Desert Island X: Group 2 Listening Thread

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Well, I kinda had a feeling that this list would get a lot of "Half was great, the other half, not so much" reaction, and that's cool. I had two sides of a very diverse coin here, after all. Glad you liked what you did.

Vangelis do a lot of film work, which is where my familiarity with them comes from. Outside of that, I'm really pretty blank. But CunninLynguists are absolutely fantastic, and I can't recommend A Piece of Strange or Oneirology highly enough.
 
cobl04 said:
Alright, Niels. Also thoroughly enjoyed your list. Opening tracks were solid without being spectacular, and though I'd heard both tracks many times before Flux and Stylo was still a killer combo. Have never liked The Streets, Mike Skinner always to me sounds like he's trying way too hard to emphasise the fact he's British and the crooners he picks for his choruses almost always suck. So did not like that song. Te Quiero had a nice beat under the surface, but it got a bit too into the style of EDM that I don't like. Would I be right in saying that Stromae is some sort of massively successful eastern European EDM artist? Like, a Tomorrowland regular?

I don't sound very impressed so far but from pretty much RTJ onwards it was so great. Banana Clipper is fucking baller, Can't Tell Me Nothing has never been a fav Kanye song of mine and I thought you could have picked a track with a bit more aggressive production to come out of Banana Clipper, but it still worked and segued well into ATLiens, which is one of my favourite hip-hop songs ever. Just so good. Outkast>Massive Attacks is something I've fiddled with in the past but I don't know if I could have pulled it off as well as you; Risingson was perfect in the next slot.

From then on I didn't know a single track (aside from the Boards of Canada one, still have no idea why I recognised it) but I thought it was just brilliant. LM made a similar downbeat/ambient list a couple of DIs ago which was really great but what I loved about this was that it was quite dark, subversive and also kept the beats in, which ambient sometimes does not do. Piezo stood out as a great song, and I loved Endless Summer as well, was quite beautiful. Rise into Trentemoller was a nice finish, although I was expecting the Trentemoller song to pick up with a hard thumping beat towards the end, as I've kind of lumped him in with the Tiestos and Deadmau5s of the world. That woulda been cool but still a good song.

so yeah overall very cool very sw I like it
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Thanks for the elaborate review. Love reading those. That's why I try to do it for everyone else's playlists but I usually fail miserably.

Stromae is actually a hugely succesful Belgian artist (they don't speak French in Eastern Europe ;) ). He's truly massive. I think he sold like 1 million copies in France alone and he's also 10 times platinum or something here. I'm not the biggest fan but I do enjoy his singles.

And Trentemöller is a lot more downbeat than Tiesto or stuff like that. His last album sucks but you should really check out The Last Resort. I included another song off that record in my previous DI list. Needless to say I'm a big fan.
 
bono_212 said:
Well, I kinda had a feeling that this list would get a lot of "Half was great, the other half, not so much" reaction, and that's cool. I had two sides of a very diverse coin here, after all. Glad you liked what you did.

Vangelis do a lot of film work, which is where my familiarity with them comes from. Outside of that, I'm really pretty blank. But CunninLynguists are absolutely fantastic, and I can't recommend A Piece of Strange or Oneirology highly enough.
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I think that happens to many lists that cover very different genres. I'll always like a list that's completely dedicated to a genre I love more than a diverse one which has stuff I'm not a fan of/ unfamiliar with (those two go together most of the time) but the thing I like most about DI is that it exposes me to the stuff I wouldn't listen to out of myself. So what I'm basically saying is that often mixed lists are more useful than lists I loved.
 
nielsgov said:
Thanks for the elaborate review. Love reading those. That's why I try to do it for everyone else's playlists but I usually fail miserably.

Stromae is actually a hugely succesful Belgian artist (they don't speak French in Eastern Europe ;) ). He's truly massive. I think he sold like 1 million copies in France alone and he's also 10 times platinum or something here. I'm not the biggest fan but I do enjoy his singles.

And Trentemöller is a lot more downbeat than Tiesto or stuff like that. His last album sucks but you should really check out The Last Resort. I included another song off that record in my previous DI list. Needless to say I'm a big fan.
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I fail miserably as well mate, I just vomit words onto the page, but I just love sharing thoughts :)

I feel like you might have shared a Stromae song a few months ago that had millions of views...?

It was interesting in your blurb you wrote about not making a whole list of that IDM/ambient stuff cos it would get too tedious but I think I almost would have preferred it.
 
Alright, some thoughts on LM's list.

As I said earlier, I really like how you managed to combine the hits with deeper cuts or lesser known bands. I think this helped maintain my level of interest throughout the list. It's hard to pinpoint my favorite or least favorite parts, as the whole thing was so consistent. Overall, though, I think I lean towards the latter half, which is closer to my own tastes. The stretch from The Sundays (a band I really like) until the Talking Heads closer was just wonderful. That middle sequence of Roxy Music, Pulp, Modern English culminating into Love Will Tear Us Apart was also great. My favorite discoveries were the Visage and Kim Carnes songs. Any recommendation of where to start with these artists?

I should also say that your list really surprised me, for a silly reason. Having just looked at the title and the cover image before listening, I expected something quite mellow. This had more punch than I expected. Enjoyed it through and through.
 
bono_212 said:
Vangelis do a lot of film work, which is where my familiarity with them comes from. Outside of that, I'm really pretty blank.
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Vangelis is one of my faves. He's one person though, btw.

Obviously everyone knows Chariots Of Fire, but as far as soundtrack work goes, people should start with Blade Runner. If you've seen the movie, you'll know what I mean.

For regular albums, from the 70's the best is Heaven And Hell. You'll recognize the theme music to the old Carl Sagan Cosmos series on it, among other things.

Opera Sauvage is also very good.

From the 80's, Direct is a great album.

He's got some great compilations as well. They come in handy as he's had some average albums containing both absolute masterpieces and weak filler.
 
Thanks for that (I forgot it was a one-man act, oops!), I'll check that stuff out. I have that weird vinyl copy of the Blade Runner soundtrack, so I haven't actually heard the original, besides what's in the film. If that's even the original, now I can't remember. I just know that lots of weird stuff happened with that movie on all levels.

But, I will certainly check out the other recommendations.
 
phanan said:
Haha, wait until you hear mine...
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I can take it in doses. 2 hour lists delving into a sub genre and mining its many offerings take a hell of a lot of work and focus. My attention span in listening to & creating mixes is a lot shorter.
 
LM:

As you all have probably surmised based on my posting, my playlist, and my comments on some of these already, most music from pre-2000 is a blind spot for me. Growing up with hardly any direction musically, I really didn't begin taking it seriously until the mid-2000s and I mostly stuck to artists who were releasing music then and there. While I try to make an effort to listen to as much as I can of artist's back catalogues, it's not easy to keep up. That's one of the main appeals of this competition for me.

The 80s are a big time blind spot for me. I know some assorted hits, and I know some big artists who released music in the 80s (U2, R.E.M., Springsteen, etc.), but very little else. I'm actually surprised how little there is scrolling through my iTunes right now. There's some Clash stuff in the early 80s, some Pixies stuff in the late 80s. But man, there's not much there. I'm saying this because lists like this that focus in on an older time period can often be like diving into cold water as far as adjustments go, and I think some of that happened here.

The good: it's fantastically constructed, which will shock no one. Everything flows well and I don't recall a jarring transition in the bunch. There were also some very good individual tracks here that I hadn't heard and enjoyed: Crystal Castles, New Order, Visage, Talking Heads for example. Mixed in with some songs I already enjoyed (U2, Destroyer, R.E.M., Joy Division), I think these are artists I'd like to check out more.

The tough part for me was that while these individual tracks jumped out, there were a lot that simply passed me by. Nothing bad, but just not my thing, and there were sections of the list where it'd be a number of songs in a row like this. I suppose that's part of the issue with a list constructed like this: the songs flow into one another, so if a sound you don't like comes up, it hangs around for a bit. There was not a large stretch of same sounding songs that exhausted me, just a number of stretches that dragged a bit.

I think others have mentioned it, but I thought the list really picked up with the last ten songs or so. Strong ending.
 
LMP said:
I can take it in doses. 2 hour lists delving into a sub genre and mining its many offerings take a hell of a lot of work and focus. My attention span in listening to & creating mixes is a lot shorter.
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Yeah it took me ages to make that list. I basically made the second half of the list over a year ago and have been slowly adding to it as I discover more new wave that I love. I used to be one of those people that thought the 80s was a shitty decade for music but have quietly changed my mind over the past 5 years. I wanted to make a list that mapped out the cause of that about face.

iYup, Peef (thanks for the lengthy overview, I appreciate the effort), Gump (ditto), Ashley and Liam have all pointed out artists they would like to check out because of my list, so I'm super happy with that.
 
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Neils:

This list, and the second half in particular, was right in a sweet spot for me. The first half moves fluidly and has some great beats (RtJ especially); I wasn't aware that Can't Tell Me was a Kanye song, though I should have guessed from that sample. Funny how far he's come in terms of experimentation. One small complaint I can level is the appearance of Big Boi on 2 tracks - my feeling is every time he is paired with someone, he comes out on the short end. Andre in particular seems to run circles around him.

Once Massive Attack hits, the list does settle into a distinct groove - the good news about this is the groove is sublime. The more industrial tracks (Autechre) fuse with the ambient tracks (Miktek) seamlessly. I found the Nautilis and Trentmoller tracks to be standouts from that run; the latter especially closed the list on a subtle but conclusive note, which is a tough thing to accomplish on a list like this. Thanks as this was thoroughly enjoyable for me, a very well-paced and well-timed list.
 
Admittedly Big Boi is outshone on Banana Clipper, but he most certainly does not come out on the short end every time he is paired. Obviously I'm biased, and I won't post 20 links proving otherwise, but as good as 3000 is on ATLiens ("put my glock away I got a stronger weapon that never runs out of ammunition" in particular is inspired) Big Boi owns that shit with his first verse.
 
Yeah Big Boi is underrated. He owns Southernplayalistic and I've always preferred Speakerboxxx to Love Below as a complete album.
 
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I'll never claim to be the Outkast aficionado some of you guys are. All I will say is I take notice whenever Andre is rapping. Not so with Bog Boi.
 
Ehh I really couldn't get into Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumours. The whole thing felt like an extended, misguided attempt at an indie crossover when his strength is clearly in more conventional hip-hop (which is not a criticism). But Lines was a dope song, and assuming you're talking about the Descending, then yeah, the Little Dragon collab is great.
 
Everything with Phantogram was surprisingly great, but I didn't care for it much overall.
 
LemonMelon said:
Yeah it took me ages to make that list. I basically made the second half of the list over a year ago and have been slowly adding to it as I discover more new wave that I love. I used to be one of those people that thought the 80s was a shitty decade for music but have quietly changed my mind over the past 5 years. I wanted to make a list that mapped out the cause of that about face.

iYup, Peef (thanks for the lengthy overview, I appreciate the effort), Gump (ditto), Ashley and Liam have all pointed out artists they would like to check out because of my list, so I'm super happy with that.
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Oh yeah, there's a ton of folks in the back-half who are subject to further investigation: The Associates, The Blue Nile, Felt, The Go-Betweens, Prefab Sprout (their first record is incredible). I'm always of the opinion that no year or decade is a wasteland; sometimes you've gotta dig deeper to find what you like, some years it's an embarrassment of riches. It's not that I dislike '80s pop, or the many sub-genres and off-shoots of that sound.

Lists deeply concentrated in a sound or specific rhythm work best for me in shorter form. The amount of time you've put into it is deeply present and makes for a rewarding listen, even if not all of it jived with me. Also, that version of "I Melt with You" is a different mix than the one I've heard on the radio for years -- also different from the one in Valley Girl.

Gump's, for instance, slides into different peaks and valleys rhythmically and emotionally within that Alt Country designation at what I felt was a perfect length. It's a sub-genre that has grazed alongside my taste (Wilco, Bright Eyes, The Okk!, My Morning Jacket, some Ryan Adams). The Ryan Adams to Drive-By Truckers stretch is sublime.

cobl04 said:
Ehh I really couldn't get into Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumours. The whole thing felt like an extended, misguided attempt at an indie crossover when his strength is clearly in more conventional hip-hop (which is not a criticism). But Lines was a dope song, and assuming you're talking about the Descending, then yeah, the Little Dragon collab is great.
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"Descending," absolutely.
 
finished niels' playlist. i had to go start over, picking back up where i left put me starting with the gorrilaz track, and i really can't stand them. predictably, it put me in a bad mood to hate the rest of the playlist, and i'd really liked the first 3 the other day. it's true, arsenal/magnus/bloc party was cool. pretty much the first snyth sound is the same type of sound (pardon my lack of actual knowledge as to how to describe it) so prevalent on get lost/holiday-era magnetic fields. not my new favorite song or anything, but it sucked me in with a familiar sound (whereas most electronic or synth-based music tends to alienate me). "french movies" was particularly awesome. sorry, after bloc party ended, i left the party. run/the jewelsoutkast/kanye has the highest incidence of rhyming a word with itself that i've ever heard, and that's the nicest thing i can say about that. streets is like wtf, how did i used to like a couple tracks from them/him/whatever. i'm not sure what i hate more, british dude rap or the "imma bang this hoe in her wet pussy for the procreation of the nigga race!" verse from atliens.


on the up side, everything from autechre onwards was fantastic. boards of canada>fennesz was a sweet transition. i'm going to echo whoever it was that said they'd honestly have prefered a whole playlist of this. maybe it really would have been as tedious you were afraid it would be, and i'd be saying i liked it til it lulled me to sleep. i doubt it, since the thing i like most about what the fuck were you calling this? intellectual dance music? is the same thing i like about post-rock, where the more minimalist and understated it is, the more attention i pay to it for some reason. probably because there's less going on that it's more interesting when something does happen. i don't know. i liked that stuff a lot, though.
 
On to Group 2.

LemonMelon:

Fairly obvious that I'd enjoy most of this. First half is like a companion piece to my own playlist, although you switched gears after (and probably a wise move). I found What About Love an interesting opener, don't think I would have thought of that. Certainly gets right to the point.

I almost used Propaganda's Duel on mine. They didn't have much material overall, but still had some killer tunes to their credit. The Murder Of Love is probably the best of them all.

We've got a one hit wonder sighting with T'Pau. Trekkers unite!

You moved away from synth pop after Bette Davis Eyes, but still a good transition into More Than This, which then opened the door for the remainder of the set.

You then went all Axver on us! The Clean, The Bats, The Chills, The Go-Betweens. I've always liked the Go-Betweens, and what I've heard of The Clean has been decent, but I don't know, that sound hasn't caught my attention enough to warrant additional listening. Yet. Maybe it will hit me at some point.

Those Dunedin cuts are interspersed with some of my all-time favorite tracks (Perfect Circle, Pale Shelter, Love Comes Tumbling) and other standouts from artists I've always liked (OMD, Echo, Talking Heads, etc.). It worked that you mixed up those songs the way you did, and they flowed together very well.

I'm with Ashley on The Associates though. By far the worst thing on here.

The stretch after that all the way to the end was perfect though. Count me in as someone else who digs The Sundays. And while I'm not a big fan of Destroyer, I've always liked Chinatown. The Blue Nile is a band I've long known but for whatever reason have never really explored their catalog. I should probably do so one of these days.

Great job as always...
 
Edit: I was incorrect, China in Your Hand didn't chart in the states... They truly are a one hit wonder.
 
No, I really and truly thought that China in Your Hand charted here. I always stick to the US market when I refer to One-Hit Wonders.
 
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