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Archive: Blur

What I listened to in 2007

4 January 2008 02:09

Categories: Entertainment, General, Internet, Music, Personal, Technology

Music of 2007

A series of posts

I am a bit late with my ranking of albums of 2007. I know it’s the new year and it’s not very fashionable to be looking back once the new year has begun. But unlike some people — who publish their lists in early December or sometimes even mid-November — I like to wait until the end of the year until posting my end-of-year list.

Unfortunately, it is taking a bit of time for me to finish off the post. You know how I like to witter on. Plus, ahem, I still haven’t received a rather important album from 2007 through the post.

In the meantime, some stats porn from my Last.fm account to give you an idea of what I listened to in 2007.

A few caveats here. I got an iPod sometime during autumn, which means that I now scrobble my out-and-about listening habits, which wasn’t possible when I used my iRiver. As such, my obsession with Battles early on in the year only registers a little bit, whereas the purchase of Radiohead’s In Rainbows in October is visible for all to see.

Okay, on to the graph. I have written before about the rather fun LastGraph service. I have decided to create a LastGraph of my 2007 listening. Of course, it isn’t restricted to music that was released in 2007, but it does give a flavour of my listening habits over the year.

I’m afraid it isn’t easy to see the detail in this image, but as you can see it is rather large enough as it is. If you click on the image, you will be able to see the full-blown PDF file, if you are really all that interested. (Warning: The PDF is a big file — 2.64MB.)

The first 2007 releases to register in the graph are Field Music’s Tones of Town and Shining’s Grindstone. Battles’s Mirrored makes a small appearance in March, but as I said it is much lower than you would expect if you knew how much I genuinely listened to the album.

Besides Ceephax and Air, nothing too much of interest happens until June. Then comes Björk’s Volta. Not soon afterwards comes the magical week which saw the release of albums by Justice and Simian Mobile Disco. Also registering here are album I bought by Cornelius and Stereolab, although these weren’t from 2007. (Incidentally, this period shows a sustained reduction in the amount of music I listened to, reflecting how unusually busy I was during the summer.)

In August you can see the biggest patch of the year — The Future Sound of London, from when I bought From the Archives volumes 1–3. After that comes another huge patch of Blur, a period where I bought a few albums of theirs and even wrote about them on this blog. A bit of an obsessive period.

Soon enough pretty much everything is crowded out by In Rainbows. If you look carefully towards the end of the year you can also see The Fiery Furnaces, Gescom and Burial.

In terms of charts, here is how my rolling year chart for artists looks like.

Radiohead — 811 plays
The Future Sound of London — 613
Autechre — 602
Pulp — 567
The Fiery Furnaces — 549
Boards of Canada — 538
Blur — 530
Aphex Twin — 453
Squarepusher — 428
Battles — 425

And for tracks, In Rainbows pretty much dominates. Not bad considering it’s only been out since October. Battles and Shining also get a look in here. Justice, Björk and The Fiery Furnaces also feature in the top 50.

I’ll post my thoughts on the music of 2007 over the next week or so.

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3 comments

Blur reunion on the cards!

18 September 2007 13:22

Categories: Entertainment, Humour, Music, Nostalgia, Television

It doesn’t feel like they’ve been away for long enough for a proper reunion. But when you think about it, the last album Blur recorded with Graham Coxon was released almost nine years ago! This should make every Britpop fan feel really, really old.

The rumours have been going for a while. Just last year I had heard that all of the members of Blur were suing each other. Now it seems confirmed that they are all — including Coxon — going into the recording studio very soon.

The fact that Graham Coxon is back is the real news though. He was pretty central to Blur. You could tell that just by listening to the sans-Coxon Blur album, Think Tank, which felt really empty and half-arsed. After a lacklustre album, it wasn’t a surprise to see Blur fizzle out.

Meanwhile, Graham Coxon’s solo career sky-rocketed. And who could blame Damon Albarn for not being too bothered given the success (and, let’s face it, damn good music) of Gorillaz. (The less said about Alex James’s WigWam, the better. At best the song sounds like an awful re-hash of ‘Girls and Boys’. And worst it sounds like the consequences of too many drugs.)

Think Tank and the death of Blur was a disappointment because their previous album, 13, is for my money one of the best albums of the 1990s. I still feel that the was completely overlooked by the media and the public, who at the time were too busy still fawning over OK Computer to notice anything else.

Listening to some of the older Blur material, it is easy to see why everyone got so excited about the whole Britpop thing. Blur wrote so many of the great pop songs of the 1990s. You can see this by looking at the tracklisting to their Best of album — more notable for the omissions than the inclusions (where were ‘Popscene’, ‘Chemical World’, ‘Stereotypes’…?).

To celebrate the news of the reunion, it is time for a Blur with Graham Coxon Nostalgic YouTube Extravaganza! (This means a bunch of videos that I will post and will stop working within a week as they get pulled off.)

Coffee and TV

The height of Graham Coxon’s powers as part of Blur.

Click “Click for more” for more.

Click for more »

3 comments

Battles — Mirrored

17 March 2007 02:16

Categories: Entertainment, Music, Reviews

I don’t usually listen to leaks. I’m old fashioned that way. I prefer to wait until I have the physical object in my hand before listening. As Armando Iannucci said, “there are only two things in the world that give us absolute happiness: one is unwrapping a newly bought CD.”

But for the first time I have listened to a leak. I just couldn’t stand waiting two months for the album to come out. I am just far too excited about this band to let this get away.

And what an album! Mirrored is undoubtedly the Battles that we have become familiar with over the past couple of years, but there is a really different vibe to their sound in what is technically their début album.

Battles are now a little bit cheeky, happy and bouncy. There is a little bit of a sense of humour shining through, but at the same time they have not allowed their incredible sense of how to surprise their listener to slip. Even the track titles are noticeably different. Many of them even contain actual words rather than looking like excerpts from half-remembered algebra lessons.

The album opens with the frantic ‘Race: In’, which already signals one of the major changes to the Battles sound: vocals take centre stage. Not lyrics, mind — vocals, often skewed so much that you cannot understand a word that is being said. The vocals in ‘Race: In’ sound a bit like dogs yapping.

Lead single ‘Atlas’ swiftly follows, and this is such an awesome track. There is a constant beat and a pounding, relentless bass accompanying the track throughout. Yet despite the basic foundations, here is a track that is as unpredictable as anything else Battles have come up with in the past.

It is kind of the theme of the album. It is recognisably Battles, the band that is liked by many for being so unconventional. With Mirrored, Battles have been unafraid to be as unconventional as to add seemingly conventional elements such as pounding beat and prominent vocals. But these elements are all incorporated in a ways that still surprise and reward greatly.

‘Atlas’ is a tough act to follow, but ‘Ddiamondd’ has a good shot at it. This is an utterly madcap track, with fast-paced chripy singing. If you can imagine it, the track is like a mixture between a sped-up version of Maxïmo Park’s ‘Limassol’ and Clor’s ‘Hearts on Fire’. And then comes the sped-up whistling that sounds like a messed up Seven Dwarves.

My favourite track, though, is ‘Rainbow’. It starts off really quietly with quite a basic riff. Gradually it builds up a bit of a warped streak before eventually turning into something that’s simultaneously mad and happy. It all builds up to a quite triumphant ending, like one of those emotional post-rock bands without (quite) as much pretentiousness. I just don’t know how to describe the track, I don’t even know why I’m trying. Just fantastic.

‘Rainbow’ particularly highlights the John Stainer’s idiosyncratic drumming style. Unrelenting snare drum rolls are interspersed with hi-hat rolls. Full marks to him for effort. To see just how much he puts into his drumming, check out this video of part of ‘SZ2′.

‘Snare Hanger’ is another stand-out track for me with its glitching, almost hip-hoppy drums. The track ends sounding almost like it was influenced by The Futureheads (“oh – o – oh oh!”).

Meanwhile, ‘Tij’ reminds me of Blur’s most experimental moments multiplied. This track is another one that ends interestingly. Splintered, it sounds like a beatboxer with a serious case of the hiccups.

In short, this is a shimmering, dazzlingly experimental album that isn’t afraid to blast out a good melody. I really hope this album is noticed by a lot of people, because it’s probably one of the best I’ve heard for a few years.

Already a lot of Battles’s more po-faced fans have reacted angrily to the new direction. It’s too happy, it’s not serious enough, and — ewww — vocals. I just love the fact that this is only their début album, and already there is ‘old’ Battles and ‘new’ Battles. This is a band that is clearly not scared to push boundaries of any sense, even if it seemingly risks alienating some of their more serious fans out there.

Atlas promo video

2 comments

Great number 1 albums

27 July 2006 15:11

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, General, Music, Nostalgia, Personal, Politics

The official UK album chart is currently celebrating its 50^th birthday.

Politicians have already chosen their favourite albums to have reached number 1. Now the public are being given their chance to vote (via Currybet).

The fact that you have to choose albums that have reached number 1 is surprisingly restrictive. For instance, you won’t be able to select ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. Meanwhile almost all of my favourite albums apart from Radiohead probably didn’t even reach the top 40, never mind the top spot.

I do own a lot of the albums though, particularly from the late 1990s, when I obviously still wasn’t quite savvy enough to be buying albums that weren’t popular. I am afraid my oldest selection is from the mid-1990s. I could have chosen some older ones, but I didn’t want to select just any old album. For instance, I could have chosen ‘The Last Broadcast’ by Doves because I do really like the album. But is it one of my favourites? Probably not. So I chose albums that I have listened to over and over again, and really mean something to me.

Here are my choices then:

Oasis — (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
I don’t actually own this album, but it is a bit difficult not to choose this album because I do quite like it. I realised it was great when I picked it up and realised that I knew every single one of the tracks, without ever having properly listened to it.
Pulp — Different Class
Pulp was the first band I truly became obsessed with as a child. I recently rediscovered ‘Different Class’ — what a fine album it is. I have a whole blog post waiting to be posted about this though, so I’ll leave Pulp alone for the time being.
Radiohead — OK Computer
One of the most overrated albums of all time, but it’s still quite good. It would probably be one of my favourites if it wasn’t for ‘Let Down’ and ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’. Those tracks simply do not belong on an album lauded for being one of the greatest of all time.
Pulp — This is Hardcore
It might not be quite as rounded as ‘Different Class’, certainly in terms of the appeal of Jarvis’ lyrics. The fun, poppy side was hidden away as the band became dark and creepy. Musically, bar a few turkeys, This is Hardcore is still very strong though. The title track is my favourite Pulp song.
Massive Attack — Mezzanine
There are lots of very strong tracks on this album, particularly ‘Teardrop’ and ‘Group Four’. In my view this is Massive Attack’s best album by far.
Blur — 13
This is an exceptional album from Blur at their very peak. Some might not have liked the band bringing their more experimental elements to the fore, but none of it is misplaced in my view. It is difficult to find a bad track in this album. Unfortunately it was to be Blur’s last vaguely good moment, as they could not be quite the same after Graham Coxon’s departure.
Radiohead — Kid A
Still my favourite album of all time.
Radiohead — Amnesiac
It hasn’t quite got the flow and polish of ‘Kid A’, but some of Radiohead’s best tracks are on here. ‘Pyramid Song’ is a pure stroke of genius, while none of Radiohead’s or Thom Yorke’s subsequent laptoppery has come close to topping ‘Pulk / Pull Revolving Doors’.
Gorillaz — Demon Days
Well, maybe it is pushing it a bit to call this album a proper great. But this album was much better than Gorillaz already fine eponymous debut. And I am pleased that an album like this can become such a mainstream success.