Speaker 1Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade Electrolytes, Zero Sugar, and Vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolytes. I'm Stephen Wilson.
Speaker 2This is my co-host, Mr. Timothy Bowness. Hello. There he is. There he is. Yeah. So today, we are going to talk 1994, 30 years ago. Where were you 30 years ago? Where were you, Tim, 30 years ago? I wasn't even born. Wasn't even born. Okay. So just to put things in perspective, 30 years ago, I was a kid. 30 years ago, 1994, Harry Styles and Justin Bieber were born. Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and Shawshank Redemption were the big critically acclaimed movies of the year. I don't know about you guys, that makes me feel really old. But 1994, myself and Tim, we were still interested in albums, weren't we, in 1994? Still are. Still are, but there were some great albums released in 1994. I still think of it as a goldmine. It's a golden era for the album. Something that you'd listen to from beginning to end. You'd sit down and you'd allow yourself to be taken on a musical journey. So we are going to talk about the albums released in 1994, the ones we love and the ones we don't love so much. Which ones have dated well, which ones have dated not so well. And we like to do these in categories, so we've made our own categories. So we're going to start, 1994, we're going to start with art rock. And we're going to start with a couple of albums that I still, to this day, absolutely adore. So we are going to start off by talking about this one. Jeff Buckley's Grace. Now, interestingly enough, Tim, we were big fans of his dad, Tim Buckley, weren't we, when we came to this? Huge fans, yeah. And I remember being very sceptical. Because, let's face it, historically speaking, the pedigree of offspring of great artists being great. I mean, isn't that good, is it? I mean, it can happen. I'm thinking of Bob Dylan's son. Okay, Jacob Dylan, yeah? Yeah. But this is an extraordinarily good album, isn't it, Grace? What a fantastic record. Do you like it, Tim?
Speaker 3I do. And it was an interesting thing with Buckley, because I saw him probably on his very first UK performance and his last UK performance. And I've never seen two such contrasting gigs. So the first gig I saw him at, he was in a tent with only a few hundred people. It was him, American Music Club helmet. It was meant to be the Melody Maker's indie tent. And he came on and no one had expectations. They didn't know who he was. He came on with the band and they exploded into tracks. This was 93 that hadn't been released at that point. And from the opening seconds, an amazing, dynamic, elastic band. They blew everyone's minds. Within the first few seconds, everyone was on side. They were completely committed. He barely spoke to the audience and they did a short half-hour set that was mesmerizing. Two years later, Shepherd's Bush Empire, I think, he's headlining, Grace has become seen as a masterwork. He was clearly out of his head. He was clearly bored. There'd be bits in between songs where he'd be rambling incoherently to the audience going, "Sure, you love me. You fucking love me." And then he'd be doing yodeling in a Robert Plant style for four minutes. And the band would be kind of looking at him, and I'm guessing it was the drugs. But it was a total, you know, he suddenly had the audience and they did love him. So when he shouted, "You love me," and he was throwing cigarettes at the audience, they're going, "Jeff, we do love you. We love you, man." But it was horribly indulgent. And the songs went on for what seemed like 50 minutes. Whereas in this half an hour when no one knew who he was, and he had to convince these people that he was a genius, he did it. And like you. I was skeptical because I was a huge fan of Tim Buckley. And the thing is that Jeff Buckley had his own voice, had his own approach, and it was a brilliant band. I think people forget it wasn't just him. What a stunning band. You know, they had to me the kind of elastic qualities that you see in early Led Zeppelin at their best.
Speaker 2There's a kind of comparison for me with Jeff Buckley's Grace, which is when you listen to it, when you kind of analyze the album, maybe some people here would agree or disagree with me. There's nothing in it. It's inherently different about what he's doing. It's standard rock music, guitar, bass, drums, voice. But the analogy to me would be something like with Nirvana's Nevermind, which again is just essentially, if you boil it down, what fundamentally that is, is just a heavy rock album. It's the combination of the songs, the lead voice, and the charisma that somehow makes a record. It's the combination of the songs and the charisma that somehow makes a record. And Jeff Buckley's Grace has that too for me. There's something about it. If you listen to it, there's nothing particularly innovative or new or fresh about it in much the same way that there was nothing particularly fresh or innovative about Nevermind. But that combination of a great songwriter, great songs, just brilliant songs, very charismatic front man, and a great singer that you believed when you listened to his voice, you believed him. Whatever he sings to you. It somehow makes that record transcend everything else around it that was very similar.
Speaker 3I think the closest comparison this year is probably the Soundgarden album, and I think partly it's because they're almost reinventing in a brilliant and natural way that 70s rock band. And I suppose you hadn't had that kind of flexibility, scope, and dynamism in hard rock music for probably a decade or two. I think the 80s had leached that out of rock music.
Speaker 2We're going to talk about Soundgarden, because Chris Cornell and Jeff Buckley were good friends while Jeff was alive. So we like Jeff Buckley's Grace. Right, so let's move on to another very different kind of record here. This is Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral, which I absolutely adore this record. When I heard this record 30 years ago, it kind of blew my mind in terms of what was possible in terms of production in 1994. And I always think of Trent Reznor ultimately as a producer. This is a producer's album. I mean, we talked about the Jeff Buckley Grace album, nothing superficially being that new. Everything about The Downward Spiral felt new to me at the time, even though now I listen to it and I can hear it's kind of a melting pot of industrial music. There's a lot of Depeche Mode in there. There's a lot of metal in there. There are good songs too, but everything is beautifully polished. I mean, industrial music traditionally was very lo-fi. You know, kind of amateurish in a good way, sort of outsider music. This is not amateurish. This is just incredibly produced. The production is polished. And also he was a great showman. He knew how to put on a great show too. But The Downward Spiral for me, and I listen to it now, it's still like a textbook of possibilities of production. It's just dynamic and there are still sounds on this record to me. I mean, unfortunately, one of the problems I think he had with the record is that it almost became a self-defining record in his career, that everything else after. It was so advanced. Everything else after this has kind of been. To the point, I don't know if you've seen, you might have seen, there's a clip on YouTube. There's somebody did a piss take called, "This is a Trent Reznor song." And it's almost like taking all the cliches of Nine Inch Nails and kind of homing in on them, which is a little bit unfair. But there are certain things, there are certain gestures that are very, very familiar to Nine Inch Nails fans and Trent Reznor fans, and they're all kind of encapsulated beautifully on The Downward Spiral. Obviously, "Hurt" was made very famous as a song in the Johnny Cash version. I still prefer the Nine Inch Nails version myself.
Speaker 3Yeah, I prefer the Johnny Cash version. I love both, but Johnny Cash definitely has the edge for me.
Speaker 2But it's absolutely dazzling as a production, isn't it?
Speaker 3Absolutely dazzling. I think it is. And I think I was drawn to it originally because I'd read some interviews with Trent Reznor. And because he was American, I don't think he quite had the same sort of fashion dictates that he had in Britain. So in Britain at the time, Melody Maker and Amie were very critical of everything. They were anything old. And so when he was being interviewed about it, and you may or may not remember this, he was talking about albums like Peter Gabriel's Three and Four and Pink Floyd's The Wall as being seminal albums for him. And I was drawn to that and the fact that Russell Mills, who did the amazing artwork for it, had also done sleeves for David Silvian and Japan, so that immediately grabbed me. And when I heard it, like Stephen, I loved the dynamics in the music and the fact that it was kind of going from sophisticated. Mysticated electropop to industrial metal, but it had an edge, it had a quality, an emotional depth that perhaps comes from his obsession with Roger Waters eras, era Pink Floyd and so on. There was certainly a lot of influences in Nine Inch Nails that made it special and he
Speaker 2transcended them. That's about the only thing about it that sounds like it's from. The conceptual rock aspect to it does kind of hark back, as you say, to things like The Wall. about it that sounds slightly nostalgic isn't it everything else about it is so modern yeah
Speaker 3it's so new well at the time it was lumped in with Marilyn Manson wasn't it well he was producing Marilyn Manson at the time
Speaker 2Marilyn Manson was like for me it was like the cartoon version of Nine Inch Nails do you know what I'm sort of you know what I'm talking about it was kind of all all the populist elements of Nine Inch Nails but Nine Inch Nails it really feels like art to me it's industrial it's synth pop it's noise it's metal it's hardcore well also as
Speaker 3a conceptual and musical arc it gives the light this idea you know we still know people who say well really music's never been the same since the 60s and 70s and in terms of pure ambition and scope that has it in spades I think it completely
Speaker 2does so anyway just spoiler alert this is definitely one of my going to be in contender for my album of the year let's move on some other entries in the art rock category this year Bark Psychosis Hex somebody here knows that record you We really like Bark Psychosis now maybe this gentleman here with these guys down here will will agree or disagree but for me this is the start of the influence of almost the legacy of Talk Talk begins kick in and this is the beginning of what we kind of think of as post-rock isn't it
Speaker 3I suppose it is I mean it's very very influenced by Talk Talk if you don't know it's a really nocturnal album with a sleeve that echoes that and it does sound as if because actually they started off as a more experimental noise band didn't they but this album yeah but this album is almost 100% influenced by the last two Talk Talk well I disagree because I
Speaker 2listened to it again and I and I didn't hear as much I don't think it's a carbon copy of Talk Talk the Talk Talk influence is I think the
Speaker 3vocals are very different for a start
Speaker 2yeah yeah there's something about the idea of them deconstructing the song which is very relatable to Talk Talk and also the kind of use of space and silence and it's kind of exploring an area somewhere between beauty noise and silence yeah and that is kind of what gives it that Talk Talk palette in a way I think
Speaker 3the drums as well have a very drums have that
Speaker 2very Talk Talky roomy sound yeah but the voice the voice is actually compared to Mark Holley it's a very underachieving voice it's a very shoegazy sort of natural kind of a weak voice but it kind of works
Speaker 3oh it really works I think the whole album has this hypnotic narcotic nocturnal feel that you just drags you in and as you say it's kind of the first example of Talk Talk who at the time again people forget you know I'm talking about when Nine Inch Nails were discussing Pink Floyd and Peter Gable in the British press if you said that at the time you would be laughed out of a room and the same with Talk Talk I mean the last couple of Talk Talk albums we now see them as classics but I'm here to tell you the NME one out of ten review was not very positive and they may now say it's an all-time classic but these albums Rain Tree Crow being another one which was a personal favorite but they loved Bark Psychosis I remember they loved them so by that time yeah it'd been by that time
Speaker 2Talk Talk beginning to be but it's only three
Speaker 3years two and a half three years yeah but some of these albums have been absolutely slaughtered as pretentious poetic wastes of space you
Speaker 2know well quality will out there you go so I don't know would you would you agree with that that description of the album no a perfect description thank you very much can we put that on the poster put on the website okay yeah it's it's kind of the beginning in a way I mean post-rock became a very big thing a few years later the whole of the bands coming up Chicago bands like Tortoise Godspeed You Black Emperor it's kind of the beginning of that aesthetic isn't it the beginning of that aesthetic isn't it the beginning of that aesthetic isn't it the beginning of that kind of approach to music deconstructing the song space texture not being afraid you know that idea of just building and building and building throwing in a string quartet in the middle of the song for no reason and like the
Speaker 3Talk Talk you can't necessarily think of individual tracks that you would hum or point out as classics it works as an album as a whole which is why it's a great choice for this yeah
Speaker 2so other album but just a couple of other other examples and just one more example in the art rock category Divine Comedy Promenade Tim you're a Promenade Tim you're a fan of Divine Comedy I've never really listened to them but um and I remember you talked about them over the years to me
Speaker 3yeah massive fan I mean this was the first album where he really finds his voice he was an incredible talent at a very early age quite precocious but this album it's mainly him with string quartets it was such an unusual album for the time because it was closer to Michael Nyman's soundtrack work with Peter Greenaway but with his very literate lyrics and his slightly Scott Walker and influenced voice but he always had more of a sense of humor so this was before they really struck gold in the later mid-90s but you could see what a massive talent he was beautiful sweeping melodies an obsession with Europe and as I've said almost this Michael Nyman
Speaker 2Europe the band the final countdown the final countdown big influence understandable yeah it wasn't
Speaker 3but in Europe itself as a continent okay I'm disappointed the
Speaker 2grand buildings of Harlem let's move on to another category now this dovetails beautifully into the next category electronic and IDM now in 1994 this is probably the music I was most interested in because for me the mid-90s is a golden era for electronic music the way technology is driving electronic music and interesting because one of the first times we're going to talk about in this category is Underworld's Dub No Bass with my head man now Underworld were interesting because they were essentially they've been a synth pop group and they transitioned into more of an electronic dance sound, kind of post-Detroit techno sound. But what made them special was the use of vocals. Yeah. And so they had this lead vocalist who wasn't an anonymous R&B singer. He was quite quirky. The way he approached lyrics was in this very kind of cut up stream of consciousness way. And I think I'm going to be right in saying to him, this is probably the only thing on the electronic list that you genuinely like. And the reason you genuinely like it, because I know you, is because of that humanising element of the lead voice, Carl Hyde's lead voice.
Speaker 3Would I be right? You're pretty right. Yeah. I love this album and Carl Hyde is a major reason why I love this album. And I saw Underworld Live as well and they were stunning. Again, it's this mesmerising, almost hypnotic, somewhere between, I would say, beat culture, dance culture. But again, that Philip Glass, Steve Wright repetition. And he was quite a charismatic performer, quite entertaining, with these incredible beat-influenced lyrics, flashes of melody, wonderful observations of British cultural life. I mean, there's a real poetry in Underworld Live. Very surreal though, isn't it? I mean, like titles like Skyscraper, I Love You,
Speaker 2you know, things like that. But I think the point I'm making is if you take Carl Hyde, if you take his voice off those tracks, they're fairly generic. I mean, I like them, don't get me wrong. They're fairly generic techno tracks, aren't they?
Speaker 3I still think they're interesting because they have. I think they're a cut above, yeah. They have unusual shifts. I think the thing is with Underworld, suddenly you will get beautiful chords that come in from nowhere. And their background actually is more peculiar than what you're saying because they started off as a band called Frere and they were an electro pop band in the early 80s. They then became Underworld and Underworld were produced by Rupert Hine.
Speaker 2And Connie Plank.
Speaker 3And they supported the Eurythmics, I think, on various tours. And they had a couple of hits in mainland Europe but were unknown in Britain. But it was actually a relatively conventional funk, electro pop style band. And then they come from out of nowhere with this, in a way. It's an astonishing reinvention. So this was actually their third album, though to all intents and purposes, it was a fresh beginning for the band. And what a fresh beginning for the band. And it was a fresh beginning for the band. And what a fresh beginning. And, you know, for me, I think they're one of those bands that have continued to be idealistic and continued to be slippy in that sense in terms of the definitions of their music.
Speaker 2I really like them very much. It wouldn't be my favourite album of theirs. I think Second Tublist and Infants would be my favourite. But it's a fantastic record, very much a sign of the times. Now, let's talk about the rest of the electronic music that you're not so interested in, because it's essentially, it's all instrumental electronic music. How many people here are familiar, with Oval, the band Oval, the artist Oval? Yeah. So this is the beginning of another, almost an invention of a genre, which is the kind of glitch, like glitch-based electronic music, the gentleman here will know. And Oval were, became almost infamous for using CDs that were skipping as the fundaments to their music. You know, even though there is this kind of intellectual conceit at the core of the music, it's glitch-based electronic music. And glitch-based electronic music became very popular after this. Bjork worked with Marcus Popp. You can hear a lot of it on Vespertine. Glitchtronica, artists like Ortega started to embrace glitch music as well. There was a whole scene for a time based around the idea of glitch electronic music. But it kind of, you know, it's, you know, it's a bit of an old-fashioned thing, but it's a bit of an old-fashioned thing. But it kind of starts here for me with this record. And it's, for me, it's still the classic of the genre. I find it actually incredibly emotional. There's something about the sound of malfunctioning technology. In the same way, and if I could draw an analogy here, that for years, I mean, we're at a vinyl festival here. For years, the sound of scratching and crackle on vinyl used to drive people that collected records crazy. And then as soon as everyone transitioned to CDs, there was almost this nostalgia for the sound of crackling vinyl to the extent that you'd get all these crate diggers, you know, kind of enhancing the crackle.
Speaker 3Well, we've both done it as well. I put loads of vinyl crackle on a lot of my music. On a number of our pieces.
Speaker 2Yeah. And I think there's something a little bit. There's something beautiful about the sound of malfunctioning technology. In the same way, and without wishing to be pretentious here, there's something about what attracts us to other human beings. It's not the perfection, it's the imperfection. That actually hooks us in. Why do we fall in love with our partners? It's the quirks. It's not the perfect thing. The most beautiful woman in the world wouldn't necessarily make you fall in love with them. It's the quirks. And there's something about. And I feel this is something that's been. Without wishing to, you know, be one of those old men sort of screaming at the clouds. There's something about pop music in 2024 that's too perfect, too polished. I don't hear the quirks anymore. All I hear is auto-tune and beat detective. And when I listen to things like Oval, the sound of the CD malfunctioning makes me feel something emotional. I can't. I don't know if you'd agree with me, sir. You're a fan of this record, right? I'm assuming, yeah. There's something incredibly beautiful and emotionally affecting about it, isn't it? You're looking for unusual rhythms. And I think one of the ways you can find unusual rhythms is to introduce that random element. So if you have a CD that's skipping, there's no way you can control that. And the rhythm kind of. creates itself. And that becomes something really, to me, quite emotionally binding.
Speaker 3But I think as well, it's an era, isn't it, where things are still being defined, still being discovered. You know, we're talking about these albums. And even though we're well into the album years and we're well into. At this stage, I suppose, DAT would have been the most advanced studio technology, which we'd just got for the No Man's Album, Flower Mouth. We'd finally got our DAT system set up, the ADATs and so on. But there were still imperfections. All that possibility. There was a lot of imperfections in early digital technology, yeah. Which now there is less. There's nothing, yeah. You know, certainly, as you were saying, in terms of sort of beats and in terms of vocals, we live in that age of perfection, which is crushingly
Speaker 2boring a lot of the time. And it's interesting that we talk about modern pop music. And I think one of the reasons why the album years, we kind of define it as being mid-60s to pretty much the end of the millennium, is that music in the 21st century has increasingly become. perfect. To the point now that if you listen to records from the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, you can hear the tempo changing. Yeah. The band are speeding up. Listen to the beginning of Money and the end of Money on Dark Side of the Moon.
Speaker 3There's some dodgy tuning on some of the best records of all time.
Speaker 2You know, people like Morrissey now, you listen to Morrissey now and you realise just how out of tune he's singing. I love Morrissey, don't get me wrong. We're going to talk about Morrissey later. But all of these little quirks now would be ironed out. Yeah. And are ironed out.
Speaker 3Well, I'm sure that, you know, in the underground there's going to be some kind of revolt against perfection and there will be records that do this. But it's not in the mainstream. I think that's my point.
Speaker 2All of those records are not in the mainstream. Sure. Some other great electronic records released. Tim's not really a fan of electronic music, so I'm just going to. I am. Some of my favourite other records from this year. Plastic Man music, the Prodigy music for the Jilted Generation. I mean, that's an interesting example. That was an electronic artist who was having number one hits at the time.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah. Well, also they fused Metallica. I mean, in some ways there's a kind of British Nine Inch Nails in that they're fusing electro-pop and metal elements as well. Well, not really on this album. On the following album, yeah. Fat of the Land. I was listening to it last night.
Speaker 2Okay. Yeah, it's quite aggressive.
Speaker 3Yeah, it is very aggressive
Speaker 2in a way that a lot of that music wasn't. Yeah. But I just think, again, Liam Howlett, the main guy from the Prodigy, was actually a great. He could write songs. He could write. Even though they weren't songs necessarily, the tracks unfolded in a way that kept you interested. They had a kind of song-like pop sensibility to them. I don't know how else to explain it. Or Tekka, one of my favourite electronic artists of all time. Their second album this year, Amber. Biosphere, Orbital released a great album, Snibilisation this year. Anyway, let's move on to things that we know nothing about. I think you're going to say we're Aphex Twin. No, we're going to talk about that in a minute. That comes in the ambient section. We're going to talk about a section here. Now, myself and Tim, we try, we do try to talk about music because we want to cover all the important music from this year. But hip-hop and R&B, as you can probably imagine, is not really our milieu, to say the least.
Speaker 3Well, I think R&B from the 60s, 70s and even 80s probably is, but.
Speaker 2Not for me, really. But anyway, if you say so. Okay, I don't really. I've never been particularly an R&B kind of person. But, unless you're talking Marvin Gaye, but hip-hop and R&B, there are some very big records released this year. The biggest selling record of the year was by a group called TLC. Crazy, sexy, cool. Right, who honestly can put their hand up here and say they know and love that record? You do? That's fine. Don't be embarrassed. Don't be embarrassed about it. I'm embarrassed that I don't know anything about it. But the interesting thing is, it was the biggest selling, the biggest selling record, 15 million copies. I'm presuming most of those were in America, but I think it probably was a big record internationally.
Speaker 3I remember the singles. Do you? I remember them being on TV, yeah. Name them. I can't. It's on the chart show, obviously. So, I. Top of the Pops, it would be on.
Speaker 2I'm sure it was on. I did do my research. I did go and listen to TLC's Crazy, Sexy, Cool. And I can't honestly say I recognise any of the songs, even though many of them have been multi-billion selling. They're triple platinum records. The one thing I was struck by is I can draw a very strong line between this record and what's going on in pop right now. Pop music these days is very much led by female R&B divas, isn't it? The most dominant artists in popular culture these days are female, which is great, by the way. Don't get me wrong, that's amazing. You're Dua Lipa's, you're Ariana Grande's. And I can hear. Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift. Less so. I think Taylor Swift's a bit more diverse than that. She comes from the country background. But Beyoncé. But these, I can kind of see the seeds of that in this album released 30 years ago, TLC. But I tell you what's different about it. It's pre-autotune. It's pre-beat detective. I could still hear the grain in the music. I could still hear. the sound of real instruments. I could still hear the sound of real voices, not always perfectly in tune. I can still hear there is a lineage between what they're doing and, say, what Aretha Franklin was doing 20, 30 years ago, before that. I cannot hear that at all, at all in modern R&B music. I cannot hear it at all. But at this point in time, I can still hear. And this is based, just listen to two or three songs. That's all I'm basing this on right now. But in my ignorance, I can still hear the influence of classic R&B and classic soul music in this music. It still has a grain to it. Here's a record that, again, I did not know at all. And I have to say, I'm very impressed. Very impressed. Nas, Illimatic. Okay. A lot more people know that record. Okay. I didn't, okay. I wasn't listening to hip hop. I didn't listen to hip hop music at the time. I was actually very impressed, I've got to say. I think the thing for me always with American hip hop music is it's sometimes it's very hard to relate to the lyrical content. And you know, ultimately, I was hearing a lot of words that I associate with the kind of archetypal hip hop guns, bass heads, hoes, all that stuff. And I'm sorry, I'm a white middle class English boy. It doesn't really speak to me about my life. Growing up in Hemel Hempstead, seeing Merillion, the local club, you know, on a Tuesday night. It didn't speak to me. But I have to say, musically, I was pretty blown away with this record. The invention in the backing tracks was very strong. Even though the lyrics don't relate to my life, I have to say there was some, there was a few lines that jumped out at me and said, "Fucking hell, that's brilliant." I don't sleep because sleep is the cousin of death is the one that springs to mind. What a great line. What a great line. What a great line. So I think, you know, there is a sense that it depends on your musical upbringing, your musical culture, how you come across music, how you engage with music. Hip hop music is difficult for me as a middle class white boy growing up in England, sometimes to find a doorway into this world of American hip hop. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3I do. I mean, for me, when I listen to albums, because we did have, you know, I loved Public Enemy. I loved the violence and their music and some of the daisy age hip hop. Hip hop as well, I really liked. That's a few years earlier than this though. It is. And when I listen to this, it's almost like when I'm listening to the electronic or ambient albums from this year that I'm listening to it from a musical point of view. So I love the really unusual juxtaposition of quite avant-garde jazz cut-ups. So I'm listening to it almost as an ambient experience. And I like it. I really like the use of cut-ups, the use of samples.
Speaker 2So let's move on. Let's move on. We're going to talk ambient here, which is kind of, you know, a little bit of a classic. very close relation of electronic IDM. And obviously we could have put this in the category here. Apex Twin, one of my heroes, Richard D. James, fucking genius. Selected Ambient Works 2 came out this year. And funnily enough, it's just about to be reissued. In fact, we've got the reissue here. Not released yet. Don't steal it because it's not released yet. There it is. There's the reissue. There you go. Have you ordered that already? I have. So now Tim, you've always been a bit Apex sceptic, haven't you? Let's face it. I think he's a genius. You've always thought he's a bit of a chancer, haven't you? Come on, let's face it. So you always say Brian Eno invented all kinds of music. I say Richard James invented all electronic music since 1990.
Speaker 3I like it. The thing is, this sort of category of music, the electronic, the ambient, I automatically like it all. But I don't automatically feel massively attracted to it or enthusiastic. So this album I bought at the time of release. I liked it. It went to the back of my collection straight away. Yeah, I was more interested in the Jeff Buckley, more interested in the Nine Inch Nails because they gripped me emotionally. It's not saying it's bad. And I did listen to it again for the podcast. And I do really, really like it. So it's not something that I poo poo. Contrary to Mr. Wilson's comments. Right.
Speaker 2Well, you told me that when you first listened to it, you thought it was really dull and really uninteresting. So there you go. Now, 30 years later, I'm glad to hear you've slightly revised your opinion. Now, here's my case here. This album invented for me a form of music, which I know you do like, the hauntological thing. Now, hauntological, people who don't know, hauntological music is a form of music which I know you do like, the hauntological thing. Now, hauntological, people who don't know, hauntological music is kind of, well, I guess the best way you could summarize it is it's electronic or ambient music which somehow sounds like it's beaming in from the past. So there's an artist that we both like called The Caretaker, for example, who his music set is all constructed from, sounds like it's all constructed from like 1920s, '78 records. But filtered through a kind of modern electronic processing. So it's both modern, but it also sounds like it's coming from a million years ago. Richard D. James invented the hauntological thing. And, you know, I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing. Richard D. James invented that form of music in 1904. No man's death and dodgy dream child. Richard D. And here's my proof. No, here's my proof. Right. So this is track five. All the tracks were untitled. Here's track five from Aphex Twins, Selected Ambient Works, Volume 2. Hauntological music. The texture, something's happening there. But also, he's doing something quite unusual in electronic music, which he's using microtones, which is, he's not using the conventional, you know, 12 tone scale. He's deliberately detuning things to give you even more of a feeling of discomfort, queasiness. It's uncomfortable. It's very, it's very sinister to me.
Speaker 3I see. I really like this, but I'm hearing someone's voice. I'm immediately conjuring melodies in my head.
Speaker 2Yeah, this is what I say with you about the, I can kind of, I can kind of predict exactly what electronic artists you're going to like. It's the ones where there's a strong solo voice, sometimes a singer. Yeah. And then there's the ones where there's a strong solo voice.
Speaker 4Yeah. Yeah. High food costs and changes to nutrition programs can strain family budgets. Your donation can help nourish families. When budgets strain, your gift sustains. Give now at feedingamerica.org slash community response.
PodcastTranscript AI