Music was my first love. And it will be my last. Music of the future. And music of the past. Oooh, I think there’s a song in there somewhere. Although, being a bit of a pedant, how could John Miles sing about music that he HADN’T EVEN heard of yet?
Electronic music was my real first love. The day that “Jack Your Body” by Steve Silk Hurley went to the tippety-top top of the pop parade was the day that music in this country changed forever. Goodbye Cliff Richard! Goodbye middle-of-the-road mawkish pap! Goodbye yellow brick road! Welcome to the future!
OK, so I was a tad naïve. But what it did do, it made me not only search out music that I had previously dismissed when I was going through my pop phase (Haircut 100? Really, Neville), but also to listen to those records again and realise that well, underneath that ridiculous haircut A Flock Of Seagulls did actually make some great records (if not a great album).
You may (I hope) get to the end of this article and think I am mocking the genre. Trust me, I’m not, I’m celebrating it. Open your ears, go listen. Criticism welcome.
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5 Comments
Selected Ambient Works vol. II is vastly superior! At times achingly sad, often utterly terrifying, but never anything less than transcendentally enthralling. Some of 85-92 has dated horribly, but I doubt Volume II will ever age. If the brain patterns that make up lucid dreams could be set to music, that’s exactly how they’d sound.
You do have to hear the vinyl version, though. The CD version omits Stone In Focus, one of the most stunning and affecting pieces of ambient music ever written.
At the time, I was more caught up with the whole “Aphex Twin signs to Warp, let’s go for the big sell” aspect. He didn’t help, by not giving the tracks titles, but calling them “Textures”. Uh-huh. When Richard James is on top form, he towers over say, Boards of Canada and Carl Craig but SAW II isn’t top form. It’s hype over content. Sorry.
Nobody towers over Boards of Canada (sorry), and I first heard SAW II almost a decade after its initial release. I’ve therefore never been prithee to a single piece of hype, which surely alone proves that a lot can be said of its content?
Great to see my favourite genre acknowledged but to ignore Depeche Mode seems a bit remiss I can name 3 albums during this period that would have made the top 5 not to mention there influence on a number of acts that followed after 89
David. Bowie. Low.