363. Jean-Michel Jarre - Oxygene (1976)
















Track Listing

1. Oxygene I
2. Oxygene II
3. Oxygene III
4. Oxygene IV
5. Oxygene V
6. Oxygene VI

Review

Ok here we hit a slight slump in quite a high on albums we've been having. Don't get me wrong, I don't "hate" Jean-Michel Jarre, but I do think he was one of the least interesting people doing stuff with electronic music at the time. This is not to say he isn't being original, he is, just not my kind of original.

Jarre is infusing electronica with a poppier sensibility by giving it a distinct harmony. The music remains spacey but never as abstract as Tangerine Dream or as mechanical and industrial as Kraftwerk. This is not a problem as a concept, in fact it is quite a good concept but the result sometimes comes off as slightly tacky, this is maybe not due to Jarre himself but to the huge amount of knock-offs we have had through the years. It reminds me mainly of all those crappy early 80's shows on technology, this is the kind of music they would have on the titles.

So Jarre, original and interesting but slightly cringe-worthy in its tackiness. Still it is something worth listening to in order to see the different directions that electronica took in the late 70's. And some of the tracks are unfortunately damn catchy.

Track Highlights

1. Oxygene II
2. Oxygene IV
3. Oxygene VI
4. Oxygene I

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The track "Oxygene (Part II)" is perhaps most famously remembered for its poignant use in the Australian film, Gallipoli.

The track "Oxygene (Part IV)" was released as a single and became one of the best-known pieces of electronic music ever.

Parts of the album were used as incidental music for the original radio version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Key components of Jarre's sound included his use of the Electroharmonix Small Stone phaser on synthetic string pads provided by the Dutch-built Eminent-310 Unique organ, and liberal use of echo on various sound effects generated by the VCS3 and AKS synthesizers.

The album reached #2 in the UK charts and #78 in the US charts

Oxygene IV:

362. Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Music From The Penguin Cafe (1976)
















Track Listing

1. Penguin Cafe Single
2. From The Colonies (Zopf)
3. In A Sydney Motel (Zopf)
4. Surface Tension (Where The Trees Meet The Sky) (Zopf)
5. Milk (Zopf)
6. Coronation (Zopf)
7. Giles Farnaby's Dream (Zopf)
8. Pigtail (Zopf)
9. The Sound Of Someone You Love Who's Going Away And It Doesn't Matter
10. Hugebaby
11. Chartered Flight

Review

Finally we are getting some amazing albums, after yesterday's Parliament we get today's Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Yes, it is considerably more obscure (the record labe it was first put out on was Brian Eno's Obscure) but it is in no way worse.

This is something novel, I don't really know how to categorise it, some might call it ambient music, or neo-chamber music or something. The album actually surpases categorisation, it can sound like music form the 20's, like the Paris Hot Club with Stephane Grappeli and Django Reinhardt or it can sound like classical chamber music, or like indie music, but it all comes together perfectly.

Few albums are able to be at the same time so varied and so amazingly consistent, there is a pervasive feeling of optimist melancholy throughout the whole thing and towards the end it starts getting more serious while also being more beautiful.This is truly beautiful music which deserves to be much more famous than it actually is. So spread the word! Testify brothers and sisters!

Track Highlights

1. The Sound Of Someone You Love Who's Going Away And It Doesn't Matter
2. In A Sydney Motel
3. Coronation
4. Penguin Cafe Single

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The line-up for much of the album consisted of the original Penguin Cafe Quartet: Simon Jeffes (electric guitar), Helen Leibmann (Cello), Steve Nye (electric piano), and Gavyn Wright (violin). The piece entitled "Zopf", which consists of seven individual "movements", had a slightly different line-up, which included the members of the quartet as well as Neil Rennie (ukelele), and Emily Young (vocals).

The executive producer for the album was Brian Eno, who released this album under his experimental E.G. Records label, with this particular issue coming under the "Obscure" sub-label as "Obscure 7". The cover painting was by Emily Young.

Nothing from this album on Youtube so you get Music For a Found Harmonium, it'll give you a gist of it:

361. Parliament - Mothership Connection (1976)

















Track Listing

1. P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)
2. Mothership Connection (Starchild)
3. Unfunky UFO
4. Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication
5. Handcuffs
6. Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)
7. Night Of The Thumpasorus People

Review

Well this is pretty much the perfect Funk album. George Clinton and the P-Funk were already featured here with Funkadelic's Maggot Brain, but Parliament is the more upbeat version of Funkadelic and makes for a much more interesting album here.

If you buy only one Funk album in your life this should really be the one. The world of Funk music is populated by mediocre albums which might have a couple of really good singles, this album is, however perfection all the way through. From the call to funk that is P-Funk to the James Brown tribute in the last track there is not a beat missed throughout this whole album.

One thing which makes Mothership Connection a particularly good album is its reliance on Jazz structures making Funk not only fun and very danceable music but also full of complexities and nuances. You can shake your ass to the first track, but suddenly you realise the quality of the piano playing and you understand that this isn't just fun, it is really amazingly good. And then you start picking out the bass of Bootsie Collins and the intertwining of sounds and you are fascinated while still having this urge to get your funk on. Doing it to your ears indeed.

P.S.- I could swear that Mr. Scruff has sampled the track Mothership Connection, does anyone know if he did and if yes in what track?

Track Highlights

1. P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)
2. Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)
3. Mothership Connection (Starchild)
4. Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Describing the album, George Clinton said "We had put black people in situations nobody ever thought they would be in, like the White House. I figured another place you wouldn't think black people would be was in outer space. I was a big fan of Star Trek, so we did a thing with a pimp sitting in a spaceship shaped like a Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang."

Give Up The Funk:

360. Aerosmith - Rocks (1976)
















Track Listing

1. Back in the Saddle
2. Last Child
3. Rats in the Cellar
4. Combination
5. Sick as a Dog
6. Nobody's Fault
7. Get the Lead Out
8. Lick and a Promise
9. Home Tonight

Review

Actually this album, even tough it is Aerosmith and actually quite uninteresting like all Aerosmith albums can't really be put into the same category of shit as the albums we were having last week. It is even better than Toys In The Attic, the previous Aerosmith album.

Yes, it does not have an instantly recognisable hit like Walk This Way in the previous release, but it is overall a better affair. It is nowhere near as painful to listen to as their last effort.

So do Aerosmith redeem themselves with this album? Not really, it is still quite dull, there is not much innovation but that is its overall problem, the fact that it is quite dull. There are some good riffs here, mainly in Last Child for example. So it is probably one of the best Aerosmith albums, but that isn't saying much.

Track Highlights

1. Last Child
2. Back In The Saddle
3. Get The Lead Out
4. Home Tonight

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

# Slash says that Rocks was the album that changed his life.

# Rocks was one of Kurt Cobain's favorite albums, as he listed in his Journals.

# In 2003, the album was ranked number 176 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Last Child:

359. Joan Armatrading - Joan Armatrading (1976)
















Track Listing

1. Down To Zero
2. Help Yourself
3. Water With The Wine
4. Love And Affection
5. Save Me
6. Join The Boys
7. People
8. Somebody Who Loves You
9. Like Fire
10. Tall In The Saddle

Review

Finally something really good. I really liked this album, Joan Armatrading is one of the first black female singer-songwriters and you can really tell how influential she was on the ones to come. This album sounds a bit like Ani Di Franco but mainly like Tracy Chapman, who really is a spiritual successor to Armatrading. Armatrading is never as political as Chapman but the sound similarities are certainly more than a coincidence.

This is a beautiful singer-songwriter album very different from all the other ones on the list, it does sound a bit ahead of its time, maybe due to its similarities to Tracy Chapman, this sounds more like her contemporary form the late 80's early 90's than mid 70's.

So finally after this long desert of quality we had Jorge Ben yesterday which I liked and today Armatrading which I kind of loved. Maybe it has something to do with being backed up by former members of Fairport Convention, but it is a beautiful album, both lyrically, in terms of performance and just the arrangements. It is quiet and heartfelt while still retaining some fire. Get it.

Track Highlights

1. Love And Affection
2. Down To Zero
3. Same Me
4. Help Yourself

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Joan Armatrading moved with her family to Birmingham, England in 1958. Her first job was working at Rabone Chesterman (makers of fine engineering tools), in Hockley, Birmingham. She was sacked from this job because she insisted in bringing her guitar to work, and playing during tea breaks. In the early 1970s, she moved to London to perform in a repertory production of Hair.

Love and Affection: