I've been talking to myself lately - I'm asking for advice
Continuing my trip up #album-of-the-day...
20.12.09 : Selected Ambient Works 85-92 - Aphex Twin (1992)
I like a bit of ambient and I like Aphex Twin - and then I remember the Windowlicker album cover and I go right off him. But I managed to get through this and enjoy it without thinking about it too much. But seriously, what was he thinking and why didn't someone stop him?
The channel gave this eight hearts, one nice, two relaxed, three thumbs up and one sunglasses - I think five different emojis might be the most we've seen so far. A load of positive comments, some discussion about this being "the racer end of ambient", a couple of new joiners and nobody mentioned the Windowlicker album cover - what more could you ask for? Wikipedia goes on a lot about how highly regarded the album is by absolutely everyone - apparently it's generally regarded as the best IDM album of all time. Which of course meant I had to look up what IDM was - "intelligent dance music", don't you know? (and no, there's no corresponding SDM genre). What I also didn't know was that it was his debut album and did indeed feature music he'd recorded over the previous seven years. It's also interesting to note how little critical success it's had over its lifetime.
"Customers also listened to" Burial, Orbital and Underworld - no surprises there. All in all, an enjoyable album provided you can keep THAT image out of your mind.
20.12.10 : Order Of Magnitude - Empath Live Volume 1 - Devin Townsend (2020)
Our second visit with Devin on this list - the channel is obviously a fan (or two people on it are, anyway). But. One hour, forty-eight minutes. Ouch. And I have to admit it was a struggle that I might have given up on at about the hour mark - I can appreciate there's a lot of skill involved but that doesn't mean I want to experience if for any particular length of time. And particularly not that length of time. Without being a fan, it's hard to know how serious he is with his links but they do get somewhat annoying - "I'm going to go to war against my inability to shut the fuck up". OK, you do that now...
The channel had a full-on Devin love-in and discussion about how they saw him play a wardrobe in Worcester once. "A WARDROBE? I saw him play a shoebox in Shrewsbury" "A SHOEBOX? You were lucky!" It took a long time to scroll past the discussion to see the five ticks, two thumbs up and one heart and then we were back to declaring him the nicest man in rock. Wikipedia has nothing to say about the album at all, but it took me a long time to work that out because his discography pages is MASSIVE (181 milliPeppers). It also took me off down a very unexpected rabbit hole because I noticed that his Strapping Young Lad live album was titled No Sleep 'Til Bedtime and I knew someone else had also used it and couldn't remember who - unfortunately Google was unkind enough to remind me it was this atrocity.
"Customers also listened to" approximately one million albums all recorded by a different pseudonym for one Mr Devin Townsend. He falls into the "appreciate rather than enjoy" category for me, but I certainly didn't need over 100 minutes of him.
20.12.10 : Ology - Gallant (2016)
An ology? He got an ology! You get an ology and you're a scientist!
Never heard of album or artist, so was going in blind and didn't even manage any wild expectations of it either. Looking at the album cover, I suspected we might have been firmly in R&B territory and so it turned out to be - it's not normally my cup of tea, but this is well done enough and a pleasant change from the normal fare served up by the channel. It reminded me of D'Angelo but had a bit more oomph to it which did it a load of favours for me. And it turned out I had heard "Skipping Stones" before and I was pleased to be reminded I'd done so.
The channel gave this no emojis and no comments - I suspect they were still tired from all the typing they did about Devin. It did get three new joiners though, which is the most for a long time. Wikipedia doesn't have a lot to say about the album but it did well enough critically and commercially (in the US, at least). It also tells me it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Urban Contemporary album (which seems a reasonably niche category).
"Customers also listened to" a load of people I've never heard of - which did not surprise me because this is very much not my favoured neck of the woods, but I enjoyed this album a lot more than I was expecting to.
I feel the round really has to go to Aphex Twin, but Gallant pushed him closer than I was expecting - probably mostly for novelty value on this list, but I still enjoyed it a lot and since Aphex doesn't really have any lyrics, Gallant gets the honour.
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