Every Record I Own: David Bowie – Let’s Dance

There isn’t much to say about David Bowie that hasn’t been said a million times. I started writing more but I don’t actually have much to say about this record other than it’s fun and I like it,

My old flatmate Callum Devlin once slowed down the song Let’s Dance for a theater show, as if it was a 45 being played on 33. It sounds great and the saxophone sounds super creepy. I played it on the radio and got so many people calling up to tell me I was playing it at the wrong speed. One person didn’t like that I said it was intentional and called the office to complain about me.

Fave tracks: Let’s Dance, Riccochet, Cat People

Every Record I Own: Shipbuilding – Robert Wyatt

Robert Wyatt was another significant artist of 2022 for me. Robert Wyatt was a drummer in a progressive rock bands in the 60s and 70s, but had an accident and was paralysed from the waist down. He then made experimental pop/jazz/indie/psychedelic music for the next 30 or so years. A lot of his work feels like what would be made in a bedroom now from someone playing with synths and drum machines and doing layers of percussion and multi tracked vocals, but it felt he was doing it way ahead of his time.

Early in the year I discovered his song The Age of Self on a playlist and I became obsessed with him. His mid-80s period where he was making weirdo political pop on synthesizers and drum machines was my favourite era.

This 7″ came up for sale when someone I follow on Instagram was leaving the country and selling all their records. Shipbuilding hadn’t been one of the songs that had stuck with me, but Robert Wyatt records don’t come up very often so I thought I’d buy it anyway. I didn’t realise until after I bought it but this is a cover of and Elvis Costello song, but this version has become known as the essential version.

Since buying the record this has become one of my favourite Robert Wyatt songs. Its the type of music that really benefits from a nice stereo. The piano is so full sounding and even though Robert Wyatt doesn’t have a classically amazing voice, his falsetto shines through.

I am not really an expert on protest music by any means. But what I love about Robert Wyatt’s protest music is how specific it is. Age of Self is about how the idea of the working class has been destroyed by changing our identities to consumers rather than workers, Pigs…in there is about factory farming. Shipbuilding is about how much responsibility do workers hold for the work they do? When they’re acting as agents of British imperialism.

This 7″ has been sitting next to my stereo for months. I often put it on in the morning or when I pop into the kitchen to make some toast or something. It’s really a perfect song. The B-side kind of sucks though.

Every Record I Own: John Carpenter – Anthology

It was John Carpenters 75th Birthday the other day and if I realised that in advance I may have written this for that occasion, but instead here it is now.

My fave guy, Tom Breihan, who I have already mentioned once in this blog and will come up again. Used to write a column for the AV Club called A History of Violence, where he wrote about the best action film of each year from 1968 (Bullit) to 2021 (F9). And John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 is 1976’s best Action film.

Before reading this column, the only John Carpenter film I had seen was Halloween. I was aware that he made the soundtrack to most of his films and people were really into them, but I’d never really explored that. Now a couple of years on, I have still not watched any more John Carpenter films, but I have gotten very into his music.

It has become regular writing/study/working music for me. It’s the right mix of atmospheric which still propulsive. It can sit in the background or come to the center of my attention and it feels like it makes my brain think differently.

It has also been quite influential in my own music making. I have a musical instrument called a Deluge, which is a sequencer/synthesizer/drum machine/sampler which feels like it was made to make John Carpenter-esque music.

Here’s a track I made for Josiah Morgan’s Show Ponies performance in Dunedin which was pretty heavily influenced by John Carpenter.

This is one of my most recent records. I bought it over summer from the Flying Out sale. This anthology is rerecorded versions of his tracks by his current band. Sometimes I feel like it’s really well done and effective and other times it feels a bit overproduced. The synths are a bit cleaner and the drums sound much more highly produced, which leaves me missing the cheaper drum machine sounds of the originals. However it does make the album as a whole a lot more cohesive, which works when you’re listening to the record.

My new goal of 2023 is to watch Assault on Precinct 13.

Fave tracks: The Fog, Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween.

Every Record I Own: Pup – The Dream is Over

Put this on when I was making dinner and then when it was over i put it on again cos I wasn’t done.

I first listened to Pup after seeing the boy from Stranger Things in a music video of theirs, which was about pets dying. It is a great video and an even better song. Then I listened to the rest of the album and I couldn’t stop listening. This album spent months on near constant rotation on streaming. It’s probably one of my all time fave albums.

Every single part of this band is catchy. Every riff, every drum fill, all the shouts. The songs have a bit of a formula but over the course of the album it feels like there is movement through the album where the songs grow in complexity and emotionally (but not completely linearly)

I soundtracked my life with this record for years. My Life is Over and I Couldn’t be Happier was the intro song to my 2018 Comedy Festival show Dignity. Can’t Win had a prime spot in my emotions 2019 playlist. Sleep in the Heat was my most played song in 2017. It’s all sort of self loathing but not in a bad way, in a fun way which was perfect for me.

I don’t listen to this band anywhere near as much as I used to. But every time I do I wonder why I don’t listen much. Feels so cathartic listening to it loudly. I can’t shout but pretending to shout along feels so good. I love owning this record because it means I will keep coming back to it and I’ll keep having this rediscovery.

Alex G – Trick

I unsubscribed from Spotify in January, so I didn’t get the 2022 wrapped. Tidal does a monthly thing but not yearly and I haven’t added them up together, but I’m fairly sure Alex G would have been my top artist for 2022.

I got quite obsessed with the early singles for God Saves the Animals which sent me on a massive Alex G binge. I don’t think I have been as excited for a new album since Mitski’s Be The Cowboy. Anyway I don’t own God Save the Animals. It’s always been sold out or too expensive when I’ve looked for it.

But the Alex G binge sent me back to his earlier releases. I have owned DSU for many years, and it’s remained on pretty high rotation, but I haven’t got into any of his other albums quite in the same way. Sometimes I’ll go through a House of Sugar or Rocket phase, but hadn’t listened to Trick much. But it ended up being a fave, so was happy when I stumbled across a reissue for sale on his bandcamp.

(I was given a bandcamp voucher when I left Good Books, which was a really nice present, but because of some sort of currency and technology thing, you’re only able to spend bandcamp vouchers on certain currencies, not including NZD. I generally only buy things from NZ on bandcamp, especially physical releases which cost a lot to ship, so was very annoyed but ended up with two cool Alex G records so wasn’t all bad.)

His first 4-5 albums stick to the same formula pretty closely, similar guitar sounds. The melodies aren’t too different. All sort of mid tempo. Very similar bedroom production. But the songs are just really good. There are so many incredible moments in this album which capture my attention no matter what I’m doing at the time.

This version comes with a 7″ with both Adam and Sarah on it, which are not on the album proper but are some of his most popular songs, so counting them with this one.

Fave Tracks: Adam, Sarah, Mary, Animals