C.T. Chua

New Order: The Factory Years

2012-02-01T10:16:00.000+08:00

Certified rock legends New Order’s first five studio albums, also their five sole records for the long-defunct Factory Records, were bona fide masterworks that have never been bettered by the band since they were originally released. While their latter-day albums for London Records were stately, polished-to-a-fault affairs, they certainly didn’t possess the same sort of artistic resonance as their predecessors. The Factory era also engendered some of the band’s most enduring singles, like ‘Blue Monday’, ‘True Faith’, ‘The Perfect Kiss’ and ‘Temptation’. These Factory works were remastered and reissued a couple of years ago (each augmented by a supplementary disc of classic non-album singles and vintage B-sides and remixes), and it is immensely worthwhile to have a brief gander at each of these masterworks and assess their indisputable merits.

MOVEMENT (1981)
A rather hesitant debut, coming after the dissolution of Joy Division, New Order’s previous incarnation, this still contains some promising tracks, and displayed a restrained authority that would fully blossom later. ‘Senses’, ‘Doubts Even Here’ and ‘Dreams Never End’ are all prototypical exercises in the burgeoning synth-pop genre, but the songwriting still needs some necessary structural improvements. The bonus disc contains two early New Order classics: the competent guitar-rocker ‘Ceremony’, and the deathless fan-favourite dancefloor filler ‘Temptation’.

POWER, CORRUPTION AND LIES (1983)
A real tour de force of a sophomore album, comprising some real crackers: the band also wisely infused a much-needed sense of humour into the proceedings. The propulsive, forceful ‘Age of Consent’, the blissful electronic ballad ‘Your Silent Face’ and the intentionally ramshackle, jangle-pop-influenced ‘Leave Me Alone’ are all confirmed New Order standards that benefited from more dynamic production values. The almighty technological wonder ‘Blue Monday’ and the synth-string-driven ‘Thieves Like Us’ are the bonus-disc highlights.

LOW LIFE (1985)
Riding high on the career-breakthrough high of the previous effort, ‘Low Life’ features more usage of electronics, and the bass lines also became more inventive and animated. The sweetly poppish ‘Love Vigilantes’ opens accounts, with the epic synth-pop masterpiece ‘The Perfect Kiss’ following. There are also moodier tracks like ‘This Time of Night’ and ‘Sunrise’ to leaven the upbeat mood, and ‘Elegia’ is a superior slice of instrumental electro-pop. The intensely cinematic extended version of ‘The Perfect Kiss’ and the rudely danceable ‘Shellshock’ are the standouts on the bonus disc.

BROTHERHOOD (1986)
A rougher-sounding proposition than ‘Low Life’, this still ranks as a proficient work that sets new hights for the band. Of course, the synth-pop classic ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ is the indisputable highlight, but other things like ‘Paradise’ and ‘All Day Long’ are also potent in their own ways. In terms of bonus-disc standouts, ‘Brotherhood’ contains arguably the most realised, archetypal New Order single, the powerful, highly assured chart-bound single ‘True Faith’, alongside other stonkers like ‘1963’ and ‘Touched by the Hand of God’.

TECHNIQUE (1989)
The final album for Factory thankfully has the band firing on all cylinders, making for one hell of an exit. Merging their basic, unique dance-rock template with a healthy dose of the then-burgeoning Balaeric house music craze, the band produced a remarkable endeavour that successfully captures the cultural zeitgeist of the late 80s. The collective authority of standouts like the high-energy acid-house stomper ‘Fine Time’, the percolating dance-pop number ‘Round and Round’ and the melodic riff-rocker ‘Run’ cannot be denied, while ‘Love Less’ and ‘All the Way’ show that the band can still rock out whenever they want to. The goofy but loveable 1990 World Cup anthem ‘World in Motion’ is the sole noteworthy track on the bonus disc.

Angel's Heap

2012-01-18T16:27:00.000+08:00

Hailing from the remote coastal New Zealand hamlet of Te Awamutu, Neil and Tim Finn have well and truly made their impact on the modern rock era, through the course of more than three decades and membership in two of the most respected and revered bands of their generation: skewed new-wave geniuses Split Enz and renowned pop-rock combo Crowded House. While the Finns have periodically worked together in each other’s bands (Neil joined the Tim-led Split Enz in the late 1970s, while Tim moved into Neil’s Crowded House briefly for 1991’s brilliant 'Woodface' album), there has never been an official, full-length Finn Brothers collaboration, until 1995’s compelling eponymous record. 'Finn' was a virtuosic collection of stylish, if somewhat low-key, melodic compositions and the Finns’ inspired harmony vocals; in theory, it was as close to a perfect duo-collaboration album as possible. Check out one of the bona fide highlights from 'Finn', the blissful singalong 'Angel's Heap', presented here by the siblings in a typically virtuosic performance at Auckland's St James Theatre in April 2001.

Massive Attack

2012-01-04T10:27:00.004+08:00

Bristol collective Massive Attack effectively ripped out the guts of the burgeoning British R&B-soul-reggae-hip-hop hybrid scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, dragged them to their dingy mad-scientist laboratory, forcibly turned them inside out and added all manner of strange chemicals to the mix, resulting in something texturally deeper and decidedly more sinister.

Widely credited as singularly creating the much-maligned trip-hop strain, the Massive Attack sound is also uniquely contradictory. Categorised under dance but eminently undanceable, relying heavily on synth programming and drum machines, but surprisingly and supremely soulful, Massive Attack was one of the most innovative outfits to ever emerge, a genuine musical revolution in the highly confusing, shellshocked landscape of the late 20th and early 21st century. Here's a brief rundown of the group's studio works:

BLUE LINES (1991)
Arguably the ne plus ultra of their oeuvre, 'Blue Lines' rightfully evoked the appropriate responses of awe and respect upon its initial release. The impossibly epic 'Unfinished Sympathy' (bolstered considerably by Shara Nelson's strident yet measured diva performance) remains the indisputable highlight, but other tracks like the effortless rap vocal gauntlet ‘Five Man Army’, the quietly menacing urban nocturne 'Safe from Harm' (again with Nelson on board) and the spacey environmental anthem 'Hymn of the Big Wheel' (featuring reggaeton veteran and regular collaborator Horace Andy) are also dynamic examples of the group's nascent artistry.

PROTECTION (1994)
A more laid-back affair that smoothes out the rougher edges of its predecessor for a more polished, accessible finish: thankfully, this makes for a no less compelling listen. The melancholic yet cinematic title track (featuring Everything But the Girl's Tracey Thorn) is a brilliant study in urban desolation and private emotional psychosis, while 'Karmacoma' takes a sharp left turn into dub-reggae (which would be even more fully realised on 'No Protection', the Mad Professor's full-length, ghostly dark-side version). 'Spying Glass' (Andy's showcase here) introduces a healthy dose of paranoia to the proceedings, while 'Sly' makes wonderful use of enigmatic chanteuse Nicolette's sensual, neo-Billie Holiday vocals to construct an appropriate 21st-century torch song.

MEZZANINE (1998)
Adopting a more organic and earthier approach on this third masterpiece translates into a darker and murkier effort that managed to win the group the attention and admiration of otherwise conservative, hardcore rock purists. Basically turning the paranoia level up to 11 and letting it seethe there until the meters exploded in shards of fear, panic and loathing, 'Mezzanine' can boast of at least three indisputable classics: the highly foreboding, bass-heavy 'Angel' (the band has reaped a plethora of royalties from its licensed usage in a variety of media); the densely nocturnal, dread-inducing 'Risingson', a malignant and venomous rap duel; and the gossamer, lighter-than-ether lullaby 'Teardrop' (with the incomparable Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser helping out on vocals), which managed to evoke an otherworldly sense of dislocation.

100th WINDOW (2003)
Perhaps relying a bit too much on Pro Tools technology and analogue modelling workstations, '100th Window' still manages to stand out by virtue of its glacial beatscapes, which at times rival the icy, apprehensive aesthetic conjured by Radiohead's similarly natured 'Kid A'. The sterile, frosty sonic-lab ambiences of 'What Your Soul Sings' and 'Special Cases' are enhanced by suitably aloof vocalisations by rock rebel Sinéad O'Connor, while 'Butterfly Caught' is psychological claustrophobia personified, droning with mutated breakbeats and overlaid with threatening rap interjections.

HELIGOLAND (2010)
This long-simmering-in-the-studio fifth album eschews the brutally frigid soundscapes of '100th Window' for a more organically structured, but no less threatening sounding aesthetic that triumphantly recaps all the highpoints of the group's oeuvre. Opener 'Pray for Rain' is suitably ominous and edgy, awash with rolling-thunder piano chords, while 'Splitting the Atom' is gloriously mutated reggaeton filtered through a Kraftwerkian lens. Erstwhile Blur frontman Damon Albarn delivers a tetchy performance on the creeping, creepy 'Saturday Come Slow', the mockingly buoyant 'Paradise Circus' is awash with tinkly music-box melodies and interjected with hand-clap samples, and the industrial-tinged, menacing future-soul number 'Girl I Love You' is anything but the conventional love song that its title would suggest.

In Your Room

2011-12-22T08:49:00.001+08:00

By the time the mid-1990s rolled around, premier synth-pop institution Depeche Mode looked to be a spent force, mentally, physically and emotionally. Having just completed the gargantuan 18-month 'Devotional' tour in support of then-current album 'Songs of Faith and Devotion', every member of the band was affected by the insanely long trek in one way or another. Martin Gore started experiencing seizures and had to be hospitalised, Andy Fletcher suffered a major nervous breakdown, Alan Wilder expressed his increasing dissatisfaction about how his contributions were under-recognised, and perhaps most damning of all, frontman Dave Gahan descended further into the throes of heroin addiction. Of course, they did make a volte face a few years later with the release of 1997's reasonably successful 'Ultra' (albeit minus the participation of Wilder, who left the group in mid-1995), but the way things looked at the time, it would seem that this was the end of Depeche Mode, what with all the intra-band turmoil that was happening. Therefore, it was no surprise that the video clip for 'In Your Room', the fourth single from 'Songs of Faith and Devotion', was a bit of a visual band retrospective, with long-time collaborator Anton Corbijn choosing to incorporate references from past Depeche Mode videos to none too subtly hammer home the point that this might be the last ever single from the band. Check out this historic promo, which is also the final Depeche Mode clip to feature Wilder as a full-time member.

The Carnival is Over

2011-12-05T13:59:00.001+08:00

Dead Can Dance, during the course of their now-defunct career, purveyed a style of music that was like no other, defying preconceived categories and breaking down whatever generic boundaries there might be. Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry proffered an ethnic-fusion approach that took in diverse elements like sinister Goth-rock, stately medieval cantatas, swirling Middle Eastern cadences, propulsive tribal inflections and rustic Eastern European folk, making for a musical brew that is at once intoxicating, challenging, refined and cerebral. Inevitable charges of art-wankery might have prevailed, but there’s no denying the unique draw of their music. This particular, peculiar musical combination is neatly summarised in the dark-toned, ominous modalities of 1993’s ‘The Carnival is Over’, a brilliantly unusual synthesis of Joy Division’s post-punk angularity and traditional English-troubadour ballad sensibilities, ably supported by one of the most amazing, kaleidoscopic videos ever made in the 1990s.

Philip Glass

2011-11-21T09:15:00.001+08:00

Philip Glass remains the foremost exponent of that rather amorphous category of modern classical music known as minimalism. However, Glass’s fundamental style does differ from other minimalist composers like John Adams and Steve Reich: instead of wanton experimentalism, he prefers to work with seemingly repeating, yet slowly developing, patterns, building up from a single compositional idea with processes like note additions and evolving time signatures. This makes for an understated but mesmerising approach that has resulted in acclaimed and award-winning works like ‘Einstein on the Beach’, ‘Akhnaten’ and the widely celebrated ‘Koyaanisqatsi’, not to mention innumerable soundtracks for films as diverse as ‘Kundun’, ‘The Hours’ and ‘The Illusionist’.

The 2007 compilation ‘Best of Philip Glass’ is a handy double-disc collection that acts as a more or less comprehensive introduction to Glass’s music, although the selections here seem to be randomly arranged, with no regard for chronological or thematic order. However, it’s still worthwhile to go through what’s available here, if only to give the greenhorn an initial sense of what comprises basic Philip Glass.

The tracks on ‘Best of Philip Glass’ can roughly be divided into two separate portions that make up the two main facets of Glass’ music. The instrumental segment takes in works like the cinematic, epic-sized ‘Facades’, the icy, elegant ‘Floe’, the sombre, piano-led ‘Dance 9’ and the deliberately arty, complexly syncopated ‘Rubric’. Mention should also be made of the optimistic, driving ‘A Gentleman’s Honour’, from the ‘Satyagraha’ opera, based on the early life of Mahatma Gandhi and his experiences in South Africa.

On the flip side, the vocal numbers are the more interesting tunes, with choices like the pulsating new wave-influenced ‘Lightning’ (with veteran session vocalist Janice Pendarvis), the pastoral, Douglas Perry-sung ‘Evening Song’, the dramatic ‘Hymn to the Sun’ with famed English countertenor Paul Esswood, and the Egyptian-flavoured ‘Funeral of Amenhotep’ from the ‘Akhnaten’ opera.

In short, ‘Best of Philip Glass’ is a solid, if rather incomplete primer to Philip Glass: for a better overall picture of his music, one is advised to get one of his full-length recordings, which are all still in print. The sort of classical minimalism that constitutes Glass’ stock in trade is certainly not something that can be consumed in bite-sized portions like what has been collected here, despite the best intentions of this primer’s compilers. An inspired, if not exhaustive, retrospective of Glass’s more well-known works, and a terrific inducement to seek out the rest of his extensive, impressive repertoire.

Craig Armstrong

2011-11-08T10:48:00.001+08:00

Scotsman Craig Armstrong is one of those criminally underappreciated film composers, despite his obvious talents and hip credentials. Maybe it's because of his idiosyncratically different approach that sets him apart from the rest. Unlike more celebrated contemporaries like James Newton Howard and Howard Shore who would sometimes have a tendency to go over the top with their symphonic-string flourishes and horn-chart bombast, Armstrong is content to brood around with his Pro Tools software, icy electronics, trip-hop beats and measured (to a fault) use of chamber strings, meticulously constructing his beautifully bleak soundscapes. Armstrong's two solo works carry over the peculiarities of his filmic work, with 'The Space Between Us' and "As If to Nothing' both comprising soundtracks to the vagaries of the postmodern world, solemn, pensive but ultimately hopeful musical microcosms that perfectly encapsulates the hopes and fears of today's global citizen. Check out the lush, sweeping 'This Love' from 1998, a sensual new-millennium torch song that features the distinctive unearthly soprano of Cocteau Twins' Elzabeth Fraser.

Run to the Hills

2011-10-25T08:23:00.001+08:00

Iron Maiden are the last act standing from the late-1970s onslaught of the New Wave of the British Heavy metal movement, after other kindred metallists have fallen by the wayside. To a large extent, Iron Maiden's singular blend of astonishing, dextrous triple-guitar interplay, brutal, punishing rhythms, intentionally grandiose classical-literature influenced lyrics, and of course, Bruce Dickinson's distinctive, attention-grabbing air-raid siren wail place them several notches above the rest of the heavy metal crowd. Iron Maiden mostly earned their stripes in the 1980s, and while they may have lacked the ostentatious showmanship and rock-star glitz and glitter of other metal gangs, but they more than made up for it with their experienced, adept playing and aggressive, dynamic musical template, with landmark albums like 'The Number of the Beast', 'Powerslave' and 'Seventh Son of a Seventh Son' comprising no-brainer must-haves in any self-respecting metal enthusiast's library. Check out one of the band's most enduring standards, the thumping, throbbing 'Run to the Hills', captured in a superior live reading at the Rock in Rio festival in 2001.

Pacific State

2011-10-10T08:02:00.002+08:00

Mancunian collective 808 State revolutionised the acid-house sound in the early 1990s by incorporating structured, song-based forms and some good, old-fashioned rock firepower into the overall texture of that house sub-genre. This resulted in a wondrous, utterly compelling aesthetic that deftly went beyond dance music's basic nature of spare, repetitive rhythms, and made the trio household names everywhere, from dank, cavernous underground clubs, to shimmering mainstream dance palaces, and even on the indie and commercial charts, where they scored with a handful of scene-defining hits. Of course, 808 State’s signature tune remains the blissful, glittering 'Pacific State', which effectively became the bona fide anthem of the second Summer of Love of 1989-1990 upon its initial release. While this ambient-house classic has turned up in various permutations since then, its original version remains the most exceptional edition, with its percolating, rhythmic synth chords, kinetic bass backbeat and that unmistakable, siren song-like sampled-saxophone riff. Check out the appropriately psychedelic, kaleidoscopic video clip, which seems to have been made to be played on giant video screens during those long, lost nights of frenetic, Ecstasy-fuelled raves which were all the rage back then.

Heartland

2011-09-26T11:36:00.001+08:00

All things considered, The The's Matt Johnson remains one of Britain's most underappreciated singer-songwriters, despite his three decades in the business. Back in the 1980s, Johnson's effectively one-man band was a regular thorn in the side of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Tory administration, churning out modern-day parables that decried the anti-unionist tactics of the Conservative Party and the slow decay of contemporary Britain. Johnson was a virtuoso at channelling the socially aware spirits of venerable predecessors like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, putting agit-prop and blue-collar grievances into neat (if somewhat leftfield) four-minute pop songs. Check out one of The The's more strident numbers, the incredibly downtrodden-sounding and America-denouncing 'Heartland', a lurching, morose track that is anchored by a stop-start time signature, enhanced by mock jazz-trio piano lines and minimal orchestral stabs.

Black Sea

2011-09-12T07:40:00.001+08:00

The electronic-music sub-genre known as glitch has become quite the in thing in recent years, with a handful of like-minded artists springing up to lay their claim to being purveyors and innovators of this subset of that larger category commonly referred to as IDM (intelligent dance music). Glitch, by itself, is admittedly a rather difficult proposition: taking direct inspiration from the hyper-abstract musique-concrete ideals of venerated modern-classical composers like John Cage and Steve Reich, it also incorporates and splices electronically processed sounds and found-sound samples to create ambient, freeform sound sculptures, occasionally informed by randomly generated rhythms and sonic distortions. This has inevitably resulted in a drifting, otherworldly variety of electronica that is far removed from any one of the multitudes of street-level dance music found on any of the major label and charts: needless to say, it also possesses absolutely no commercial aspirations whatsoever.

One of the foremost practitioners of glitch is Austrian maverick Christian Fennesz, who has carved out a very respectable career for the past decade-and-a-half with his distinctive brand of eerie, cabalistic, and yet stately soundscapes, carefully treated guitar and synth textures, brittle, odd-metered electronic percussion and compellingly spooky found-sound samples. Check out the epically proportioned, highly ominous 'Black Sea' (which also constitutes the title track to his most recent album, released in 2008), which effortlessly maintains its mood of uncompromising, tectonic bleakness throughout its mammoth ten-minute running time.

Atmosphere

2011-08-24T12:19:00.000+08:00

Arguably the most suitable contender for the most epiphanic and transcendent post-punk composition of all time, Joy Division’s 1980 classic ‘Atmosphere’ remains one of the most beloved and enduring numbers in a woefully truncated but highly essential repertoire, which also includes defining standards like ‘Transmission’, ‘She’s Lost Control’ and the evergreen ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. The powerfully low-key ‘Atmosphere’ practically typifies the music critic-favourite expression “Ebony-tiled sonic cathedral”, with its rumbling, ominous, almost tribal-like percussion undertow, its starkly minimal yet effectively sepulchral bass drone, and its darkly shimmering washes of synth chords. But perhaps the most impressive and important component of this indisputable masterpiece was the late, lamented Ian Curtis’s spectrally calm and controlled tenor, which made for an eerie auditory foreshadowing of his suicide a few months later. Thoroughly epic in scale, and unrelentingly powerful in execution, this awesome threnody gets a wholly appropriate video-clip treatment upon its 1988 re-release, in the form of an elegantly shot black-and-white short film by master stylist Anton Corbijn that featured midgets in sinister mourning shrouds wandering around a remote desert shore, interspersed with stills of the long-departed Curtis.

A Little Time

2011-08-08T12:11:00.001+08:00

Like bangers and mash, The Sun and hedgerows, the Beautiful South remain a staunchly, indefatigably British institution. It is no joke to state that the sadly now-defunct bunch of Northern scum (as affectionately labelled by their legions of die-hard fans) are true-blue musical innovators: no other band in history has so successfully merged sickly-sweet, confectionery pop with the most vicious, diatribic lyrics imaginable, and wrapped it all up in chart-friendly packages that are perennial Top Ten entries. The five-piece's musical blueprint was astonishing, to say the least: an effortless amalgamation of various British music styles, including music hall, Northern soul, Madchester dance and melodic jazz, which ultimately proved too eclectic for the global market to swallow. Add to this mixture main vocalist Paul Heaton's mighty, soaring, underrated vocal chords (which he keeps in prime condition with regular visits to his local), and you have one of the most unique and memorable groups to trouble the charts in the latter half of the 20th century. Check out one of the South's most enduring numbers, the superlative love-song-with-a-spiteful-subtext 'A Little Time', aptly backed by a sharply witty video that boasts of a wicked twist ending.

Need You Tonight

2011-07-25T11:38:00.001+08:00

INXS remains the only real, successful Aussie band to break out from its initial, parochial pub-rock confines to embrace a larger, more varied worldview. The now semi-inactive sextet had their heyday from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, scoring sleek, funk-inflected and Rolling Stonesy hits on charts everywhere. Of course, the magic ingredient in the scheme of things is undoubtedly the natural showmanship of long-deceased frontman Michael Hutchence, with his cocksure strut, self-assured posturing and audacious presence, which made him an innate and wholly believable rock star (although some naysayers might say this was all calculated and done to break the band in America). Check out the enduring, glossy grooves of 'Need You Tonight', the band's sole US number one hit, which still awes after all these years with its clipped guitar riffs, resonant drum work and a measured but energetic Hutchence vocal, backed by a simple but effective rotoscoped performance video.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

2011-07-08T11:45:00.002+08:00

Prior to their landmark 'Songs from the Big Chair' album, Tears for Fears had dabbled in a somewhat inchoate synth-pop style that nonetheless won them a scrap of commercial fulfilment and a fairly loyal following. Inevitably, the critics wrote them off as another typical outfit in the then-burgeoning New Romantic camp. However, 'Songs from the Big Chair' saw Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith going for a more refined, varied approach that paid off handsomely in terms of chart success and popularity. Coupled with stronger and more dynamic songwriting qualities which smartly emphasised effective, hook-laden melodies and less abstract, more linear lyrics, the record was primed to make optimum commercial impact. Check out the certified commercial monstrosity and the duo's indisputable signature song, the dreamily percolating, straightforwardly poppish 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World'.

Ryuichi Sakamoto

2011-06-21T11:18:00.006+08:00

To call Ryuichi Sakamoto - synth-pop pioneer, ethnic-fusion guru and progressive-electronic stalwart - a jack of all trades might be a bit of a cliché, but the point to be made here is that he has indeed become a master of the various genres he has dabbled in throughout his three-decade-plus residency in the music business.

From the early, pioneering days with avant-rockers Yellow Magic Orchestra (during which he virtually set the blueprint for the emerging techno-pop movement), to the grandiose but measured orchestrations he did for cinematic epics like 'The Last Emperor' and 'Little Buddha', to the latter-day experiments in modern classical, Sakamoto can well and truly be called "a careerist who lives on the cutting edge" (as described in Time magazine's profile of him in their 2002 'Asian Heroes' issue).

Here is a rundown of the more prominent recordings that Sakamoto has made in his three-decade-plus residency in the business:

THOUSAND KNIVES (1978)
Sakamoto's debut solo effort is an intelligent updating of his work with Y.M.O., highly reminiscent of Kraftwerk's middle-period endeavours. A milestone album that signalled the beginning of a new trend in Japanese techno-pop.

THE END OF ASIA (1982)
A singularly unique work combining classical gagaku tonalities with Renaissance-era textures, Sakamoto's collaboration with the early-music ensemble Danceries is a breathtaking, complex, yet accessible album that remains the most adventurous in his repertoire.

MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE (1983)
Sakamoto's soundtrack for Nagisa Oshima's existentialist drama, aptly displaying the inventive pentatonic arrangements that he would soon be known for. A purely synth-derived effort that remains surprisingly undated and engaging, even after more than two decades after its initial release.

ILLUSTRATED MUSICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA (1984)
Arguably Sakamoto's most eclectic album, this sprawling work takes in everything from straight-ahead synth-pop ("Field Work", featuring synth maestro Thomas Dolby), to austere minimalism ("M.A.Y. in the Backyard"), to electronically based fusion jazz ("Etude") and Oriental dub ("In a Forest of Feathers"). Might sound uneven at times by virtue of its stylistic variety, but still remains Sakamoto's most adventurous venture.

NEO GEO (1987)
A more streamlined version of "Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia" that incorporates large doses of funk into its structure. Notable for appearances by Booty Collins and Bill Laswell, and including "Risky", a startling techno-pop duet with punk godfather Iggy Pop, of all people.

THE LAST EMPEROR (1987)
Sakamoto's lavish score for the Bernardo Bertolucci epic that earned him an Oscar. A staid, expansive suite that makes wonderful use of romantic-era motifs, Ching-dynasty musical themes and Sakamoto's own distinct timbral sensibilities, and a landmark in modern classicism.

HEARTBEAT (1991)
Essentially Sakamoto's contribution to the then-burgeoning house movement, with some avant-pop aesthetics. A controlled artistic experiment that merges Parisian swing, Hendrix samples, proto-ambient patterns, ethnic fusion and disco glitz. A genre-defying woldbeat melange.

SWEET REVENGE (1994)
In which Sakamoto visits the New York underground club scene and comes away with appropriate-sounding collaborations with Roddy Frame, Andy Caine, Paul Alexander and Holly Johnson. Some tracks are hard-edged (the brutal techno-pop workout "Love and Hate") and stately (the minimalist title track), others dreamy (the free-flowing "Interruptions") and placid (the soothing "Water's Edge").

1996 (1996)
A serious, studied chamber-orchestral work that brilliantly displays Sakamoto's modern-classical arranging aptitude. Past themes from "The Last Emperor", "The Sheltering Sky" and "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" are given new, vibrant life in this elegant, sophisticated setting.

SMOOCHY (1997)
Sakamoto's most carefree album integrates neo-bossa nova ("Bibo no Aozora"), post-romanticism ("Bring Them Home"), late-1970s Miles Davis ("Insensatez") and modified reggaeton ("Poesia"). However, tarnished by an appalling album design.

DISCORD (1998)
A thematic neo-classical symphony about the state of the late-millennium world that is largely influenced by timbral chromaticism and harmonic atonality. Soberly ascetic, yet animated at the right moments, this is akin to locking Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Gorecki in a small room, and forcing them to come up with an experimental soundscape that sets free their innermost inhibitions.

BTTB (2000)
Back to the basics, indeed. A minimalist solo-piano showcase that is also informed by post-romantic motifs from Ravel, Satie and Debussy, this is an avowedly avant-garde, painfully perfectionist recording that is like a vanity project for Sakamoto's pianistic dexterity and range. Look out for a John Cage-influenced prepared-piano piece that is a marvellous study in tasteful dissonance.

CASA (2002)
"Lush" and "melodic" are the two words that come to mind when describing this refined, poised tribute to bossa-nova legend Antonio Carlos Jobim. Aided by longtime Jobim partners Jaques and Paula Morelenbaum, Sakamoto interprets a selection of well-known Jobim gems ("O Amor em Paz", "Vivo Sonhando", "Inútil Paisagem") and other less-celebrated tunes ("Chanson pour Michelle", "Tema para Ana").

CHASM (2004)
Sakamoto's new-found interest in glitch and micro-house is fully evident on this adventurous but never alienating record, which is enriched by logical contributions by genre luminaries like Cornelius, Sketch Show and Ryoji Ikeda. Pieces like "Coro" and "Ngo/Bitmix" are commendable exercises in the glitch genre, incorporating appropriate found-sound material, while other tracks like 'Undercooled' and 'War and Peace' are more typically Sakamoto in nature. The remarkable and topical 'World Citizen', featuring a sympathetic David Sylvian vocal, is an outstanding attempt at combining circuit-bending sonics and singer-songwriterly sensibilities.

Ballad of a Deadman

2011-05-31T08:52:00.000+08:00

Best-known as the drummer and percussionist extraordinaire for defunct early-1980s synth-pop Orientalists Japan, the reclusive but indomitable Steve Jansen has gone on to carve a rather successful solo career as a session musician and producer of note, even if this is the sort of success that can’t be measured by any commercial considerations. Jansen’s musical aesthetic is very similar to that of erstwhile Japan frontman David Sylvian (who, incidentally, has been firmly established as a veteran luminary of leftfield, experimental pop): his works are quietly compelling, substantially eclectic pieces that reveal new subtleties and inventive textures with each listen. This approach has placed him squarely along the outer firmaments of contemporary art-rock (along with Sylvian), and has also won him no small amount of respect and acclaim from more discerning listening quarters. For a sample of Jansen’s unique artistry, check out this persuasive live performance of 'Ballad of a Deadman’, an outrageously mutated country and western ditty that mixes in liberal doses of folktronica and Fourth World music, with slightly spooky duet vocals provided by Sylvian and folktronica icon Joan Wasser.

Careless Memories

2011-05-23T09:48:00.004+08:00

Like it or not, New Romantic veterans and 1980s survivors Duran Duran excelled at making stonking radio-friendly and chart-ready singles, a highly addictive mixture of funky Chic-informed dance rhythms, arty David Bowie and Roxy Music-shaped glam-rock, edgy post-punk melodies and a bright, shiny new-wave pop slant. However, the one crucial factor that really stencilled these now-ageing Birmingham lads' names in the annals of pop-music history is their groundbreaking, often provocative (in more ways than one) music videos, which introduced and defined the idea of the video clip-as-viable-promotional tool, and arguably single-handedly elevated the nascent MTV to iconic status. Check out 'Careless Memories', one of their latter-day videos, released during the original quintet's reunion tour in 2003, a unique, fun-filled anime-informed short film that features striking visual elements like faceless assassins, giant mutant monsters, rampaging robots and an ending sequence that has a giant animated Simon Le Bon tearing down the corporate headquarters of a certain EMI Records.

Star Guitar

2011-05-09T16:20:00.000+08:00

Drum and bass never had a more prominent representative than veteran big-beat proponents Chemical Brothers. Through the course of nearly two decades in the business, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have pioneered a musically revolutionary yet commercially viable brand of electronica that has resulted in a handful of high-charting singles and a string of number one albums. Kinetic, forceful singles like ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’, ‘Setting Sun’ and the appropriately titled ‘Loops of Fury’ became staples on mainstream dance radio and underground clubs alike, with their eardrum-shattering combination of pavement-cracking bass lines, ecstatically forceful breakbeats and raging synth patterns. Check out one of the Chemicals' more underrated singles, the ferociously percolating, insistently poppish ‘Star Guitar’, backed by an innovative, meticulously assembled, rail travelogue-themed video directed by maverick auteur Michel Gondry.

Peter Saville, Joy Division and New Order

2011-04-22T11:27:00.002+08:00

Graphic-design icon Peter Saville is a bit of a celebrity in the world of album design, especially amongst post-punk acts that made their names in the late-1970s, early-1980s British scene. Joy Division, New Order, O.M.D. and Roxy Music are just some of the luminaries who have benefited from Saville's oftentimes enigmatic, yet strangely compelling graphics. Hardcore, compulsive aficionados of Joy Division and New Order have invariably become, by corollary, devotees of Saville's cover motifs as well, for those wonderful albums and singles that soundtracked the lives of so many cognoscenti-conscious mid to late-thirtysomethings. Here are some of the more striking Saville designs to have graced Joy Division and New Order record covers:

UNKNOWN PLEASURES (Joy Division,1979)
A bizarre-looking design for a jagged, scary album. That mountain range-looking pattern is actually a collage of 100 consecutive radio pulses from the CP-1919 pulsar. Art-wankery at its best.

CLOSER (Joy Division, 1980)
Joy Division's second and last album has a palpable aura of despair and mortality hanging over the proceedings, and Saville appropriately played up the funereal atmosphere by using a close-up of a mausoleum in the Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa, Italy.

POWER, CORRUPTION AND LIES (New Order, 1983)
This by-now classic design for New Order's sophomore effort is a simple, elegant still-life painting by French Impressionist Henri Fantin-Latour that provided a sense of the band's quietly burgeoning confidence. They finally found their own unique style on this album, after the half-hearted Joy Division affectations of their first album ‘Movement’.

BLUE MONDAY (New Order, 1983)
The notorious floppy-disk design for the best-selling 12-inch single of all time that supposedly cost New Order and Factory Records to lose 20 pence on each copy sold (it's an apocryphal account, by the way).

LOW LIFE (New Order, 1985)
A unique, interactive design that features four interchangeable photographs of the band members tucked inside a semi-transparent sleeve, stamped with the band's name.

TRUE FAITH (New Order, 1987)
New Order's American breakthrough sports a straightforward, oil painting-based diagram for its cover. That falling leaf is perhaps a visual representation of the band itself, as they drift towards an unknown but promising future, after years of trying to break into the world's most impenetrable market.

SUBSTANCE (New Order, 1987)
A stark, bold, modernist-informed theme for arguably the ultimate New Order compilation. Ridiculously simple, but assuredly effective.

TECHNIQUE (New Order, 1989)
A Technicolor reinterpretation of a Renaissance-era sculpture? A tongue-in-cheek visual representation of an Ecstasy-inspired vision? Whatever Saville's original intention might be, this cover for New Order's best-loved album is a brilliant depiction of the house-influenced, acid-drenched Summer of Love of 1989.

REPUBLIC (New Order, 1993)
As the finances of Factory Records quickly went into decline, so did New Order's intra-band relations. The design for this first release on new label London Records (the band's last one for almost a decade) effectively captures the spectre of discontent that hung over the recordings. The juxtaposed images of fleeting exuberance (the couple on the beach) and destruction (the conflagration) speak volumes about the contrast between the pseudo-stridency of the opening tracks and the sheer resignation of the closing tracks.

SINGLES (New Order, 2005)
An early-millennium reformation of New Order that spawned two flat-out brilliant albums (2001's ‘Get Ready’ and 2005's ‘Waiting for the Sirens' Call’) led to the release of this latest anthology, which collects in chronological order all the official singles. Saville's design, a smart, conscious update of the falling-leaf motif of 1987's ‘True Faith’ single, is both an acknowledgement of the band's illustrious past and an affirmation of their current standing as elder statesmen of rock.

Fingers of Love

2011-04-14T20:42:00.001+08:00

Venerable pop institution Crowded House possess this singularly unusual penchant of evoking simultaneous sentiments of bliss and melancholy, oftentimes within the same song, concurrently celebrating the prosaic joys of everyday life and classic existentialist angst. This dichotomous juxtaposition has been brilliantly manifested not just in certified standards like 'Don't Dream it's Over', 'Four Seasons in One Day' and 'Distant Sun', but also in the myriad of fan-favourite album tracks that make up the backbone of the Crowded House discography. One of the more popular album tracks is the haunting 'Fingers of Love', off 1993's adventurous 'Together Alone', an atmospheric slice of exultant melancholia, with a strong whiff of patented psychedelia. Check out a spirited performance of this underrated masterpiece at the band's historic 'Farewell to the World' show at the Sydney Opera House in 1996, featuring a scintillating guitar solo from multi-instrumentalist member Mark Hart.

Brad Mehldau

2011-03-25T21:26:00.000+08:00

The jazz genre, as defined in the new millennium, comprises several distinctive factions, one of which is a rather adventurous bunch that possess this rather pleasing habit of pushing the envelope (and occasionally, setting it on fire) on the "typical" definition of how jazz should be in this post-modernist age. These adventurous souls, heavily influenced by the intellectual approach of neo-classicists like John Cage and Steve Reich, have a penchant for introducing odd time signatures and odder instrumentation. making music that is breathtakingly brazen in their structures. One of the most visible figures amongst these bold practitioners is pianist Brad Mehldau, who has carved a reputation as one of the most intrepid performers, even within the circle of experimentalists to which he clearly belongs. Mehldau is known to take an intensely cerebral approach to performance, frequently engaging unusual harmonic constructions, mutated modal chords and an austere, Zen-like simplicity in overall presentation. Check out one of Mehldau's more well-known pieces, an audacious, freeform-jazz interpretation of Radiohead's dark Gothic crawl 'Exit Music (For a Film)', done with his customary technical assurance and an inherent sense of musical adventurism.

The Diamond Sea

2011-03-14T13:59:00.001+08:00

Immediately hailed as a groundbreaking rock act at their inception about three decades ago, noise-pop pioneers and erstwhile sonic terrorists Sonic Youth have weathered numerous obstacles and presented the world with a series of revolutionary records that simultaneously stamped their name in rock-music history and introduced the concept of guitar feedback to the rock overground. Atonal and dissonant almost to a fault, the group were dead set right from the beginning to foist their inimitable brand of rock on an unsuspecting world, whether the music-listening public liked it or not. Make no mistake, Sonic Youth are one of the genuinely original (in every sense of the word) rock acts ever even if commercial success has been elusive, and looks to be perpetually out of reach, given the current sorry state of the music industry. Check out one of the band's latter-day highlights, the cinematic avant-garde noise epic 'The Diamond Sea', which was trimmed down to a more manageable five minutes for radio play, a marked difference from its original gargantuan twenty-five-minute length.

Lift Me Up

2011-02-18T09:37:00.003+08:00

Unjustly vilified as a lightweight synth-pop relic that belonged squarely in the 1980s, the prosaically-named Howard Jones did manage to move beyond the strictures of that rather belittling stereotype in the 1990s and beyond, and in the process, adopting a more mature approach to music-making. The first fruits of this newfound sensibility was neatly encapsulated in 1992’s ‘In the Running’, a firm fan favourite which was not given its proper due by the charts. The artistic essence of ‘In the Running’ was a sea change from the MIDI patches and Casio polyphonic tones of yore, instead relying on studied, yet easy-flowing piano chords (brilliantly displaying Jones’s underrated pianistic skills), judiciously placed organic instrumentation, and a more thoughtful, considered lyrical focus. Check out the lead single, the surging ‘Lift Me Up’, with its triumphant (real) horn charts, skilful piano arpeggios, and a video clip that slyly splices the unassuming Jones amongst ancient footage of old-time entertainers from the 1930s and 1940s.

Hunting High and Low

2011-02-03T12:28:00.010+08:00

Veteran new-wave popsters a-ha have certainly come a long way since their embryonic days in the mid-1980s. When they started out back then, they were, rather unjustly, lumped together with the other groups populating the teenybopper-act community. What the detractors failed to realise (and still fail to do after all these years) is that a-ha are markedly different from their contemporaries, mostly in terms of the nature of their compositions and, just as importantly, in their distinctly singular worldview. What separates Morten Harket, Magne Furuholmen and Pal Waaktaar from the rest of the 1980s rank and file is the innate melancholia that permeates the majority of their songs, perhaps nurtured by a youth spent enduring bleak Scandinavian winters. This quality comes through most clearly in Waaktaar's elliptical, elegant, oftentimes abstract songwriting, his lyrics dealing with glum subjects like mortality, failed and/or twisted romances, and Kafkaesque existential angst. It’s all deceptively filtered through some accessible radio-friendly melodies, dextrous and polished production, and the secret weapon in a-ha's arsenal: Harket's charged, theatrical tenor. No wonder the critics were fooled. Check out a dynamic live version of one of the group's avowedly splendid classics, 'Hunting High and Low', a sweeping, almost desperate account of chronic loneliness that undoubtedly ranks as one of the best examples of a-ha's unflagging penchant for musical drama.

Once in a Lifetime

2011-01-20T22:25:00.000+08:00

Of all the acts to emerge from New York City's fertile post-punk backdrop, art-school avant-gardists Talking Heads stood out from the rest with their perennial musical adventurism, dabbling in everything from post-punk guitar-pop to terse funk-rock to complex, no-boundaries world-music explorations, defying all known rock genres and creating a sound all their own. All this earned them the expected continuing critical acclaim throughout their 15 years in the business and, surprisingly, a fair measure of commercial success as well, particularly with 1980's astonishingly groundbreaking 'Remain in Light' album. Check out the signature track from that magnum opus, the frantically percolating, hyper-excited 'Once in a Lifetime', which is marked by a hooky singalong chorus, one of the most complicated rhythm tracks of any rock song, and a brilliantly idiosyncratic video that features frontman David Byrne in a maniacally prancing performance, and deftly displays his wonderfully high-strung vocal mannerisms.

The Catalogue

2011-01-04T08:56:00.001+08:00

Much like the veteran electronic-pop exponents themselves, this new collection, encompassing Kraftwerk's eight major-label albums, is expectedly sleek and technologically advanced, efficiently packaged in a handy, compact box that is conveniently compartmentalised to snugly hold each of the albums. Name a classic Kraftwerk album, and you'll find it here, with everything from 1974's historic record 'Autobahn', to 1977's scene-defining and artistically definitive 'Trans Europe Express', to 1981's commercially amicable 'Computer World', with each track on every album meticulously remastered and polished to a gleaming chrome finish.

'Autobahn' from 1974 marks the instance when Kraftwerk made the leap into the general consciousness of popular music, with its clean break from the free-flowing, proto-ambient textures of the band's preceding three self-titled albums. The indisputable highlight here is the mind-expanding 23-minute title track, with its effortlessly paced, insistently propulsive motorik rhythm, whimsical found-sound samples and naggingly familiar vocal refrain. Other tracks like the icily elegant 'Comet Melody' and the pastoral-sounding yet sample-driven 'Morning Walk' are competent enough, but hardly matching in cultural resonance to the 'Autobahn' composition.

The albums that followed 'Autobahn' saw the Teutonic outfit venturing into concept-album territory, with oftentimes astonishing and innovative results. 'Radioactivity' from 1975 explores the topic of broadcast communications, with tracks like the pulsating title track, the appropriately robotic 'The Voice of Energy' and the quirkily melodic 'Ohm Sweet Ohm' standing out. However, it is 1977's 'Trans Europe Express' that remains Kraftwerk's artistic magnum opus, a thematic record that pays tribute to modern-day rail travel. Pristine, severe and mechanical to a fault, 'Trans Europe Express' included influential tracks like the classically influenced 'Franz Schubert', the expansive, optimistic 'Europe Endless', and perhaps most of all, the precise, surging, relentless eight-minute title track.

Riding on the commercial success of 'Trans Europe Express', Kraftwerk shed all pretensions of being human, to the extent of publicly representing themselves as androids in publicity shots. This cold, clinical persona manifested itself perfectly in 1978's 'The Man Machine' and 1981's 'Computer World', concept records that contain bemused observations of a world ruled by rampant technology. Highlights from the former include the mechanical, inventive 'The Robots', the shimmeringly blissful 'Neon Lights' and even a hit British single, the droll, radio-friendly 'The Model'. The latter was marked by more accessible, radio-friendly grooves, as Kraftwerk expressed their concerns on living in a 'Computer World', using a 'Pocket Calculator' and a 'Home Computer', and bemoaned the tribulations of computer dating in 'Computer Love'.

Latter-day records like 1986's 'Techno Pop', 1991's 'The Mix' and 2003's 'Tour de France Soundtracks' might not be as culturally resonant as their predecessors, but they do comprise some notable moments that bear more than just a cursory listen. 'The Telephone Call' constitutes pure pop pleasure, without any of the usual cloying commercial whiff, 'Aérodynamik' is a glossy piece of sequencer pop, and 'Vitamin' is Kraftwerk's conscious nod to downtempo ambient, one of the sub-genres spawned from their classic music. Mention should also be made of the fan favourite 'Tour de France', a kinetically propulsive musical representation of the titular bicycle race.

Serving as a digitally efficient reminder of Kraftwerk's futuristic electronic pop, 'The Catalogue' is potent and authoritative in its own way, with each of the albums here making a good case for these German brainiacs' important position in 20th-century music. The collection also acts as a comprehensive history lesson in how Kraftwerk's brand of music has influenced innumerable contemporary pop trends, with everything from synth-pop and new wave to the present-day electronica movement (and its various, seemingly endless permutations) owing their very existences to the sounds in these pioneering albums here. A highly essential box set for serious pop-music scholars, and a genuine boon to Kraftwerk enthusiasts seeking to replace their worn-out first-generation CDs of those venerated studio works.

Twist in My Sobriety

2010-12-28T09:16:00.000+08:00

Amongst the myriad of sensitive, folk-influenced female singer-songwriters who emerged in the late 1980s, British teenager Tanita Tikaram was arguably the most original, arty and adventurous, easily coming to the fore with melancholy, wistful works that belied her tender age. The most remarkable characteristic about Tikaram's artistry was her distinctively smoky, torch song-informed voice, which provided a terrifically suitable conduit for her insistently elliptical, somewhat haunting folk-pop vignettes, making her stand out from her more conservative-sounding contemporaries. Check out one of Tikaram's most enduring standards, the darkly surreal 'Twist in My Sobriety', which is aptly backed by a moody, sepia-toned video featuring rather disturbing footage of what appear to be daily events in an indigenous community somewhere in the hinterlands of Mexico.

Danny Wilson

2010-12-16T08:57:00.001+08:00

One of the best-kept secrets in late-1980s British pop was Scottish trio Danny Wilson, which amassed a healthy cult following and scored a handful of minor but memorable hits on the contemporary charts from 1987 to 1989. Hailing from the historic northern metropolis of Dundee, the group (which took their name from a minor 1952 Frank Sinatra flick) purveyed a refreshing brand of jangly folk-pop that is undercut with a dash of Steely Dan harmonic and lyrical sophistication and and a generous dollop of velvety blue-eyed soul, making them stand out from their cookie-cutter pop contemporaries. Check out one of Danny Wilson's better-known standards, the dreamy, insouciant 'Davy', backed with an idyllic, blissful band-performance video clip.

Ventura Highway

2010-11-20T21:33:00.001+08:00

One of the more underrated outfits that formed part of the ubiquitous country-rock movement of the 1970s is also one of the most unlikely, hailing from the Greater London area, with its members comprising American military brats. Giving themselves the generic band name America, the unassuming-looking trio studiously worked their way through the London pub circuit, eventually recording their first album and scoring an improbable worldwide hit with the comically surreal 'A Horse With No Name'. More chart success followed with subsequent singles, with one of the more noteworthy ones being the bittersweet nostalgia trip 'Ventura Highway', an elliptical narrative of the protagonist's teenage years. Check out a laid-back, in-studio performance of the song, which aptly highlights Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek's adroit finger-picking acumen and idyllic harmony vocals.

Outbreak of Love

2010-11-09T21:26:00.001+08:00

The now-sadly defunct Midnight Oil have always maintained an indomitable, indefatigable never-say-die spirit, in spite of the changing times. Thirty-five years after their inception in the rough-and-tumble pub-rock circuit of Sydney, Australia, the Oils--as they are more widely known--are still known as one of the premier torch-bearers of rock-with-a-conscience. Best known for incendiary standards like 'Beds are Burning', 'The Dead Heart' and 'Blue Sky Mine', the Oils are perpetually at the forefront of socio-political rock, rallying against various injustices of the day like environmental degradation, the detrimental side effects of asbestos mining, the predicaments of Australian Aborigines, and French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Check out a typically adroit live-television reading of one of the Oils' more underrated singles, the measured but still compelling 'Outbreak of Love'.

Back in the High Life Again

2010-10-30T15:44:00.000+08:00

Steve Winwood is a true, certified rock renaissance man who has worn many hats during the course of his long and varied career. Starting out as a teenage prodigy and a member of the revolving blues-rock collective The Spencer David Group, Winwood then went on to become one of the prime personalities of the late-1960s folk-rock movement with the legendary Traffic. Being the restless creative soul that he is, Winwood then disbanded Traffic and notched up a brief pit stop as one-third of acclaimed supergroup Blind Faith. Winwood then proceeded to carve out his own highly successful solo stint, which has lasted more than three decades, and yielded popular radio standards like 'Higher Love', 'While You See a Chance' and 'Roll With It'. Check out one of Winwood's lesser-known, but no less potent hits, 1986's cautiously optimistic ‘Back in the High Life Again’, backed by a prosaically appropriate video.

The Jesus and Mary Chain

2010-10-15T21:50:00.004+08:00

While the tug of war about the merits and defects of guitar feedback may rage on, there is no denying that acts who have adopted it as their key musical aesthetic have made a substantial impact on the general state of rock music, for better or worse. The Jesus and Mary Chain are one of the prime movers of the erstwhile noise-pop movement, a sub-genre of indie-rock that employs jarring guitar feedback as a main means of expression. Basically, the Chain work in a seemingly contradictory musical style: their songs had a bubble-gum melody foundation, borrowing some of the bright, poppish affectations of the Beach Boys and the Lovin' Spoonful, but the tracks were wrapped snugly in swirls of aggressive dissonance and atonal white noise. Ironically, the resultant soundscape made for a rather accessible and surprisingly sublime brand of rock that became one of the most inventive evolutions in contemporary music. Check out a 1985 live-on-television reading of one of the Chain's most well-loved standards, the cacophonous, claustrophobic 'Just Like Honey', which boasts a surprisingly sweetly poppish essence.

Loverman

2010-10-02T15:14:00.005+08:00

A truly terrifying, utterly bloodcurdling monster of a song, Nick Cave's 'Loverman' constitutes one of the more outstanding tracks from 1994's stellar 'Let Love In' album. Encapsulating all the key elements of Cave's Southern Gothic musical aesthetics, including scarily precise quiet-loud dynamics, grinding guitar riffs, cavernous percussion fills and doomy-sounding bells, 'Loverman' remains a bona fide classic in Cave's frighteningly extensive repertoire, and a powerful testament to the inherent power of no-holds-barred, unadulterated rock. Check out the atmospheric, ominous video clip, which skilfully intersperses ferocious, fire and brimstone-infused footage of Cave and his Bad Seeds cohorts in onstage action, with eerie black-and-white scenes of a combination charismatic healing service and warped scientific experiment, seemingly set during the Victorian age, and starring Cave and his men as the subjects of said experiment.

The Best of Joy Division

2010-09-17T21:20:00.002+08:00

With a name that contradicts the barely containable terror and sense of impending doom that comprises the band’s stock in trade, Joy Division was one of post-punk’s foremost acts, turning out distinctive songs that were visceral and cerebral at the same time, filled to the brim with requisite amounts of vitriol, as well as remorse and guilt. Needless to say, countless miserablist-themed contemporary music genres (e.g. neo-psychedelia, sadcore, Goth-rock, the Paisley Underground and shoegazing) all had their roots in the unique brand of post-punk that Joy Division espoused in their short existence between 1977 to 1980.

The late, perpetually troubled Ian Curtis, Joy Division’s tragic poet-cum-musical martyr frontman, was the band’s most recognisable feature, instantly distinguishable by his desolate, all-hope-is-gone, elegiac lyrics, his monotone-like yet affecting vocals, and perhaps most striking of all, his disturbingly kinetic, almost-epileptic stage flailings, the infamous 'fly dance'. Of course, Joy Division wasn’t simply Curtis alone, despite his overwhelming, awe-inspiring presence: his bandmates were as integral a part of the band as he was. If not for Bernard Sumner’s corrosive, ragged guitar riffs, Peter Hook’s ghostly, high-register bass lines, and Stephen Morris’ astonishingly precise powerhouse drumming, Joy Division would merely be one of a few million post-punk outfits littering the fertile musical landscape of the late 1970s.

For the curious neophyte who don't want to splurge on 1997's exhaustive box set 'Heart and Soul', 2008's single-disc compendium 'The Best of Joy Division' is the next best thing, a commendable attempt that gathers the more notable moments of the band’s brief lifespan. And it does a rather spiffy job too, successfully bringing together all the artistic and lyrical elements and nuances that made the group such a persuasive musical force, even after nearly 30 years after their disbandment.

The compilation opens with the distressed-sounding, desperately forbidding ‘Digital’, a perfect showcase for the band’s remarkable, almost instinctive synergy, highlighted by a moaning, anguished vocal from Curtis. The equally forbidding ‘Disorder’ follows, building up to a dramatic climax before fading out into the rumbling ‘Shadow Play’, with its shards of jagged guitar and pounding percussion framing a desolate travelogue of some unnamed inner-city locale.

Elsewhere, there is the slow-crawling, intensely theatrical, utterly depressing ‘New Dawn Fades’, a prototypical Goth-rock composition that paves the way for outfits like Fields of the Nephilim and The Mission. The evergreen death-disco stomper ‘Transmission’ is of course present, along with other Joy Division classics like the epic, black-tiled sonic cathedral ‘Atmosphere’, the brutally unrelenting, relentlessly fearful ‘Dead Souls’, and the chilling, claustrophobic ‘She’s Lost Control’, containing some of the most morbid lyrics Curtis has penned. The indisputable centrepiece is of course the band’s signature song ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (deemed by the departed Kurt Cobain as “the greatest song of all time”), still bleakly stately as ever in its narrative of a fractured relationship.

Other highlights of Joy Davison’s career canvassed here are the skittish, restless ‘These Days’, marked by Morris’ extraordinary, suitably anxious percussion work and a busy, almost funk-rock-informed bass groove, the echoing, starkly spectral six-minute ‘Heart and Soul’ (which also lent its name to the authoritative, exhaustive 1997 Joy Division box set), and the histrionic, height-of-joylessness lament ‘Twenty Four Hours’, which could well be the most distressing and devastating composition in the band’s entire oeuvre (complete with the knowing line “Just for one moment, I thought I'd found my way/destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away”).

In a nutshell, ‘The Best of Joy Division’ does constitute one of the more compelling records of Joy Division’s music, and a true testament to the genius of the late, lamented Curtis. Even if the tracks here might seem inhospitable and detached for the first-time listener, subsequent hearings will reveal sonically interesting details and remarkable textures that all contribute toward Joy Division’s stature as one of the most important rock bands of the late 20th century. But be warned, this is not for the faint of heart, so mainstream chart fans are well-advised to steer clear of this bleakly despondent and forbidding, but utterly virtuosic and exceptional anthology.

The Dark of the Matinée

2010-09-03T17:14:00.000+08:00

Glasgow collective Franz Ferdinand remains one of the bona fide standard bearers of the post-punk revival of the new millennium, nearly a decade after their initial formation. Armed with angular, razor-sharp guitar riffs redolent of Wire and Magazine, a supple rhythm section worthy of the best death-disco sensibilities, and appropriately quirky vocals courtesy of the dependably yelpy Alex Kapranos, the four-man band has scored a battery of genuine hits on both the mainstream and indie charts, earning the acclaim of critics and the public alike, not to mention the unconditional admiration of the usually-tetchy NME. Check out one of Franz Ferdinand's higher-charting singles, the propulsive, skittering 'The Dark of the Matinée', ideally complemented by a madcap, herky-jerky, surreal video that brilliantly mirrors the song's lurching, jittery essence.

Disintegration

2010-08-19T08:36:00.001+08:00

The Cure’s behemoth ‘Disintegration’ is arguably the band’s paramount defining moment, and the one record that can easily and definitively define the Goth-rock genre. When it was initially released way back in 1989, the album was received with equal amounts of critical acclaim, commercial success and worshipful awe and praise. You know that you’ve made it to the major league of rock players when your album gets an overwhelmingly positive mention on the irreverent ‘South Park’ (which it did on the insanely hilarious ‘Mecha-Streisand’ episode from 1998).

What makes ‘Disintegration’ such an intense and powerful listening experience is the fact that it was conceived as a sonic cathedral (for want of a better term) that is meticulously constructed and inlaid with all sorts of appropriate instrumental textures and fastidious production details. Romantic cold turkey is the order of the day on ‘Disintegration’, its heart and soul housing that ominous spirit of that particular combination of romantic disillusionment and unrequited love that comes to roost in all our lives every once in a while.

This two-disc reissue of the album ups the ante by adding on a second collection of relevant B-sides, live takes and demo versions, making for what is arguably a complete and exhaustive ‘Disintegration’ experience. While the disc of extra tracks does provide a sense of totality to the proceedings, it most certainly does not distract from the real attraction at hand: the parent album, with its overpowering, attendant, existing heartbreak factor and grief-stricken, anguish-laden confessionals.

‘Plainsong’ is a logical start to the record, an almost ethereal, ominous tone poem that has legendary frontman Robert Smith intoning the verses in a hushed, brooding vocal, while swirls of synth strings and tribal percussion whirl around him. ‘Pictures of You’ is a bleak, icy study in slow-motion heartbreak and unrequited love that is ironically filled with elegant guitar figures and a yearning performance from Smith. ‘Closedown’ is a frightening drone of rumbling percussion parts and portentous synth tones, while ‘Homesick’ is a resigned, dejected elegy that is suitably decorated with some piano chording that takes direct inspiration from Chopin’s moodier nocturnes.

The poppish ‘Lovesong’ could well be the album’s prettiest moment, a straightforward, simple declaration of unaffected love, but underlaid with a leaden organ undertow that underscores the futility of such a statement in the face of inevitable rejection. The quivering, slowly creeping ‘Lullaby’ takes some time out from the romantic despondency to tell the quirky, spooky tale of a spider-like creature that haunts the dark, dank corners of bleak North Country mansions. Elsewhere, ‘Fascination Street’ is a brutal, percussive celebration of nihilism that has lots of psychedelically informed guitar pyrotechnics, constituting the record’s most strident instance.

The award for most miserable moment on the collection must surely belong to the appropriately titled ‘Prayers for Rain’, a slow, desolate crawl through a dingy twilight garden that pulsates with heavily flanged, dark-toned synth chords and backwards, start-stop percussion work. However, most diehards would bow more willingly to the title track, which runs for a ferocious, merciless eight minutes, tearfully and angrily howling its tragic account of romantic neurosis, emotional grief and detachment, viciously deconstructing the myth of happy endings. The final sound of a glass being smashed to smithereens against the wall says it all.

The extra disc of value-added content is perfunctory and functional for the most part, although there are some numbers here that merit more than a passing mention. ‘Out of Mind’ is a surprisingly bright poppish ditty that is more reminiscent of the band’s work on the preceding ‘Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me’ album, while the stately, synth-dominated ‘Fear of Ghosts’ puts keyboardist Roger O’Donnell’s predilection for neo-classical nuances on show.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see why ‘Disintegration’ is still held up as The Cure’s indisputable magnum opus, even after all these years. Its dense, layered production, astonishingly accomplished songwriting and sheer instrumental excellence all combine to create an atmospheric, epic soundscape that resonates strongly, long after the final notes are played. Even if the proceedings are overwhelmingly loaded with huge amounts of despair and desperation, the album never becomes once weighed down by inertia or sluggishness. On the contrary, ‘Disintegration’ is a beautifully constructed sonic cathedral (here’s that phrase again) that pulses with dark melancholy and an odd sense of cold comfort, a notion that is effortlessly confirmed by this reissue. Simply put, a must-have.

Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

2010-08-06T08:49:00.003+08:00

Melding streamlined electronica and angular post-punk forms seems to be all the rage amongst the more adventurous fringes of the industry these days, and no one has done it with more aplomb and with more creativity than British collective Hot Chip. Taking equal parts artistic inspiration from luminaries like Kraftwerk and Joy Division, Hot Chip have well-deservedly seen their star soar high in the firmament of contemporary and leftfield pop, netting critical and commercial acclaim for their groundbreaking albums and their revolutionary remixes for artists as diverse as Tracey Thorn, Gorillaz and Queens of the Stone Age. Check out their innovative version of fellow like-minded musical explorers Vampire Weekend’s ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’, a genre-defying melange of brightly coloured Congolese soukous, accessible synth-pop and good, old-fashioned rock and roll values, featuring a certain Peter Gabriel on lead vocals.

Bug Powder Dust

2010-07-24T15:40:00.000+08:00

One-man electronica act Bomb the Bass, also known as Tim Simenon, helped to popularise the idea of the DJ as a bona fide artist, with his run of innovative dance singles in the late 1980s and early 1990s, giving rise to what will eventually be known as DJ culture. Simenon also helped to develop what would subsequently become the trip-hop genre with 1991's 'Unknown Territory' album, which introduced more textural qualities to the electronica scene of the time. However, it is with 1994's 'Clear' album that he really established his credentials as a sound stylist of substance. 'Clear' still constitutes an excellent example of the progressive directions electronica is capable of in the hands of the right man, being a multi-faceted work that bristles with all manner of cabalistic sub-genres, running a triumphant gamut from ferocious industrial pop and sample-based hip-hop to dark-hued, earth-shaking dub and rave-inspired techno. Check out one of the bona fide highlights from 'Clear', the remarkable, propulsive 'Bug Powder Dust', featuring notorious performance artist Justin Warfield on guest vocals. This freeform advocation of recreational drug usage, laden with numerous references to William Burroughs's 'Naked Lunch', is wrapped up in a wildly oscillating, full-fledged, mutated-electronic thrash-metal jacket, and backed by a hallucinatory, hazy, travelogue-themed video.

Wild is the Wind

2010-07-17T15:15:00.002+08:00

This might be hard to accept now, but there was a time in the mid-1970s when David Bowie was coked up beyond belief, suffering from a prolonged bout of substance addiction and chronic depression. But, as the late, lamented Nick Drake once whispered, the darkest shadows can give the brightest light, and Bowie produced some of his best works in the aforementioned era, even as he would later claim that he couldn’t remember much of what went on. ‘Station to Station’ from 1976 was a schizophrenic, dual-natured tribute to classic Motown soul and electronic pioneers Kraftwerk. There’s virtually no filler on the album, but Bowie’s cover of the old Tin Pan Alley standard ‘Wild is the Wind’ is a particular standout. Arguably Bowie’s most passionate vocal accomplishment is present here, and producer Tony Visconti had the sense to secure Bowie’s ghostly yet affecting croon to an immaculate, pristine, jazz-tinged backdrop, bringing out the soulful quotient of the song admirably. Chacek out the starkly simple, yet brilliantly effective black-and-white promo clip of Bowie and his band in action working their virtuosic way through this vintage love song.

The Drugs Don’t Work

2010-07-10T15:30:00.003+08:00

The monumental ‘Urban Hymns’ from 1997 rightfully remains the Verve’s magnum opus, by dint of its incredibly focused songwriting, epically ambitious production values, and some of the Wigan group’s most virtuosic performances ever. While the towering, larger-than-life loser’s invective ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ instantly takes the prize as the album’s most recognisable single, no less noteworthy is the heart-rending, woefully woebegone break-up saga ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’. Adorned with appropriately weepy pedal-steel guitar riffs, a maudlin orchestral arrangement, and a highly affecting vocal from ‘Mad’ Richard Ashcroft, this modern classic torch song justifiably charted at the top spot on the British singles chart. Check out a passionate performance captured on the venerable 'Later With Jools Holland' variety show.

Raintown

2010-07-03T20:23:00.003+08:00

One of the brightest and most promising bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s was Glasgow-based Deacon Blue, who managed to score a string of Top 40 hits in their native Britain before disbanding in the mid-1990s (thankfully, in an amicable manner, and not in any “classic” intra-band implosion like a thousand others).
But during the group’s glory days, fans were consistently treated to highly melodic, pleasantly intelligent (but hardly awash in the sort of witty cynicism displayed by someone like Morrissey), and top-quality pop songs that are unfailingly accessible, but never condescending to the level of swamping listeners with clichéd, histrionic sentiments.

Of course, much of Deacon Blue’s success can be attributed to the songwriting of frontman Ricky Ross, surely one of the most criminally underrated singer-songwriters to emerge from the British blue-eyed soul scene of the late 20th century. Some might charge that Ross is nothing more than a Scottish version of Bruce Springsteen, with the same sort of song topics: urban desolation, working-class concerns, general social issues and that dependable standby, unrequited love.

However, the point is that Ross never engaged in the rabble-rousing grandstanding that the Boss is partial to on occasion, and while his band never quite tasted the sort of global glory that Springsteen’s E Street Band revelled in, they made enough of a name in the British Isles during their time to still be remembered fondly today.

Deacon Blue's defining album remains their 1987 debut, the fabulously dour 'Raintown', basically a candid, no-holds-barred musical commentary on their perpetually rain-lashed and wintry hometown. The title track (preceded by an abbreviated piano-and-voice snippet called 'Born in a Storm') is a rational start to the record, its dramatically windswept, rain-lashed atmospherics hardly diminished by the march of time.

'Ragman' and 'Loaded' are also strong entries in Deacon Blue’s oeuvre, two basic but highly ear-friendly soul-pop tunes that tell of the drudgeries of working in dead-end jobs. The hit singles from 'Raintown' are placed squarely in the middle of the album, and they thoroughly deserve such strategic positioning. The strident 'Dignity' is still one of the best expressions of everyman defiance in the face of overwhelming economic odds ever recorded, while the slide guitar-enhanced tale of unrequited love, 'Chocolate Girl', mines the country-pop vein with customary aplomb.

The three members of now-defunct British soul collective Londonbeat are brought in to lend backing-vocal weight to the yearning lost-love ditty 'When Will You Make My Telephone Ring', adding an interesting counterpoint to Ross’s raspy lead vocal. And finally, the resentful, angry 'Town to Be Blamed' is an apt ending, basically a denunciation of the evils of union-destroying Thatcherism.

In retrospect, the music on 'Raintown' remains startlingly fresh and soulful, despite its age, and also contains some of Ross’s most inspired songwriting. Deacon Blue did put out more stylistically varied albums since 'Raintown', but, confessional, revealing, heartfelt and intuitive as it is, this one will be remembered as a particular highlight in the band’s repertoire. A hugely underrated album that deserves to be introduced to a new generation of listeners.

Falling Down

2010-06-26T16:00:00.001+08:00

Usually well-regarded (or notorious, depending on one's viewpoint) for their drolly straightforward, no-frills trad-rock values, Brit-pop institution Oasis opted for a more varied approach around the time of the new millennium, incorporating more eclectic influences into their basic artistic blueprint. Erstwhile band mastermind Noel Gallagher developed a more catholic musical palate, taking in a myriad of hitherto untouched genres like electronica, psychedelia, folk and prog-rock. This newfound aesthetic resulted in a fair bit of experimentalism in Oasis's music, and surprisingly, even won over a sizeable coterie of new fans. A prime example of this experimental methodology is 'Falling Down', taken from 2008's 'Dig Out Your Soul' album, which nicks the all-too-familiar skittering, compressed treated backbeat of the Beatles' legendary 'Tomorrow Never Knows', and uses it as the rhythmic foundation of a neo-psych-rock epic about disillusionment and psychosis. Check out the compelling, narrative-driven video clip, which shows the debauchery-speckled travails of a fictional member of the British Royal Family.

Hounds of Love

2010-06-19T20:39:00.001+08:00

'Hounds of Love' from 1985 remains reclusive British chanteuse Kate Bush's most realised effort, an ambitious, experimental yet accessible collection of forward-thinking art-rock pieces that instantly became the magnum opus of her career. It rightfully became Bush's first number one album on the British charts, and spawned a series of hit singles that all made it to the Top 20, and also became firm fan favourites. It's worth any self-respecting music student's time to go over the original tracks to discern how Bush effectively harnessed her creative energies to create such a tour de force.

'Hounds of Love' kicks off with the propulsive 'Running Up That Hill', a driving rocker with a kinetic rhythm that builds up to a strong climax. The nervy title track is up next, a leftfield pop number with an orchestral tinge, while the expansive 'The Big Sky' is as wide-screen and cinematic as its title suggests. The measured 'Watching You Without Me' is a diversion into angular electro-pop, while 'Under Ice' is a shimmering neo-classical showcase, anchored by dramatic violin pizzicatos.

'Mother Stands for Comfort' provides a moment of solace in the scheme of things, before the pace picks up again with the richly textured 'Cloudbusting', a hypnotic mantra that is anchored by an insistent cello-driven melody. 'And Dream of Sheep' is a quiet Celtic-informed ballad, while 'Waking the Witch' is a piece of intentionally complicated art-rock. 'Jig of Life' is a jocular knees-up of a song, living up to its mirthful appellation, and 'Hello Earth' is a bagpipe-permeated seven-minute epic. The closing 'The Morning Fog' makes for the perfect coda, a carefully contented, brightly coloured celebration of life and all its diversities.

So, even if Bush is blissfully enjoying the fruits of her labour these days, content to languish in semi-retirement, she can rest easy, for 'Hounds of Love' has long ago cemented her name in rock-music history. This is, by all means, an outstanding 1980s-era art-rock classic, and solid proof of Kate Bush's innovative and singular artistry.

Starfish

2010-06-12T20:54:00.000+08:00

Veteran Goth-rockers The Church have never been more commercially successful than they were in the late 1980s, when they shifted temporarily to the decidedly alien surroundings of Los Angeles to lay down tracks for what would become the 'Starfish' album from 1988. Up to that point, the outfit had only tasted cult success in their native Australia and a few other limited markets, with a handful of modestly charting singles that consolidated their reputations as competent exponents of psychedelic rock. However, it was 'Starfish' that constituted their real breakthrough in the all-important American market, managing to reach the Billboard Top 40, with the lead single 'Under the Milky Way' creeping into the Top 20.

'Starfish' also marked a noticeable change in the band's basic sound, moving from their usual jangly-guitar template to a wider canvas of various sonic colours and wide-screen production values. The band also tightened their songwriting focus, laying some of their most engrossing and engaging tunes on record, a discernible break from the hazier textures of their preceding efforts. This translates into a wonderfully dynamic and resonant record that successfully bridges the gap between critical acclaim and commercial achievement, while greatly improving the band's creative sensibilities.

'Starfish' opens with the expansive 'Destination', which detailed a disquieting journey through a harsh and surreal landscape. 'Destination' also helped to set the pace for the rest of the album, which seemed to be a musical travelogue of the band's American sojourn. But it was the next number that was the indisputable highlight, the uneasily dreamy but highly atmospheric 'Under the Milky Way' (complete with a synthesised bagpipe solo as a middle-eight). This well-constructed and elegant tune was a surprise entry into the American Top 40, and remained The Church's signature song.

The rest of 'Starfish' doesn't let up for a minute. The quietly menacing 'Blood Money' practically brimmed with cunningly concealed venom, while the assuredly charging rocker 'North, South, East and West' showed off the band's electric-guitar riffing skills to considerable effect. 'Reptile' was another standout, being as sinuous and snaky as the title suggested. Rhythm guitarist Peter Koppes laid down a rhythm-guitar riff that slithered stealthily, punctuated by lead guitarist Marty Willson-Piper's quick lead-guitar stabs, which sounded like the musical equivalent of a serpent's bite.

Elsewhere, 'Antenna' was a sea-shanty guitar waltz that danced along at a stately pace, while the whimsical 'A New Season' is a mid-tempo number with wailing seagull-guitar effects. The closing 'Hotel Womb' was another winner, a confident rocker garnished with ringing guitar riffs and carefully modulated synth effects that detailed the end of the journey started in 'Destination'.

It's no overstatement to say that 'Starfish' has truly stood the test of time, even more than 20 years after its initial release. The performances here are uniformly excellent, and the band has never sounded more artistically confident than on here. Truly the work of a band at the virtual height of its powers, and arguably the Church's most commercially realised record.

Come Talk to Me

2010-06-05T09:33:00.001+08:00

Given veteran art-rocker Peter Gabriel’s enduring propensity to mount elaborately themed concert shows (an obvious holdover from his nascent days with legendary progressive-rockers Genesis), it came as no surprise that his extensive ‘Secret World’ tour of 1994, in support of then-current album ‘Us’, boasted rather ornate onstage trappings. Working from a dual-stage concept (the ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ platforms), Gabriel put on invariably aesthetically pleasing performances that drew consistent kudos from press reviewers and diehard aficionados alike. Check out a brilliantly executed rendition of the widescreen ‘Come Talk to Me’, whereby Gabriel initially began singing in a mock classic telephone booth, then slowly emerged from it, being tethered by the receiver cord, and then pulled back into the cubicle again at the end of the rendition, thus giving a slyly literal meaning to the song’s central message of communication breakdown.

The Downward Spiral

2010-05-28T17:13:00.002+08:00

The decidedly antagonistic subjects of chronic anger, emotional despair and self-hatred seem to be Nine Inch Nails' stock in trade, and nowhere is this aesthetic more purely embodied than in the industrial-rockers' 1994 opus, 'The Downward Spiral'. Rapidly attaining multi-platinum status when it was first released back in 1994, 'The Downward Spiral' remains Nine Inch Nails' greatest commercial achievement and most admired album. Filled with lyrics that contain raging wrath, simmering misery and disheartening apathy, it also spoke volumes to a disenfranchised and angsty Generation X that were still getting their heads over the fact that one of their revered heroes (Nirvana's Kurt Cobain) had just taken his own life.

Musically, 'The Downward Spiral' was an artistic step forward for Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor, with its innovative arrangements, sonic trickery, tighter songwriting and intelligent textures. Previously turbulent and seemingly unbridled swathes of noise have now been corralled into more measured vectors of produced sound that provide logical backdrops for Reznor's more securely structured songs. Reznor also made the sensible choice to incorporate more accessible hooks into the music on 'The Downward Spiral', or at least as accessible as industrial rock can get, given its innate cacophonous nature.

'Mr. Self Destruct' is an apt title for the opening song, a harsh blast of industrial rock that flails along on a layer of grinding, distorted guitars. The following 'Piggy' is slower in tempo, with an almost jazzy backbeat and whispered, fidgety vocals, and 'Heresy' almost sounds like a less accessible Depeche Mode, with its bedrock of burbling synths and precise drum programs.

The highlight of 'The Downward Spiral' is undoubtedly the six-minute 'Closer', which became Nine Inch Nails' most notorious (and well-known) number, by virtue of its provocative, expletive-laden lyrics and a highly disturbing promotional video that featured images of bestiality and religious desecration. The oddly titled 'March of the Pigs' is another favourite from the album, with its multi-segmented configuration of abrasive programmed beats and placid piano chords.

Elsewhere, 'The Becoming' is a disconsolate slow-motion crawl in the dark, with echoing percussion rhythms and disturbing animal-scream samples. 'I Do Not Want This' juxtaposes rapid-fire machine-gun cadences and down-tempo piano arpeggios, while the ominously titled 'Big Man With a Gun' features Reznor dementedly, and repeatedly, screaming "I'm going to come all over you, me and my fucking gun". Enough said about that one. 'A Warm Place' provides a much-needed breather, with its cloud of Brian Eno-inspired ambient keyboards, before 'Eraser' picks up the pace again with its shrill, metallic pulses.

'Reptile' is a measured slice of straightforward industrial rock that bristles with strident arena-rock guitars lifted straight from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' playbook, while the title track is the sonic equivalent of a nightmarish trudge through a godforsaken dungeon, with its banks of skittering synth lines and backwards vocal samples. And last but not least, the monumental 'Hurt' (latterly covered in a stellar version by the late, great Johnny Cash) finally gets its proper place, a fury-wracked piece of self-loathing that could well be one of two bona fide anthems of Generation X (the other one being Nirvana's epochal 'Smells Like Teen Spirit').

The remarkable thing about 'The Downward Spiral' is that it still sounds as innovative, emotional and brutal as ever, even more than a decade after its initial release. While Reznor has never produced a masterwork like this again (subsequent efforts were met with popular indifference, and sometimes even outright hostility, in the case of 1999's self-important 'The Fragile'), he can certainly take solace in the fact that 'The Downward Spiral' has long been regarded as one of the most significant rock records of the 1990s, never mind its inherent animosity. A bona fide nihilistic classic.

Advice for the Young at Heart

2010-05-22T22:26:00.002+08:00

New-wave mainstays Tears for Fears made a rather dramatic turnaround in their artistic sensibilities in 1989, with the release of their third studio work, the much-celebrated 'Sowing the Seeds of Love'. Instead of the hermetic, synth-heavy approach that constituted Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith's stock in trade in the preceding years, the duo decided to adopt a more open-ended, organic aesthetic that instantly reaped both critical and commercial acclaim for them. Check out one of the more exemplary tracks that successfully embodied this new methodology, the streamlined Philly-soul concoction 'Advice for the Young at Heart', whose video is set Miami's Little Havana, detailing the apparently prosaic but unconditionally meaningful events at a Cuban American newlywed couple's wedding ceremony.

People are People

2010-05-16T15:49:00.001+08:00

Synth-pop pioneers Depeche Mode performed a rather dramatic volte-face in 1984 with the release of their fourth studio work, the oft-misunderstood 'Some Great Reward'. Where the Mode of yore were content with their plinkety-plonk Casio-keyboard trinkets, the band, in the mid-1980s, wilfully introduced an increasingly darker, more mature streak to their artistry. This meant an increasing use of clanging industrial-noise samples and modulated synth tones, and a noticeable proliferation of socially aware lyrical matter. One of the best examples of this then-newfound sensibility was the forthright social commentary 'People are People', which has the band bemoaning the prevalence of intra-species hatred and malice amongst human beings. Check out the highly appropriate video clip, which interspersed scenes of the band roaming and mucking around on the decks of the HMS Belfast cruiser, with generic footage of naval warfare and street riots.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

2010-05-06T21:17:00.001+08:00

The recent reformation of 1980s British synth-pop pioneers Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark did come as a genuine surprise, given their virtual dormancy for the past two decades. After the original line-up went their separate ways in 1988, frontman Andy McCluskey did soldier on for three more studio albums, using the commercially viable OMD moniker, but failed to make the sort of significant chart impact that the previous incarnation enjoyed.

However, in early 2006, McCluskey announced plans for a regrouping of the classic group for a full-scale tour to promote a newly remastered version of the 1981 magnum opus 'Architecture and Morality', and even a possible new album. Responses to the tour were unexpectedly and overwhelmingly positive, with most venues registering sold-out ticket sales and fan forums notching up rave reviews.

And thus, as the OMD story comes full circle with the upcoming release of the new album, their eleventh proper studio endeavour, it does seem timely to go over their discography and pick out the bona fide highlights.

ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK (1980)
The band's debut album was a perfect example of how inventive a band could get with a couple of ancient analogue synthesizers and a basic drum machine. The legendary 'Electricity' was of course the lead track, but there were other high points as well. 'Almost' was a brilliant synthesis of icy synth drones and precise bass lines, and 'Mystereality' even featured a saxophone in the midst of all the blips and bloops.

ARCHITECTURE AND MORALITY (1981)
The third album was the band's most ambitious and artistically realised, with a sense that they were coming into their own as a genuine synth-pop institution. Opener 'The New Stone Age' could best be described as some prototypical version of techno, 'She's Leaving' was a pure electro-pop gem wrapped in melodic synth washes, while 'Sealand' was an almost formless seven-minute epic that glided along on a synth-drone undercurrent, sort of an ancestor to the ambient-techno movement of the 1990s. The true standout here is the impossibly ethereal 'Souvenir', meticulously constructed from unidentified church-choir samples and orchestral (as it was) synth lines.

DAZZLE SHIPS (1983)
Deciding to move away from the distinctive synth-pop they were becoming known for, the band came up with what could well be the most misunderstood album in their oeuvre. 'Dazzle Ships' might have been dismissed at the time because of its wilfully experimental nature, but it was probably the first album in 20th-century music history to incorporate samples into every single track. But underneath all that clamour and machine-generated noise, there were several pop gems that stood out conspicuously, like 'Telegraph' and 'Genetic Engineering'.

CRUSH (1985)
OMD's most pop-oriented album to date, with two of its attendant singles ('So in Love' and 'Secret') even breaking into the conservative American charts. However, other tracks, with the exceptions of the sample-laden title track and the stream-of-consciousness narrative 'Bloc Bloc Bloc', were near-identicals of each other, and veered dangerously close to manufactured, cardboard synth-pop.

SUGAR TAX (1991)
The first 'solo' McCluskey album came as a bit of a surprise commercial success, constituting almost a partial return to the ethereal mood of Architecture and Morality, with just the right balance of art and commercialism. 'Sailing on the Seven Seas' sprinted along on a big, thumping, glam-rock-inspired backbeat, 'Pandora's Box' was a cleverly observant take on the story of tragic silent-film star Louise Brooks, while 'Speed of Light' was a pure rush of vigour, a thundering synth workout that successfully updated the classic OMD synth-pop sound for the 1990s.

UNIVERSAL (1996)
The final album to be released under the OMD banner, at least until their restoration, with a more organic sound, incorporating real guitars and drums into the mix. Synth programming was also considerably toned down for this release, with less reliance on samplers and sequencers, resulting in superior cuts like the autobiographical 'Walking on the Milky Way', the mournful 'The Black Sea' and the dynamic, cinematic title track.

Evening Star

2010-04-30T23:38:00.002+08:00

When King Crimson head honcho Robert Fripp and former Roxy Music egghead Brian Eno teamed up for ‘Evening Star’, their prototypical ambient-music project in 1975, little did they know that the record that came out of those sessions would virtually set the benchmark for all similarly natured albums to come. Of course, the industry had not started to use the term “ambient music” back then, and nothing like ‘Evening Star’ had appeared in the marketplace before. Therefore, the album was understandably confounding in its scope, especially to record-company suits, who must have been scratching their heads as to how to market such a record. Nevertheless, it did find a highly acclaimed niche amongst fans of experimental rock, who deemed it as a genuinely groundbreaking opus that paved the way for the popular ambient-techno movement of the 1990s and beyond.

The wondrous and otherworldly sonic textures of ‘Evening Star’ are now available again, in a newly remastered version that successfully brings out all the minute, detailed nuances of the music. This remastering gives new life especially to the album’s Frippertronics, an inventive, original tape-looping technique developed by Fripp that endlessly loops treated guitar lines to create a lush, otherworldly soundscape that had no aural precedent. Add to that Eno’s innovatively layered synth-chord patterns, and you have an album that stands heads and shoulders above any of its then-contemporaries, and by extension, anything else in the scene today.

The opening ‘Wind on Water’ is a slowly unfolding, intricate composition that eventually reveals a cluster of monophonic synth tones, over which Fripp performs a languid, space-enhancing solo. This segues effortlessly into the title track, a gentle, repetitive tonal construct that is assembled from Fripp’s sustained, melodic guitar notes and Eno’s serene-sounding electric-piano scales.

Elsewhere, ‘Evensong’ is an ebbing, pastoral piece that evokes the calm harmonic structures used by late-19th century Impressionist composers like Satie and Debussy, while ‘Wind on Wind’ is a stellar example of Eno’s patented “discreet music”, a seamlessly tiered and static musical form that uses an experimental sequencing method as its sonic basis. However, the arguable highlight of ‘Evening Star’ has to be the epic, appropriately named 30-minute ‘An Index of Metals’. This is an ominous, industrial-informed behemoth that stands as one of the most accomplished pieces of so-called “drone music”, made from atonal synth chords gathered in an endlessly repeating loop, with dissonant Frippertronics on top as sound garnishing.

In retrospect, ‘Evening Star’ is a highly literate and lyrical album that has, for want of a better term, stood the test of time, and very well at that. Nothing like it has emerged since its release three-and-a-half decades ago, and modern-day ambient outfits like The Orb and Future Sound of London practically owe their entire careers to the standard set by ‘Evening Star’. By turns brilliant, meditative and mercurial, ‘Evening Star’ is one of those albums that truly belongs within the hallowed annals of rock-music renown, and this new, remastered edition only serves to confirm its innate stature and authority.

The Blue Nile: Vintage Electronic Melancholia

2010-04-23T22:19:00.003+08:00

Glasgow-based collective the Blue Nile deftly trumps the general notion that all electronic-based pop music is synthetic, listless and lacking in any real soul. Ever since their remarkable debut, 1984's 'A Walk Across the Rooftops', the three-man band have consistently maintained a reputation for purveying timeless-sounding, intricately-constructed synth-orchestrated pop suites that still comprise one of the most outstanding repertoires in the rock era.

This theatrical musical palette is brilliantly coupled with frontman Paul Buchanan's poetic, elliptical, utterly moving vignettes of urban living, detailing relevant aspects like inner-city loneliness, economic desolation, and of course, that old faithful, unrequited love. On the wrong days, it can sound achingly human and unbearably emotional.

Notwithstanding the ridiculously prolonged between-album breaks (a mere four in a staggering twenty years), the Blue Nile remains highly relevant in this day and age, quietly standing far and above fickle trends that burn out within several months. Needless to say, the replay value of their songs cannot be overstated: virtually nothing in their back catalogue sounds remotely dated. Here are several prime examples of the majestic electronic melancholia that they specialise in:

A WALK ACROSS THE ROOFTOPS (1984)
The title track off their debut album paints a highly evocative picture of a nocturnal cityscape, all aglow and alive with the attendant neon lights, vehicular movements, evening crowds and human traffic. The well thought-out drum-machine backing track is carefully laid beneath a steady Moog-bass pulse and sweeping synth strings, making for one of the strongest opening tracks found anywhere.

EASTER PARADE (1984)
A pensive piano ballad that juxtaposes the fleeting, brightly coloured jubilation of a city-street parade with the protagonist's more permanent, darkly shaded romantic uncertainties, 'Easter Parade' was later remade as a fuller-bodied number by bohemian singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones.

THE DOWNTOWN LIGHTS (1989)
Arguably The Blue Nile's most accomplished composition, this excellently paced and slow-burning epic tone poem is painstakingly constructed from cinematic synth strings, an wavering synth-bass cadence and Buchanan's choked-with-emotion baritone. An intensely graphic study in urban isolation and the torments of unrequited love, this consummate and open-hearted opus abounds with striking, haunting lyrical images (walking alone down empty streets, leading an angst-filled existence in dilapidated, freezing bedsits) and some of the most candidly lovelorn lyrics ever laid down ("Sometimes I walk away, when I really want to do, is love and hold you close").

LET'S GO OUT TONIGHT (1989)
Weary-sounding synth-brass charts make up the backbone of this despair-filled lamentation, made even more sorrowful by some delicate synth-guitar pluckings and Buchanan's tired voice. One of the best anecdotes of a romantically-fuelled emotional crisis ever composed, and the ideal track to play at the ungodly, deathly silent hour of 3.00 a.m., when all possible hopes seem to have dissipated.

SATURDAY NIGHT (1989)
One of the rare instances of a relatively blissful tone in the band's repertoire, this cautious account of hard-won optimism provides a fitting closer to their sophomore album, the yet-to-be-matched masterpiece 'Hats'. Celebrating the protagonist's love for "an ordinary girl", it is, however, left uncertain if the girl in question is of a reciprocatory disposition.

FAMILY LIFE (1996)
Bolstered by a plaintive orchestral-string arrangement by underrated film composer Craig Armstrong, the piano sonnet 'Family Life' unflinchingly details the breakdown and dissolution of a marriage, and the subsequent disaster zone left behind in its wake. Certainly a much more evocative and effective exposition of a separation than Elton John's 'Sacrifice', which is the more popular standard.

STAY CLOSE (2004)
An absolutely disconsolate and sorrowful elegy that trudges on like a dying horse for eight agonising minutes, 'Stay Close' is permeated with ominous-sounding synth-woodwind tones and a plodding machine-generated drumbeat. Add to the mix Buchanan's tearful, repeated exhortations for a loved one to "stay close to me", when quite obviously, the object of his affections has departed long ago, and you have the perfect song to soundtrack that particular barren state of mind you are left with, when all illusions of and prospects for a potential, long-lasting relationship have vanished.

Fall at Your Feet

2010-04-10T23:16:00.000+08:00

One of the more underrated and under-recognised gems in the venerable Crowded House's back catalogue, 'Fall at Your Feet' from 1991 still managed to scale into the British Top 20, mostly by dint of its polished, somewhat polite AOR veneer. However, no other adult-contemporary chart single can boast of such classicist obsessive-stalker lines like "I'm really close tonight, and I feel like I'm moving inside her" and "Do you want my presence or need my help, who knows where that might lead", making the song a virtual sugar-coated bullet, so to speak. The composition is given additional authority by the always-remarkable double-tracked harmonies of the Finn brothers, and the subversion of traditional pop-song ideals via the introduction of a recurring twangy pedal-steel guitar riff. Check out the resonant video clip, filmed in an atmospheric black-and-white fashion, and featuring somewhat surreal elements that could have been lifted straight out of a Dali painting.

September 13

2010-04-02T23:27:00.001+08:00

Grey-haired Australian singer-songwriter Stephen Cummings is the very definition of a cult success: his is a name that is only known in selected circles down under, and despite investing more than three decades in the business, he has not achieved any sort of significant commercial recognition. This is a terrible shame, considering that Cummings's songs are candid, elliptical narratives of everyday life in Australian inner suburbia, about the joys and travails of falling in and out of love in such a grimly humdrum environment. It's no overstatement to state that Cummings's works are small, quiet musical miracles that hold up remarkably well even after countless listenings. Check out 'September 13', a wonderfully oblique ditty from 1994 that takes a somewhat surreal and peculiar look at a rapidly disintegrating romance, and the effects from its fallout. The rather disturbing video clip is set entirely in a frozen-meat locker, portraying a tied-up Cummings struggling desperately to set himself free before the onset of hypothermia and subsequent death by freezing.

Black Sea

2010-03-19T23:10:00.000+08:00

The electronic-music sub-genre known as glitch has become quite the in thing in recent years, with a handful of like-minded artists springing up to lay their claim to being purveyors and innovators of this subset of that larger category commonly referred to as IDM (intelligent dance music). Glitch, by itself, is admittedly a rather difficult proposition: taking direct inspiration from the hyper-abstract musique-concrete ideals of venerated modern-classical composers like John Cage and Steve Reich, it also incorporates and splices electronically processed sounds and found-sound samples to create ambient, freeform sound sculptures, occasionally informed by randomly generated rhythms and sonic distortions. This has inevitably resulted in a drifting, otherworldly variety of electronica that is far removed from any one of the multitudes of street-level dance music found on any of the major label and charts: needless to say, it also possesses absolutely no commercial aspirations whatsoever.

One of the foremost practitioners of glitch is Austrian maverick Christian Fennesz, who has carved out a very respectable career for the past decade-and-a-half with his distinctive brand of eerie, cabalistic, and yet stately soundscapes, carefully treated guitar and synth textures, brittle, odd-metered electronic percussion and compellingly spooky found-sound samples. Check out the Reich-influenced, epically proportioned 'Black Sea' (which also constitutes the title track to his most recent album, released in 2008), which effortlessly maintains its mood of uncompromising, tectonic bleakness throughout its mammoth ten-minute running time.

Priest = Aura

2010-03-12T23:00:00.003+08:00

Coming on the heels of 1990's disappointingly polished and emptily refined 'Gold Afternoon Fix', 1992's 'Priest = Aura' was a dramatic turnaround for veteran Goth-rockers The Church. This masterwork saw the band immersing themselves fully in the cabalistic, murky waters of psychedelic rock and coming up with an original, if admittedly leftfield work of art. Its songs were decidedly surreal, akin to cryptic snapshots taken in some otherworldly landscape found only in LSD-induced nightmares. It was undoubtedly an incongruous album to release during the supremacy of grunge in the early 1990s, but in retrospect, it might well be The Church's strongest work.

The epic sprawl of the title track (vaguely about a soldier's wanderings in a distant war-torn land) made for a great opener to the album, setting the pace for the arcane, unsettling atmosphere to follow. 'Ripple' followed, a nervous, shadowy invocation of a merciless femme fatale, anchored by trademark Church jangly-guitar riffs and Kilbey's almost somnambulant vocals. The haunted-house tale of 'Lustre' was marked by monstrous snare drums and a throbbing bass line, while the deceptively gentle waltz-time 'Swan Lake' detailed a hellish family life with unflinching candour. Some succour came in the form of the soothing mid-tempo dance groove of 'Feel', but soon the sense of unease takes over again, in the whimsical but highly disturbing English music-hall chanting of 'The Disillusionist', whose titular character is "famous from the waist down, but the top half of his body is a corpse". Things finally end with the menacing, frenzied turmoil of 'Chaos', which lasted for a staggering ten minutes, collapsing into an utter mess at the end in an insane explosion of over-the-top guitar feedback. An astonishing, well-crafted record that could well be The Church's indisputable magnum opus.

She's Lost Control

2010-03-05T22:37:00.001+08:00

Of the handful of singles that the legendary Joy Division released in their brief lifespan, the utterly bone-chilling ‘She’s Lost Control’ remains the post-punk troupe’s most compelling and influential. Drawing perverse inspiration from late frontman Ian Curtis’s encounter with an epileptic and her accompanying lack of direction, this iconic composition acquired an additional resonance from the fact that Curtis himself suffered from the same condition. Musically speaking, the track is a commendable exercise in classicist death-disco aesthetics, with the band firing on all cylinders: Stephen Morris laying down a terrifyingly steady backbeat, Peter Hook providing a spookily insistent high-register bass line, Bernard Sumner wielding abrasive, jagged riffs, and Curtis himself delivering a haunted, nerve-wracking vocal performance. Check out this vintage-quality, persuasive live clip of the song, with Curtis treating the audience to his infamous ‘fly dance’, which fit the work’s desperation-filled, despair-ridden lyrics to a tee.

Blue Albums

2010-02-24T20:46:00.007+08:00

There's a particular class of thematic works by certain acts that are best described as “blue albums”, for want of a better term. The unifying concept that ties all so-called blue albums together is a all-too tangible sense of romantic disillusionment and emotional turmoil, conveyed through the artist's appropriately dejected delivery and pertinently sober arrangements. In other words, these constitute the sort of stuff to play after the end of that turbulent fling, or if you're wallowing in the depths of unrequited affection. Here are some notable examples:

ONLY THE LONELY (Frank Sinatra, 1958)
The sentimentality on this often overlooked masterpiece by Old Blue Eyes is that of the disheartening and resigned variety, brilliantly put forward through these so-called "suicide songs". Every single track here is exquisitely moving, shaded with gloom-filled, spare orchestrations by Nelson Riddle that knowingly emphasises Sinatra's pain-wracked tenor. One for those long, dark lonely nights of the soul.

I'M ALIVE (Jackson Browne, 1993)
Written as a direct response to his tumultuous break-up with actress Daryl Hannah, 'I’m Alive' is often named as Browne’s most personal set of songs, and rightly so too. Encompassing the full gamut of a restive relationship, from desperate devotion ('I’ll Do Anything', ‘Everywhere I Go'), furious frustration ('My Problem is You'), soul-defeating apprehension ('Too Many Angels', 'Take This Rain') and hard-won acceptance ('Sky Blue and Black', 'All Good Things'), 'I’m Alive' is remarkably well-composed and appropriately empathic. The absolutely devastating 'Sky Blue and Black' must surely be the most candid paean to a dearly departed ever written in late 20th-century rock.

TUNNEL OF LOVE (Bruce Springsteen, 1987)
Another sincere rejoinder to the end of a relationship, Springsteen’s Dear John letter to ex-wife Julianne Phillips is suitably stark and subdued, a welcome contrast from the more well-known bombast of the preceding 'Born in the USA'. The reflective 'One Step Up' arguably ranks as the Boss’s most forthright break-up ditty, while the languidly paced 'Valentine’s Day’ makes for the perfect closer: ominous, shadowy and angst-ridden.

US (Peter Gabriel, 1992)
A kaleidoscopic musical tapestry that blends the best of Eastern esoterica and Western firepower, 'Us' is a powerful yet sincere assessment of Gabriel’s past failed relationships, filtered through some of his most intimate lyrics and stately arrangements. 'Come Talk to Me' makes for one hell of an album opener, lamenting the lack of communication on both global and personal levels, while the gospel-influenced 'Washing of the Water' and the cathartic closer 'Secret World' features Gabriel’s most emotional vocalisations to date. Still remains unparalleled in its sheer emotional scope.

WHERE IT GOES (Lori Carson, 1995)
Underrated New York folkie Lori Carson brings us this absolutely shattering set of yearning love songs, brutally shot through with raw sentiments and conflicted emotions. Couched in some of the most skeletal textures ever crafted, the songs on 'Where It Goes' tells their collective story of romantic upheaval and unrequited love simply and quietly, thankfully without any grandiose affectations. Almost unbearably quiet in places, the album is painfully palpable and justifiably bleak, but imbued with a paradoxical sense of exhausted hope.

Don't Drink the Water

2010-02-20T21:43:00.000+08:00

The ever eclectic Dave Matthews Band went the socio-political route with brilliantly resonant results on 1998's blistering 'Don't Drink the Water', a mocking, vicious indictment of both South African apartheid and the decimation of Native Americans by Spanish conquistadors. Check out an appropriately fiery, highly effective live take of this landmark song, taken from 2003's 'The Central Park Concert' video, which shows the band members firing on all cylinders, effortlessly displaying their collective, synergistic yet-unsurpassed instrumental prowess, and their instinctive knack for a bloody good jam session.

Knights of Cydonia

2010-02-12T23:42:00.000+08:00

Modern-day prog-rockers Muse might have been accused of being Radiohead wannabes in the initial stages of their decade-long stint in the business, but the (mostly unwarranted) charge was quickly dispelled by the release of their superlative fourth album, 2006's 'Black Holes and Revelations'. This ridiculously resonant 11-song set was a head-spinning, but still cohesive melange of classic progressive rock, propulsive synth-pop, sneery punk-rock and whimsical folk, all held together by epic, cutting-edge production values, courtesy of maverick auteur Rich Costey. Check out one of the more notable tracks from this multi-platinum magnum opus, the hilariously monstrous, self-consciously strident, Rush-approximating 'Knights of Cydonia', which is brilliantly visualised in an intentionally insolent video clip, chock-full of not-so-veiled references to a variety of well-known pop-cultural artefacts.

Kingdom of Rain

2010-02-05T23:35:00.001+08:00

Mostly known as an incisive, polemical rabble-rouser who constituted an annoying thorn in the side of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory regime of the 1980s, one-man band The The, also known as Matt Johnson, was also an keen observer of the human condition, detailing all the peculiarities unique to men and women. One of Johnson’s more engaging, non-political numbers is 1989’s ‘Kingdom of Rain’, a haunting duet with Irish rebel poet Sinéad O'Connor that became a minor independent-chart hit. This regret-ridden, tension-tight ode to a deceased relationship gets an appropriately edgy, noirish video-clip treatment, complete with all manner of non-sequitur images and bleak-cityscape views. Oddly enough, O’Connor herself didn’t appear in the promo, instead being replaced by a ghostly, blank-faced, blue-lit avatar that adds to the overall sense of surreal disconnection.

Falling Down Blue

2010-01-15T22:15:00.001+08:00

Blue Rodeo remains one of Canada’s best kept musical secrets, despite having put out numerous albums since the mid-80s, and winning a handful of Juno Awards (Canada’s equivalent of the Grammies). It’s easy to see why the roots-rockers do not enjoy the same sort of acclaim as more illustrious Canuck rockers like Neil Young, Bryan Adams or The Band: they specialise in putting out songs about chronic heartaches, hard economic times, desolate country towns and other less-than-cheery subjects, all set to some of the most understated and bare-bones music ever committed to record. Here’s an example of Blue Rodeo’s subtle craftsmanship, the elegantly poised, lounge-jazz-influenced ‘Falling Down Blue’, which gets an appropriately low-key monochromatic video-clip treatment.

Jean the Birdman

2010-01-08T22:29:00.000+08:00

A top-quality collaboration between two art-rock authorities materialised in 1993, when avant-pop stalwart David Sylvian teamed up with King Crimson head honcho Robert Fripp for the stupendously excellent ‘The First Day’ album. ‘The First Day’ was an astonishingly adept record that effortlessly redefined the boundaries of modern-day progressive rock, while laying down some purposeful, superior-quality guitar grooves and spacey, patented Frippertronics courtesy of Fripp, expertly blended with some of Sylvian’s most confident and upfront vocals. While this sort of masterfully crafted neo prog-rock possesses not an iota of commercial-chart aspiration, it does constitute a rare, wondrous gift for aficionados of the genre, not to mention faithful fans of both Sylvian and Fripp. Check out the intentionally kaleidoscopic, appropriately surreal video clip for the sole single from this historic partnership, the cerebrally rugged and funky pop-rock composition ‘Jean the Birdman’.

Daydream Nation

2009-12-31T21:26:00.001+08:00

With the release of 1988's 'Daydream Nation', erstwhile avant-garde rock pioneers Sonic Youth finally and decisively consolidated their credentials as elder statesmen of alternative rock. While previous efforts like 1986's 'Evol' and 1987's 'Sister' were commendable exercises in melding leftfield songcraft with the band's noise-terror approach, 'Daydream Nation' successfully corrals the past sonic aggressiveness into a more streamlined sensibility. This new archetype made for a better, more realised vision of Sonic Youth's artistry, in which the unorthodox, the primal, and the poppishness coalesce into a single innovative totality.

The boldly defiant anti-anthem 'Teenage Riot' sounds as riveting as ever, while 'Providence' is rightfully hazy in its shifting fever-dream musicality. 'Eliminator Jr.' is an exercise in controlled cacophony, and 'Hyperstation' is almost skeletal in its short, controlled bursts of staccato guitar chords.

Elsewhere, 'Total Trash' is a piece of low-key, mildly threatening white noise, while 'Silver Rocket' kicks out the jam with its punky demeanour. The cascading 'Eric's Trip' practically rolls with waves of feedback, and the terrifying 'Cross the Breeze' revels in a venomous arrangement that borders on speed-metal. The group also indulged in a bit of social commentary here, skewering Hollywood shallowness on 'Kissability' and lampooning American consumer culture on 'The Sprawl'. The most accessible instance on the album comes in the form of the relatively 'normal' rocker' 'Candle', which bears the immortal lyric "Wind is whipping through my stupid mop".

In short, the overall disposition of 'Daydream Nation' is nothing short of stunning, and perfectly illustrates how well performance-art aesthetics can be seamlessly embodied within fairly conventional rock structures. Even though Sonic Youth would go on to achieve greater commercial heights in the 1990s and beyond, this album still represents the band at the height of their powers, and still sounds remarkably cohesive, well-rounded and self-assured, more than twenty years after it was first put out. Aficionados of classic alt-rock can do no wrong by investing in this confirmed genre tour de force.

Red by King Crimson

2009-12-20T16:28:00.001+08:00

The music that progressive-rock pioneers King Crimson made in the mid-1970s continues to be a rather contentious issue, even amongst avid aficionados who possess every single one of the band’s recordings. On the one hand, supporters would refer to the mind-expanding improvisatory instrumental jams and the virtuosic musical aptitude that luminaries like Bill Bruford, John Wetton and Jamie Muir brought to the table as proof of the enduring qualities of the music. On the contrary, detractors would charge the same long-winded instrumental jams as nothing more but artistic self-indulgence, and would also point to the lack of coherent melodic structures and intentionally complicated production values as evidence that King Crimson was deliberately making life difficult for their fans.

While King Crimson’s mid-1970s-era material continues to inspire endorsement and exasperation in roughly equal measures, one album does stand out from the rest of the three albums that were released between 1972 and 1974. This particular record is 1974’s ‘Red’, which, incidentally, was the 1970s King Crimson line-up’s last album before bandleader Robert Fripp decided to retire the King Crimson name, albeit temporarily until 1981. ‘Red’ stood out by virtue of its tighter, more focused songwriting and more purposeful performances (although artistic excess did exist in places), as compared to the dissonance of the preceding ‘Larks’ Tongues in Aspic’ and ‘Starless and Bible Black’, making it arguably the most resonant and accessible of the three albums.

This newly minted surround-sound reissue of ‘Red’ fleshes out the inherent muscularity of the original music, making it the definitive version of the album. The remastering does help in spades, especially in bringing out the hitherto buried tonal shades of the opening proto-metal instrumental ‘Red’, a cacophonous but still melodic tour de force that compellingly displays Fripp’s one-of-a-kind tri-tone guitar-riffing method. The following ‘Fallen Angel’ is an expansive six-minute ballad that abounds with lots of interesting sonic details like oboes, cellos and alto saxophones, while the guttural, raucous ‘One More Red Nightmare’ is an explicit showcase for percussion, a psychedelia-tinged rocker with death-defying metrical changes.

‘Providence’ marks the one instance on ‘Red’ when King Crimson lapsed into musical indulgence, a freeform instrumental improvisation that is both calculatedly chaotic and whimsical, and ends up neither here nor there. Thankfully, the band did a fair bit of bootstrapping for the concluding, twelve-minute epic ‘Starless’, a carefully crafted, multi-segmented showcase that seems to incorporate everything that contributes to King Crimson’s artistic majesty: melancholy, slightly medieval-influenced balladic elements, aggressive riff-based counterpoints and dissonant improvisational changes, making for a very apt swan song for this formation of the group.

So, even if King Crimson’s music in the 1970s still constitutes a bone of contention amongst its community of hardcore fans, ‘Red’ does prove that there is a large measure of validity to the material put out back then. It’s a futile exercise to compare ‘Red’ to the awe-inspiring 1969 debut ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ or any of the latter-day, streamlined albums released from the 1980s onwards, simply because it operates on a different level of artistry altogether. Therefore, ‘Red’ must be assessed on its own terms, and in doing so, one can finally recognise its core values and appreciate its true artistic standing, without any inappropriate comparison to other Crimson albums. The best way to do so is to get hold of this remastered edition, which also doubles up as an essential and effective introduction to a particular stage of King Crimson’s artistic evolution.

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

2009-12-15T12:15:00.001+08:00

Amidst all the acclamation that veteran musical Renaissance man Ryuichi Sakamoto has garnered in his extensive and varied career, a little-mentioned but nonetheless essential facet of his artistry is his dexterity as a concert pianist par excellence, which has been proven time and again in numerous onstage solo performances in diverse locations all over the world. For a stellar example of Sakamoto's painfully perfectionist ivory-tickling acumen, check out this devastatingly, emotionally stirring recital of his undelible theme from Nagisa Oshima's existentialist war epic 'Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence', during a 2005 jaunt.

In the Court of the Crimson King

2009-12-11T13:56:00.001+08:00

Has there been a more electrifying and attention-grabbing debut album in rock history than ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’, the 1969 introduction of seminal progressive-rock legends King Crimson? The short answer is an unqualified no. It is easy to discern why 'In the Court of the Crimson King' is held in such high regard in critics’ circles and amongst serious rock fans. Everything is pitch-perfect on this era-defining album, from the towering, overwhelming music, which successfully merges disparate genres like psychedelic rock, baroque classicism, avant-garde jazz and folk balladry into an artistic totality that is almost frightening in its dexterous execution, to the physical packaging, whose macabre, fearsome album cover by the late Barry Godber remains one of the most indelible and arresting sleeve jacket ever produced.

It is also on this mammoth, influential record that all the essential artistic elements of King Crimson came together to form a seamless whole: the death-defyingly accurate and proficient playing aptitude, the abstract, intuitive lyrics that oftentimes border on the outrageous and surreal, and the elaborate, intelligent production values which hold everything together effortlessly. It is no wonder that subsequent King Crimson endeavours are invariably compared, frequently unfavourably and unfairly, to this antecedent record whose cultural relevance still resonates strongly today.

‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ now gets a long-deserved 5.1 surround-sound release, which efficiently fleshes out all the detailed instrumental nuances and tonal colours of the five-song set. This is good news indeed for those King Crimson aficionados who have been looking for a sonically superior replacement for their worn-out first-generation CD copies. This new remastering job benefits the proceedings greatly, especially on the awe-inspiring opener ’21st Century Schizoid Man’, King Crimson’s undisputed signature tune, and a virtual precursor to and benchmark for all forms of rock music to come (its tempestuous post-bop jazz middle-eight section sounds particularly provocative here).

The following ‘I Talk to the Wind’, an airily placid and melodic medieval madrigal, makes for a sudden but welcome change in pace from the sonic frenzy of ’21st Century Schizoid Man’, with its poignant flute solos and low-key double-bass underpinning. Next up is the hauntingly sinister, nine-minute multi-segmented symphonic suite ‘Epitaph’, which abounds with a surfeit of apocalyptic lyrical imagery ("The wall on which the prophets wrote, is cracking at the seams, confusion will be my epitaph").

Elsewhere, ‘Moonchild’ is a defiantly experimental set piece that is divided into two sections: the first is a delicate, folk-influenced pastoral ballad with lyrics that could have been lifted straight from a medieval troubadour’s sonnet, while the second is an elongated, improvisatory instrumental portion that makes for a respectable template for the ensuing minimalist-classical movement of the 70s.

The concluding almost-title track ‘The Court of the Crimson King’ is perhaps the most creatively realised and musically majestic composition here. Underlaid with an exceptionally inspired lyrical depiction of Lucifer’s palace in Hades, this cathedral-sized, sonically dramatic, Mellotron-driven symphony, capably bone-chilling in its intensity, makes for one hell of a grand finale to one of the greatest rock albums of all time.

In short, the singularity of vision on ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ remains fiercely undiminished and dynamically commanding, despite the passing of four decades since it was originally unleashed on an unsuspecting public. Nothing released since has come close to the album’s fundamental, calculated power and uncompromisingly intellectual musical structures, and it’s certainly no overstatement to say that this is one album that can be safely regarded as belonging to a far, lofty roost completely removed from and above any capricious vagaries of the day. An outstanding, breathtaking reissue of a true rock-music classic, and one that rightfully belong in any self-respecting rock fan’s record collection, or any record collection for that matter.

Wish You Were Here

2009-12-08T10:59:00.000+08:00

One of the lesser-known outfits to emerge during the mid-1990s trip-hop boom, the Aloof developed a knack for combining sleekly freeform, nocturnal-themed electronic textures with more organic rockist tendencies. This resulted in a categorically unique, intensely cinematic sonic sensibility that managed to score the band a series of minor hits on the independent dance charts throughout the fag end of the century. Check out one of their more accessible singles, the desolately titled ‘Wish You Were Here’, which received a suitably existential angst-themed video-clip treatment, showing the group walking purposelessly through a deserted, godforsaken summer-resort beach.

Pandora's Box

2009-12-04T11:36:00.002+08:00

Possibly the only pop song to have been written about cult silent-film flapper celebrity Louise Brooks, Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark's 1991 single 'Pandora's Box' was a surprise top ten hit for the veteran synth-pop outfit, and one of the more accessible numbers in a rather ornery discography that contains songs about nuclear warfare, genetic engineering and Catholic martyrs. Neatly packaged in a straightforward, house-inflected synth-pop guise, 'Pandora's Box' also boasted some rather empathic lyrics about the tragic star, who was beset by scandals of all sorts during her truncated career. Check out the atmospheric video clip, which intersperses clips of frontman Andy McCluskey in performance with footage from one of Brooks's more notorious pictures, the titular 'Pandora's Box'.

Tunnel of Love

2009-12-03T16:15:00.003+08:00

While Bruce Springsteen is best known to the masses for his declamatory, rabble-rousing stance and an astute chronicler of the times and troubles of the American everyman, there is another side to The Boss which might not be readily apparent at first.

This Springsteen taps a subtler artistic vein, telling stories of desperados on the run, relationships that turned out wrong, and other more understated subjects. 'Nebraska' from 1982, 'The Ghost of Tom Joad' from 1995 and 'Devils and Dust' from 2005 are all valid showcases for this particular sensibility, but the one album that really does the trick is 'Tunnel of Love' from 1987, which examines the wreckage of an expired relationship.

'Tunnel of Love' manages to take in all the various uncertaintites and turmoils of that exigent thing called love: unrequited feelings ('Ain’t Got You', 'Tougher Than the Rest'), emotional turmoil ('Cautious Man', 'Tunnel of Love'), romantic disillusionment ('When You’re Alone', 'All That Heaven Will Allow'), marital infidelity ('Two Faces', 'Brilliant Disguise') and hard-won, if utterly bitter acceptance (the emotionally wrenching 'One Step Up', the brilliant and darkly ominous closer 'Valentine’s Day'). In hindsight, Peter Gabriel’s 1992 masterwork 'Us' is perhaps the only work that can match 'Tunnel of Love' in its extensive explorations of the entire spectrum of romantic turbulence.

The Boss decided to keep his regular E Street Band on the sidelines for 'Tunnel of Love', making the album an unassuming, low-key work that relies mostly on acoustic instrumentation and shaded production values. This translates into arguably Springsteen’s most rounded and cohesive effort, without any of the giant-sized guitar riffs, cavernous rhythm sections and Wall of Sound production qualities that characterised more popular efforts like 'Born to Run', 'The River' and 'Born in the USA'.

King Crimson's Red

2009-11-23T08:08:00.002+08:00

Venerable progressive-rock institution King Crimson in the 1990s metamorphosed into an innovative double-trio format, and inevitably became one of the more distinctive professional rock collectives to shake up an otherwise moribund musical landscape, in an era dominated by sullen grunge nihilism and teen-pop drivel. Anchored by the terrifyingly precise and athletically angular axe-wielding skills of head honcho Robert Fripp and the irascible Adrian Belew, bolstered by the superior Chapman Stick work of Tony Levin and Trey Gunn, and given heft by the amazing, interlocking percussion underpinnings provided by Bill Bruford and Pat Mastelotto, the double-trio King Crimson was certainly worthy of all the adulation that they have netted. Worship them here as they make their usual, effortless, virtuosic way through a seismic-quality rendition of 1975's cacophonic white-noise epic "Red".

Waiting for the Sirens' Call

2009-11-20T08:09:00.003+08:00

Effectively New Order's definitively final studio album (especially in light of the statements made by Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook regarding the band's termination), 2005's 'Waiting for the Sirens' Call' constituted one hell of a swan song for the British rock legends. The record managed to blend all of New Order's essential aesthetics, i.e. the innovative fusion of post-punk sensibilities and alternative-dance grooves, the eminently accessible melodic substance of the songs, and, perhaps most importantly, the band members’ individual instrumental skills, still peerless after decades of abuse.

A particular highlight on 'Waiting for the Sirens' Call' is the title track itself, a track that practically defines the term "frosted-glass elegance", and a classic single in the making that consciously acknowledges several important stages of prime-era New Order: a 'Power, Corruption and Lies'-informed synth-string overlay, 'Low Life'-approved melodic-guitar riffs, and a 'Technique'-styled rhythmic backdrop. Combine all these elements together, and an instant masterpiece that is already becoming a confirmed fan favourite is effortlessly conjured. Check out a typically virtuosic performance of the song on the venerated British music programme 'Later With Jools Holland'.

Architecture and Morality

2009-11-19T11:37:00.005+08:00

In many ways, 1981's 'Architecture and Morality' was the culmination of all of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s early-era achievements. Up to that point, the Liverpool synth-pop outfit had specialised in churning out basically structured three-minute pop songs that updated the synthesised Krautrock of Teutonic electronic-music pioneers Kraftwerk, scoring respectable entries on the British charts with quirkily accessible trinkets like the 'Electricity', 'Messages' and the irrepressible 'Enola Gay'.

It was all well and good, but after two albums of the same sort of ear-friendly melodies, OMD stood at an artistic crossroads at the turn of the decade and needed to develop its sound.

This was where the grandly titled 'Architecture and Morality' came in. Imbuing its fundamental pop-based template with liberal dashes of atmospheric experimentalism (including tape loops, found-sound samples and more organic instrumentation), utilising more ambitious production values, and generally tightening its songwriting focus, OMD emerged with its finest hour, and an album that can truly be called its magnum opus.

It was also the first OMD album to be welcomed as a critical success by those unreasonably merciless music-mag hacks who, up till then, had perennially derided the group’s music as rather derivative and lacking any real musical soul.

Given the recent renewed interest in all things synth-pop, 'Architecture and Morality' is well worth a detailed investigation, given its near-legendary stature in the OMD scheme of things.

The incredibly cagey-sounding, proto-techno 'The New Stone Age', with its fragments of random electronic pulses and processed-guitar riffs provides an ideal start to the proceedings, while the following 'She’s Leaving' is a polar opposite, a polished, archetypal synth-pop number that is arguably the most melodic moment on the record.

The impossibly ethereal, stately 'Souvenir' is another memorable instance, with its unidentifiable church-choir samples and a widescreen, cinematic synth backdrop, while 'Sealand' is an eight-minute tone poem that could well be a direct precursor to the ambient movement of the early 1990s, with its almost freeform synth drones and wordless vocalisations.

The pair of songs about Catholic martyr Joan of Arc are up next, a true study in contrasts and musical styles. While 'Joan of Arc' is a lighter-than-air ditty laced with tinkling wind chimes, spectral choir samples and shuffling electronic percussion, the subsequent 'Maid of Orleans' is anchored by a primary melody of a wheezing synth bagpipe, underscored by a clattering martial-sounding drum pattern.

The instrumental title track is another proto-ambient workout in the manner of the earlier 'Sealand', but tighter in overall form and secured by an insistent Moog synth-bass undertow. Penultimate number 'Georgia' is a conscious nod to the synth frivolity of their first album, while the closing 'The Beginning and the End' is as good a conclusion as there ever is, a melancholic, down-tempo, after-hours piece heavily influenced by baroque-era choral compositions.

While OMD can never hope to attain the heights of 'Architecture and Morality' ever again (even with the recent reformation of the classic line-up and their ongoing artistic renaissance), it can be assured that the album has helped to cement its reputation as a luminary of late 20th-century electronic pop. Simultaneously sweeping in its musical scope, considerately theatrical and complete with avant-garde sensibilities, and yet strangely approachable in its reach, Architecture and Morality is still an artistic accomplishment to marvel at, even after more than two decades since its initial release. An important milestone in the history of one of synth-pop’s most beloved institutions.

Kiss That Frog

2009-11-16T09:26:00.001+08:00

One of the earliest examples of the intelligent usage of CGI in a music video comes in the form of Peter Gabriel's groundbreaking promo for 1993's 'Kiss That Frog'. Directed by maverick VR pioneer Brett Leonard, this colourful, kaleidoscopic mishmash of various marine-related images is a fun-filled, psychedelic rollercoaster ride through a weird and wonderfully surreal aquatic realm, and constitutes solid testament to how a deskbound technology can be judiciously, imaginatively and successfully translated to the more freeform environs of the music-video medium. This revolutionary clip won Gabriel an MTV Music Video Award in 1994 in the Special Effects category, and remains one of the more striking short films in his extensive repertoire.

Live Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

2009-11-13T08:06:00.004+08:00

An often-underrated aspect of synth-pop pioneers Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark's artistry is their penchant for putting on a solid live performance, as evidenced in the usual riotous clamour that accompanies all their gigs. Central to OMD's onstage finesse is Andy McCluskey's natural frontman charisma, especially his endearingly silly geography teacher-at-the-school prom dance routine, which has been described, less than flatteringly, as resembling an epileptic windmill. Of course, the instrumental aptitudes of keyboardists Paul Humphreys and Martin Cooper and drummer Malcolm Holmes in the OMD live experience shouldn't be underestimated either. Check out a rendition of the quietly desperate mood piece 'Almost', done during the group's residency at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1981 in support of then-current album 'Architecture and Morality', and witness McCluskey in all his flailing-arm and kinetic-leg glory.

Idioteque

2009-11-09T09:16:00.004+08:00

Making one of the most talked-about and acclaimed records of all time, and following it up with a couple of left-leaning, coldly forbidding works that immediately alienated any bandwagon fans would seem like career suicide to any sensibly minded band, but with Radiohead, it's a logical horizontal career-mobility move. While 1997's 'OK Computer' shattered all manner of records and became the definitive yardstick by which all subsequent Brit-rock albums are measured against, the following 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac' had Radiohead dabbling in various sub-genres of electronica, making for what could be the most dramatic volte-face ever within the business. Bandwagon fans enamoured of the likes of 'Just', 'Fake Plastic Trees' and 'Karma Police' were expectedly turned off by this revolutionary change in direction, but long-suffering disciples who have faithfully worshipped the band since the early 1990s took to it like ducks to water, and most critics hailed it as a bold new paradigm shift.

A solid example of this electronica-influenced aesthetic can be found in the paranoiac 'Idioteque', originally found on 'Kid A', a tetchy, IDM-sourced, beat-crazy stormer that is as good as anything put out by ambient-techno pioneers like Aphex Twin or the Future Sound of London. Check out the artfully shot video clip, which alternates jerky images of random pieces of machinery and what appears to be psychotic, gun-toting mutant bears.

Wrapped Around Your Finger

2009-11-06T08:23:00.004+08:00

While the evergreen stalker anthem 'Every Breath You Take' remains The Police's most recognisable single (and Sting's perennial cash cow), there are other, stronger moments from parent album 'Synchronicity' that merits more than just a passing mention. One of these moments is the quietly threatening 'Wrapped Around Your Finger', a brilliant verse study in power-play innuendoes garbed in a skittish, syncopated reggae-ballad structure, perfectly underscoring its inherent sense of foreboding, menacing psychodrama. Check out a typically stellar performance of the song at a stop in Montreal during the band's massive 1983 world tour in support of the mega-platinum-selling 'Synchronicity', replete with rather disturbing slow-motion footage of dozens of fans in the ecstatic throes of band worship.

Mad About You

2009-11-05T08:23:00.003+08:00

One of the more lesser-known singles from former Police chief Sting is the much-underrated 'Mad About You', taken from the erstwhile Gordon Sumner's mortality and aquatic-themed 1991 tour de force 'The Soul Cages'. The prosaically titled mid-tempo ballad, augmented by some appropriately arabesque atmospherics, is simply Sting's uniquely secular-existentialist take on the David and Bethseba parable, without any decent into religiously postulated condescension. Check out the cinematic, evocative, noirish 'Casablanca'-influenced video clip, which deftly intersperses filmic footage of intrigues going on in what appears to be a French colonial-era Moroccan hamlet, with Sting leading a befuddled Icelandic horse across an obvious static-matte desert expanse.

Cathedral Song

2009-11-04T11:13:00.002+08:00

One of the most under-recognised luminaries to emerge from the 1980s folk-music movement, the exotically monikered Tanita Tikaram made a brief but culturally signficant impact on European charts in 1988 and 1989, with her distinctive brand of melancholy, nostalgic brand of singer-songwriter pop. The most striking thing about Tikaram's singular artistry has to be her smoky, world-weary, bordering-on-baritone voice, which provided vivid, animated life to her story songs that detailed commonplace subjects like the travails of everyday life, the regrets of past romances, and classic existential angst. Check out 1988's 'Cathedral Song', a carefully constructed, folk-inflected gem that speaks volumes about Tikaram's musical sensibilities, and is bolstered by an appropriately idyllic, summer holiday-themed, but somewhat wistful video-clip treatment.

The Carnival is Over

2009-10-29T14:24:00.003+08:00

Combining kaleidoscopic worldbeat flourishes and stately medieval tonalities with dark-hued Goth-rock sensibilities and dream-pop kookiness into a palatable musical stew might initially seem to be a near-impossible undertaking, but that is exactly what dynamic duo Dead Can Dance have been doing since the early 1980s. Coupled with telling, harrowing, existentialist-angst wordplay that invariably border on the surreal, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry have successfully, effectively crafted a unique aesthetic that has won them numerous critical accolades, even if commercial rewards have been less than forthcoming. Check out 1993's 'The Carnival is Over', one of the most realised examples of Dead Can Dance's peerless artistry, a melodramatic, theatrical tour de force that slyly drops several Joy Division lyrical references, and also gets a highly abstract and decidedly dreamlike video clip that effortlessly matches its auditory impact.

Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart

2009-10-27T20:02:00.003+08:00

A much-underrated slice of chamber-pop worthy of adulation on the same sort of level as certified classics by Burt Bacharach and Scott Walker, the evocative 'Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart', written by the collaborative team of Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook, was originally a top five hit for crooner Gene Pitney in 1967. However, it's the 1988 resurrection of the song, conceptualised as a duet between notorious former Soft Cell frontman and synth-pop bon vivant Marc Almond and Pitney himself that gave the composition its highest recognition, going all the way to the top spot in Britain. Check out the kaleidoscopic video clip of this version, suitably set in a decidedly idealised version of Las Vegas.

Here Comes the Flood

2009-10-27T09:09:00.003+08:00

Originally constructed as a grandiloquent, orchestrally enhanced prog-rock epic on his 1977 debut, Peter Gabriel has subsequently reinvented the quietly desperate 'Here Comes the Flood' as a humble piano ballad, which did the neat trick of effectively enhancing the song's inherent personal-apocalypse lyrical context. Check out a live-in-concert take of one of Gabriel's most fan-beloved songs, performed during a gig in Philadelphia in 1987, mounted in support of his 1986 blockbuster record 'So'.

Don't Give Up

2009-10-27T08:06:00.002+08:00

Arguably the most understated single to emerge from veteran art-rocker Peter Gabriel's 1986 commercial breakthrough 'So', the quietly moving 'Don't Give Up' is calibrated as a delicate duet with former child-prodigy songstress Kate Bush, infused with just the right amount of pathos to make for an unassuming, but effective inspirational anthem. Check out its appropriately austere, straightforward video clip, the overall concept of which is postulated upon the primary visual motif of an extended bear hug betweeen Gabriel and Bush.

The Chauffeur

2009-10-23T09:12:00.002+08:00

One of Duran Duran's more esoterically arty compositions is the haunting, eerie epic tone poem 'The Chauffeur', originally found on their 1982 sophomore blockbuster 'Rio'. This drama-in-song constitutes a discernible and welcome change of pace and mood from the more chart-friendly likes of 'Hungry Like the Wolf', 'The Reflex' and 'Girls on Film', and also offers a darker, edgier musical sensibility, as proven in its ghostly, icy synth ostinatos, steadily crawling drum-machine undertow and nightmarish, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Check out an appropriately theatrical live performance of the track, shot during the band's triumphant 'Sing Blue Silver' tour of 1984, during the period when they had all their Taylors together.

Aérodynamik

2009-10-22T21:41:00.002+08:00

The Kraftwerk live experience is quite unlike anything else on Earth. In contrast with other more conventional gigs by the likes of similar contemporary rock giants, a Kraftwerk concert does not rely on visceral showmanship, instrumental pyrotechnics or hazardous stage diving. Instead, the four unflappable German pioneers of synth-pop would stand stoically at their Korg polyphonic synthesisers, Yamaha Midi keyboard controllers or modified Sony Vaio laptops, and strike the appropriate keys or depress the correct buttons, all done with no discernible passion or facial expressions. It’s just Teutonic accuracy and austereness at its best.

The real attraction in any Kraftwerk concert, as any devotee would tell you, is the visual accompaniment to the music. The focus here is not on those four German gentlemen playing in splendid isolation; instead, the primary appeal lies in is the complementary imagery. As each track plays, fitting images would be projected on the giant screens behind them. Check out a stellar example of this visual artistic aesthetic at work, when Kraftwerk performed the sleek, streamlined 'Aérodynamik' at the European Music Awards in 2003, with projected computerised grid patterns appropriately embodying the futuristic vigour and drive of the track.

Small World

2009-10-20T08:18:00.002+08:00

Despite having put out an overwhelming surfeit of eminently ear-friendly, reliably flawless pop melodies, Scottish singer-songwriter Roddy Frame might have toiled long and hard in an often-unforgiving business, but has only been repaid with continuing unresponsiveness and sometimes, even sheer unawareness (especially in that monolithic, oftentimes indifferent market called the United States of America). A crying shame, really, considering that Frame has proven himself time and again to be habitually incapable of writing a duff song (virtually every tune he has written holds the potential to be a hit single, if only given the proper exposure and support). One of Frame's most endearing trademarks is his singular ability to effectively convey simple, candid observations without sounding mawkish, and nowhere is this more evident on 'Small World', a sparkling guitar waltz from 2002 album 'Surf'. Check out a stellar live take on this minor classic, shot at the famed Borderline in London during a series of residencies to promote 'Surf'.

Congo

2009-10-19T16:18:00.007+08:00

While most uppity critics and armchair aficionados have criticised the late-1990s, Ray Wilson-led incarnation of Genesis as the weakest (not to mention artistically dreariest) of all the myriad line-ups of the veteran progressive rockers, there are a few commendable pieces from that era to take note of. One such song is the dark-hued, alt-rock-inflected 'Congo', which harks back to the measuredly insane Peter Gabriel days of the mid-1970s, a noticeable (and welcome) change from the slick, MOR-influenced Phil Collins sensibilities that permeated the chart-busting records of the 1980s. Check out a dynamic live performance clip of the track, shot in Prague during the brief tour in 1997 to promote parent album 'Calling All Stations'.

The Stone Roses

2009-10-17T21:52:00.002+08:00

The Stone Roses, for all intents and purposes, were the most artistically accomplished and commercially renowned act to emerge from the chaotic Madchester scene of the early 1990s. Armed with a justifiably arrogant attitude, classicist pop-smart songwriting and an awe-inspiring arsenal of endlessly inventive and impossibly cool guitar riffs, the Manchester outfit rode high on the charts back then, winning the hearts and minds of fans and critics alike. The band's key sensibilities are perfectly encapsulated in their 1989 eponymous debut album, which has become something of a confirmed rock-music classic and a pop-culture phenomenon, winning numerous accolades and being hailed as one of the most consummate debut records in years.

For newbies still in the dark about the legendary and exceptional stature of 'The Stone Roses', this newly reissued edition should serve as an ideal introduction. Presented in an expectedly pristine remastered format, and value-added with a bonus disc of vintage outtakes and B-sides, this new edition of 'The Stone Roses' is a virtual boon for longtime aficionados seeking to replace their first-generation CD editions. So, diehards can once again thrill to the exhilarating likes of the luminous, sacrilegious 'I Am the Resurrection' (with John Squire's spangling guitar lines), the tremendously kinetic, funked-up 'She Bangs the Drums' (a good showcase for frontman Ian Brown's disdainful, nonchalant drawl), the blissful Technicolor portrait of paradise that is 'Waterfall', and the swaggering, self-assured 'This is the One'.

Elsewhere, Reni and Mani, the band's proficiently funky rhythm section, excel on the rampant, rampaging 'Elephant Stone', and 'Made of Stone' is a cavalierly restrained guitar-pop bauble that takes full flight in its choruses. The stratospheric 'Fool's Gold' is a druggy, acid-drenched, too-cool-for-words rocker that is one of Madchester's indisputable anthems. And finally, the echo-laden, confidently energetic 'I Wanna Be Adored' is as definitive a statement of intent there ever is, effortlessly taking listeners to a veritable musical dizzy height.

At the end of the day, no matter how hard any critic tries, the truth is no amount of words can describe the sheer pop-cultural weight of 'The Stone Roses': the only way to experience its greatness is to hear it for yourself. Still resonant and resplendent after all these years, this is one album that rightfully deserves the deluxe-reissue treatment, with all the bells and whistles that such a package entails. Nowhere else has an amalgamation of intricate yet appealing guitar hooks, neo-psychedelic values and dance-rock cadences been so perfectly woven together into a flawless tapestry, and nothing else comes close to it in terms of musical enlightenment. An absolutely stellar reissue of a confirmed rock-music classic, one that should belong on every serious collector's shelf.

Come Down in Time

2009-10-09T16:19:00.002+08:00

One of the more under-appreciated compositions in Elton John's extensive repertoire is the yearning, yet stately 'Come Down in Time', originally found on Reg's mythical 1970 concept album 'Tumbleweed Connection'. Former Police chief did an unassuming and unadorned, but also engaging and persuasive version for the 1991 John and Bernie Taupin homage collection 'Two Rooms', and that adaptation was arguably one of the bona fide highlights of an otherwise run-of-the-mill tribute record. Check out this historic televised performance, where these two British mainstream rock legends finally got together to do an impromptu but inevitably first-class rendering of this classic ditty about unrequited love.

Sleepless

2009-10-09T08:29:00.004+08:00

Making an extremely strong case for the artistic validity of the 1980s incarnation of legendary progressive-rock icons King Crimson, the overwhelmingly overpowering 'Sleepless' unexpectedly became a minor hit single for Robert Fripp and company in 1984. The most striking thing about 'Sleepless' is its absolute monster of a bass line, generated from a modified Chapman Stick, and played by maestro bassist Tony Levin. This instantly memorable riff constitutes the essence of the song, which is also embellished by Bill Bruford's adept polyrhythymic percussion structure, Fripp's patented guitar Frippertronics, and Adrian Belew's suitably schizophrenic and paranoiac vocals. Check out a jaw-droppingly virtuosic live performance of 'Sleepless', filmed during the band's April 1984 tour of Japan in support of then-current album 'Three of a Perfect Pair'.

And I Love Her

2009-10-09T08:13:00.004+08:00

One of the more underrated and under-recognised pieces in the Beatles' impossibly vast constellation of stellar songs comes in the form of the carefully poised ballad 'And I Love Her'. Originally found on the historic 1964 mock documentary 'A Hard Day's Night', the Paul McCartney-written composition has a structurally understated but authoritatively melodic feel to it, with its primarily acoustic arrangement, bossa nova-derived underpinning, and defined acoustic-guitar riff. Check out the initial performance of the track, lifted from the middle segment of 'A Hard Day's Night', brilliantly displaying the Fab Four in the finest fettle possible.

Glitterball

2009-10-05T08:06:00.005+08:00

Simple Minds in 1998 decided to make a return of sorts to the proto-electronica sound of their nascent days of the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the release of the much-underrated 'Néapolis'. This change in artistic aesthetics caught many bandwagon fans by surprise, the same fans who revelled in the stadium-rock stridency and the foghorn bombast of the preceding years. Unlike the mainstream pop-rock accessibility of chart-busting hits like 'Don't You Forget About Me', 'Alive and Kicking' and 'Sanctify Yourself', the tracks from 'Néapolis' were by contrast more measured and restrained, not to mention more abstract and thought-provoking. The first single, the effortlessly streamlined 'Gliterball', was a veritable mélange of icy synth patterns, processed guitar riffs and a slow-motion Kraftwerkian rhythm logically spiced with some updated junglist elements. Check out its evocative video clip, set in the future-surreal surroundings of the one-of-a-kind Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

The Queen and the Soldier

2009-10-02T08:52:00.003+08:00

Without a doubt, Suzanne Vega remains the most resonant and engaging luminary to emerge from the short-lived 1980s folk-pop movement, which provided a viable alternative to the garishly gaudy New Romantic acts and greyscale post-punk acts that dominated the Me Decade. Vega's songs are things of awe and revelation: equally inspired by the nebulous wordplay of Bob Dylan and the sharply drawn songwriting of Leonard Cohen, and calibrated by her own acutely sharp observations of life in detail, they are fiercely intelligent and quietly compelling gems wrapped in coolly impassive, yet eminently accessible melodies. This brand of sophisticated leftfield pop has produced extraordinary, lasting compositions which should have made bigger impacts on the charts, if only the industry was more welcoming of this sort of leftfield pop. Check out Vega's appealing artistry in this 1997 live performance of the baroque-sounding 'The Queen and the Soldier', an oblique anti-war tale set to measured steel-string guitar lines.

Cocteau Twins

2009-10-02T08:10:00.003+08:00

The legendary Cocteau Twins' impact on indie rock cannot be overestimated, although the now-defunct Scottish trio were prone to some artistic pretentiousness and wilful insularity back in the day. The Cocteaus were arguably responsible for engendering that rather gauzy but utterly compelling sub-genre of rock known as dream-pop, marked by blissed-out synth atmospherics, heavily flanged guitar patterns, and most of all, frontwoman Elizabeth Fraser's vaporous, angelic vocals, which can sound rapturous and blissful one minute, and absolutely bloodcurdling and spine-chilling the next. It's no overstatement to say that the Cocteaus' basic artistic methodology practically defines the phrase “aural ecstasy”, and how. To get an idea of the Cocteaus' out-of-this-world sonics, check out 1994's stellar, idyllic 'Evangeline', which received a rather arty video-clip treatment, showing the band performing in a sea of modified looking-glass effects.

1979

2009-10-01T08:30:00.004+08:00

One of the most candid and heartfelt paeans to Generation X angst ever put out in the market, the Smashing Pumpkins' '1979', a major hit for the veteran alt-rock collective in 1995, was also significant for a few other reasons, mostly to do with the band's artistic sense. For one, it was the first instance where Pumpkins mastermind and frontman Billy Corgan abandoned his erstwhile epic, progressive-rock obsession, in favour of a more streamlined, conventional pop-song approach that virtually seemed tailor-made for commercial radio. '1979' also marked the juncture where the Pumpkins decided to opt for a more pronounced electronica-influenced sensibility, a methodology that they would embrace in full on their next studio work, 1998's sleekly brooding 'Adore'. Check out the whimsical video clip, in which Corgan acts as a bemused observer, duly noting down the antics of a clique of bored suburban teenagers getting into various hijinks in an unspecified midwestern American town.

Sailing on the Seven Seas

2009-09-29T08:06:00.004+08:00

When founding Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark member Paul Humphreys decided to up and leave the synth-pop pioneers back in 1988, taking along multi-instrumentalist Martin Cooper and drummer Malcolm Holmes with him, it looked as though it meant the end of the road for the Liverpudlian collective, which had, up to that juncture in time, enjoyed almost a decade of critical and chart success in their native Britain. However, remaining co-founder Andy McCluskey did some serious bootstrapping, successfully retained the OMD name (although only after coming through a rather rancorous legal dispute), and launched a de facto solo career that utilised the OMD moniker for commercial familiarity's sake. The first album by the McCluskey OMD incarnation was 1991's 'Sugar Tax', a surprisingly effective blend that combined classic-style experimental sensibilities from the early 1980s, with an early-1990s sense of sleekly produced operatic-pop aesthetics. Maiden single 'Sailing on the Seven Seas' embodied this new-found methodology perfectly, with its poised, glam-rock-inspired rhythmic underpinning, neatly framed electric-piano chords, and a general, palpable air of artistic self-confidence. Check out the intentionally surreal video, shot somewhere in a desert in the Southwest United States, featuring an array of incongruous imagery, all juxtaposed together to form a dreamy, Dali-influenced panorama.

Bad Lieutenant

2009-09-25T08:30:00.003+08:00

Coming about a couple of years after the unofficial (and rather acrimonious) break-up of British rock legends New Order, Bad Lieutenant, formed by New Order alumni Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris, and augmented by veteran indie-rock studio hands Phil Cunningham and Jake Evans, are starting to carve a name out for themselves amongst the cognoscenti. However, instead of the dance-inflected post-punk guitar-rock that constituted New Order's stock in trade, Bad Lieutenant offered a more Spartan, back-to-basics straightforward form of pop-rock that might be frills-free and rather unassuming, but is still compellingly melodic and engagingly accessible enough to make it to the mid-levels of the indie charts. Check out their first single, 'Sink or Swim', which makes for a very valid example of Bad Lieutenant's unpretentious artistry (with a minimalist-themed video clip to match).

Mad World

2009-09-20T23:32:00.002+08:00

'Mad World', a hoary old new-wave nugget by Tears for Fears that managed to land itself within the British singles chart top three way back in 1982, received a new lease of life in 2001, when singer-songwriter Gary Jules delivered his own unique take on the song. This reinterpretation, poised as the signature track from Richard Kelly's landmark mind-expanding, genre-defying cult classic 'Donnie Darko', was done as a slowed-down piano ballad, with minimal production values. Freed from the at-times stilted, synth-heavy trappings of its original surroundings, the song managed to take on a whole new, refreshingly different existence here, making its inherent message of alienation and existential angst even more poignant and impactful. Check out the ridiculously simple but highly effective and inventive video clip, courtesy of enfant terrible director Michel Gondry, showing a group of schoolchildren creating all manner of animated shapes on a sidewalk, which successfully displays Gondry's natural penchant for manipulating the basic elements of mise en scène in his own inimitable, unorthodox style.

Unfinished Sympathy

2009-09-17T12:37:00.003+08:00

No matter what history’s final judgement on that gauzy genre of popular music called trip-hop might be, there is no denying that its standard bearers Massive Attack remain one of the more innovative and groundbreaking acts in late-century British rock. One of Massive Attack's, and by virtue, trip-hop's signature tracks is the awe-inspiring 'Unfinished Sympathy' from 1991, the key single off the Bristol collective's phenomenal debut album 'Blue Lines', which has constantly been voted into 'best of' lists, even right up to the present day. This superlative opus features a superb, emotional vocal turn from British soul diva Shara Nelson, which drifts effortlessly above a majestic, elegant sheen of sweeping orchestral strings, offset by a inherent, streetwise hip-hop attitude, as embodied in a lockstep drum cadence and some subtle turntable scratching. Check out the revolutionary video clip, one of the earliest promos to make use of the continuous-shot concept, filmed at a gritty area running along West Pico Boulevard, and featuring an array of downtown Los Angeles-specific low-lifes.

True Faith

2009-09-14T08:28:00.004+08:00

One of the most distinctive examples of the legendary New Order's patented synth-rock aesthetic is the mighty 1987 single 'True Faith', which was co-produced with studio wunderkind Stephen Hague. Boasting an immaculate, polished synth-pop sheen (it was one of the first ever all-digital recordings), infused with just the right amount of post-punk grittiness, this tale of lost innocence and the confusion of post-modern life had all the classic New Order artistic trademarks in place: Peter Hook's earth-rumbling, high-register bass lines, Stephen Morris's drum-machine genius, Gillian Gilbert's innovative synth wizardry, and snarling, jagged guitar motifs and an oddly sympathetic vocal from frontman Bernard Sumner. The accompanying promotional clip, done by French mime choreographer Philippe Decouflé, was an exercise in post-modern surrealism, featuring all manner of bizarre elements, from pugilists in colourful costumes running backwards in slow motion, and then beating the crap out of each other, to a sullen, bizarrely made-up girl stuck in an overturned boxer's punching bag, spelling out the song's lyrics in sign language.