1001 Albums: One World

#381

Album: One World

Artist: John Martyn

Year: 1977

Length: 38:38

Genre: Experimental Pop / Dub / Blues / Jazz-Funk / Rock / Ambient

“Going to get on up and fly away
Go on out for another way
And a new day’s dawn
Going to carry on.”

Small Hours

After I had listened to Steely Dan’s Aja and found myself unsure of what to really say about it, I had a moment where I reassessed how I was listening to music in general. I questioned whether I truly didn’t have much to say because the album didn’t do much for me or because my current listening habits were getting in the way of me truly listening to the album. I’ve become habituated to just listening to as many as albums as I possibly could and having them play whenever I can, which means they would often play in the background as I work or do chores or just chill and relax, that I became more excited about getting to the end of the album to say I’ve listened to it than actually being excited about listening to the album itself. That attitude was definitely hindering my album listening experience.

Seeing as One World was next, I felt I needed to focus more and truly give this album a listen. I really loved John Martyn’s Solid Air and seeing another one of his albums pop up on the list, I figured it would be the best thing for me to actually allow myself to experience the album fully and not somewhere in the background. It’s the least I could, especially since I loved the last one so much, I had to give myself the opportunity that I would possibly love this one just as much. So I did. I sat down and gave my full attention to the album and really tried to focus and listen to it so I can absorb as much as possible. It’s time I change my listening habits.

All pretensions aside, I already knew ahead of time that I wouldn’t be able to decipher any lyrics or be able to analyse them in any way. I always have difficulty fully understanding lyrics when I listen, so I knew that wouldn’t really happen entering this new mind set. However, I definitely let myself lose myself to the music and tried to keep track of any feelings I had through the album. I wanted to make sure I really did take it all in as much as I could. I even listened to it twice to really get a hold on how I felt and I’m happy I did because this was a positive experience.

I loved Solid Air and I can safely say I also loved One World. Entering this challenge, I never expected I would have found myself quickly becoming a fan of John Martyn’s work (mainly because I didn’t even know who he was before starting the challenge) and it seems his style of music is really resonating with me in a deeper way. Somehow it touches me down to my core and into my soul and just tickles it in a way that a lot of other music doesn’t. I find myself just feeling in a good place when I listen to it and this album had a sort of calming effect on me, which is always a plus. It’s hard to define his style of music but the mix of experimental pop and funky folk stylings just works wonders for me in a way that other music in this genre just doesn’t.

The whole album had this sombre yet uplifting feel to it that made me think of driving down the highway in the middle of the night. It helps that the final song is even called Small Hours, which make me think that’s what he was going for. As someone who works overnight, I’ve driven down the highway at 3 am many, many times and the vibes I was getting from this album brought me back to those nights, driving through the misty air, stars and moon in the sky, surrounded by peace with nary a soul moving. The sleeping city passing me by as I cruise down alone on this patch of road. It felt like midnight but the best parts of midnight. When we think of midnight in a nostalgic way, the sky painted a dark blue with sprinkles of street lights guiding the way. It was a good feeling.

One song in particular that stood out for me, Smiling Stranger, fit right into this style of music I like to call Music For Frogs. A style of music that sounds like its made for frogs to enjoy. With watery sounding blurps, croaking timbres and swampy sounds, Smiling Stranger was an incredibly pleasant surprise of Music For Frogs I did not expect to hear on this album. If I knew how to make music, I would love to make an album called Music For Frogs that incorporates these kinds of sounds, and Smiling Stranger would definitely serve as an inspiration of the kind of sounds I’d like to get. I love Music For Frogs and anything that fits into that category becomes an automatic favourite.

It’s safe to say John Martyn is a musician I’ve grown to really enjoy and with this album now on my radar, I think it’s time for me to do a deep dive into his work and see what other gems I can discover. He has this knack of just writing music that sits nicely with me and I can’t deny myself having more of that in my life. That’s just not acceptable.

Favourite Song: Smiling Stranger

-Bosco

1001 Albums: Trans-Europe Express

#370

Album: Trans-Europe Express

Artist: Kraftwerk

Year: 1977

Length: 42:45

Genre: Electronic / Synth-Pop / Experimental Pop / Avant-Garde

“Parks, hotels and palaces
(Europe endless)
Parks, hotels and palaces
(Europe endless)”

Europe Endless

I always get excited when I get to talk about Kraftwerk in any way. There’s a giddiness that just fills me up and I don’t know exactly why Kraftwerk fills me with such emotion, but they do and I won’t question it because it’s good to get excited about things. It makes me sad that whenever I bring up Kraftwerk in social circles, rarely anyone even knows who they are, which is shocking especially when you take into consideration that a lot of these people love electronic music in some way. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t see beyond just what’s modern and don’t look back to what came before. Real shame because they are missing out. I think I got especially excited because I recently just read a book that dissected Kraftwerk’s album Computer World (which has quickly become my favourite album by them) and I got a lot of insight about how they function as a band and even a little glimpse into how they went about recording this particular album. I learned about how they write their music, how they use their studio as an instrument and also about their philosophies as a band in regards to our relationships with technology. It was an incredibly insightful read and I would suggest it to anyone who is interested in learning more (It’s the Computer World book that’s part of the 33 1/3 series!)

In true Kraftwerk fashion, they continued what they started with Autobahn and created a soundtrack to modern technology, specifically related to travel. While Autobahn evoked imagery of driving in your car down the German autobahn, Trans-Europe Express does the same but this time with train travel. Songs like Europe Endless recreate the feeling of sitting in a train and watching the scenery pass, while the entirety of Side B is the movement of the train, from the percussion that recreates the chugachuggachugga of a train, and the synths that evoke speed and directness, with a kling klang of metal on metal as the train barrels down the tracks, its amazing how well they bring that to life from 100 % synthetic sounds from their studio. It seems the group were trainspotters and loved watching and listening to the trains pass by, recording their sounds as they did. These recordings would heavily inspire them to make this album and would provide the blueprint of the sounds they were looking for. Even the two songs on the album that have nothing to do with trains (Showroom Dummies and Hall of Mirrors) still hold true to their exploration of modern technology (Hall of Mirrors being well, mirrors, and Showroom Dummies being a pre-cursor to the Robots and their mannequin aesthetic they would develop in their live shows and appearances).

I always believed Kraftwerk to be predicters of the future, somehow having such a good grasp on what was happening and predicting where things were going. But it seems the reality was they were very much in tune with what was happening in the present. As much as a lot of their music seems to predict future trends (Man-machine and Computer World being the biggest examples of this) they always claimed that they were very much just living in the present and seeing what was happening around them. It just happened that their strong awareness to technology around them would make them out to seem like seers of some sort. Their strong fascination with the technology was what made them seem like a band from the future, when in reality they were just strongly living in the present (which I feel is a lesson we should all learn for our own personal lives).

Kraftwerk is one of those bands that I think I’ll never grow tired of in any way. Maybe it’s because it’s one of the earliest bands I got into or maybe it’s just my love for anything electronic, but they really did have a unique talent with how they handled their music. A part of their process when writing their songs was to let the beats and foundations of the song play sometimes for days on an endless loop to see if the music could live that long, which I’m sure was an incredibly helpful process for this album to recreate the feel of long distance travel on a train and get that chugging sound just right. Their studio was very much an instrument as much as the actual instruments. And although none of this is unique when looking at it through a modern lens, it definitely was one of a kind back in 1977 and no one was doing what Kraftwerk was. They were innovating and inventing and just living in their own little world musically.

I, for one, couldn’t ask for any more from them.

Favourite Song: Europe Endless

-Bosco

P.S. A lot of the information here came from the 33 1/3 book on Computer World. If you love Kraftwerk, I highly recommend reading it!

1001 Albums: Before And After Science

#369

Album: Before and After Science

Artist: Brian Eno

Year: 1977

Length: 39:30

Genre: Art Rock / Art Pop / Avant-Pop / Experimental Pop

“Spider and i sit watching the sky
On a world without sound
We knit a web to catch one tiny fly
For our world without sound
We sleep in the mornings
We dream of a ship that sails away
A thousand miles away.”

Spider and I

I find it funny how much I adore the music of Brian Eno and yet, for whatever reason, I keep purposefully stopping myself from listening to any other albums by him. It’s not because I don’t want to, I really do, but there’s this part of me that wants to discover them through this list as I go through it and only listen to the Brian Eno album once I get to it on the list. I don’t know why I’m doing this with brian Eno in particular, I haven’t applied this level of… I guess you could say commitment, with any other bands or artists. So why Eno? What is it about him that I’m holding such restraint from listening to his music before it appears on the list? If I want to listen to Music for Airports, there’s absolutely zero reason why I shouldn’t do just that. Why wait until it’s next on the list? Why do that to myself? What is this delayed gratification I’m creating for myself, is it really worth it? I’ve been aching to get to this album to finally listen to it, so would you believe my excitement when I finally did? I have to say, it was worth the delayed gratification.

Brian Eno has such a fascinating grasp on pop music as a whole. The music here seems to somehow embody the sensibilities of pop while also being unique in their own way, giving it that art school spin (for lack of a better term). I don’t know how he manages to make music that sounds both accessible and weird at the same time. It’s basically unconventional pop music that just works really well and Brian Eno has just mastered the art of making this style of music. In some ways I feel like it just shouldn’t work and yet, here he is, doing it and doing it spectacularly. To call Brian Eno a musical genius might be hyperbole but there’s definitely an argument to be made in that regard. He just understands what he’s doing at a fundamental level and stays true to his own artistic integrity. That’s worth a hell of a lot in art. 

What makes this album in particular so interesting is how it seems to mark the exact transitional period from Eno making rock and pop music to his ambient music. The first half of this album is that exact art pop I mentioned above and it just kills tune after tune with his brand of eccentricity and absurdism. Something I admire about Eno is how he makes the music first and then when it comes to the vocals, he just sings gibberish and turns those into words. For him, it seems, the lyrics and vocals are equally a part of the instrumentals and are used to support the music rather than the music supporting the lyrics. That’s a pretty cool approach. But in the second half of the album we start to see songs that are a little longer and also have a very different feel to them, slowing down considerably and feeling more atmospheric. It’s like they’re taking you through some emotional journey rather than three minutes of just pure rockin’ fun. It’s interesting how the album changes completely, with the final song and beginning song seemingly coming from two different albums and yet Brian Eno eases us into the change, with the transition happening almost seamlessly that you don’t even notice by the end of it. He seemingly was already working on his ambient style of music while this album was in production (apparently for two years) so it makes sense that as we the listener go through the album, it’s almost as if we were experiencing the change Eno was going through creatively as well.

I’m excited to get to the next Eno album, whenever that might be, and yes, it seems likely I will indeed wait until I hit it on the list. I do like to torture myself like that sometimes, it seems like its all worth it.

Favourite Song: Backwater

 -Bosco

1001 Albums: Here Come The Warm Jets

#301

Album: Here Come the Warm Jets

Artist: Brian Eno

Year: 1974

Length: 42:01

Genre: Art Rock / Art Pop / Glam Rock / Experimental Pop / Avant-Pop

“Some of them lose – and some of them lose
But that’s what they want – and that’s what they choose
It’s a burden – such a burden
Oh what a burden to be so relied on.”

Cindy Tells Me

Brian Eno is a weird fucking dude. I mean that in the best way possible because when it comes to music, that eccentricity he exudes works incredibly well. But man, he’s a weird looking dude. He seems to have adapted the famous bald guy with long hair look, which will always look weird. I mean, take a look at this:

If you saw this man walking down the street, you’d definitely do a double-take. He kind of looks like an alien who isn’t quite sure what a human is supposed to look like. He kind of looks like Riff-Raff from Rocky Horror Picture Show, unsure if either one was inspired by the others look, but wouldn’t be surprised if there was some look sharing going on there. I don’t mean to rag on his looks (he’s doing absolutely fine, especially at this point in his career) but I mean, LOOK AT THE DUDE!

Alright, enough about that, we’re all here for one thing and one thing only and that’s experiencing Brian Eno’s solo debut. His first album after his departure with Roxy Music and it’s clear he’s bringing along a lot of his musical stylings from Roxy Music with him, while peppering in a lot of his own unique style on top of it. With this album he managed to be post-punk and New Wave way before those two genres even existed. Listening to this album I can hear clear pathways to bands such as Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Devo, Oingo Boingo, XTC, Magazine, Wire and many more! Which makes sense because a lot of members of these bands were not only hugely influenced by Brian Eno but, also, revered him. He even produced a few of those bands albums, that’s how much of a music legend he would become to be. But before he did that, before he touched the ambient music genre, here he was creating his own avant-garde version of art-pop. Mixing a myriad of experimentation with old school techniques (the bo diddley beat appears on one song) to create music of the future!

I think it’s pretty clear I enjoy this album, but what can I say? This music is right up my alley, it’s the exact kind of stuff I eat up. So maybe there’s a little bit of bias when it comes to it, so be it, but can you blame me? Regardless of what my taste in music is, you can’t deny, Brian Eno was onto something in 1974 when he made this (and maybe on something too). He set the stones for the roads that would lead to the artistic boom that happened in the late 70s and you can clearly see that pathway being laid down with this here album. I, also, have a soft spot for his approach to lyrics, which apparently, according to him, have no meaning to them whatsoever. He apparently would just record some gibberish over the tracks he made and try to turn that gibberish into words, which would explain a lot of the lyrics that have cone out of this album. I just absolutely love that, especially in an age where everyone is trying to dissect things to death and find meaning where there isn’t any, it’s nice to have something that refuses to be dissected because it was built on gibberish. It’s beautiful.

To end this, I just want to say that the first song is called Needle in the Camel’s Eye, which seems inconsequential, but I think is wonderful because as we all know Camels are the most beautiful creatures to exist. No, I will not explain this.

Favourite Song: Blank Frank

-Bosco