My Listening Hours: January

I'm trying something new with these My Listening Hours posts in 2011: rather than a week of posts every three months—far too daunting to compose anymore—I'll trot out a much more abbreviated monthly post. Ideally I'll have written at length about most of these records already. At the three month mark I may still do a quarterly report of some sort... who knows.

I've ordered these by when I acquired them. This "month" actually stretches back to about mid-December—everything I've acquired since doing my year-end wrap-up. Without further ado...

Sam Prekop: Old Punch Card (2010)
An interesting excercise but not really a fulfilling listen. Review.

• Sam Prekop: Old Punch Card

Third Eye Foundation: The Dark (2010)
Singling out one track from this record does not do The Dark justice. It succeeds best as a whole work, listened to from beginning to end. Probably my favorite album of this month's bunch. Review.

• Third Eye Foundation: Anhedonia

Actress: Splazsh (2010)
There's probably a name for whatever genre Actress is working in—microhouse? dubstep?—but I don't keep up well enough with all the varieties of electronica to know for sure. At any rate Splazsh is a mostly great album that rewards multiple listens. Review.

• Actress: Maze

Kraftwerk: Autobahn (1974)
Despite my love of all things krautrock, Kraftwerk has been a longtime blind spot for me. Last year I started at the very beginning, picking up their four earliest records, most of which were spacey and aimless and featuring more organic instrumentation and composition. This is my first real taste of the Kraftwerk everyone means when they talk about Kraftwerk. The title track is, as anyone would tell you, spectacular. The rest is merely okay by comparison (it is, after all, hard to compare). Funny to me, though, that this gets as much praise as it does when other groups were making music as good (or better) than this at the same time. Fr'instance, Harmonia.

• Kraftwerk: Kometenmelodie 2

Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (1974)
I've been slowly and steadily picking up various Brian Eno albums ever since finally getting around to Another Green World a couple of years go. I've begun with his early, pop-oriented albums, this being the last one I've come across. It's not as perfect as Here Come the Warm Jets, nor as bouncy as Before and After Science, nor as ambitious as Another Green World—but it's still pretty good. I'm eager to start moving into Eno's ambient albums. Suggestions on where exactly to start are welcome.

• Brian Eno: The Fat Lady Of Limbourg
  

Disappears: Lux (2010)
Tim Hecker: An Imaginary Country (2009)
Belong: October Language (2004)
As I perused Pitchfork's list of upcoming releases in 2011 (which I detailed here), one word kept jumping out at me: Kranky. Feeling a little drained on rock music, I felt a renewed attraction to the label that treated me to so many great albums years back when I did a better job of keeping up with ambient and space rock. All three of these acts have albums coming up any time now. Since I didn't know their stuff, I went back and sought out earlier releases from each. Well, turns out Disappears isn't space rock so much as a fairly noisy psychedelic act—which is fine! Actually I think Lux is a pretty good album—good enough for me to want to hear the next Disappears album. The Tim Hecker album, of these three, is the highlight. It's a really beautiful ambient album. I do have a couple of other tracks by him and I feel convinced now that I am a convert who will follow him for a long time. The Belong album is also quite nice—washes of distortion that feel more peaceful than noisy.

• Disappears: Marigold
• Tim Hecker: Borderlands
• Belong: I Never Lose, Never Really

Destroyer: Kaputt (2011)
I seem to be the only person on the internet who thinks this is a mostly terrible album. It has its redeeming qualities—the lyrics, for one—but I just can't stomach the soft rock genre Dan Bejar has chosen to take on. More about this record, and the soft rock trend, to come tomorrow. Anyway, here's one of the good songs.

• Destroyer: Poor In Love

Tennis: Cape Dory (2011)
A great story and a nice aesthetic but it only rises near greatness in spots. Not a bad record, but I think they need to become more assured songwriters. Review.

• Tennis: Seafarer
  

The Radio Dept.: Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002–2010 (2011)
There's still at least another disc's worth of miscellaneous Radio Dept. tracks that could be collected, and I'd happily pick that up too. Review.

• The Radio Dept.: You And Me Then

Iron & Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean (2011)
I made the mistake of playing my brilliant wife this album's worst track, "Big Burned Hand," before she heard anything else. Now Kiss Each Other Clean is dead to her. I would entreat her to give it another chance were it not for my own mixed feelings. There are some great songs here, such as "Godless Brother in Love," but it's also accurate to say this is Iron & Wine's worst album. I'll have a fuller review in a few days.

• Iron & Wine: Godless Brother In Love
  

Comments

[cam]

Interesting juxtaposition of Autobahn/Musik von Harmonia. I wonder, though: isn't "Autobahn" a more melody-based composition than Harmonia's first record, which is more of a proto-industrial work? Writers in the past seem to have made a big deal about the "Fahn, Fahn, Fahn" being so similar to the Beach Boys' "Fun Fun Fun". I guess my point is that it's a more inviting, user friendly record, therefore it was a bigger hit.

[Newartillery]

I highly recommend going to Harmony in Ultraviolet next for Tim Hecker. I enjoyed An Imaginary Country and put it on my top 20 for 2009, but I keep going back to HiV.

Very excited about Ravedeath.

[scott (the other one)]

As far as Eno's ambient albums go, you could do considerably worse than taking them in chronological order and starting with 1975's Discreet Music, especially if you like Another Green World; I admit, though, that I do find his deconstructions of Pachebel's Canon in D on the LP's b-side to be much more interesting in theory than practice.

The first Music for Films, from 1978, was my initial exposure to Eno the artist (as opposed to Eno the producer) and the album clicked with me instantly, but it's 18 or so short pieces--not really characteristic of most of his ambient stuff. There's even a few pieces that could almost be considered funky. Sorta kinda.

1978's Music for Airports, released earlier in the year, may be the most characteristically ambient of his ambient releases, and 1980's Plateaux of Mirrors the most gorgeous. If either of those work for you, I'd recommend 1985's Thursday Afternoon, an hour-long piece which sometimes seems to get overlooked.

There are a fair number of pieces from these released on YouTube if you want to sample--it looks like almost every cut off The Plateaux of Mirrors is there, and I really cannot praise its beauty highly enough.

Hope this wasn't too much info.

[PS: I would entreat her to give it another chance were orbit for my own mixed feelings. "Were orbit"?]

[Richard]

Hi Scott - it happens that I've just taken the Eno plunge myself. At first blush, I like what the other Scott said. "Discreet Music" the (30+ minute) track is absolutely beautiful; the rest of the album struck me as kind of meh, if pleasantly so. I loved Music for Airports and Plateaux of Mirrors, as well as On Land. (I am, incidentally, fairly indifferent towards Another Green World.)

[scott pgwp]

Were orbit = iPhone autocorrect. Should have been "were it not".

[scott pgwp]

Cam - I was thinking more of Deluxe. The first track there is quite similar. And gosh, a 20 minute Kraftwerk jam is more accessible? Germans.

New Artillery - definitely want to check that Hecker out, and am excited for the new one too.

Scott and Richarc - thanks for recommendations! Have either of you heard his Apollo record? I heard just a snippet of it the other day and instantly fell in love, even if I only heard 30 seconds of a track.

[scott (the other one)]

Yeah, I love Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. The presence of Daniel Lanois alters things, however. In most ways, that's for the good: Lanois makes things more interesting and varied musically. But while Lanois's certainly not short on atmospherics, he's not really ambient, per se. So his pedal steel (I think it is) is wonderful, but makes the album as a whole less solidly in the ambient genre than many of the other recordings mentioned. That's not necessarily a bad thing, by any means: it could very well mean it'll be your favorite. But it's worth noting.

And I agree with Richard, by the by, that On Land is also marvelous.

[scott pgwp]

Ah, thanks for the insight. Clearly there is a lot of Eno in my future.

[Alex V. Cook]

The three must-have ambient Eno albums IMO are (in order)

On Land
Music for Airports
Discreet Music

The others are all good as well, but these form the core of his ambient work, I think.

Also I recommend getting My Life in the Bush of Ghosts that he did with David Byrne, not just because its a milestone in using samples in a pop context but it neatly ties mid-80's electro pop, post-punk and his approach toward the ambient. Bush is a noisy record but in a lot of ways satifies the John Cage concept of silence meaning the sounds naturally occurring around you without intention.

And I'll second that Destroyer album being mostly terrible, if not all terrible.

[cam]

Believe it or not, there was an "Autobahn" 7-inch single:

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/kraftwerk/autobahn___morgenspaziergang/

[cam]

Also, Harmonia's Deluxe has yet to see a domestic U.S. issue. Kraftwerk circa Autobahn had a U.S. deal with Vertigo records, and then Capitol. It was released here first on 8-track: http://bit.ly/eBoMoo

[cam]

"A version of the song lasting over 22 minutes was recorded as the title track of the album Autobahn. This was edited to a more modest 4 minutes and released as a single, giving the band an unexpected Top 40 hit in the USA, and other countries, the first of their career. A differently edited version, at 3 minutes duration, was released in the UK, reaching #11, and was later included on the UK compilation LP Exceller 8. The song also reached #12 in Canada (Vertigo VE-203)":

http://bit.ly/cPlp1x

[mistahcheetham]

Kraftwerks reputation really rests on Trans Europe Express, The Man Machine and Computer World, I think. At a time when electronic music was mostly either unlistenable classical such as Xenakis or ropey post hippie crap such as Tomita, Kraftwerk's mix of bizarre sounds, danceable rhythms and sardonic lyrics was the sound of exciting urban life - no wonder they were a massive influence on the nascent techno of Detroit and Chicago. Incidentally is it just me who thinks theres a hint of Pocket Calculator in Actress's Splash? Mind you, I really enjoyed the Harmonia music you posted a while back and rather wish I had discovered them at the time (but the music world was harder to navigate back then... cont p.94)