The summer always tends to be a bit quiet for new releases, which gives us a chance to roll back a few months and pick up some of the things we missed at the time. Here’s a great one, from January – Visage, with their latest compilation The Wild Life: The Best of Extended Versions and Remixes 1978 to 2015. Sounds fantastic!
In all, between 2014 and 2015, this blog posted 66 beginner’s guides. The idea was to present six things:
They were very popular – in fact, for a long time, Depeche Mode‘s was the most popular post on this blog, and while that does suggest to me that it reached the wrong audience slightly, it’s still a good thing. They were also divisive – inevitably, people disagreed with a lot of what I wrote and told me so in angry or passive-aggressive ways. This is the internet, after all.
So what’s happened since they were written? Here are some highlights:
You can find the index to all the beginner’s guides here.
Every so often, the random jukebox picks out something very special. I chose to delay this one a little, as we had Olive fairly recently, but you can’t really not love You’re Not Alone. Number 1 from 1997.
It’s a quarter of a century since rave happened. Specifically, it was 25 years this week that Moby‘s debut album Moby was released. For the preceding couple of years, he had been churning out 12″ singles under various pseudonyms, and so most of his early albums really seem to be compilations rather than actual albums. Having said that, it’s still annoying to me that the version that I own of this album has a slightly different track listing to the original one, and so I had to search around on YouTube to find the first track. Mind you, the UK release, The Story So Far, has a completely different selection of tracks altogether.
Anyway, having tracked the original album down, it opens with the slightly daft rave piece Drop a Beat, a single from early 1992 which would not have sounded entirely out of place on an early record by The Prodigy.
It’s fair to say this album hasn’t entirely aged well. Everything, originally from 1991’s UHF EP, is better, particularly when the house piano arrives, but it still all feels as though you have stepped out of a time machine into the early 1990s, rather than a coherent album track. I gather that’s what Moby thinks as well.
Yeah is less inspired, and then comes Electricity, which was previously the b-side to Drop a Beat, is a bit dull, but is one of the more pleasant tracks on here. Next is Next is the E, or I Feel It, as it was renamed for the UK charts. Quite why this was picked as the second UK single is a total mystery unless you imagine yourself in a sweaty early 1990s, drug-fuelled haze, at which point it starts to make some kind of sense.
Mercy is one of Moby‘s ambient moments – a little out of place here perhaps, and there isn’t a lot to it, but it’s one of the best things so far on here. It leads us on to the Woodtick mix of Go, the huge single which had just taken Europe by storm and probably led to the release of this album in the first place. It had originally appeared on the Mobility EP as his first release in late 1990.
It’s difficult to know what to say about Go – it’s certainly Moby‘s finest hour, and honestly if this album hadn’t existed then it would have been another five years or so before this turned up on one, which would have been a lot less than it deserved. It’s so good! Those huge string chords from Twin Peaks, the enormous drums. Not to mention the millions of alternative mixes, which we probably didn’t need.
Help Me to Believe follows, released under the Mindstorm and Brainstorm pseudonyms in 1991. It’s definitely nice to have something that’s fairly pure dance music, but not nearly as manic or crazy as most of the things on the first half of the album. You do get the feeling that probably isn’t going to last long though.
Your gut is right, although Have You Seen My Baby?, silly though it is, isn’t too offensive. Ah-Ah is much more what you might expect from a rave track, but it bounces along without causing too much trouble. Maybe it just feels less of an affront on the senses by this stage in the album.
Slight Return is next, definitely belonging on the Ambient album rather than here. It’s a very sweet piece, and although it doesn’t really go anywhere in particular, it’s difficult not to enjoy. The same is true for Stream, which has some lovely gentle tribal drumming and lots of pads. It’s a world away from the first few tracks on here.
And that’s about it. Except that the German CD closes with Thousand, which has pretty much nothing going for it except for the concept, and therefore also the title. It’s silly, but fun.
But Moby was the album that introduced us to Moby, the eccentric multi-instrumentalist who periodically sets the world alight
Perhaps surprisingly, Moby is still widely available.
Here’s the second single and title track from Erasure‘s latest album World Be Gone. Out this week.
Here are the albums this week:
One of the things I really wanted to do when I started this blog five years ago was to try to do anything I could to help unsigned artists. I had tried previously, actually, on a radio show, and had found that a lot of unsigned acts couldn’t get their, um, “act” together to make it work as a cohesive feature, and so it only really ran three of four times before falling in flames.
The unsigned feature on this blog lasted a little longer, and did showcase some interesting acts, but it also opened me up to a lot of artists who for one reason or another weren’t appropriate for the blog, and one or two people who didn’t take that news too well. These are the perils of doing anything on the internet.
But let’s take a look at those who did make it, and see what they have been up to!
First covered on my radio show in February 2005, and then subsequently looked at in detail on this blog in November 2012, this Danish duo seem to have entered a quiet phase in their career. Looking at their Soundcloud, their last new tracks were the ones we covered here five years ago, and there have been a few DJ mixes since then, but not a lot of activity.
We covered this Irish acoustic act back in November 2012, and looking at his Soundcloud account he’s been very busy recently. His Bandcamp page includes ten releases since we last spoke to him, including acoustic tracks and film soundtracks.
Covered back in August 2013, when he was between albums, he seems to have released three new albums in the last few years, all of which are available on his Bandcamp page.
We first covered Jon’s debut album in November 2012, and when we visited him again the following year, he had just released another album. He’s now part of a label that I need to look into further called The People’s Electric, and recently released an album called Skylines.
Introduced to this blog back in November 2012, this UK-based act was still busy a year or so later, including proudly posting one of his songs that was played on BBC Essex, but he hasn’t pushed much to his Soundcloud recently.
An old favourite of mine from the mp3.com days of the early internet, I first covered them here back in 2013. Things seem to have been quiet for them for a couple of decades now, but you can still enjoy their back catalogue at Soundcloud.
This Brighton-based duo were first covered here back in December 2012 when they had just released their debut album. The following year when we looked again, they had just released another album, but things seem to have been quieter since then.
Featured on my radio show in 2005, unfortunately I don’t have any record any more of who they were, how they got in touch, or where they are now. If you know, please ask them to get in touch!
First covered in August 2013, then revisited later that year when he was in the middle of touring, this flamboyant LA-based artist is now working on his next solo album The White Tomato. More at his official website.
Finally, I think a few more people had filled in the form on the website and asked for coverage. I’ll sit down and actually read those messages and do a feature on them very soon – apologies for the lack of responses if you’re feeling impatient.
Here’s an oldie from Norwegian popsters a-ha: Crying in the Rain.
She had risen pretty much out of nowhere over the preceding decade or so, and could now be regarded as a mature musician. For her fourth and most successful solo album, Beth Orton worked again with one of the stalwarts of what I hesitatingly call “folktronica,” Ben Watt, and also perhaps more surprisingly, Johnny Marr turned up to help out as well.
Daybreaker was released fifteen years ago this week, and opens with a sweet pop song called Paris Train, although there’s little clue in the lyrics why that might be a suitable title. When Orton is at her blandest, her songs are pleasant but distinctly unmemorable, and this is a good example of this.
Concrete Sky is the collaboration with Johnny Marr, and perhaps because of this, it does stand out somewhat, although Mount Washington, which follows, is the first track on here that really gets anywhere close to catchy. Then comes Anywhere, which was the lead single – and deservedly so – it’s probably the best track on the album.
Honestly, it might have sold well, but this isn’t a great album from this point onwards. The title track Daybreaker is pleasantly trippy and has some fun sound effects in it, but it’s not exactly exciting. Carmella and God Song are either pleasant or dull, depending on your perspective. The titles are still pretty perplexing for the most part, as well.
Some of them are witty, at least – This One’s Gonna Bruise, a collaboration with Ryan Adams, is a pleasant listen too. Orton’s haunting vocal breathlessly works its way through the notes, and the contrast with the electronic rhythm of the opening beats of Ted’s Waltz is notable too. But don’t get too excited – there’s nothing that would pass for uptempo on this half of the album.
Maybe not getting excited is exactly the point. There is a nice rhythmic quality to Ted’s Waltz, making it stand out somewhat, and while this might be a downtempo album by its very nature, it certainly isn’t boring. But hopefully it’s also OK to find it a little dull at times.
In which case, closing track Thinking About Tomorrow is entirely appropriate, as it’s forgettable on every level. It’s a shame, but there it is. Ultimately Daybreaker is far from a bad album, but it’s not even Beth Orton‘s finest hour. Get Central Reservation instead.
You should still be able to find Daybreaker at all major retailers.
Oh, well this took long enough. Just sixteen years after Pet Shop Boys started gathering together the definitive versions of their back catalogue on CD, now the set finally continues, with Nightlife, Release, and Fundamental. Packed with an essential set of bonus tracks, each is now available as a double or triple CD set, and this time on heavy vinyl as well!
Music for stowaways 