Top 10 Albums 28/01/14

I started this list and realised that all of the choices were albums I listen to all the way every time. No favourite tracks here, more soundtracks for occasions or the ol' quotidian.


Ambient 1 Music for Airports - Brian Eno: A series of sparse piano and mellotron themes loop until they start going out of synch and providing chance harmonies. After a few iterations (all of which sound like their own tracks) we are treated to a beautiful warm synthesiser version. I used to walk home after a night visiting friends or float away on it while the endone put some neural distance between me and my post op leg in 2012 and these days whenever I need to concentrate. I never get sick of it.

Ross Edwards/Symphony No. 3 (Da Pacem Domine): One of my first cds ever, it replaced one of my last tapings of the radio. This gentle plaintive theme builds to a gigantic climax before retreating back into something like acceptance. Unofficially for the sufferers of AIDS, seldom was such grave music used in celebration of life.

 




XX: I first heard this shy sounding UK band as a broadcast of a live show on 3RRR. At one point the make singer murmured, "fuck, it's hot," and transported this lonely cool sound through the heatwave I was escaping by lying in the dark of my loungeroom. I bought the album soon after. It's highly derivative (particularly of the Young Marble Giants) but has a quiet insistance that gets past all that early on.

 



Evol - Sonic Youth: Turn it on. Leave it on. SY's masterpiece, IMHO, the one that provided them with decades of more of the same. This is from when it wasn't. A cinematic journey through mental states and emotions, never afraid to get creepy, with each side of the LP ending in an endless grooveloop, it felt like falling into the Harkonnen planet in Dune.

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society: Every single song is so good that the album all but protests if you try to stop it.

White Album - The Beatles: Often my fave fabs outing this double presents no problem at all in my hearing the lot at one sitting. This despite my disdain for some of the tracks and indifference to others. The whole creates a constantly shifting soundscape made out of great rock music until you get to the rock song that turned into a great soundscape, Revolution 9. Even when it mushes out at the very end it just feels complete. From the chunky rock of Back in the USSR to the sinister Happiness is a Warm Gun, through the singsong satire of Piggies or all out metal nightmare of Helter Skelter, and through so much more, you get the result of a few weeks spent in meditation in India. Wonder how serene those mantra whispering retreats were.

Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me soundtrack - Angelo Badalamenti: From the lilting jazzy sax playing under the starless synthesised sky of the titles, the psycho bebop rap, the metal clang and fragile beauty of the quieter moments, this highly evocative score suggests even more worlds than the hi calorie imagination of the movie it served. Always aches a little to know the final track has started.

Dummy - Portishead: From the time my first full hearing rendered the heatwave cool and mysterious to now I travel with this album along roads and landscapes not always pleasant but forever intriguing.

 









Singing Bones - The Handsome Family: Not necessarily my favourite songs from the Albuquerque Two but as a run of musical thoughts and textures, Brett's Grand Canyon baritone takes us through the shviery pictures of The Forgotten Lake to the reprise of the hymnlike Should the World End in Ice we are taken through the funny and freaky world of Rennie's mind. More than all the other albums this one rewards continuous play.

The Doors: The debut platter from the LA foursome blossomed in the first flush of hippy but couldn't have been less peace and love. When Morrison gets close with white boy blues he uses his tongue. While it took me a while of listening to allow that into my ears when I did this album became a continuous player. From the erectile blues through Sinatra like croons about masturbation fantasy, wild sex trips like Light My Fire that threw a few memento mori lines into the mix, through the icy End of the Night and finally arriving at the big beautiful and scary opera of The End, The Doors is of its time and one of the strangest wallflowers of its mainstream. Play it, Sam, play all of it!