This is it. My personal top ten. Yours may vary. Contents may settle during shipment. Objects in the rear view mirror may be closer than they appear. Please check “Yes” to indicate that you agree with this end user agreement, which is 200 pages of small print that you’d never read.
10. New Order, Technique. This was and is the perfect New Order record to me - technology meets guitars and you never have an idea, outside of Hooky playing bass and Bernard Sumner’s vocal duties, who does what in the band. This album slides between acid house and that Typical New Order Sound with finesse. “Mr Disco” is my favorite song they’ve ever recorded; haunting lyrics about abandoned love and a danceable beat - it’s “Blue Monday,” but not.
9. Erasure, Erasure. Ambient wizard Thomas Fehlmann came in and opened up the band’s previous pop sound massively, creating huge soundscapes with subtlety where they’d gone for the obvious hooks before. “Fingers And Thumbs (Cold Summer’s Day)” and “Rock Me Gently” are highlights that really show that pop is much more malleable than American Idol would want you to think.
8. Stevie Wonder, Innervisions. A while back, Stevie was asked to compare Talking Book and Innervisions, and he said the former was a collection of better songs but Innervisions was a better overall statement, more thematically coherent and flowing for the listener. I daresay I agree with our favorite blind musician - I love both dearly, but Innervisions has the definite edge. “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” makes life better just for having been created.
7. The Beatles, Revolver. “Eleanor Rigby” and a set of other songs that are just as good with only one clunker, “Yellow Submarine,” that I am alone in my active dislike of. Enough said. No, really. I’m done. It’s a great pop recording and it’s been reviewed to death by two generations of better writers before I came along. Go about your business.
6. DJ Shadow, Endtroducing. Take a white boyfrom the Bay Area with a love for hip hop and give him a record store that lets him trawl in its basement for records to sample. Wait a few years. You’ll get some singles on the Mo’Wax label that tickle a few ears and then this. Deep, murky beats that are a summation of what made hip hop explode in the late 70s and early 80s without being retro in the slightest. If you’ve heard of “trip hop,” you’ll know that this album gets mentioned quite a lot and it’s usually by people who don’t like rap or “urban music” in general. Endtroducing is miles above the stigma that particular genre name has associated with it.
5. Orbital, Orbital 2. It’s an electronic album that’s not ambient, nor is it exactly “dance music.” The Harnolls’ second full-length starts off with a proper suite of five tracks: an introduction and four stomping tunes that create an epic that culminates in the fist-pumping “Remind.” The fact that they manage to go and remix their own “Halcyon” into a stretched out, druggy meditation that bring the listener on the mythical “journey” that so many electronic artists rally around is icing on the (very tasty) cake.
4. Miles Davis, Kind Of Blue. This is generally considered to be not only the greatest selling jazz record of all time, but the perfect introduction for people wondering what all the hubbub’s about. It came along at a perfect time for the jazz scene - big bands had pretty much died and bebop was rapidly finding a way up its own ass when Miles Davis got Julian “Cannonball” Adderly, John Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Bill Evans (and one one track, Wynton Kelly) to try a modal take on half-composed tunes they’d not rehearsed properly and caught lightning in a bottle. The mood is mellow, but the songs never fade to the background - something is always happening that engages you and makes you wonder where else the album is going. A lynchpin to learning more about jazz because you can pick up other records by each performer and broaden your horizons quickly.
3. Pet Shop Boys, Very. and Behaviour. I know, I’m cheating. These two records flip flop based on the time of year - fall and winter belong to the the warm analogue synths and melancholy of Behaviour while spring and summer demand the bright pop madness of Very. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are, I’m sorry to say to all Beatles fans out there, my favorite British songwriting duo. They possess a wit and sensibility that I respond a little too well to or a straight American, with Very being the most English album released since Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. You can do a lot worse than picking these up used if you think the band was just about “West End Girls,” and “Opportunities,” a pair of songs that I am particularly sick of.
2. John Coltrane, A Love Supreme. Writing about this only does it a great injustice - complex, beautiful and pure, this serves as Coltrane’s definitive statement of love towards God and his fellow man. There are moments when you fight back the tears when you hear his tenor working its lyrical voice between Elvin Jones’s insistent polyrhythms as Jimmy Garrison’s bass only adds to the intimacy of the whole affair. Without a single bit of hyperbole, this is mindblowing and important music.
1. Underworld, Dubnobasswithmyheadman. I fucking love Underworld and this album is the reason why. Stream of conciousness lyrics cribbed from page after page of obsessive notetaking on the part of vocalist Karl Hyde, deep grooves constructed by Rick Smith and then-member Darren Emerson, and an innate intelligence that is hard to deny combine to create a totally unique listening experience that takes cues from progressive house, ambient, and even the blues while never doting overlong on any one aspect. There’s not a wasted moment on this 75-minute epic that goes from late-night half-whispers on opener “Dark And Long” to screaming techno madness on “Cowgirl” and back calmer waters on the inspiring “M.E,” a song I am still surprised by, 11 years after the album came out - it’s that good.
That’s it with the music stuff for now, I guess. I’ve got some new comics I’ll be talking about tomorrow, including my honorable mention prize for Rob Osborne’s poetry contest, the new Sugar Buzz collection and maybe, just maybe, I’ll have finished Bone by then.
Oh, yeah, and if you didn’t know? Orgazmo finally hits DVD tomorrow. Get it and be a man, a manny, manny man.
