Day 0967 - Fishscale

Ghostface Killah “Fishscale” (2006)

It’s been a bit of a gap since Wu-tang have shown up on this list in any form.  I suspect Raewkon’s “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx” (which heavily featured Ghostface Killah) might have been the last.  In that time GK had released a few solo albums, an album with his rap collective Theodore Unit, guested on a bunch of other artist’s releases and had temporarily dropped the ‘Killah’ from his name.

This was hailed as one of GK’s best, most cohesive albums for a while and (without being that familiar with most of his work) I could get behind that.   As with many hip-hop albums of this era, it’s overlong, running 65 minutes or so.  It has 24 tracks but plenty of those are short skits or nice brief tracks below the 3-minute mark, so things don’t get stagnant.

The mix of producers doesn’t prevent the album coming across as a cohesive work, though I did prefer J Dilla’s tracks, especially the catchy, quirky “Whip You With a Strap”.  I believe J Dilla released some solo stuff too, so might need to check on that.  MF Doom’s “Underwater” is also enjoyably interesting and sonically feels like it lives up to its name.

There are some quite RZA-esque beats here.  That, mixed with the film dialogue samples ties it nicely into the Wu-niverse, even though it seems to throw in a lot more soul samples and horns and whatnot.  

Day 0636 - The Real Thing

Faith No More "The Real Thing" (1989) - got it

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a big fan of Mike Patton and of Faith No More, so I have listened to this album more times than I can remember... but as usual, for completism I listened to it again today.

It is slightly disappointing to me that this is the only FNM or Patton album in the 1001 albums, especially considering the breadth of Patton's oeuvre, and the fact that FNM's somewhat weirder "Angel Dust" album has been cited as an influence by many bands, named as album of the year by a few magazines, and was even cited as "the most influential album of all time" by Kerang magazine.   That's not to take anything away from TRT, I'm just saying that it makes me wonder what other great albums from other artists might have been omitted from the list because they weren't quite as commercially successful.

FNM had parted company with vocalist Chuck Mosley after 2 albums, due to his volatile personality, limited vocal ability and his various addictions.  They recruited fresh-faced 20 year old Mike Patton from the eclectic band Mr Bungle.  Patton came with a multi-octave vocal range, and a demented, yet somewhat literary approach to his lyric-writing.

The first two albums with Mosely had been a mix of funky post-punk, new wavey synths, metal riffs, rap, punky vocals, and pop hooks (largely thanks to keyboardist Roddy Bottum).  "The Real Thing" seemed to be a case of the band looking to redefine themselves after Mosely's departure by narrowing their focus.  The album still has its pop hooks in songs such as "Falling to Pieces" or "Underwater Love", but the album had much more of a funk/metal focus, via the collision of Bill Gould's percussive funky bass, Mike Bordin's tribal beats, and Jim Martin's chugging metal guitar riffs.

The album goes into propulsive pop-metal territory with opener "From out of nowhere", and straight-ahead metal with "Surprise! You're dead" and "The morning after".    Most of the other songs mix things up a bit more, with the title track features an almost dub-reggae drum beat interspersed with rock explosions, and "Zombie Eaters" starts with a series of very pretty acoustic guitar parts.  "Woodpecker from Mars" is a 'middle-eastern-meets-metal' instrumental track that shows that FNM could have easily been a force to be reckoned with without Patton or Mosely (or Courtney Love, who was their vocalist at some early shows).

"Epic" was the big hit from the album, with its combination of metal, funk and rap unfortunately inspiring the nu-metal craze that would follow.   The album ends with a further venture into metal territory in the shape of a cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" and then the musical left turn of sleazy loungey jazz-pop track "Edge of the World".

This is probably my least favourite album that FNM did with Patton, but it's still one hell of an album.