Listen to an album you've never heard by an artist you never listen to and then tell us about it!

I decided to listen to a Taylor Swift album for the first time, so I picked her first one. I thought it was good! I didn't think it was anything particularly special compared to my other favorite country albums in the last couple decades, but it's a good listen. The only other Taylor Swift I've really heard were a few of the inescapable singles, when I've had a chance to listen to anything escapable I escaped.

(also i don't think Radiohead had any cred at the time of CR,CR... unless you think "Creep" was influential lol)

Oh yeah, I meant this in an anachronistic sense, like it coincidentally reminded me of later Radiohead for a few bars.

Are you familiar with CAN? Please listen to Ege Bamyasi and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for the TFC recs everyone, I'll jam some later this afternoon.

You know Can has never clicked for me, even though I should love it on paper + I love Neu and other krautrock + I love Jaki and recently got super into his late period percussion ensemble Drums Off Chaos (highly recommended!). I had Ege Bamyasi on cd but honestly haven't heard it for, uh, over 15 years. I put Tago Mago on sometime in the last year but wasn't in the right headspace to really take it in. So I'll listen to both today.

Post-Damo Suzuki CAN doesn't get quite as much love, but I think it's just as worthwhile to check out, these albums are a bit more song focused and funky as opposed to the loose psychedelic jam vibes of the Damo years. I highly recommend Soon Over Babaluma, Landed, and Saw Delight.

Can - Ege Bamyasi

Ok Jaki sounds amazing on this so far. The sparseness of the kick drum in the busy funk on Pinch, the tightness and the jazz touch on the ride cymbal crashes on Sing Swan Song, so good.

Love the interlocking bass/keyboard groove in 7 on One More Night, and the knife scrapes. I know this isn't a fresh take, but I like the reverse of the usual focus, how the vocals act as a sort of textural element to add some variation to the music.

Vitamin C, of course I know this from samples.

Soup is funky, some crazy left hand snare business. Not as into the jam/freak out section but the tones are pretty insane for 1972.

I'm So Green is almost a little too normal? Although that kinda highlights the weirdness even more. There's the thinnest line separating this from terrible hippie jam nonsense (a little dissonance, a little danger, and Jaki?).

Spoon is a nice simmer, maybe the closest it gets to motorik? Cool beat. Seems like it could go on for another 7 minutes.

i kinda love all can. landed and saw delight are so amazing.

"scott please listen to mellon collie in full"

oh man i would have to be in a good mood. maybe though. ned won't see what i write, right? isn't he a big pumpkin guy? my youngest kid was telling me how he was enjoying a SP song and played it for me and it was luckily one of the earlier ones that was less histrionic. then we were at a used record store and he asked me if i would buy him a SP best-of cd and i said no. no i wouldn't. for an 18 year old he has amazing taste thanks to spotify. such a wide range of stuff that he likes.

ege bamyasi is really easy to love! its so cool. its one of a kind for sure.

Ok I'm moving on to those post-Damo records before going back to Tago Mago.

when i left home as a kid i moved to Philly and got a job at a Saladalley restaurant at the Bourse across from the Liberty Bell. it was a local 80s chain with a big salad bar. i didn't have much money or even a real place to live - this was 1988 - and i would go to 3rd Street Jazz once a week and buy one Can album until i had most of them. it was a better education than college would have been. they had nice new German Spoon reissues on vinyl back then.

when all is said and done, Tago Mago might be my fave Can album. but its hard to pick. i just don't pick usually. its easier that way.

'Soon Over Babaluma' is cool, it sounds amazing. Everything has a nicely restrained dynamic to it, and the grooves and drumming are less traditional (no snares, hardly a backbeat to be found), but some of the tracks have a more conventional 'jamming' arc that I don't love?

Listening to 'Saw Delight' now and I wasn't expecting the reggae/ska/almost highlife vibes on some tracks. Interesting how conventional the drumming is compared to those other records. 'Animal Waves' would be a good one for the weirdo dj night.

maybe it's too obvious as it was actually a hit but I Want More is my favourite post-Damo Can song, but I'm not that keen on Flow Motion as an album so maybe that's why nobody is mentioning it

then we were at a used record store and he asked me if i would buy him a SP best-of cd and i said no. no i wouldn't.

I would like to nominate scott for father of the year. You can make a difference people - start with your own kids!

xp Flow Motion is as good as the other post-Damo records mentioned above.

cosign on Flow Motion, I really like it

Soon Over Babaluma is imho the best Can album-as-album

I only first heard the later Can records thirty years after I heard the 1968 to 1974 run, and I guess my low expectations had been built up so long that I was surprised at how pleasant Flow Motion and Saw Delight were. If I had been a Can fan when they came out, my reactions might have been more critical.

I want more is my fav top of the pops performance ever

I won't go deep on Tago Mago, since it's so long and shaggy (all those cut-up jams). After my day of Can-listening the most inspiring have been Ege Bamyasi and Soon Over Babaluma (which I almost certainly hadn't heard before).

to revisit TM just jam "Halleluwah" real loud

and listen to "full moon on the highway" on Landed for a glimpse of an alternate universe where pop music was future music. or something like that.

one great thing about Can is that yes, they have their peak and their later records aren't as great, but at least those records aren't failed attempts to capture the past or adventures in pop that don't work, they're mostly just fun and groovy, to a fault even. like Saw Delight is a really enjoyable record for a band that's past its prime.

Morton Subotnick - Ascent Into Air/A Fluttering Of Wings

A Fluttering Of Wings as played by the Juilliard String Quartet and an ELECTRONIC GHOST SCORE is brittle and metallic and becomes sickly over time. Grandmother is not well. Ascent Into Air as played by Cal Arts Twentieth Century Players and written for 10 instruments and COMPUTER GENERATED SOUND is more approachable and shows the possibilities of combining computer sound with acoustic instruments. Get this: the possibilities are endless. There is a lot of tension here. And anxiety. Like too much coffee. Like a deadline approaching. But also the space and calm in between those moments of speedy aimlessness when you are trying to do three things at once. Then, finally, the Ambien kicks in. It is quite a ride.

These two pieces are from THE DOUBLE LIFE OF AMPHIBIANS. A staged tone poem with three parts. Amphibians, Beasts, and Angels. All from 1981. This recording is from 1984. On Nonesuch.

Okay, now i'm going to listen to some Motown 45s for an hour or two. Sheesh.

lol

Side 2 of "Soon Over Babaluma" is the best music in the world.

jamming Saw Delight now and yeah its super fun, probably would be considered a classic if by most other bands. but I gotta say what's with Can going from having state-of-the-art production even when we know their equipment wasn't all that advanced to sounding like they were recording in a shoebox

I mean check out the bass/drum interplay in Animal Waves - Holger would never play like that so Jaki almost never plays as frenzied as he does here

Anyone want to recommend me something? Genres I know next-to-nothing about and am intrigued by: country, krautrock, drum and bass, yacht rock

xp pretty sure “Animal Waves” became my go to when I want to a long Can track. Wonderful genre-jumping exercise.

I can recommend plenty of drum & bass but not sure which *album* to start with, you'd be much better off with tracks or mixes

A.R. & Machines - Die Grüne Reise is the krautrock record that got me rolling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb4ERB8SRmM

I would start with the canonical artists - Can, Neu!, Faust, maybe Amon Duul II, for a more rock approach. Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Cluster for the electronic end of things.

Krautrock is such a useless term though, especially these days.

Anyone want to recommend me something? Genres I know next-to-nothing about and am intrigued by: country, krautrock, drum and bass, yacht rock

― a hoy hoy

For Country: Dillard & Clark, Waylon Jennings and Tony Joe White

I’m actually not that well versed in Country music and I don’t pay much attention to lyrics which is one of the main points of Country music. So someone else might recommend you better things. I just really vibe with those three.

For albums

Dillard & Clark - The Fantastic Expedition
Waylon Jennings - Ramblin Man (but he was on a roll in the 70’s, you can easily pick any other)
Tony Joe White - this is a hard one… he doesn’t have a “great album” but there’s a brilliant pair of songs in mostly every album from him… he’s more of a swamp rock/country hybrid so maybe not what you’re looking for.

Krautrock is such a useless term though, especially these days.

yea it's kinda funny none of the big Krautrock groups really sound alike at all, even the ones which share members. I think on one side there's the cosmic freakout/hard rock stuff and on another there's the 'motorik' sound. but Can is sort of a blend of the two, they're like an alien funk band I guess. then you have all the synthesizer stuff by Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze. hell I've even heard of Nektar referred to as Krautrock. I guess you can call anything Krautrock so long as it's from Germany.

however there is one album which I think encapsulates all of this - Tarot by Walter Wegmuller. you really wanna go off the deep end, give that a shot.

I would start with Faust IV

Ironically, Nektar were British! Although they were formed in Germany to be fair so maybe it counts...?

outside of the fact that what they do is clearly progressive rock, yeah

I'd never call it the best, but I think of the first Agitation Free record as a basic "starter"-type Krautrock record that touches on a lot of the styles and trends that other groups explored more thoroughly.

I believe the only drum-and-bass album I've heard is Malice in Wonderland by Rufige Kru (Goldie) and it didn't do me any harm.

A.R. & Machines - Die Grüne Reise
Dillard & Clark - The Fantastic Expedition
Waylon Jennings - Ramblin Man
Malice in Wonderland by Rufige Kru
Faust IV

Will give all of these a go over the coming week, cheers.

Also yeah I know drum & bass isn't an album genre but it is one I wanted to dip my toe in the water of, and I was already on the thread.

You see, to me, Agitation Free are very West Coast US jam band influenced - not so much the first album but the second definitely.

one thing I really do want is stuff that sounds like the first track on the debut Ash Ra Tempel album

Can are undoubtedly the band that touch most bases.

A hoy hoy, I recommend Photek's Form & Function, it's a bit of an outlier but that's what blew my head off as a kid.

Think a good starter D&B mix might be Kemistry & Storm - DJ Kicks from 1999 - though plenty has happened in the last quarter century too.

I listened to Powerslave by Iron Maiden. don't think that band is for me tbh. songs were too long, and I was expecting to at least like some riffs or something, but it was mostly pretty plodding and I expected it to rock a lot harder than it did. I thought Aces High was OK but that was about it