris did it on another level of of smartness and intellect i mean he is really dismantling you know polite society through a lot of but you're right i think there's something about the comedy that is that is a very musical experience the way he's using sound sound design music to put you in this kind of surreal absurdist frame of mind where you can connect with things that are on the page barely comedy at all they're actually really offensive i think
Speaker 3he wanted it on i think originally uh 3 a.m or 4 a.m because he wanted people to listen to it to be drunk in a particular state almost yeah either drunk or drunk with sleep in some way so it's even more surreal but and eventually i think they played them at midnight that was the compromise that they came to yeah but yeah you know i think he was conscious of how he wanted people to absorb this as well which i quite like because he's curating the music curating the text and then also he wants to curate how we respond to
Speaker 2it but he's also we're getting into this dismantling the whole idea of comedy here now but it's also is that this kind of mixture of highbrow and lowbrow in his comedy isn't it so you do get this sketch where a man walks into a doctor's surgery and it feels very uncomfortable and very absurdist and then they end up basically having a competition to see who can make their willy flap the highest so it goes from being very highbrow and very intellectual to being you know smutty and lowbrow but all the way through there's this very uncomfortable
Speaker 3yeah electronic
Speaker 2queasy electronic music well it's
Speaker 3as confrontational as derrick and clive but where's derrick and clive he slaps you in the face straight away yeah this is kind of almost like stealth bombing you're not sure how to feel
Speaker 2about it oh yeah you're not sure how to and i think that's the thing about that that sort of brand of comedy you're not sure whether you should be laughing crying or just with your jaw on the floor i mean the one sketch i can never forget from blue jam is is the parents that have their child has been kidnapped and and they're like just talk oh by the way love did you did you pick up jimmy from the school today no has he not come home then no little bugger and it goes on like this and then for days afterwards and then finally they find him murdered in a wood oh by the way love i had a phone call about little jimmy yeah they found him murdered in the woods yeah apparently it was our neighbor the fucker i'm gonna go and
Speaker 3have a word with him later didn't he also do the tv version of this as well yes well
Speaker 2so that was just
Speaker 3called jam yeah yeah yeah which was equally unnerving well
Speaker 2even more so in that
Speaker 3sense yeah yeah and again i think the visuals in that went with this score if you remember
Speaker 2yeah i love it chris morris is a modern comedy genius i think anyway so we've kind of digressed slightly there to talking about comedy but it's very hard to to talk about this record you have to kind of hear it to understand what we're talking
Speaker 3about it's important thanks i think as well sometimes comedy kind of intersects with music you know you think about it and you think of say monty python were very popular with underground artists yeah the 60s 70s and it went both ways you know they love python python loved that music yeah and you could see it as well i think when badigal and newman were really entwined with the whole brit pop culture as well and lee and herring yeah and i think that this was really as important to uk electronica as the apex twin in its own way yeah well it's funny because
Speaker 2i think that's the thing about the only because there's a lot of there's a lot of apex twin in chris morris i found the whole thing the the you know the whole idea of deconstructing the idea of having a public face to music the way that apex twin would always make his covers look as ugly as possible you know a portrait of him but as ugly as can be yeah and there's a there's a sense of that going on in chris morris's work too let's move on a few other records now tim i've got used to this when i talk about electronic music i'm really passionate about the 90s particularly which for me is the golden age of the 90s and i'm really passionate about the golden age of modern electronica bands like ortega and apex we've talked about this is one of my favorites from the 90s and i get used to saying to you oh you gotta listen to this tim is one of my favorite electronic bands from the 90s and you go i listened to it it was all right so this is another one gas wolfgang voigt's released his album pop his fourth album this year this is one of the most special electronic acts of all time for me you listened to it tim what did you think about it i
Speaker 3couldn't believe it my mom was blown man don't lie to me
Speaker 2don't lie to me
Speaker 3it was all right it was quite pretty yeah quite liked it no i did i listened to the album in its entirety right genuinely enjoyed it lovely amorphous textures quite sweet half melodies with the loops so his
Speaker 2whole thing wolfgang's voice thing with gas is he he takes loops from classical records okay and he basically makes he rusts them he makes them sound like they've been left out in the rain for about 10 years okay so they're you know we've talked about this before the kind of hauntological thing about how things sound like they're beaming in and they've been they sound old they sound decayed this sounded
Speaker 3like it's recorded in a forest
Speaker 2exactly that's his thing so all of the artwork also is these close-up you know very kind of micro images of like leaves and and and bushes and things so yes you're absolutely right it's it's it's a wonderful atmosphere it's a one gag it's a one gag act all his records sound like that but it's a gag i could listen to forever it's just i liked it so powerful you liked well that's more than i expected i thought you're gonna say it's all right what about boards of fire it's all right it's all right it's canada's in a beautiful have we talked about boards of canada
Speaker 3very briefly we must have referred um but i like i mean this one i liked um the first and the third piece quite a lot um weird i i thought i genuinely liked it so it was you know very beautiful very hypnotic um again gorgeous textures i think a bit like the gas album what i quite like is it had quite distressed textures which appealed to me yeah um the beat seemed weirdly old-fashioned to me that seemed like the sort of things that you and i were doing in the late 80s actually didn't mind it but but the textures i loved and i really liked the um use of the voice from the religious commune the whole title of the ep comes from the waco community doesn't it this idea of and of course like you i've always had a fascination for religious cults so anything to do with waco or scientology i'm on board so i liked it and that's also
Speaker 2the thing with boards of canada whenever they do use voices it's in this very kind of impressionistic you know haunted way so like the title track as you say the voice the when you actually hear the the main vocal line is spoken through a vocoder so there's this kind of sense of distance um but it's very beautiful very affecting very emotional you're right the rhythms are nothing they're certainly not in the sort of league of square pusher apex twin or teca they don't have anywhere near that degree of complexity which i think actually is why boards of canada became much more successful they were very that certainly their first couple of records kind of crossed over i think yeah it's quite a broad audience and sold probably better than warp records usually you're not going to choke your chicken out at the dinner party with this they're very pretty they're very beautiful superficially but the more you go in there is this sense of unease there is this sense of something a little bit more uncomfortable below the surface well there's also
Speaker 3there's a great what i thought about it was you know it's my thing that when i listen to music like this which i really genuinely liked i'm hearing vocal melodies i'm hearing lyrics immediately it evokes something in me right which
Speaker 2is a good thing you know yeah absolutely yeah now the folks listening at home won't realize this but just then just then we took a break tim didn't we we did it's been edited out now but we took a break then and just while we took the break there rob scaring who is sitting there listening uh said he listened to the gas and he really liked it sounds like there's a rave going on in the distance and i think that's a really good way to describe gas so i'm going to appropriate that when anyone anyone asked me about gas i'm going to say sounds like there's a rave going on on the other side of a
Speaker 3forest because that's kind of what you're saying yeah i'm going to say that's what i've been doing my whole career okay so my whole career i'm
Speaker 2going to stop now yeah one more album to talk about in the electronica section broadcast the noise made by people the debut album by broadcast now broadcast an interesting um band because they were kind of in love with like things like the bbc radiophonic workshop yeah and library music and there's been a whole i don't know it's explosion of that but there has been a little genre that's kind of grown up around that labels like ghost box um stereo lab were always into that too yeah i think that's a really good idea i think that's a really good idea i think that's a really good idea um well how do you feel about that
Speaker 3kind of approach to him is it is it's sort of yeah i like it i mean it's i again this album i thought was you know it's a very sweet album but what it kind of reminded me of as much as anything else is you know a lot of people at the time were kind of comparing it to things like portishead bizarrely but i sort of hear it as being more jane and barton more saint etienne it's got that kind of early 80s quality that's why i say jane and you know that kind of very naive early yes it's deliberately this is this sounds like a negative marble giant
Speaker 2this sounds like a negative word but i don't mean it to be but it's got that deliberate sense of tweeness about yeah and i think it comes from the sort of the girly voice doesn't it it's stereo lab have this too yeah um it's not like a very soulful assured voice like beth gibbons or you know or tracy thorne singing with massive attack it's a very kind of like um understated underachieving voice in a sense that's got that kind of sweet school girl quality it has yeah um i'm not sure how i feel about it's always kind of what put me off a little bit of the actually talked about saint etienne's and things like that i think i preferred a voice that would try and do a little bit more than that but it's i definitely like it musically it's fascinating you can hear the references back to things like the bbc radiophonic workshop and library music and stuff like that which i'm also you know very interested well i think
Speaker 3you know what's interesting about it i guess is it's got that kind of as you say that kind of bbc 50s test card quality that kind of almost school girl english voice from the 1960s it's very pure you know early marianne faithful even but it's not quite as sung as early marianne faithful but as i think the jane and barton it reminds me of specifically in a sense then are
Speaker 2they they perhaps they're also signifiers of the fact we're at the beginning of the great era of youtube in the sense that it's very easy now to start looking back but it's also
Speaker 3looking for because some of the electronics quite contemporary and do befit the idea that they're on warp so what i kind of think there's a kind of sort of retro
Speaker 2futurism well that's what i mean but it's the beginning of that in a sense that the past is now the past is so easily available yeah that perhaps bands i'm assuming they're in their early 20s at the time bands from 10 20 years before would have just not been aware of that stuff you know how would you have heard old library records from the 70s or bbc radio apart from watching an old episode of doctor who or something you wouldn't have been exposed to that and yet now in 2024 now we're there are whole generations of musicians and bands that all that stuff is easily available to them through youtube but then the whole history of music is so easily available yeah that i think nostalgia and the past has become perhaps too much an element of of the music that is around that is available to certainly in in we've talked about this before how rock music has not reinvented itself as successfully perhaps as electronic and urban music has just reinvented itself and part of that i think is the obsession with the past the fact that the led zeppelin back catalog is easily available the the black sabbath the entire catalog of all these bands can be listened to and absorbed in the space of a couple of hours whereas you and i spent years saving our pocket pocket money going to the record stores and gradually collecting the rush back catalog or collecting the black sabbath back catalog or the or the you know whatever the neil young back catalog now it's all instantly available isn't it and and does that kind of mean that music becomes necessarily more regressive and retrospective and more nostalgic i think in some genres yes
Speaker 3and on that bombshell we'll move on but anyway yeah i think it's a good you know the broadcast album it's good and you can see along with stereo lab how they influenced a certain kind of aesthetic visually as well as
Speaker 2musically yeah absolutely let's move on to the mainstream we've already talked about this record a little bit at the beginning when we were talking about radio you too all that you can't leave behind this is a band as we said earlier almost doing the opposite of what radiohead are doing yeah they're saying what do people like about us when we were doing the joshua tree and when we were doing you know boy and war and the unforgettable fire let's do that again because we've kind of done this experiment with you know what were the previous two albums pop and zuropa and acting baby and acting baby and was there another record maybe that's it yeah um i
Speaker 3think i'll say those are the previous
Speaker 2three records right so we've kind of done we've done our experimental thing maybe we shouldn't do that anymore maybe we should go back and do what people like which is strangely at a point that radiohead are going the complete opposite direction in a sense radiohead are doing what you two did yeah arguably more successfully they're
Speaker 3doing what you two did when they made zuropa aren't they i think they are to a degree definitely although i think with you too that maybe it's twofold really number one they always listened to fans and to the time so they'd have been really aware of the bends and okay computer and possibly as i've said everyone wants to be radiohead at the point radiohead becomes something different you know you two are no exception to this and i think number two it became ironic should we say an acting baby it was the right move at the right time and it was brilliant for them and i think they carried that through onto zuropa which again you know is arguably more ambitious in some ways than acting baby and pop and while zuropa wants more sort of reinforced i think they're following it's what we're saying about with tusk after rumors the sales were getting lower and lower the stage sets might have been getting more ambitious but by the time of pop people were actually slightly more ambitious and they were more ambitious and they were more bored by their irony and i think there was also a reaction to that was there also sense that the
Speaker 2people didn't trust their motives for adopting electronic music and trying to be more hip and more urban i've always i've always slightly distrusted that i mean i like you two don't get me wrong i like them a lot but i think when i hear tom or johnny greenwood adopting krautrock or i completely believe it's because they genuinely love it yeah and i think with bono and folks i always felt slightly like it was a careerist more of a careerist move and i might be i might be unfair there i'm sure they were genuinely excited by the possibilities well there's a difference
Speaker 3isn't it because i think that with radiohead that there's a continuum although they're very very different records amnesiac and okay computer have the same level of seriousness so if you're looking at the artwork you're looking at the lyrics and you're looking at tom york's delivery actually he's not shifted probably from the first great radiohead piece to amnesiac everything around it shifted whereas you think of you too whereas they were this very earnest anthemic band by the time you're getting to acting baby's europa pop they're trying comedy they're trying elvis vegas comedy oh okay do you know me in the presentation they're very well aware in the presentation and the lyrics they're undercutting themselves which i don't mind but partly i think
Speaker 2that was a reaction to the fact that people always accuse them of being two pompers which of course people accuse Radiohead of being to but radio had never seen they never seemed to have cared yeah they don't seem to care but i think you two maybe took it to heart a little bit there was also that tendency where you two were going to go back to our route americana roots that they never had growing up in a northern island uh sorry school boy era number one well that's a terrible one yeah no it's because we were just talking about van morrison off air a minute ago um they never had those americana roots and it always made me slightly suspicious you know bands that can't suddenly find america you know yeah although elton john and bernie torp managed to pull it off in a way but i never completely buy into it you know so is there a sense that they kind of succeeded in their goal because
Speaker 3this album was massive wasn't it this one did i think after this point maybe not but this one is almost like what you're exactly right what do people like about us what we do it was full of the most anthemic you two pop songs for you know a decade and a bit and and they do pull it off they're good they're confident it's a strong album then again for me it's too clean i just you know whereas i can i think there are some rough edges and some duff bits and brilliant bits on joshua tree which keeps it interesting this is kind of almost like a streamlined home to perfection you two rock albums so okay it's always been slightly less little bit contrived but and and one of the things i suppose i never quite trusted about you two compared to some other artists you know bono is clearly very gifted and a brilliant front man but whenever you saw an interview with him it was either you know oh well of course from the very beginning scott walker's the biggest influence of course in the very beginning sugar cubes the biggest influence of course in the very beginning punk was my influence of course in the very beginning it was the strawbs i loved he always has for whatever interview in whatever era from the very beginning it was stravinsky strawbs punk bjork associates that was always running
Speaker 2through his music i think that's what i mean i never quite trust him i think there's there's a lot of posturing and badge wearing uh with them i mean to be fair they have an incredibly distinctive sound of their own and when they're just trying to be you too which is most of the time to be fair it's amazing but also i find his lyrics are not that i mean there's a song on this album called elevation and i'm sorry but when you start doing chorus rhymes like i wish i could fly high up in the sky you're going in all of all the duck territory for me um that's the laziest rhyme in history fly sky and high sorry and it's in it's in the big single off this record elevation fly sky and high i'm sorry you've got to do better than that seriously mr monopoly here miss me monopoly is back at
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