GY!BE's album 'Yanqui U.X.O.' is one of the greatest instrumental records of all-time

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A trap, eh? Hmm, it was only meant as a statement of personal preference...

the 90s were amazing. i grew up in them after all, they made me! the best things about the 90s:

- commercial pop rave and eurobosh all over the charts
- trip-hop
- angsty female singer-songwriters who were not just angsty but arty and experimental and visionary
- both classic old-skool r&b, and the first stirrings of hyper-modern timbaland-driven r&b
- spice girls and britney spears

notice the LACK OF BLUR IN THAT LIST.

again i recognise the crate-digging for old stuff mentality, that's not so weird, but it normally gets applied to...60s-80s. the 90s is a bit fresh in people's memories.

hang on, louis, what did you like when you were 12/13?

there's one every year!

2006 = Joanna Newsom - WhYs allegedly...

I'd snort but if someone had told me kids would still be wearing Nirvana t-shirts a decade on, and not 2006's version of Rave Pants... :(

When I was 12/13, I was deeply into The Cure (Pornography being my starter, an album I didn't see as dark or unlistenable but tuneful and imaginative) and XTC (NONSUCH), and I also loved early Pink Floyd, King Crimson and The Byrds. I still love all of them, but I have since found things I love yet more (not much in XTC's case, though). The only thing I liked as a child that I have grown to love yet more in my early adulthood is Steve Harley's greatest hits album, an absolutely spectacular compilation of intelligent, grade A+ pop.

My friends listen to very little that I do. Some are into their jazz big-time, some prefer things like The White Stripes and Sublime, others Belle and Sebastian, many are into classical, quite a few are trendy indie-kids who name-drop Clap Your Boy Most Likely To Wolf Steady, others are cooler indie kids who name-drop Les Savy Fav and Throbbing Gristle in the same sentence (these ones tend to have a music-taste most similar to my own, even if the overlap tends only to be in our immediately contemporary taste, and even then not particularly extensive). Quite a few are into shit like Wolfmother, emo, post-punk bollocks like the whole Razorlight thing, bad, commercial R&B, or sissy guitar queef such as Damien Gray. Some are rockists who espouse the overarching brilliance of The Rolling Stones and then declare that BRMC are the only contemporary act they have any time for. Nobody else likes Mansun. Where, I wonder, does this leave me?

P.S. I'd probably love YS, yes, based upon what I've heard. Although it probably could have done with more effects/computerised bleeps... :P

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), December 4th, 2006.

in fairness i should have added:

i was sitting down.

and mega-stoned.

I'd be interested to know if he thinks the recorded version sounds as fuck-awful as I do! And I'm not even the type to get bothered by such things usually but I can barely make it three songs in to Ys (record) without wanting to scream. I should upload that live stuff in the Ys thread really... the difference is like night and day.

haha this is also indicative of my own tastes (by which I mean that I naturally have an affinity for futuristic-sounding blips and bleeps), which is why I listen to techno and house and r&b and hip-hop and pop rather than indie!!!!!

I'm just a bit wtf-ed at ver kids... at least they've kind of broken away with the whole EMO thing lately, or maybe even Nu-Rave, but it's been years coming, the Kurt-T-Shirt thing is a bit passe now I guess.

Of course Lex's kids (on the bus) do none of this but Grime really isn't that big in Hull you know?

I'm sorry, but I don't understand a word of this. Are you trying to explain my 'indie stiffness' by name-dropping a few 'scenes' such as 'the whole EMO thing', and 'Nu-Rave' (whatever the fuck that is), or even the 'Kurt T-Shirt thing'? I have never associated myself with any scene or any specific type of music, I don't care what everyone else my age is into, and I'd be insulted if I were thought to limit my music taste with certain stylistic conventions.

Just trying to grasp at why Blur et al never did a lot for me (probably at root because Britpop felt 1000% times more manufactured & assisted by the media than anything that came before did, and you started getting a LOT of bands with a very fake, arch & constructed-to-fashion feel about them being passed off as GOLD, and I think it seeped into a lot of other stuff, even less commercial stuff right up to today (Franz Ferdinand seem like a '00s version of this).

Anyway, onto my idea of progress in music.

This is based around the FACT that I have never heard an album which honestly moves from start to finish in a perfect manner. Perfect, for me, is displaying an ability to consider any sound, any musical progression, to go to any lengths to create the most delightful listening experience, and yet remain coherent, memorable, and astounding. I know that artists will, MUST, continue to approach this creative peak, however.

The reason I know this is that when listening to any album of mine I have thought of innumerable ways in which they could be improved, new progressions, new flourishes, new ideas which would completely blown me out of the water. The only album for whom I can't really think of much is Mansun's Six, and that was slaughtered in its tracks by the record company. Music's possibilities are vast, but those exploring the boundaries are only really exploring in one direction. When different directions are combined into one ambitious, all-encompassing, endlessly rewarding package, only then will the stakes be raised to the limit. Hopefully after that someone will come along and come up with an even better combination of soundwaves (for that is what an album essentially is) for our aural and intellectual delectation. Which takes us onto 'possible sounds', which was discussed at length on old-ILX, so I'll shut up now.

Anyway this is getting a bit off-topic, it's still hard to explain what I mean about British pop just being a bit more natural & less studied pre-1993/4, occurring as a result of genuine movements & trends instead of simply reacting far too much to top-down crap thought up by the NME and magazines afterwards.

x post or y know not

Blur's stylistic shift in 'Blur', and yet more so in '13', was surely a reaction against your accusation that they found something and played it for all it was worth? Similarly, Mansun's shift from the ambitious glam-pop of AOTGL to the freakout splendour of Six was another attempt to break free from the 'top-down crap' to which you refer?

Besides, music that conforms to 'movements' or 'trends' can be just as stifling as 'studied' rock/pop. Blur were innovators, and, eventually, they were above either practice (and well beyond being dictated to by any music magazine).

do you like chavez? you should check them out. that's what i'm listening to right now.

Chavez? Never heard of. This is the joy of ILM! *potters off to Allmusic*

hang on, matt, just checking 'em now...

if nu-metal was the movie "dazed and confused" they would've been randall "pink" floyd.

btw, T/S: GOMEZ VS. CHAVEZ ;-)

http://www.matadorrecords.com/mpeg/chavez/chavez_guard_unreal.mp3

He always seems to have wanted to be treated like a serious artist, which in fact he is, by just writing a lot of quite good pop songs, but I think he wants to be recognised in the same way as someone like Kevin Shields is... Just my opinion.

Also, the Britpop thing clearly was 1000% manufactured, but it doesn't mean the bands involved were. There's nothing 'manufactured' about Franz Ferdinand for sure. Not that matters one way or the other.

I liked Mansun's ambition and it did stand out at the time, in terms of ambition... Problem for me was that they just didn't actually cut it.

I think it's right that stuff (for a while, and in that particular field) before 1993/94 was a bit less studied, but that's largely, I think, because it was basically less popular.

Besides hip-hop, GYBE was the only music me and my stoner surfer brother-in-law could definitively agree on.