If I was to compile a list of my top five emcees, MF DOOM would definitely be at the top of that list. I never fail to be impressed by his lyrical agility and deft wordplay. Yet, across his expansive output, with projects spanning a variety of aliases, it is this, his first Viktor Vaughn album that has stayed with me the most.
All the hallmarks that make him such an exemplary rapper are present and correct: the funny, surreal lyrics, the seemingly effortless manner in which he toys with words, and the quirky patchwork of old cartoon and TV show samples that segue the tracks, not to mention that distinct drawl. For me, 'Vaudeville' features what I consider to be some of his best work, the abstract, electronica of some of this album's tracks particularly standing out to me for obvious reasons.
One of my favourite things about DOOM's music is the way you discover new things within his rhymes every time you listen. It's similar to the feeling you get when you re-watch a well-written film and discover a new element you'd previously overlooked. This, of course, is testament to DOOM's remarkable skill and craft.
Not really much to say about this one, to be honest.
A beautiful, chilled album that, over time, endeared itself to me that little bit more with every play. It's one I like to play when I'm reading, having a bath, or trying to sleep. Solid, well made electronica that's left a lasting impression.
When it comes down to it, there are two types of people in the world:
Mac people and PC people (Mac!).
Cat people and dog people (dogs are cool, but I like cats more).
Korn people and Deftones people. Well...
Back in the day, that day being the mid-90s, I never, ever understood the fuss about Korn. Of the two bands, I heard them first, but I just didn't get it. I found their aesthetic too heavy-handed, and frontman Jonathan Davies' candid lyrics and "tortured soul" posturing cringeworthy and irritating. The banal, lumpen riffs they bashed out didn't help either. A lot of my friends liked them, but I didn't. In fact, I couldn't. They just annoyed me.
Soon after, I heard about Deftones and was reliably informed that they were similar, which immediately jaundiced my opinion of them. However, I found, upon listening this wasn't really true. Sure, the first Deftones track I heard, namely '7 Words', bore some similarities to what Korn were trying to do, but Deftones was a different beast, and hearing their debut 'Adrenaline' further cemented this to me. And yeah, the first album was decent (if somewhat inchoate), but the second album? Now that was good.
I think it was around 1998 when I first heard 'Around the Fur' and I was immediately impressed. Compared to 'Adrenaline', the production was fuller and the songs had more impact. What the debut record merely hinted at had finally been realised. In contrast to Korn, Deftones' strengths always lay in the elliptical poetry of their lyrics, the eclecticism (more apparent on later albums), the artful blending of sensuality, and darkness, and the inimitable range of Chino Moreno's vocals. From listening, it was clear that their influences lay beyond the obvious touchstones you'd expect from such a band, delivered with a sense of style Korn could only dream of mustering.
Deftones' heaviest moments are almost elemental in their intensity, but underneath it all is a sensitivity and elegance that really makes the music stand out, and 'Around the Fur' was the first Deftones album to really show me just how powerful that could be and it has stayed with me for that reason.
REM was one of the first proper bands I got into in my mid-teens. Prior to that, I mostly listened to C64 chiptunes, Jean Michel Jarre (eek!) and a side helping of assorted chart music. That's right, I'm not even going to pretend I was too cool for that shit back then. I wasn't. I was an adolescent, and in the same manner that I was developing, so was my appreciation of music. Anyway, it might come as no surprise to learn that my first encounter with REM was through 'Shiny Happy People', which in turn, piqued my interest in their 'Out of Time' album a bit later on.
When hearing REM for the first time, something about them intrigued me, and I could immediately perceive this was a band of hidden depths. I liked Michael Stipe's voice and was fascinated by his strange and often oblique lyrics. The music itself was also compelling and interesting to me as it was quite different to a lot of the music I was used to hearing. It was one of my first introductions to "alternative music" during a time when it was starting to gain prominence.
Anyway, I borrowed 'Out of Time' from my local library, taped it and played the shit out of it. Being new to the band, I was then to discover that REM had a huge back catalogue that stretched a long way back; long before I even knew they existed. That same library introduced me to some more of their earlier works, but it was 'Green' that really grabbed my attention and somehow, my sixteen-year-old self fell in love with that album straight away. It had rockier numbers counterbalanced with quieter, acoustic tracks, all sewn together by Stipe's enigmatic poetry. To say I loved this album would be an understatement.
A few years later 'Automatic for the People' hit, and again, I played it to death, but I always came back to 'Green', even with the releases that would follow in the years to come. REM is one of the key formative bands that helped shape my growing interest in music as a teenager, providing me with music that the shy, awkward outcast I was then could really connect with. I tend to look back on those developmental years with a sense of retrospective embarrassment, but it was there that I was introduced to music that would influence on the person I would eventually become, and 'Green' was a very important album in that process.
Now, this is an interesting entry for many reasons. I wasn't even going to include this here, owing to the fact that my favourite Bjork album is actually 'Vespertine', the follow up to this. However, as much as I like that album, I don't consider it an all-time favourite because it hasn't stayed with me the way this one has. I know, that probably doesn't make a lot of sense to you reading this so I will try to explain.
'Homogenic' was actually the first Bjork album I ever bought. I was introduced through an old school friend who played it to me one night at his house. Prior to that, I was aware of Bjork, but somewhat indifferent. When her first two albums hit, I was engrossed in the world metal, and therefore not really interested in anything that wasn't metal, so Bjork and the hype that surrounded her completely passed me by. In the years that followed, I moved on to different things, but in those explorations, didn't even consider Bjork's music until said friend brought it to my attention. And it was then that I realised how foolish I was in overlooking her before.
Homogenic to me was a work of genius: the blending of orchestral and electronic sounds, whilst not such a big deal today, wasn't very common back in the late 90s, yet Bjork made it sound so effortless and natural. Even in those rockier days, I was never one of those types to dismiss electronic music as "soulless" or not being "real music". I understood there was more to it than simply pushing a button on a computer that magically created music all by itself, a lazy argument often made by people who know nothing about electronic music production. I mention this because 'Homogenic' was, at the time one of the most vital albums I'd ever heard, introducing me to Bjork's enduring trick of making electronics sound organic and alive.
Hearing this album had a huge effect on me, and from there, I went back to her previous works and religiously devoured everything that followed 'Homogenic'. To this day, Bjork remains one of my heroes - I absolutely LOVE what she does. Whilst I understand she isn't for everyone and can appreciate those who may be put off by her idiosyncrasies, I would not have her any other way.
So yes, overall I do consider 'Vespertine' to be my favourite, but in many respects, it was a continuation of 'Homogenic', the first album to introduce me to Bjork and the first to completely blow me away, and for that reason alone, I consider it an all-time favourite of mine.
I've never been one of those people who was crazy about The Cure. Whilst they have some decent albums and great songs, for the most part, their output has been pretty hit and miss for me overall.
Of their albums, the ones that have stood out the most for me are 'Faith', 'Disintegration' and of course, this one. Innuendos aside, 'Pornography' ticks all the right boxes for me: the relentlessly brooding atmosphere, moody synths, icy guitars and thunderous programmed beats all combine to create a beautifully dark album which The Cure have never ever come close to matching again. Every time I play this album, I am utterly overwhelmed by the sheer force of lead track One Hundred Years' textural guitar chords, carrying the terrible weight of crashing waves, or perhaps the gravity at the centre of a black hole. It really draws me into the album, and the dark journey to follow.
I recall a particularly dark phase in my life where this album spoke to me, resonating with how I felt. It played a big part in helping me cope with the chaos I was suddenly surrounded by. It has stayed with me ever since, even though that storm has long passed.
'Pornography' then is a testament to the affecting power of music, and how it can be there for you when nobody else is, and in a way that no other person ever could be. My story had a happy ending, but I don't know where I would've been in those days if it wasn't for this album.
I still remember the dumbfounded look I wore when my good friend asked me: "So what era of Velvet Underground are you into?". All I could say was "Err...".
As you might've guessed, I wasn't into any VU whatsoever at this point. Not for any particular reason, I just hadn't really happened upon their music. We've all been there. We all have bands or artists that we hear of and intend to check out, but fall off our radar. Very occasionally, we remind ourselves and say "Yeah, I must get round to checking them out at some point", but never do. So much music, so little time and sadly, something has to give.
Had I not met said friend, and had he not asked the above question, VU would've remained as such a band for me, and I would've missed out on a blinding record, one that is arguably foundational to much of the music I own.
I first heard 'White Light...' when visiting my friend one evening for a gaming session. It was just a group of us guys in his flat getting stoned and playing video games and he'd sometimes play music he liked as we waited for everyone to show up. The first thing that struck me about this album was the chaos and dissonance. Of course, being more than familiar with a lot of 80s and 90s noise and alt-rock, it wasn't new to me, but hearing it on a record from 1968 was utterly shocking. What's more, as it would be at least another 20 years before guitar music would dare to be noisy in this way again, it meant that WLWH was completely ahead of its time.
So that's how I ended up being turned on to this album. I could not fail to appreciate its prescience and the fact that it happily sat alongside some of my more contemporaneous music without sounding out of place. This was the kind of 60s I could genuinely dig. And then my mind split open...
This album completely blindsided me. I went in not expecting much and was more than pleasantly surprised. You see, I tend to be somewhat ambivalent about solo albums. At best, you gain a clearer understanding of an individual member's contributions to their host band, but at worst, you can get what feels more like a cut down version of the host band's material. To give a good example, as much as I mostly enjoyed 'The Eraser' by Thom Yorke, some of its tracks felt like underdeveloped Radiohead songs to me.
As earlier entries attest, I really, really like Hungry Ghosts, and the fact that we may never see a new album from them saddens me every day. But, this is how I ended up with this album; by this point, I'd already sought out all of Hungry Ghosts' releases, and, somewhat resigned, realised this was the closest I was going to get to brand new material. A "cut down" solo album was better than nothing, I reasoned.
As above, I went in not really expecting much, and even though I knew this wasn't Hungry Ghosts, I hoped it would be similar in some way. Were my hopes met? Well, yes and no. Inevitably, there are some similarites (which is to be expected), but on the whole, 'Sad is Blue' really is a very different beast, sounding more like the soundtrack to an arthouse film. Recorded by Shilo on a 4-track at a Buddhist retreat, the album's eclectic suite features ambient mood pieces, bizarre cabaret, piano dirges, post-rock, noise, dark Lynchian Jazz (hear below) and something that would not sound at all out of place in a silent movie. It is an unapologetically schizophrenic affair that is refreshingly unclassifiable... and I absolutely love it for that. What's more, despite the vast array of styles on display, it still manages to remain consistent. It also goes without saying that my initial cynicism was entirely misplaced.
I have mostly played this during my morning commute, in the evenings when I'm reading or at night when I want to fall asleep. As such, the album has embedded itself into my subconscious and through repeated plays, has become something of an obsession, which is how it has earned a place here amongst other sounds that made me.
And JP Shilo, if by some remote chance you're reading this, please release some new music soon. You're killing me here.
