Music Matters: Volume One

As promised, here's my first post regarding a few CD's or, to be more exact, artists that have sat with me over a good few years now and still succeed in bring many emotions on every single listen.

They aren't meant to be exhaustive write-ups of the artists entire life and recorded outputs - this is the W3 and a few Googles away are far more words about them than I'm liable to fit in a month of these. Also, don't take the fact that some get one album pictured and others a number as a qualitative statement of overall rankings - these are routes into the collection, all hand picked with Carpy-tastic skill and judgement.......


Julian Cope
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/

peggy suicide

jehovahkill

autogeddon

Recently a newspaper review described him thus:-

For all his eccentric behavior, Julian Cope has never been convincingly weird. The more he dons turtle shells or turns in 10-minute Krautrock epics about boulders, the more he comes over like a regular man wearing a wacky tie at a party.

It's actually a very astute quote - anybody on the outer rings of Planet Cope is liable to think it too strange a place to land but, beneath all the traffic cone hats and "turn left at out-there and keep going" loose musical style, there are things to rival pretty much anybody.

How this guy got from the 80's pop of Teardrop Explodes to the self-confessed "Arch Drude" (dude + druid, get it ?) I have no idea.....but I'm very glad he did. Out went direct, obvious stomping pop and in came guitar strums, psychedelic epics, cosmic krautrock jams and acid-fried campfire singalongs. Only with a stomping pop hook. There's that contradiction again.

Among the wealth (in quantity AND quality) of albums the three above stand out as a trilogy of sorts. Covering love, emotions, the Earth, religion, alien life, transport policy and numerous other things they are sprawling collections which take many listens to really sink in.

The simple ones are way more complex than you realise and the fully realised ones are far more basic than they have any right to be. Somewhere in the middle of these two the Cope exists and prospers, being both a minstrel for the third eye and, probably to your surprise, the countries leading mind on stones, relics and areas of (pre)historic interest around Britain.

In the same way Cope is more than willing to have opened his mind to things outside the stoic norm, so it's worth doing the same with the contents of his albums.



Prince


around the world in a day

Lets get the obvious comments out of the way first, shall we ?

He's short. He once scrawled the word slave on his cheek. He changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and then back again. He has a flamboyant choice in clothes.

There, done - now on to what I wanted to write.

The small (purple) one has during a quite ridiculous number of releases gone everywhere - funked up rock, glammed out funkadelica and perfection in pop bliss. One day a huge chart classic for Chaka Khan, Sinead O'Connor or the Bangles - the next day a grinding funk jam workout or a pop-rap radio friendly singalong.

For all the love and apathy that exists for the wee (purple) one, there also exists at least something for even the most skeptical audio traveler. I'd go with the cloud suited Around The World In A Day, back from when he was nestled in amongst the Revolution. Pop and psychedelicious arrangements mingle pretty much perfectly together in, for me, still one of his towering moments.

If you've never dabbled due to thinking he's just a bit too odd for you, then maybe hit the back catalogue in order to get a handle on the fact for all his star tantrums and press-baiting stunts, maybe in this case the devil doesn't have all the best tunes.....

I'd also have to mention the track Sometimes It Snows In April from the Parade album - if this record doesn't cause emotion to well forth then your heart is liable to be common or garden stone.


Tricky
http://www.trickyonline.com/

maxinquaye

pre millennium tension

nearly god

angels with dirty faces

blowback

Drug addled spokesman for the wasted generation ? Spokesman for weed psychosis effects ? Mumbling chancer ?

I guess anybody could pick one of these and assume that was the case.

Personally, I'd take those as maybe 25% of him. Even with the rasped whisper of a delivery his lyrics are stupidly clever. Urban poetry, phonetic raps, drawn out tirades....all hit the spot with what feels like a consummate ease. I pretty much blank 90% of rap from my ears due to finding it a seriously vapid waste of breath but somehow, in slowing it down to the speed of thought, this stuff hits home.

The thing about Tricky though, to me, isn't purely about his vocal style.

Having started as a member of Massive Attack it's fairly obvious where the basis of his sound issues from. Trip Hop. There, I said it and the world didn't stop spinning, did it ? For many it's a sound been and gone, something of a whole dropped musical age. What there is here though is music that evolves between albums, and manages to hold the attention during each too. Many years after it was the in album "Maxinquaye" still sounds very fresh, very sensual and like drowning in something very sleek.

Aside from the music there's also a serious, and surprising, role call of guest partners in crime - the (ir)regular contributions of Martina Topley-Bird through to Terry Hall, Alison Moyet, Bjork, Alison Goldfrapp, P J Harvey, Cyndi Lauper and even the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Each rises to the occasion, somehow having the best drawn out of them with the ease Tricky himself enjoys a reefer.

Want something contemporary but still quite unique ?

Tricky, isn't it.....