Tiny Music...Songs from Various Record Shops VI -- How to Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell by Bob Geldof

First, a brief interlude. Coloured vinyl is a pretty, pretty thing and I never miss a chance to show it off:

Tiny Music...a series of entries on recent and seemingly random purchases. Why I made them, and why, perhaps, you ought to do the same--or at least take up the methodology!

Part I

Part II

Part III

 Part IV

Part V

Tiny Music...Songs from Various Record Shops V

Tiny Music...a series of entries on recent and seemingly random purchases. Why I made them, and why, perhaps, you ought to do the same--or at least take up the methodology!

Part I

Part II
Part III
 Part IV

Released as part of the "Original Masters" series with this cover, this is the first purely ambient solo album Eno released, two months after Another Green World, the first Eno solo album I ever bought. If you want something up-tempo, danceable, short, fun, etc, this is not an album for you by any stretch of the imagination. Ambient music is generally quite long as a result of the languid nature of the music: indeed, the genre's name is derived from the intention to make the music a part of the ambiance of an environment.

In defiance of many expectations, when I first delved into Aphex Twin, the album I was most interested in finding was not The Richard D. James album with its frenetic Drum and Bass/Jungle/etc (please, please don't ask me to figure out what electronic genres are which--I have enough trouble with distinct, classically-recognized instruments-based bands) but Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II which was a follow up to the ambient-techno (it's a different thing, promise) Selected Ambient Works 85-92. SAWII was a sprawling, 3LP, 2 cassette, 2 CD monster that was 25 tracks on vinyl and cassette and 24 on UK CD (the US release inexplicably dropped another track, which has annoyed me for years) and primarily consists of slow, beat-less tracks in the 7-10 minute range.  

Discreet Music is similarly "ambient" (not "ambient techno") in that its first half is the 31 minute "Discreet Music," which flows gently along for 30 minutes with no audible beat and nothing grating, intrusive or otherwise attention-grabbing. But it's incredibly pretty and pleasant, which is something I often find appealing, myself. The second half is a re-interpretation of Pachelbel's Canon in numerous variations, similar in end result to "Discreet Music," though it is performed by actual live strings instead.

Caustic critic Christgau called it "good for hard bits of writing," as it functions in that place that Satie envisioned a lot of his music would, to some extent: musique d’ameublement or "furniture music," as it is most commonly translated. Of course, Satie was, in some respects, creating the idea that did become ambient music. Richard D. James himself (aka the Aphex Twin) has noted the influence of Satie before, and referenced him pretty openly regarding the much more mixed album Drukqs, which contains a number of solo piano style pieces reminiscent of the peculiar French composer.

While I was out shopping for all of these things, I did eventally stumble into a (slightly mutilated) copy of Erik Satie's own writings and musings collected as A Mammal's Notebook, too. I do like the French composer's work, actually, though not, as always, to prove some kind of point about my taste or style, but because the minimalist approach to music hits the right chords--well, notes--for me. I carry around a small list of the Satie works that are apparently some of the best recordings, and own a compilation of Aldo Ciccolini playing them.

But I'm really getting away from the primary point here: Eno is known as a producer more than anything these days, or as a collaborative artist, especially when he works with David Byrne, but for a time in the 1970s he did independent work like this and Another Green World and hit various poles of music in the process. It's good stuff--this one I have listened to a few times and quite liked!

Tiny Music...Songs from Various Record Shops IV -- An Emotional What? Junk What?

Tiny Music...a series of entries on recent and seemingly random purchases. Why I made them, and why, perhaps, you ought to do the same--or at least take up the methodology!

Part 1

Part 2
Part 3 

With respect to a stack of some weird and out-there choices, An Emotional Fish's Junk Puppets was probably the most random selection of all. Of course, it was part of the 2 for $3 mess, so I did need to walk out with an even number of titles. Still, the cover art was intriguing, and while the metaphor of books and covers may hold, the actual literal meaning of judging inert objects by their covers can turn out quite well.

Finding out what this disc was was one of the more peculiar events of the trip, as it's one of those lingering, obscure titles in the Amazon database which has had incorrect cover art assigned (Amazon thinks this is the cover). Similarly, Wikipedia has no articles on their respective albums, despite three of them being released. They're a band from Dublin, and opened for U2 on the Zoo TV tour (on the backs of Achtung Baby and Zooropa).

Their first album was even released on U2's own label, Mother Records), after their single "Celebrate" even hit the top 5 on the US Modern Rock charts. They apparently maintained far more popularity in their home country than anywhere else and sort of fizzled after this, their third and final album. It's a bass-heavy 90s rock album that, as yet, does not jump out and grab me, but I'm still giving it some time.

Tiny Music...Songs from Various Record Shops III -- The Cult's Sonic Temple

Tiny Music...a series of entries on recent and seemingly random purchases. Why I made them, and why, perhaps, you ought to do the same--or at least take up the methodology!

Part 1

Part 2

I wandered into The Cult more by chance than anything else. I discussed the Beggars Banquet Omnibus Edition series releases some time ago, and The Cult's Love was amongst them. I didn't know the band and they had a weird reputation--weird in the sense of "normal." It meant it was the last of the Omnibus titles that I purchased (The Fall followed The Fall, and Bauhaus came close behind). The liner notes themselves reference this, noting all the reviews and interviews that suggest that "rock" was a 'dirty word' at the time of Love's release, at least in the independent community that they came from.

Tiny Music...Songs from Various Record Shops II -- Walking With Thee by Clinic

As I'm failing to focus on any group long enough to create a distinct article on anything. I've decided to break down the things I pick up and explain the whys, wherefores, and sometimes the end results of the purchases I've made semi-recently, via short discussions of each that I began previously.

Part 1 can be found here.

This series will take us from my first "classic" period Bad Seeds album through to the far more obscure Kno album Death Is Silent, as seen (somewhat blurrily, for which I apologize, but I do not have the discs handy to replicate and touch up the photo!) below:

 Today, we have Scousers Clinic and their second album, Walking With Thee.

Tiny Music ...Songs from Various Record Shops I -- Tender Prey

As I've only created an increased avalanche of incoming music that I am happily making my way through, I'm going to continue with the compressed formatting of explanation for the purchases I showed off previously to explain my relative quietness, moving on ahead through the alphabet. I left off before with The Byrds' pre-Byrds demos known as the "preflyte" sessions--though, of course, this isn't a completely fair name. They weren't the Byrds yet, but they were the Jet Set, which is still about flying--but nevermind that.

This will take us from my first "classic" period Bad Seeds album through to the far more obscure Kno album Death Is Silent, as seen (somewhat blurrily, for which I apologize, but I do not have the discs handy to replicate and touch up the photo!) below:

This was a string of peculiar trips to various stores, mostly an FYE, a few locals and one chain used store, so it's going to continue as a truly weird selection.

To avoid complete overload, I'll go through an album a day here, hence the reference in the title to someone-or-other's weird, off-kilter third album.