Day 0973 - Kala

M.I.A. "Kala" (2007)

Funnily enough I watched the doco/film about Mathangi Arulpragasam (M.I.A.) a week or so after I listened to and wrote this one up - which would have saved me a bit of reading time, but just digging around a bit and yeah she's had an interesting life.   She grew up in Sri Lanka during the civil war, surrounded by violence.   When she and her family moved to the UK she found herself surrounded instead by racism.

Arulpragasam actually started her artistic career as a visual artist.   She was becoming a respected artist in her own right when Elastica took her on board to do artwork for one of their albums.   She went on tour with them to do some filming, and the tour opener artist Peaches encouraged her to make music.   Elastica singer Justine Frischmann provided her a sequencer/drum-machine and Arulpragasam started putting together some demos, adopting the stage name M.I.A.

Frischmann's manager helped her secure a record contract and M.I.A. released her first album.   That was my first introduction to her, with the videos for "Bucky Done Gun" and "Sunshowers" getting a bit of play here in NZ.   BDG in particular wasn't really like anything I'd heard with its beats, minimal arrangements, stabs of horn and raps.

"Kala" mostly follows in this vein, mostly focussing on beats without too many instruments arranged over the top of it.  Just there to underline M.I.A.'s vocals.  There are samples of South Asian music and (just to mix things up) the Clash, with that band's "Straight to Hell" being used to create the brilliant "Paper Planes".   "Bird Flu" is all sorts of percussion wonderfulness, "Jimmy" is a bit more electro-pop.   

Great album, though I would say I was less impressed by the artist behind the art after watching the film. 😕

Day 0791 - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

The Smashing Pumpkins "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" (1995) - got it

 

This is another of those albums that I did not really need to listen to for the list (but did anyway) because it is imprinted firmly on my brain.    This was one of the first albums that was 'mine' as opposed to listening to my parents' or siblings' music.   I used to sit and listen to this album (all 2+ hours/28 tracks of it) at LEAST once a day.  Not doing anything else (except maybe making up music videos in my mind) just listening to the music.  Some days I wish I had the luxury of and concentration for doing that now.

It had been decided before the songs had even been written that the Mellon Collie would be a double-album.   Corgan stated they'd almost had enough songs to make the previous album "Siamese Dream" a double album too, which probably explains the full-length b-sides album "Pisces Iscariot" that was released between the two studio albums.

What could easily have been a giant overindulgent mess ends up being quite a cohesive musical journey (remembering that this is wound so deep into my synapses that I can't be entirely unbiased towards it).

While the vibe is largely angst, loneliness and nihilism, there is also joy and fear and love and the whole spectrum of human emotion.  The music has range too, with a delicate piano opening track seguing into "Tonight Tonight" with its interesting mix of prominent strings with a melodic alt-pop track (also the first Pumpkins song that I ever heard).   I won't got track by  track through the album, but suffice to say it has punishing riffs (Tales of a Scorched Earth, Bodies), subtle melodic tracks (Galapagos, Stumbleine), ventures into prog (Porcelina of the Vast Ocean), dabbles with electronic elements (1979, Beautiful) and a dozen other genres.   The whole thing is divided into two disks "Dawn to Dusk" and "Twilight to Starlight" and the final track "Farewell and Goodnight" features all four band members taking turns on the vocals to wish the viewer sweet dreams, again letting you feel like you've taken a musical journey. 

I think an important part of the success of this album is that Billy and the band were just creatively on fire at this point (or maybe it's just that this is when their songwriting most aligned with my own personal tastes).   All 28 songs from the album are enjoyable, most of the 25-30 B-sides associated with the album are really good, even the unreleased demos I've heard from this period are mostly decent.   Nowadays I'm lucky if a new Pumpkins song sticks with me past the first listen.

Day 0736 - Siamese Dream

Smashing Pumpkins "Siamese Dream" (1993) - got it

I had an odd introduction to the Pumpkins.  My brother showed me the music video for "Tonight Tonight" and (being a Beatles fan who didn't really like "heavy" music) when I heard the string-backed alt-rock with a slightly nasally vocal I liked what I heard and was making connections in my mind to Lennon.   As we lived in a small town with no music store, I ordered the Pumpkins' first two albums "Gish" and "Siamese Dream" on cassette through a mail order catalogue.   That ended up being a slightly wrong (yet so right) move as neither album had "Tonight Tonight" and both were packed with loud swirls of distorted guitar.

Having shelled out the pocket money to get them, I pushed ahead listening to them, and pretty quickly they started to get under my skin.

Reading up on it, following the punishing tour schedule for psychedelic sludgey riff-fest Gish, the band started working on Siamese Dream.  Billy Corgan was driven in his vision to combine the heaviness of Black Sabbath, the psychedelia of Pink Floyd and the musicianship of Led Zeppelin. 

Arguably he succeed.  The music is a noisy wave of guitar woven over hummable melodies and overlaid with some wailing lead guitar parts.   The album has a bit of variety between the noisy guitar-cyclone of "Silverf*ck" to the aptly named ballad "Sweet Sweet" with its clean, chiming guitars.   There is a vaguely cinematic feel to a lot of the songs, whether it's the guitar-heavy "Geek USA", the melodic closer "Luna" or the slow build of "Soma".   Yet across its different tracks and different styles, the album (and this is true of Gish too) has its own internal logic, so that the songs sound like they belong together.

There has been some debate as to how much of the album featured guitarist James Iha and bassist D'arcy with some rumours putting it that Billy recorded everything himself, but drummer Jimmy Chamberlain is certainly present.   The punishing drums of Chamberlain have the musicality of jazz with the force and heaviness of metal and are a defining feature of the Pumpkins' sound.  Chamberlain's issues with narcotics started to interfere with the recording, with him occasionally vanishing during the recording process.  He was pushed towards rehab, though would continue to suffer addiction for a few more years.

Day 0703 - The White Room

The KLF "The White Room" (1991)

The KLF released music under the names the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, JAMs, and (to release a childhood favourite of mine "Doctorin' the TARDIS") the Timelords.  The group also published a book "The Manual (how to have a number one the easy way)". 

The group pulled off some rather extreme performance pieces, including dumping a dead sheep at their after-show party, and then disbanded.  They formed the K Foundation with the mission of subverting and creating.

Prior to the breakup though, they produced this album.  Originally designed as a soundtrack for a film of the same name, the film was cancelled so the group moved towards producing a standalone album instead.   The music goes between the worlds of pop and the trance/rave scene.  For an album from the constantly evolving (musically and technologically) electronic scene, this one has aged incredibly well and I could imagine them possibly having influenced the Prodigy among others.

Day 0439 - London Calling

The Clash "London Calling" (1979) - got it

From a ho-hum punk album on day 438 to one of the greats.  To be fair, the Clash were barely 'punk' by this stage.  The attitude remained, and some of the more direct, raw 'rock' tracks still reflect that side of their sound, but the band were pulling influences from all corners: rockabilly, northern soul, post-punk, ska, reggae... even hints of new-wave.

 With a run of 19 tracks, I do tend to get a feeling of 'track fatigue' with it.  Most of these tracks are good and I can pick out pretty much any one track and enjoy it, but it just seems as though 65 uninterrupted minutes of Clash is probably slightly too much in one sitting for me.

Day 0397 - Parallel Lines

Blondie "Parallel Lines" (1978)

I have a greatest hits by Blondie, which I enjoy... but ye gods, this album has so much more variety and interest than the hits package!

Blondie had started to develop their punky sound into more of a new-wave direction and producer Mike Chapman gave their sound more polished sheen.  Chapman took what was to be a James Brown-esque hard-funker "Heart of Glass" and giving it a disco groove.

The album has a kind of fun playfulness throughout, occasionally verging on the childish. Even the slightly menacing "one way or another" sounds like a playground threat with its "I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha".

Day 0053 - A Love Supreme

John Coltrane "A Love Supreme" (1965) - got it

I love this period of music history, where pop/rock albums could sit side by side in popularity with instrumental jazz records and other genres.  I honestly hadn't realised that 'a love supreme' was released this late though!

One of the more popular jazz albums ever released, and, like Miles' "Kind of blue" it's an exploration in modal jazz.
I somewhat prefer Coltrane's "giant steps" album for its concise, hooky yet virtuosic bop.  Also, some of his later more exploratory releases, but a love supreme is still an amazing record.   Coltrane's band at the time was unsurpassed, especially his drummer Elvin Jones... mindblowing ability!