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Monday, Sep 23 2019, 6AM
#414 - Talk Talk's "Spirit of Eden" was released 30 years ago, September 16th 1988. The album was recorded during a frenetic 11-month period where the band turned Wessex Studios, a former church in London, into a "cocoon of darkness save for a few desk lamps in the control room, a sound-triggered strobe light around Lee Harris’ drum set, and a 1960s oil-wheel projector that cast globules of color onto the ceiling where the band worked." The hours were 11 a.m. to midnight, five days a week, smoke from incense and hand-rolled cigarettes fogging the space. Soon the sense of time seemed to slip away from everyone.
#413 - Modest Mouse's debut album, released April 16, 1996. The album "expands upon the themes of emotional and geographic isolation found in the band’s early recordings, and finds the band mixing slow, brooding numbers with thrashing guitar workouts. The general mood here is one of loneliness and desperation, eloquently expressed through both the lyrics and the rhythmic, sprawling instrumentation."
#412 - Released April 22 April, 1980. Fun fact: Recorded at Morgan Studio One in London. Morgan, we didn't know you had your own studio! Robert Smith has said of the album "During seventeen seconds, we honestly felt that we were creating something no one else had done. From this point on, I thought that every album was going to be the last Cure album, so I always tried to make it something that would be kind of a milestone. I feel Seventeen Seconds is one of few albums that genuinely achieved that."
#411 - “We recorded Halcyon Digest in two weeks,” says the band's frontman Bradford Cox. “For most bands that would be impossible, but for us those two weeks felt like two years! I don’t understand why things need to take so long.” deerhuntermusic.com
#411 - Fun fact: Deerhunter unveiled the album by asking fans to print out a vintage DIY-style poster, photocopy it, and tape it up all over town.
#410 - This album was released 26 years ago, March 22nd 1993. Their 8th studio album was recorded in Madrid over 8 months with producer Flood – who’d just wrapped up his work on U2’s ACHTUNG BABY – suggesting that the band build their own studio within the house they were renting, which is exactly what the basement of the house became.
#409 - Phife Dawg recently revealed that in order for Lou Reed to clear the sample for “Can I Kick It?,” Reed took 100 percent of the royalties and publishing.
“I remember with [record label] Jive, there was a problem with the sample being cleared,” Phife recalls. “I don’t think they cleared the sample, and instead of Lou Reed saying, ‘You can’t use it,’ he said, ‘Y’all can use it, but I get all the money from that… to this day, we haven’t seen a dime from that song.”
#409 - Released on April 10, 1990, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is the debut album from Queens-bred hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest – composed of MC Q-Tip, MC Phife Dawg and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad. It’s also the only Tribe record to feature fourth member Jarobi White. The hook for this song is a sample of 'Sueno' by The Young Rascals.
#408 - Reelased in February 1981, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is the first album by Brian Eno and David Byrne. Rather than conventional pop or rock samples, most of the vocals are sampled from other sources, such as commercial recordings of Arabic singers, radio disc jockeys, and an exorcist. (Well THAT'S appropriate for our 666 countdown! 😈) Eno described My Life as a "vision of a psychedelic Africa".
#407 - The Canadian band's fifth studio album was released on July 28, 2017. Win Butler said last year "Part of me hopes that this record is our stinker, our horrible record ...Because if it is, then we may be the greatest band of all time. It’s pretty funny to me. If that’s the worst thing we can possibly do then I’m at peace."
#407 - Another one from Arcade Fire! www.everythingnow.com
#406 - Yo La Tengo released their 9th studio album on February 22, 2000. This is a cover of a George McCrae song.
#405 - From the band's 2nd album! Death Cab for Cutie will be playing 3 shows at the Showbox February 24th/25th/26th. deathcabforcutie.com
Guitarist Chris Walla reflected upon the album stating: "That second record, especially, for years and years has been my favorite ... As I try to figure out what it is about that record that I react to so strongly – we started recording it like twelve years ago – dissecting all those elements and trying to reverse-engineer what happened, I've learned so much about what I value about songwriting and about performances."
#404 - From their fourth album, release August 28th 2015. Their latest album, Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, is due out October 18th! www.foals.co.uk
#402 - Released in September, 1979. The late Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks once said “Before we do a song, I make sure that song is going to stand the test of time.” ✔ 💯
#402 - “I won’t be nasty,” Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley said in Melody Maker in 1978. “We’re just four nice lads, the kind of people you could take home to your parents.” Aww!
#401 - From the Canadan band's second studio album, released on June 5, 2012.
Drummer Dave Prowse cited Guns 'n Roses Appetite for Destruction as an influence on the album's sequencing. Rather than having a traditional ‘Side A’ and ‘Side B’ structure, Appetite For Destruction is split into ‘G’ and ‘R’ sides: the former 'Gun' side dealing with violence and debauchery (‘Welcome To The Jungle’, ‘Paradise City’), while the latter 'Roses' side focused on love and sex (‘Sweet Child o' Mine’, ‘Rocket Queen’). As King further explained, "We had this idea of the album having two sides, where [like Appetite For Destruction] ‘Side A’ is super-intense and ‘Side B’ is softer and poppier."
#400 - From the debut studio album by Dublin band, released 12 April 2019. Fontaines D.C. joined us here in the KEXP studios back in May - check it out over on our YouTube channel! www.youtube.com
#399 - From the fourth studio album by singer-songwriter Cat Stevens, released November 23, 1970. 🐈🐈🐈
#398 - Released December 15, 1992. From Dre's debut solo album, The Chronic, and featuring fellow American rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg. 🐶🐶🐶
#397 - Released on 12 October 1987. According to Andrew Farriss, "Anyone can write a song that sounds contemporary. We wanted our songs to sound like the future".
#396 - RDebut album by Deltron 3030, the hip hop trio composed of producer Dan the Automator (as The Cantankerous Captain Aptos), rapper Del the Funky Homosapien (as Deltron Zero/Deltron Osiris), and DJ Kid Koala (as Skiznod the Boy Wonder). Released May 23, 2000. The album's story casts Del in the role of Deltron Zero, a disillusioned mech soldier and interplanetary computer prodigy rebelling against a 31st-century New World Order. In a world where evil oligarchs suppress both human rights and hip-hop, Del fights rap battles against a series of foes, becoming Galactic Rhyme Federation Champion. Sounds familiar ... 🤖
#395 - Myth Takes is the third album by !!!, and was released on March 5, 2007.
#393 - From the third album by local Seattle band The Posies, released on April 27th, 1993. The band has said that "Between Failure and Dear 23, we had exhausted all the homage we wanted to pay to our heroes. We had to go through that, paying tribute to the records we loved. But we’re really off on our own on Frosting, not paying tribute to anybody, which is where you find your voice."
#392 - From their debut album, released February 22, 1993. Fun fact: The album's name comes from a Jerky Boys sketch. 📞
#391 - The band's Romy Croft explains how the band created the album: "#391 - Well, on this album, we did a lot of writing at night, and - unless we were having a pajama party. It's easier to just communicate over the Internet late at night. And it sort of came to be that we just send things back and forth."
#390 - From the debut album by British band The Specials. Released on 19 October on Jerry Dammers' 2 Tone label, the album is seen by some as the defining moment in the UK ska scene. FUN FACT: The 🕴 ("man levitating in hat") emoji, was originally introduced into the Webdings font and is known as Walt Jabsco. The developer who created it was inspired by a Specials album: “I had a Specials Japanese import LP, and I saw one of the keywords was ‘jump’ so thought it would be good to make a jumping, pogoing man,” he said. “The style of the 2 Tone guy was black on white, and it was graphic, so it was easy to make something like it into a font.”
#389 - From Bowie's eighth studio album, released on May 24th 1974. Thematically, the album was a marriage of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Bowie's own glam-tinged vision of a post-apocalyptic world.
#388 - From Elbow's 3rd studio album, released September 12, 2005.
The band returned to their roots and inspired Guy Garvey to write this love letter to his home town, warts and all.