Decoy Spoon
Tomita – Snowflakes Are Dancing (1974)
Debussy’s “Clair De Lune (Bergamasque 3)” and “Arabesque No. 1” become ethereal cybernetic pieces from some past future ideal. Shifting and panning across the stereo spectrum, they sound full of hope, believing in the utopic notion of technology as a democratic agent of social progress and equity. Perhaps Moog would become the first machine ‘of loving grace’…
2012 or It’s the End of the World as We Know it (And I Feel…*shrugs*)
Within Korea (and outside) I think PSY may find with time that the exposure (and its attendant irony) will defuse any political/social motivations behind the song and render it the exact opposite: a total glamorisation and endorsement and validation of the very things he sought to ridicule. Everyone LOVES “Gangnam Style” = it’s totally cool to be Gangnam Style. Oppan Frankenstein…
The Problem With My Endless Love Of Music
Remember the future? The old future of SF paperbacks with blocky robotic font and sweeping imaginative artworks? It was a future that still seemed like the future. The future was going to be different. Well, now the future is here and most of it looks like a cover version of the past…
Have a Musical Christmas
This came out around the time I was getting into Low, which is cool because it has stayed one of my favourite albs/EPs of theirs. I actually noticed “Just Like Christmas” being used in an ad on TV the other day, and I thought: Oh well, it’s only taken people 12 years to wise up to what a great band they are, and what a great song it is. Better late than never, I suppose…
Queen – A Kind of Magic (1986)
Queen took prog’s cerebral bookish head and reattached it to its body, then gave it a nervous system via strong melodies delivered with a maximum of passion and heart-pumping surges of adrenal energy. In doing so they managed to create a unique style of rock/pop with brawn and brains…
Suzanne Vega – Solitude Standing (1987)
She’s the kind of artist I imagine who has some pretty devoted (read: borderline obsessive) fans who debate the definitions and decipher her imagery ’til dawn. And good on ‘em, but it’s not for me. These days I tend to leave her on in the background, like ambient music, and fill the room with that aromatic Vega vapour and just breathe it…
Róisín Murphy – Overpowered (2007)
Whether it’s the hot lava landscape of “Cry Baby”, or the sweat-soaked swamps of “Primitive”, or the dark neon city of “Overpowered”, or the icy caverns of “Scarlet Ribbon”, or the urban fast-lane of “Movie Star”, or the oceanic pulses of “Checkin’ On Me”, or one of the other extrasolar songs on this album, they will all lure you at some point. And once crash-landed, you may debate whether to try and escape at all…
The Afghan Whigs – Gentlemen (1993)
This became a private soundtrack to many nights, alone, staying up late, reading, thinking, staring at the carpet, holding mental court over various recriminations. The album is one long confessional…a conceptual ode to the id. Greg Dulli is having it out with himself, never sparing his psyche, which may be ready to collapse, or perhaps through the furnace of these songs rise up and Phoenix from the flames…
Radio Free Metropolis (or Show Me The Monáe)
Janelle Monáe has something she wants to say, and it’s an empowering message of love and empathy (laced with a subtext that raises cautionary questions about our behaviour in the future…)
RIP…
If you don’t know them, get on Google and find out, and seek out the music – because each of these artists laid down some impressive work. From the avant-garde to classic-rock radio, in no particular order, let’s raise our glasses to the following cool cats…
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