Let's Listen to Talking Time's Favorite Albums

[Cadenza]

Sometimes you just want to geek out about your favorite albums with someone else. This is a thread for that!

Here's how it'll work: someone posts an album, and gives relevant background on it as well as the artist responsible (release date, musicians, tracklist, etc.); everyone else will give it a listen and share their thoughts. This can last for a few days or so, and then someone else can take their turn and the process will repeat itself. If there's sufficient interest in this thread, we can maybe formalize the process a little, but for now I just want to get the ball rolling and see if anyone else wants to participate.

You can write as much or as little beyond the basic details about a given album as you want - if you want to post an essay about why X Album is amazing, go ahead! But if you just want to say something to the effect of "hey this record rules please check it out", that's fine too. The point here is to share your enthusiasm for a given collection of tunes, and maybe turn people on to music they might not have otherwise looked into.

I'll follow this intro post with an example of the possible format to get things started.

 

[Cadenza]

Mouse on the Keys – The Flowers of Romance
Release date – September 4th, 2015
Musicians – Akira Kawasaki (drums), Atsushi Kiyota (piano and keyboards), Daisuke Niitome (piano and keyboards), Atsuko Hatano (violin), Daisuke Sasaki (trumpet), Masahiro Tobita (guitar)
Playlist

Personal favorite tracks:
leviathan
the lonely crowd
the flowers of romance

Official website
​

Mouse on the Keys are an instrumental trio from Japan. Akira Kawasaki and Atsushi Kiyota founded the band as a duo in 2006, and Daisuke Niitome joined them in 2008; as far as I’m aware they’ve had the same lineup ever since (although they do have guest musicians on their albums sometimes). They’re kind of difficult to box into a single genre – their website describes their music as “a mix of post-hardcore, techno and contemporary music, among others”, which is adequate but doesn’t get the full picture across in quite the same way as listening to them does.

I first stumbled upon them kind of at random over a decade ago. Somehow their song Spectres de Mouse (from the album “An Anxious Object”) came up in my recommended videos on YouTube, and I was instantly hooked; the dense, intricate piano lines, lyrical melodies, and absurdly technical drumming combined in an incredible way, and I’ve been following them ever since.

All of their releases are good, but “The Flowers of Romance”, their second full-length album, is my very favorite. All of the elements I mentioned above are here in full force, augmented by some lovely string arrangements and a few guest soloists (although I can't find information on all of them; any insight into this would be appreciated). Aside from two short lead-in tracks, the whole album is top-to-bottom pretty fuckin’ rad, and I would be delighted to hear y’all’s thoughts on it.

 

[Purple]

Battle Beast – Battle Beast
Release date – May 17th, 2013
Musicians – Noora Louhimo (lead vocals), Anton Kabanen (lead guitar, backing vocals), Juuso Soinio (rhythm guitar), Eero Sipilä (bass, backing vocals), Pyry Vikki (drums), Janne Björkroth (keyboards, backing vocals), Joonas Kaikko (percussion), Nitte Valu (additional vocals)
Playlist

Personal favorite tracks:
Let It Roar
Neuromancer
Machine Revolution

Official website​

I have a weirdly high number of friends from Finland, a country which, as a quick personal estimate, has something approaching 1 metal band per capita. One of those is Battle Beast, a band that started off as three friends from high school picking up a few more people from auditions, and setting off on a mission of recording a bunch of songs with a bit of a throwback '80s power metal sound, largely about the manga Berserk, and prominently featuring buff lion men on the album art (which I have to assume was driven by the original lead guitarist since it followed him when he left to make the new, very similar band Beast in Black). Not too long after their first album however, their original lead vocalist had to leave and they were fortunate enough to replace her with Noora Louhimo, who has frankly one of the most amazing voices in the world, able to really belt the hell out of these sort of loud metal vocals while still having a really great range (see what might be my favorite track from their whole discography).

They've been branching out stylistically a bit in some really interesting ways in their more recent albums, but if I have to pick just one album, there's just too high a concentration of super upbeat songs to fight armies of killer robots too concentrated into this one.

 

[Kirin]

I haven't listened to the whole album, but I did get through the three pieces @Cadenza linked from Mouse on the Keys and they're pretty great! I was struck by how leviathan started like you've just been dropped in halfway through some obtuse a-melodic jam session, but then soon morphs into several different things. Fun listens all around.

 

[Dark Medusa]

I do plan on doing my own writeup in good time, but only after I've listened to the previous two albums! Just got through The Flowers of Romance, and although I've enjoyed some Mouse on the Keys before and generally enjoy things on a similar wavelength (Toe, Soil and Pimp Sessions, other Japanese bands with math-rock and ambient/instrumental tendencies) I didn't find myself feeling strongly about The Flowers of Romance. I think the reason is that although I have a stomach for avant-garde music, this album feels a bit aimless. Each song feels like it's striking out on its own, trying to do something different and wild, but not coming together cohesively. le gibet has an interesting piano line, and the discordant trumpets are intriguing, but they almost feel like separate elements that don't come together. The shredding guitars just add another layer that... just doesn't quite mix right for me. hilbert dub I think is the song that most has its central gimmick (this driving bass line and drumming rhythm) reflected and iterated upon in the song, and I think that song is the one that most speaks to me because of it.

Really appreciate that you shared, though, because I really have been meaning to check out more Mouse on the Keys after listening to their third full release (tres) a few times without being inspired enough to buy it.

(also, I realize the irony that other people are also not going to jive with my pick for my favorite album, but I suppose that's the fun of it! I'd rather have people listen and understand, if not grok it, than to not share at all. so I hope, Cadenza, that me not jiving with your pick isn't going to get you down.)

 

[Dark Medusa]

Somehow their song Spectres de Mouse (from the album “An Anxious Object”) came up in my recommended videos on YouTube, and I was instantly hooked; the dense, intricate piano lines, lyrical melodies, and absurdly technical drumming combined in an incredible way, and I’ve been following them ever since.

I will say, Spectres de Mouse also is appealing to me just because it comes together in a way that a lot of the songs that The Flowers of Romance don't, for me. I'm not sure if it's because it's not quite as discordant, or feels like a song that's going somewhere, but apparently that's what appeals to me!

 

[Cadenza]

No worries, Dark Medusa! The whole point of this thread is to expose people to music outside their usual listening habits, and while not everyone may connect with a given record, I figure as long as people's horizons are being expanded a little it's all good.

Purple, this Battle Beast record is fun! The singer has some serious chops, and I appreciate that the bass is so crunchy. (Also, it kills me that a Duke Nukem voice clip sample is used in two separate songs.) Favorite tracks here are "Neuromancer", "Machine Revolution", and "Kingdom" (which I'm pretty sure is about the manga Berserk? I haven't read it, but the lyrics make some pretty specific references...)

I'm also very glad my thread didn't immediately die, hooray!

 

[Purple]

Yeah, for their first 3 albums before their original lead guitarist/songwriter left you could basically count on roughly half of any given album actually being about Berserk. On just this album alone, there's also Out of Control, Golden Age, and Fight, Kill Die. Guy REALLY likes Berserk!

And I just realized I didn't actually hit send on my thoughts on that Mouse on the Keys album, which is also quite good! There's a real clear emotional progression to some of these tracks that just kinda conjure a whole big dramatic scene in one's mind.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Yeah, I already like the thread. I just haven't had a chance to do anything with it yet. But I definitely know the albums I want to contribute.

 

[Cadenza]

It's been about a week, so if nobody else wants to post an album tomorrow I'd be more than happy to do another one. Not trying to pressure folks to hurry or anything, I just have a lot of music I want to talk about 😁

 

[Dark Medusa]

I'll try to get a writeup going.

edit: looks like it'll be tomorrow since I'm pooped from work

 

[Dark Medusa]

and then I got sick so go ahead and someone else take the wheel for a bit, I need to find energy to write something for work first

 

[Dark Medusa]

Adrianne Lenker – songs
Release date – October 23rd, 2020
Musicians – Adrianne Lenker (guitar, vocals)
Playlist

Personal favorite tracks:
anything
not a lot, just forever
my angel

Official website
​

Adrianne Lenker is primarily a fingerstyle guitarist, singer-songwriter, reaching back to 2014 when she was busking with her then-partner (and now-bandmate) Buck Meek. Since 2017 she's been the frontwoman of Big Thief, consisting of herself, Buck Meek, Max Oleartchik, and James Krivchenia, who are renowned for their incredible chemistry both on stage and in their daily life. Generally, Adrianne's stayed within the folk-alternative genre, with Big Thief giving her songwriting a bit more gravitas and volume. I personally find myself gravitating more towards Adrianne's solo work, even as Big Thief's latest work Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (rightfully!) got more public fanfare for being a grab-bag of expansive and sometimes sweepingly beautiful work.

I first stumbled upon her as her album abysskiss was featured by Pitchfork (I think its song symbol was one of their best new tracks), and found the album both emotionally raw and Adrianne's guitar work mesmerizing and intricate for just one instrument. At the same time, I do find some of her songwriting on abysskiss and performances at times a bit too wonky, a bit too hokey, delivering heartfelt odes to passing on in one breath (Terminal Paradise) and hamfisted metaphors and hackneyed lyrics on relationships (maybe...?) lyrics on another (blue and red horses). But I was still intrigued by her style and sound, bought her back catalog and was excited to hear more. When Adrianne dropped her first single from songs, anything, I was a little hesitant, as the song still deals with the same typical topics of love and bits and pieces of songs from abysskiss that didn't wow me. But when the whole album dropped, my lord. songs and its partner piece instrumentals were recorded in the early days of the pandemic in a one-room cabin in Western Massachusetts on a 8-track recorder. The context of the album is both the pandemic, of course, but also the ending of a long relationship with her partner Indigo, which bleeds through on many of the songs.

Adrianne really ramps up her songwriting and guitar parts in a way that I find hard to describe. Although Adrianne continues (to this day!) to continually write about love and death as her primary subjects, the way she muses about a failing relationship ("not a lot, just forever"), the decomposition and inevitable cycle of life and death ("ingydar")... and for me, the showstopper is my angel, an atmospheric, near-death experience and encounter with her angel, with the rain outside her cabin captured to enforce the mood. songs doesn't stick around too long, but each song tells a small story that compliments the album as a whole and is both an easy and engrossing listen (at least, for me). I hope y'all enjoy!

 

[Cadenza]

This kind of super sparse/minimalist stuff is far outside my wheelhouse, but I did enjoy listening to this! Lenker is a very good guitarist and singer, and the lyrics in some of the songs (like "forwards beckon unbound") have this curious quality about them, switching between kind of obtuse and very direct seemingly on a dime. I'm not like, an expert on lyric writing or anything (in fact I mostly listen to music without words at all), but I did enjoy the effect.

Thank you for sharing this album with us!

 

[Purple]

So this thread seems to have died a little, so, here's another one from me?

Billy Idol – Cyberpunk
Release date – June 29th, 1993
Musicians – Billy Idol (vocals, keyboards, programming, swarm camcorder, arrangements), Mark Younger-Smith (keyboards, programming, guitars, sitars, arrangements), Robin Hancock (keyboards, programming, arrangements), Jamie Muhoberac (keyboards, organ), Doug Wimbish (bass), Larry Seymour (bass), Tal Bergman), David Weiss (saw), Robert Farago (spoken words), Muhammad Ali (excerpts), London Jo Henwood (sexy voice), The Shartse Monks (excerpts), Durga McBroom (backing vocals), Carnie Wilson (backing vocals), Wendy Wilson (backing vocals)
Playlist

Personal favorite tracks:
Shock to the System
Neuromancer
Wasteland

Official website​

We all remember Billy Idol, right? Huge in the '80s, really distinct pop-punk sorta sound, lot of hits that are still crowd pleasers today if you just throw them on... what ever happened to that guy anyway? Well, in the early '90s, he got way into William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, learned a little programming for the accompanying floppy disk of multimedia weirdness (I'd say "as was the style at the time" but this was before the trend really kicked off, notice I said floppy disk) and how to do his own mixing and production on his personal Mac, and released this here very good album called Cyberpunk... which outright destroyed his career. Mainstream audiences just kinda went "WTF is this nerd crap?" and nerds, broadly, decided to do some serious gatekeeping against this rocker guy despite him honestly being shockingly legit and hardcore about this stuff. Also probably didn't help that his personal takeaway from binging on foundational cyberpunk works was less "robot arms are cool and let's fetishize Japan" and more "consumer level access to recording and information technologies lets us countersurveil members of correct systems like the LAPD and mobilize people to take direct action against them."

 

[Daikaiju]

The Gone Jackels - Bone to Pick
Release date: March 1, 1995​

I'm, not much of an album guy. But Tim Schafer used this entire work as the soundtrack for Full Throttle to great effect. How could I not seek it out?

Especially aftter opening the game with the absolute banger, "Legacy"