This is Album of the Week #11 ~ This week's album is Jag Panzer - Ample Destruction

Year of Release: 1984
Genre(s): Heavy Metal
Country: United States
Length: 39 minutes
RYM | Listen! (Album.Link)

Excerpt from Ride Into Glory:

Ample Destruction is filled to the absolute brim with killer riff after killer riff. It’s difficult to pick out a highlight track as they all flow together in one, singular metalstorm. There is very few moments for reprieve as Jag Panzer keep it at 100% for nearly the entire album. The guitars, played by Joe Tafolla and Mark Briody, are masterful and a worthy match for Conklin’s performance. The bass, as became standard for most US power metal, is very prominent in the mix. John Tetley’s bass guitar works to compliment the guitars and drummer Rick Hilyard is certainly no slouch as his drums round it all out. The production is thick and undoubtedly old-school sounding. It does a wonderful job bringing together the instrumentation while letting Conklin take the lead with his soaring vocals.

Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

--

Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.

Missed last week? It can be found here.

Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

This is Album of the Week #10 ~ This week's album is The Undertones - The Undertones

Year of Release: 1979
Genre(s): Pop Punk
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 29 minutes
Listen! (Album.Link)

Excerpt from BBC:

Armed with seemingly rudimentary musical skills, the reason the Undertones stuck out was that, unlike their cooler older peers from London and Manchester, they didn't stick to the rigorous adoption of American garage and art rock like the Stooges to the Velvets. They were still in love with their elder brothers and sisters' Bolan and Bowie albums: their sound welded glam to pub rock, all topped off with Feargal Sharkey's Larry the Lamb warble. If they did take a cue from any USA acts it was the cartoon fun of The Ramones, Here Comes The Summer contains the same Beach Boys-on-amphetamine rush that 'da brudders' wielded so succesfully. At the same time, the accents definitely didn't stray across the pond. Never has the Northern Irish twang been so thrust into the face of our pop kids. Check out the deadpan backing vocals on True Confessions.

Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

--

Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.

Missed last week? It can be found here.

Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~

Good morning ~ This is a thread to discuss new album releases that have arrived on our doorstep this week. Feel free to share albums and EPs that have caught your eye and interest.

Discussion Points

What are you looking forward to listen to?
Have you listened to any of these releases?
What are your thoughts?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past?

Why Friday?

Most (but not all) new LPs/EPs release on a Friday, as labels want to give the release a full week of sales before entering the charts.

~~ Feedback on the format welcome

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Time Period: 1990-1994

Choose one album
that you love
that you think deserves more love

Tell us what it is, and why.

Previous posts in series

Additional Details

This is Album of the Week #9 ~ This week's album is The KLF - Chill Out

Year of Release: 1990
Genre(s): Ambient, Sound Collage
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 44 minutes
Listen! (YouTube) This album isn't available on streaming services.

Excerpt from Pitchfork:

The interwoven pieces play out like a radio broadcast heard while half asleep, tapping into the same surreal aesthetic that David Lynch would explore in Twin Peaks’ debut just a few months later. Call it the American uncanny, in which familiar tropes are turned strange, and tantalizing snippets suggest hidden narratives—root systems of stories burrowing deep underground. Like the Swiss heritage of photographer Robert Frank, another eagle-eyed traveler of America’s backroads, the KLF’s foreignness gave them special purchase on American myths. It was all a product of the duo’s imagination; Drummond had never even been to the places they were evoking, and they only settled on the titles after recording. “We thought that it had the feeling of that sort of trip,” Drummond told X Magazine in 1991. “I love maps and atlases and I love place names, and I just sat down with the atlas and picked, you know, and saw the journey that it was and it all seemed to fit.”

Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

--

Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.

Missed last week? It can be found here.

Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Good morning ~ This is a thread to discuss new album releases that have arrived on our doorstep this week. Feel free to share albums and EPs that have caught your eye and interest.

Discussion Points

What are you looking forward to listen to?
Have you listened to any of these releases?
What are your thoughts?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past?

Why Friday?

Most (but not all) new LPs release on a Friday, as labels want to give the release a full week of sales before entering the charts.

~~ Feedback on the format welcome

Merrily abusing my piano with my horrifying lack of skill, I keep noticing songs beginning with the notes C-F:

• Moonlight Shadows
• Auld Lang Syne
• Es hatt ein Bauer ein junges Weib
• Der sad to katte på et bord
• Forest Green

It sorta feels like the melody exists in the area around F, while C is used as kind of special effect. Are there some connection or tradition behind those C-F openings, or is it just me seeing patterns where there is none?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

This is Album of the Week #8 ~ This week's album is Tame Impala - The Slow Rush

Year of Release: 2020
Genre(s): Psychedelic Pop
Country: United States
Length: 57 minutes
Listen! (Album.Link)

Excerpt from NPR:

As a producer, Parker has more moving parts to balance this time, but he arrives at a deft auteur-pop synergy in which every last decision, down to the assorted cathedral-like reverb effects that lend his voice an otherworldly aura, become as intrinsic to the music as the melodies or the words. Though there's a lot going on in the latticework of the music — springy analog synthesizer arpeggios, guitars doing unguitarlike things, layers upon layers of pastel lushness — the post-psychedelic swirl of The Slow Rush registers as an organic blend, with the songs never feeling cluttered or too tightly scripted.

Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

--

Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.

Missed last week? It can be found here.

Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~

The "album problem" is, of course, the fact that our music listening habits have changed over the past decade and the value of a well-thought-out album is not nearly what it once was. This is in large part due to the fact that it's easy for people to create playlists with a billion different songs to choose from, recommendation algorithms, "Discovery Weekly" playlists, and whatever else the streaming services can throw at us.

I may not speak for all of us, but I've personally not been able to fully consume a new album for quite a while now, finding that I gravitate toward a few songs/singles that get dumped into a separate playlist. I don't like this and I miss the days that I would discover deep cuts in the back of an album that I listened to ad nauseum.

I present to you the "Six Disc Changer" playlist. The rules are simple:

1. Create a new playlist in Spotify, Tidal, or your chosen platform. Call it "Six Disc Changer"
2. Add six FULL albums to the playlist
3. Force yourself to listen to the playlist -- maybe not exclusively -- but a fair amount. Imagine you're driving around in your 2002 Honda Civic and the only music available to you is what you've got in your CD changer.
4. Any time you want to add a new album, you must remove an old album. You should only have six CDs loaded up at any time.

If you want to take the concept a few steps further...

5. Any time you remove a CD, add it to a separate playlist called "CD Catalogue".
6. Any time you want to add a new CD to the catalogue, you must "purchase" it with an "allowance" of your choosing. I'm going with 1 new album per week. You can swap out albums from your Catalogue playlist freely, but new albums must be "purchased." This will simulate scarcity, which was a large part of what drove us to listen to albums over and over again.

But... why?

My goal is to get back to listening to full albums and truly taking them in. The best way I can think of to do that is to simulate the way things used to be. By using a streaming service instead of, say, just going back to CDs or records, you get the benefits of convenience, Last.fm, easy Bluetooth, etc.

As for what's in my CD changer right now, I've got:

1. Sufjan Stevens - Javelin
2. The Antlers - Need Nothing
3. Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
4. Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come
5. George Harrison - Living in the Material World
6. Bob Moses - Battle Lines

Is it dumb? Probably. It's been fun so far and my music listening experience has been much more focused.