Day 2 - Quirky Ambient Popular Music

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92
I am already hating this. Its dull, repetitive, monotonous, repetitive, dull, repetitive, monotonous. Etc. Maybe I don't get it, someone described this as "intelligent dance music" and that might be it. I'm not intelligent enough to understand why this is even on this list. Here's to an hour or more of my life that I will never get back. Can't wait for Abba.
EDIT: Still listening to this drivel. One of these bloody songs was nine minutes long!!
Standout Tracks: All of them stand out as incredibly dull.






Arcade Fire - Funeral
Never heard of these before picking up this record. Vocally haunting in places, Arcade Fire sound like they have something to say to someone, but that someone is not listening. Reminiscent of Rogers Waters era Pink Floyd, the vocals have the same air of melancholy and sometimes desperation about them. Musically, they try to pack every inspiration they ever had into this album, resulting in an often busy and packed melody that sometimes causes a song to lose direction. It often works though and they hit the heights they set for themselves, while the vocals continue to shout anxiously for attention. A very accomplished album, with a very melancholic edge to it that I liked a lot.
Standout tracks: Neighbourhood #2 (Laika), Neighbourhood #4 (7 Kettles), Crown of Love




Lily Allen - Alright, Still
Decent pop record this one. Lyrically the themes are a little darker than the light and airy music would suggest. Many of the songs seem ironic in fact, such as "Everything is wonderful", where if you actually listen to the lyrics everything is definitely not wonderful. Lily Allen sounds like someone who got jilted at some point in an Alanis Morrisette fashion (although quirky, she is not in the Morrisette mould of "plain wierd"). She spends a lot of time telling us how tough she is and what she will be doing to exact her revenge on previous boyfriends, which gets just a tad dull after a while, however the range of different styles of pop and the variety of music is more than enough to keep you interested in the record, even if the melodic vocals are not quite in the Aguilera league.
Standout Tracks: Smile, LDN, Shame for You, Take what you Take, Alfie (not sure why!), Naive (Bonus Track, very cool)


So there you go. Three more albums from the offering today, and a mixed bag at best. I like the quirkiness and the variety on the Lily Allen album, enjoyed the ambition and haunting melancholy from Arcade Fire (of whom I had not heard before today) and hated every moment of the Aphex Twin rubbish (a copy of Dance EJay later, I could have produced that myself ... ). Tomorrow I need to download a FLAC player, as the Abba album and some world music from Senegal are both in that format. See you tomorrow!