Five Albums I'd Never Heard Before By Bands I'd Never Even Heard Of...

Friday is fun because it's about music. I share links & playlists and get into a range of topics, old nostalgia, new releases, and everything inbetween. Today, the title tells you all you need to know

My 12yo son Oscar is a hip-hop head. That’s his focus. It started with Eminem and moved to Kendrick Lamar. And that’s where he’s still at, though he likes a heap of things on the side. And I think the things that really stuck — so far — from the range of music he heard when he was younger include an appreciation of some Pink Floyd, a deep love of the Guns N Roses album Appetite for Destruction, the full catalogues of Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, and a curiosity towards the best 80s bangers. But it goes surprisingly deeper than just that at times. A snippet of the timelessly beautiful John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman album came on the other day, and Oscar instantly pricked up, “ooh, I have to hear this”. That’s worth any of those late nights and temper-tantrums from the past right there. I tell ya.

He’s got my bug of listening through to whole catalogues in order, to find out the secret sauce of what makes an artist tick. He likes to get right in under the hood. It’s both blessing and cursed. He’s listened to more Queen and Kiss than I ever will — just because he wanted to find out. Some people take old watches apart, or take down their stereo and survey the components. We line up albums in chronological order and mow through them like a summer-growth lawn.

Anyway, I love it when Oscar comes to me with a music-listening challenge. And this week he asked me if I’d checked out the RateYourMusic site’s Best Albums of All Time list. I’m largely done with such lists. But he told me he was going to educate himself by listening through their top 50 albums. And I thought that was a very cool thing for him to want to do. He started reading me the albums in order. It’s a better, more interesting collection of music than the tired, old, classic-rock filled diatribes. But the very best of that classic rock (which I can’t shake, and frankly wouldn’t want to) is in there. But, to give you a clue of how this is different, based on a contemporary audience of music listeners voting up their choices, the top 10 features two Kendrick Lamar albums, two by Pink Floyd, three Radiohead records and is rounded out by King Crimson’s In The Court of The Crimson King, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and Madvillainy’s Madvillain.

Okay, I’m not saying it’s the best list, or that it’s even ‘right’, but it’s instantly more interesting than where Mojo and Uncut and Rolling Stone and Pitchfork go with such things. And you’ll trust me when I say it gets more modern.

And hold on to your letter-writing pen for a bit, after that Top 10 we calm down quickly and across the Top 20 it gets far more interesting. The Beatles (Abbey Road) and Talking Heads (Remain in Light) are added with their career-best albums, then it’s into John Coltrane, Bjork, Charles Mingus, Bowie, Velvet Underground, and, erm, Nas. Nothing wrong with Nas, especially if it’s Illmatic, which it is — just saying it like that because it’s actually a bit, you know, refreshing.

I surveyed the list and told Oscar I was impressed with his commitment to the bit. He’d get some good listening in. He’d be baffled by some stuff from way before his time, and he might find a few new favourites. Possibly both things could happen at once even, eh.

Then he wanted to know what albums I had not heard — well, there was only one in the Top 50, so we rolled on through the Top 100. I tell you, the long winter evenings just fly in this house! And I found five albums I had never heard. But even better, they were by bands I’d never even heard of — four bands in total.

I like homework. As a freelancer, and now newsletter writer, I’ve been giving myself homework assignments for over 20 years. So I knew this week’s goal was simple: Listen to the albums and report back.

My goal was to listen to the music without knowing anything about the band, no peeking to find out what genre, etc. Then a quick Google after to see the scope of the artist and where they fit in timeline-wise. That’s it.

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So, here we go - in order of how they arrived in the list, and therefore in order of how I discovered them and listened. We have:

LONG SEASON by Fishmans

This single-track 35-minute album instantly hooked me. Fishmans was a Japanese psychedelic pop band, underground, LONG SEASON arriving near the end of their 90s run. It’s an extrapolation of an earlier song called Season. And the Wiki tells me the album was low-key, and barely known outside of Japan until the 2010s. I mentioned to a friend who knows far more about Japanese music than me, and look there’s a chance I know far more about Japanese music than you, that I was listening to this, and that I instantly loved it. And he replied, “We have barely scratched the surface when it comes to Japan”.

My hope, is that if anyone reading today’s piece wants to take a punt on any one album, it’s this. This is one of those ‘happy’ listening experiences that just transports you; makes you feel good — and can be played in almost any context. You can play this in the background or up loud and in front. I will return to this record. A lot.

Deathconsciousness by Have A Nice Life

Next up we have Deathconsciousness, a sprawling 90-minute double album released to little fanfare in 2008, as the debut album by a goth-loving duo called Have A Nice Life. It has since been deemed a cult record, gained a tribe, and is therefore rated highly enough to be on the ‘cool’ list. The band’s influences include My Bloody Valentin, Joy Division, New Order, Earth, Sun O))), Nine Inch Nails, Sisters of Mercy, Kraftwerk, and — somewhat pretentiously, but fairplay too: “the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzche, Dungeons & Dragons and the novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

That’s a pretty tight set of influences, and though I never came across it at the time to listen to it, that list alone would pull me in today. In fact I’m far more into this goth-leaning, ‘downer’ music now than I would have been at the time. I’m a big believer the right music finds you at the right time. So I also really loved this and will keep it in the rotation. It moves from dark, Bowie-styled instrumentals to more of the Sisters of Mercy ‘song’ vibe. And I’m very okay with both settings. Quite keen on this in fact.

Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road

I quite liked this indie/experimental album from British band Black Country, New Road. Shit band name, shit album title, and it’s a bit trebly and artfully histrionic for my liking long term. It reminded me of lots of things I reviewed back in the dying days of newspaper reviews (2010s) that I big-upped and then almost forgot about entirely (Devotchka). Which is not to say the music’s bad, just that you had to move through it so quickly.

I get the feeling the more I might learn about this band, and the more I might listen would only put me off — I find this sort of stuff (think: Black Midi, Fontaines D.C.) a bit too clever for its own good, ultimately. But there were some good songs on here (Concorde especially, on a first listen) which made me think of other “clever” bands (The Decemberists) I’ve forgotten about, or relegated, and might not to revisit.

Velocity: Design: Comfort. by Sweet Trip

My instant reference point when I clicked ‘play’ was Squarepusher. And I quite like revisiting that glitch/breaks vibe, as a huge Aphex Twin fan. So I was less pleased when it broke away into the second song (Dsco) and got a bit like the gimmick-camp end of Daft Punk. Weirdly, Sweet Trip get written up as Shoegazer-y and talk up the influence of Slowdive, Sonic Youth, and My Bloody Valentine. But I just hear Aphex Twin and Daft Punk in a blender really. And sometimes that’s very good, and other times it is both twee and grating. Of all the brand-new-to-me albums I heard this week, this was the least meaningful, and the one I could easily have lived without because I’ve just heard so much of this type of stuff. But, also, sometimes, this is the vibe. So it was not at all terrible.

But just a bit too much for me these days. If this was back in 2003 — when it was released — I’d have loved it. Or even back in 2008, I’d have taken this over, say, Deathconsciousness. Music’s funny like that.

98.12.98 男達の別れ by Fishmans

We’re back to Fishmans, this one actually was higher up the ranked list, but I left it until the end, as it was the only double-up on the list. And I loved LONG SEASON so much, I was interested to hear this double-live album to end. Not as instantly sold on this, because I guess it has to do the work of a ‘career-survey’ album, so I find the ‘twee’ pop moments and cutesy vocals at odd with the neo-psychdelic waft that I loved so much on my first listening experience with this band.

But, hey, I think I’ve found a new act to add to the favourites/must-explore list for sure. There are some moments on this live album I dig very much — and just the spread and sprawl of it tells me I’ll hit up the whole Fishmans catalogue. Best band name on the list too!

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To check out the full RateYourMusic go here. It’s a list that goes on well over the 100, and yes, there are some non-male artists in there…

I guess what was most interesting to me with this week’s task, was the fact that this was all music released in the time when I was most actively listening to and writing about music. In the late 1990s and early 00s I was an active CD buyer, I still had tapes and records too. I worked in a music store for a lot of that time. And I was reviewing — including reviewing a lot across 2006-2016. And even then I couldn’t keep up with everything. These names were genuinely all brand new to me, had never even heard them. And I guess that was the hook.

So thanks Oscar. Great job. You gave me this week’s column inches. And a great set of new albums to ponder.

See anything you’re interested in here? Or heard any of these already?

And by all means add your favourite ‘brand new to you’ listen down below…

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But wait, we can’t end like this. It’s Friday. So we have to end with our usual weekly playlist. This one is old and new music. Because, why not. It’s vol. 170!

Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. And have a great weekend!