Quick reminder: you don’t have to post your text during the month, it’s just your pick for that month. So if you’re busy right now but have more time in say August or November, you can wait until then and write your text for July or any other month then and post it in this thread. We’re happy for everyone who joins and don’t want to discourage you because it’s hard to find the time to write each month!
Hoping this might bring some people back in, participation is slowing down a bit. Thanks to everyone who’s still going strong and looking forward to everyone who’s returning!
The year 2000 was a special one for me, I graduated from universiiy, I went through the emotional rollercoaster of a painful breakup of a long-term relationship and completely falling for someone only a few weeks later (we’re still an item). Needless to say that the music I listened to during this period has a special place in my heart. When I started typing this, my intention was to write about Etienne de Crecy’s “Tempovision”, but unlike his previous album “Superdiscount”, it hasn’t aged particularly well and for me personally it’s eclipsed by another record I bought at that time. What makes the one I’ll write about even more special is the fact that I bought it at a record shop run by a friend of mine who fulfilled his lifelong dream of owning said record shop, which turned out a right old money sink only a few months in. My record for the month of July is
“Jazzanova Remixes 1997-2000”
a compilation of very diverse tracks remixed by the notorious Berlin DJ/production collective. I’m not sure I was aware of their work before I got this, I definitely didn’t know most of the original tracks, except for Ian Pooley’s “What’s your number?”, but I’ve since realised that Jazzanova went to town on quite a few stone cold classics, for me most notably Men from the Nile’s “Watch them come”, said Ian Pooley tune, and of course MJ Cole’s “Sincere”. Admittedly, that distinct late 90s NuJazz (ugh!) sound hasn’t aged all that well either, but from my point of view, the execution here is top notch. Most tracks are not mere remixes, but complete reworks that manage to bring out the best of the originals, from the spoken word of Ursula Rucker’s “Circe”, to Ski Oakenful’s “Fifths” (sampling Herbie Hancock’s “Nobu”) to Azymuth’s “Amazon Adventure”, always building up tension very nicely. I’m not sure the whole affair objectively is something for the history books, but revisiting some of these tracks evokes some strong emotions and memories.
The middle of the year, summer in my part of the world, so I thought it was time for my all time favourite. There is not an album in the world that evokes so much feelings/emotions as this one. For me it is the Sgt Peppers of electronic music, an absolute masterpiece. It’s cinematic, but doesn’t fit in any genre. It is layered and complex, but also sucks you in in no time. It combines a lot of the music I like (early UK dubstep, UK garage, jungle/dnb), but the result was something totally unique.
I discovered this album around the time I also discovered Ableton, so a major influence when I was taking my first steps in music making.
Tuesday Wonderland by Esbjorn Svensson Trio. Such a perfect album. No boring songs, all of them are perfect. One of those rare albums that’s completely perfect.
Apart from the whole amazing set of songs, Eight hundred Streets from this album might be the only song even though I might have listened it over countless times and still, never gets boring.
This is not a popular opinion, especially on a synth/electronic music forum, but I love Moby.
Let me start from the beginning. In approximately 1970-2000 we had this thing called Fazerin musiikkikerho (Fazer Music Club) in Finland. It was a lot like a book club. You would join the club and get to choose 4 albums for a very cheap starting price and after that they sent you the club magazine every month and you needed to remember to cancel the monthly recommended album or otherwise they’d send it to you and bill you. And those monthly records cost the normal amount or more and were usually utter shite.
Me and my friends found a loophole in their rules and exploited it. We joined the club, got the 4 cheap albums and then quit the club only to join again after a while. Can’t remember the exact details how we made it work but we did.
On one of those times as I was joining the club in 1995-1996, I picked Moby’s Everything Is Wrong as one of my four cheapos. Didn’t know anything about him, but had a faint idea that he was maybe operating in a similar ballpark as The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. Living in a small seaside town in Finland you had to grab what you could get if you were interested in electronic music.
When the records arrived, I kinda liked the Moby album the best of the bunch. Can’t even remember what the other ones were. There was something amazing in those euphoric synth lines and then having an almost punk rock track in the middle of them. This was something I hadn’t heard before and I liked it. At times it was painfully close to some eurodance stuff which I loathed but then at others it felt like serious art. That scene in The Heat with God Moving Over The Face Of Waters playing in the background still gives me the chills.
So I liked the music. And as was customary in the 90s I went through the cd booklet obsessively trying to grab an idea of where this dude was coming from. To my surprise the booklet was not so much about synths, lyrics, music and thanking his friends as it was about animal rights and the benefits of humankind evolving to a vegetarian or vegan diet. The more I read the more sense it made to me. There were quotations from credible sources and people I looked up to and basically on that day I decided to stop eating meat.
This thread is about albums that define us. Albums that make a difference in our lives. Albums that make us who we are. I find it hard to come up with any album that has had such a monumental positive effect on my life than Everything Is Wrong had. I’ve slipped a few times over the years when I was younger, but we’ve been vegan with my spouse for almost six years now and I’m not looking back. This is me now and forever.
After the first fling it didn’t take long for me to start to despise Moby. For me Play was (and still is) a little bit problematic. The dude who only couple of years earlier had talked about animal rights and compassion towards living beings was suddenly selling his beliefs and licensing basically every track on the album to be used in car commercials and whatnot. What a sell out!
Years later I came back to Moby, read both of his autobiographies back to back and saw the bigger picture. Money fame and drugs can fuck up anybodys head. It only took a few years for a christian vegan social warrior to become a coke snorting party monster and asshole. I’ve forgiven him for Play and even bought it on vinyl when I got the chance. It’s not even close to his best work but I guess it’s his most well known stuff among normal people. There’s a lot to love in his early work but Everything Is Wrong for me is the absolute pinnacle of his work.
There is no one in the music business doing more work for animal rights than Moby and for that I raise my hat forever. Say what you say about his music (which I mostly love) but the man has his heart in the right place. He’s in my mind one of the most level headed artists out there - giving a huge amount of money to charities and always keeping the important stuff in focus.
To be frank, I wasn’t looking forward to July’s entry. I knew this one would be a bit of a slog, feel overly academic and be a general pain in the ass to at least reasonably edit. I had thought I had a good start early in June. But then life got in the way. Summer is busy. One of my kids will be going to college soon which is consuming on multiple levels, let alone emotionally. Yada, yada, yada. In the end I am glad I preserved, though.
The TLDR is the album is largely responsible for sparking an interest in me to better understand art, literature and a desire to excessively expand my knowledge in any manner that strikes my fancy.
So far, I’ve sorted my list chronologically by when the album became important for me and started to define me. I have to jump ahead a bit for this months entry – both because the rest of my list is still in flux, but also because I wanted to start the second half of my list with an entry that fits and adds a new flavor. So I’ve landed on …
If anyone has read my list carefully so far, you might have noticed that I’m often stressing how joyful an otherwise melancholic album is, or how an artist that seems very serious is not taking themselves so seriously after all. But why would that even matter? I guess because the project is to identify albums that define us, I want people to know that I’m not a sad and overly serious guy, although a first glance at some of my favorite albums might suggest that. Luckily, there’s one album on my list that nobody would call a sad or introspective album. It’s number 7, and “It’s Album Time!”!
This album came out in 2014, but I’ve more or less ignored it until 2020. I’d like to think of myself as being a goofball that should have some appreciation for this music when “It’s Album Time” released. But if I’m being honest, I dismissed it for absolutely superficial reasons back then. Let me explain. I remember seeing Local Natives at Southside Festival 2010, and me and my friends being fascinated by the style of these men. Their beards and clothes looked like they came from “that 80s show”, and we hadn’t yet encountered anyone who looked like that in real life. This gradually changed, but we kept calling people “Local Natives” for quite some time, until the idea of a “hipster” had finally reached our cosmos. For whatever reason, I didn’t like hipsters and wanted to distinguish myself from them. And when I saw Todd Terje and the cover for “It’s Album Time”, I thought this was the prototype of a hipster.
Everything I read or saw about the guy or the music seemed like it’s something I have to be against. I can only guess what triggered this strong reaction, but here’s my theory: I was socialized to be skeptical of people who are having too much fun and seem a bit too confident. I think I was a fairly popular child who was always good at school and sports, but when puberty hit and I was slowly becoming the person I am today, it started to feel different. As I’ve mentioned in my essay about “De-Loused in the Comatorium”, I hung out with the wrong kids and adopted a slightly nihilistic and “anti” stance. Luckily, I would soon find better friends and feel more confident, and the music I got to know at the time played a huge role in that. Still, I suddenly found myself in sort of a minority position: music was now the most important aspect of my life, and few people at my school knew the shit I was into. My parents and family were different than most others. And I didn’t think of myself as the most attractive boy and was shy when it came to women. All of this led to me adopting a defensive yet offensive attitude, thinking that the other kids at my school who listen to more mainstream music, are into sports or are having sex are a bit superficial and ignorant. And I think years of being socialized by different forms of alternative culture have contributed to this. So when I saw Todd Terje, some of these reflexes I’ve learned over the years to define myself against something kicked in.
I think I carried this attitude with me for a long time and it’s still in me. But I’ve changed over the last years, and 2020 might be the most crucial year in that respect. A major factor that contributed to this was that I started running regularly in 2020. And as I grew increasingly ambitious and also ran with new friends I had made, it occurred to me that labelling people who are into sports as superficial is just a pretty dumb thing to do, befitting of an insecure teenager, but not a grown-up. When I realized things like this about my attitude, I tried to be more open, and not discount people who aren’t into subculture as somehow below me. Anyways, I had listened to “It’s Album Time” a few years earlier by then, but I was still very skeptical of the guy and the music. The only song I really liked was “Johnny and Mary”, which sounded nothing like the rest of the album, so I thought I just don’t like Terje’s style. But now in 2020, I was searching for music that’s good for running, and I was less anti than I used to be. And so, I gave “It’s Album Time” another chance.
And what a joy it was! If I had to pick an album that’s pure joy, it would be this one. There’s recently been a thread titled “songs that make you feel good”, and I didn’t even have to think a second before I knew my pick would be “Inspector Norse”. And there was no year in recent memory when I (or dare I say: we) needed that dose of fun and whimsy more than in 2020. So, in a way, I’m really glad I’ve only gotten to know this wonderful album then.
The pandemic hit at a very strange time for me. I had just gone through a breakup and moved to another city – so I would naturally rediscover going to clubs, meeting new people and seeing friends in other cities. It obviously sucked that I could no longer do any of that. At the same time, I found myself in a new relationship sooner than expected. Which meant that although everything else was going down the toilet, I was really happy and looking forward to what would come. “It’s Album Time” was my companion for going through this weird mix of emotions.
I’ve already mentioned that I’ve discovered running during that period in my life. I had started about a year earlier, but it first felt like a chore I had to do and not like something I’d ever enjoy. But then I started running with my new partner and her roommates, and I soon found out that I’m actually not as bad as I had thought. They showed me their favorite track in the woods, and it’s still my absolute favorite track to run on. It was also a great way to get to know my new neighborhood and its surroundings. So when the first lockdown was enforced, I already knew what to do. And when the lockdown hit really hard in that endless winter of 2020/21, I doubled down. Every other day, I would run for 10km as soon as I finished working from my one room apartment/office. It was the thing I was looking forward to for the whole day, because it meant I could leave my home, be outside, feel alive. I have surreal memories of running through the empty city park in the darkness, being soaked in sweat and rain, occasionally meeting another runner or somebody who recently got a dog so they could be outside. And when I think of these scenes, “It’s Album Time” is playing in the background.
Dancing – or to be more precise, gathering for dancing – was not allowed for most of 2020 and 2021. I was lucky though, because my partner lived with three roommates, and each of us was allowed to bring their partner. So, unlike many people who had to be alone or meet with one person max, we would often hang out as a group in my partner’s shared apartment. And we threw a birthday and New Year’s Eve party where we could finally dance again. Guess what I always cued up? “Delorean Dynamite” and “Inspector Norse” – and we went crazy. I was already pretty sure these are fantastic tracks to dance to, but they were even better than I had expected. There was also a short period during summer when it was relatively easy and save to meet. So a friend of mine initiated a new tradition: we would meet at his parents’ remote farm and dance in a giant complex that used to be a pig barn. It was a great throwback to the parties I used to throw at my (grand)parents’ remote farm, but instead of playing the hits from back then (which I wrote about extensively in my “Funeral” essay), we could finally explore new tracks we had discovered during the 2010s. We would prepare shared playlists in advance, and, of course, Todd Terje was always on it. And we loved it.
There were no concerts though. And I couldn’t convince Terje to play at our pig barn parties. So I was left with YouTube, like everyone else. Luckily, there’s a full recording of Terje headlining Øya Festival 2014:
It remains one of the best shows I have ever seen, and I wasn’t even there. It has all the hallmarks of a great concert: he’s mostly playing the album, and the tracks are the same, but there’s a band that makes it all sound different and even more exciting. There are strings, a drummer and a percussionist – sure, they add a lot sonically, but they also make the whole show better because they are just having so much fun. Then we have Terje playing keys or twisting knobs on his ARP 2600. I was already pretty sure that the sound I loved most by now was somebody delicately manipulating a characterful synth running through simple delay and reverb. Now I was absolutely sure. All of that makes for an excellent concert, but what elevates it to be one for the ages is Terje going the extra mile and inviting some special guests. First, Brian Ferry enters the stage halfway through the show to sing “Johnny and Mary”. It’s the only time during the whole concert (or album) when a vocalist is present, but then it’s an absolute legend, bringing with him the gravitas of an aged voice and an aura of “without me, this music probably wouldn’t even exist”. I’m sure by that point, everyone in the audience was already blown away. But Terje still has one trick up his sleeves. During the finale, dancers in costumes start appearing in the crowd, making their way towards the stage, cementing “Inspector Norse” as probably the most pure and cathartic dance song of all time.
The album ends with that same song, fading out as we hear crowds chanting the melody. Without context, it sounds exactly like the thing I’ve despised about many people over the last decades: drunk idiots shouting a stupid melody, making people like me uncomfortable. But now that I knew the album and had seen that show, I could recognize the power and brilliance of it all. This is music that goes straight to the heart, making you smile and dance, bringing people together. It’s what I loved about Sigur Rós during their infamous concert, music that causes a bodily reaction you can’t control. It’s what I adored about Arcade Fire, music that makes you want to hug the strangers next to you and go crazy with them. Only that Todd Terje’s music isn’t about death or some other deep subject. It also doesn’t require you to know the songs and lyrics to fully appreciate the music. It’s so pure, so fun and so good that you can just listen to it for the first time and have the time of your life. In that sense, “It’s Album Time” also acts as a stand in for the power of electronic music and club culture that will otherwise not be represented on my list. It’s the reason electronic music arguably has become the most popular music on earth, and it’s the most reliable way for me nowadays to enter a trance state that allows me to connect to my inner self and my body – while having a hell of a good time.
“It’s Album Time” is one of my surprise discoveries during the process of making my list of 12 albums that define me. When I started to work on my list, I didn’t even think of this album. I think it popped up at some point because I realized my list contains a lot of heavy and melancholic music, and I felt like that’s not quite representative of who I am and what I like in music. It has since been the album I’ve probably listened to the most, and I’ve already formed new memories with it – like picking “It’s Album Time” as the first album to blast on maximum volume in my new car while driving to two friends’ Bachelor’s party.
The most important aspect of the album for me is that it’s just so much fun, I think I’ve made this excessively clear by now. Two other things stand out: the sound design is brilliant, and so is it’s pacing. I’ve listened to “It’s Album Time” a lot when I started to make more music in 2021, and got interested in different kinds of synths. I love that these tracks are defined by what an ARP 2600 sounds like and what you can do with it. Terje’s tracks are rather sparse, they’re often defined by a bass and lead line plus an arp. Often, the same few bars are more or less looping throughout the whole track. But the way Terje performs with these sequences is masterful, they’re constantly changing, and they’re in perfect conversation with each other. I also love how the album is clearly inspired by the sounds and gear of the 80s, but unlike so many musicians these days, it doesn’t sound like a copy of some influential 80s artist. It just sounds like Todd Terje – retro, modern, timeless. And whenever there’s an element that goes beyond the focused instrumentation, it adds a lot to the music while blending in perfectly (think of the orchestral elements of “Alfonso Muskedunder", the vibraphone on “Leisure Suite Preben”, the slappedy bass on “Delorean Dybamite”, or the percussion on “Oh Joy”).
And while the title of the album might be a bit tongue in cheek, knowing that many of the tracks have been released before, it doesn’t sound like a bunch of singles with some fillers spliced in. It sounds like a coherent album with a dramatic arch spanning from “Intro” over centerpiece “Johnny and Mary” to the grand finale of “Inspector Norse”. The reason that Øya concert is so great is that the album already is such a well paced trip, and Terje knew exactly what to add live to make the highlights pop even more. I also think the album is getting better and better over its playtime. I much prefer the second half, and the finale of “Swing Star Part 1 and 2”, “Oh Joy” and “Inspector Norse” is just epic. Finally, I have to say the obvious: “Johnny and Mary” is a masterpiece, and putting it smack in the middle grounds the album in a profound way. I always loved the original song, but the cover version gives it a depth that wasn’t there before. It’s ironic that Terje picks a rather upbeat 80s song, slows it down and lets an aged Ferry sing it – basically doing the polar opposite of every other song on the album. The fact that it works so well and sounds so good makes you think he could really do everything, and it makes you wonder what a whole Terje album in that style would be like. I love that it’s just a fleeting moment though – and as much as I’d like to see him return with a full album in whatever style, I’m also glad Terje left us a definitive statement with his first and only album.
