Album Review: Unknown Pleasures [1979] #20

Joy Division grew out of the ashes of the band Warsaw when Ian Curtis joined the band as the singer and also becoming the face of the band. Joy Division were never meant to have a longer career and would go on to be disbanded only a couple of years after first uniting. Their first release was the EP an Ideal For Living which they later followed up with Unknown Pleasures, one of the most notorious punk records in history aswell as yet another incredibly iconic release that we can find on this chart.

Post-punk, the genre mostly affiliated with Joy Division, came to grow as a more experimental take on straightforward punk music, where Brittish bands had a heavy focus on rhytmic and melodic bass lines while keeping the instrumentation punk-ish. Bands like Joy Division and The Cure came to be the ones to break out into the mainstream in England, while more experimental bands like This Heat and The Pop Group became staples among the more alternative crowd. Other bands like Throbbing Gristle took the idea of punk and ran it into industrial ground instead, creating yet another off shoot for punk as a genre and this is merely touching upon what was going on in The United Kingdom during the years between 75 and 80 for post-punk as a genre.

During the band's shortlived era, Ian Curtis was suffering from depression which would ultimately lead to him deciding to take his own life in 1980, the year after Unknown Pleasures was released. As sad as it may be, Curtis' state of mind became one of the biggest factors in Joy Division's and Unknown Pleasures' success and originality, due to the dark, gloomy atmosphere at hand aswell as Curtis' sad, destructive and depressive lyrics which are quite apparent during most of the album. Joy Division didn't have a sliver of happiness in their music, both the name of the band aswell as the cover art for the debut EP, An Ideal For Living were references to nazi-Germany and WWII, which led to a bit of controversy around the band (as it should have since they were still punk at the core).

They became a monumental band, despite their shortlived reign and their legacy still lives on today, be it through Tumblr-posts of good looking people in Unknown Pleasures t-shirts or through the major influence they had on many punk acts to come in the early years of the 80's. Their spot on this chart is not an unwarranted one.


I first came across Joy Division and Unknown Pleasures through a cover of the song Shadowplay on an album with a collection of b-sides by the band The Killers. At the time I had no clue of Joy Division but I did come to enjoy the song despite it being many years until I would finally come across the original. I didn't actually listen to Unknown Pleasures until about a year ago when I redsicovered it.

At the time I didn't care for their music that much, I felt that many of the songs on the album, especially the bigger part of the A-Side, felt quite lacking from the loss of energy and tempo that usually were apparent amongst the punk I was familiar with. I was mainly drawn to songs like Disorder, which had more hectic drumming aswell as more dominant lead guitars, giving way to a stronger sense of melody in the bands music.

What really turned me around on the bands music however, was watching Anton Corbijn's feature film Control about the life and death of the vocalist Ian Curtis, retelling his tragic story, going from an ordinary guy with an interest for punk music to one of the biggest underground stars of his time, only to fall as another martyr in music history, becoming another "what if?" along the lines of Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith, Jim Morrison and several more. The film, how correct or incorrect it may be, gave a different perspective of the band and especially Curtis as this tragic figure who saw the world in another light, something I've come to appreciate a lot more in different artists that I usually didn't care for, something that we see quite often in this genre to be honest.

It gave a different light to their music. Hearing New Dawn Fades as Curtis' belches out "A loaded gun won't set you free!" only to faintly whisper the continuing line of "so it seems...". I do believe that it ultimately was me not quite "understanding" the band's music, and not that I couldn't appreciate the musically, but more that I didn't quite understand what Curtis' thought and felt when he wrote Disorder.

While I still don't find Unknown Pleasures to be one of the greatest albums on this list, I do feel that it deserves its place on this list, and clocking in at spot number 20 is fair enough for an undisputed post-punk legend. Unknown Pleasures might not be my personal favorite post-punk record, barely even a favorite in Joy Division's short discography, but it is an influential album with merit to itself.

Unknown Pleasures is a straight forward punk record and a great entry point for the vast amounts of post-punk in the world. If this is a genre you're curious about then this is where you should start. If this is an album you enjoy then you're in luck because there's a ton of phenomenal albums aswell as a ton of variation that came to be out of post-punk. Genres like new-wave, no-wave, industrial and several others grew out of this movement which itself grew out of the first renditions of punk. 

I think it's hard for generations that didn't experience punk at its high point to really understand how monumental the movement was, not only musically but also historically, dominating a huge amount of the 70's and shaping what we know as both the middle and the working class of society. What an experience to be 19 years old in 1979 right?

Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division

7/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: F#A#oo [1997] #65

I decided to hop around the list a bit instead of going straight down the line from one to hundred and with how the weather's been today I decided to revisit an old favorite of mine, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's debut LP, F#A#infinity.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor's music is often classified as post-rock, and when talking about this band I think it's important to open with some information about the genre in itself. Post-rock as a term was coined sometime during the early 90's, or even as far as the late 80's to describe jazz-influenced rock with focus on timbre and progressive melodies. You had bands like Talk Talk, Tortoise and even Slint being lumped in the same genre which doesn't quite make the sound of "first wave post-rock" very apparent, even if jazz-influences and timbre are the main connectors somehow.

Now Godspeed You! were the band that came to make the transition from first-wave into the well known and probably most popular form of post-rock, namely the second-wave. This wave was almost completely dominated by Canadian bands from the Montreal-area and mainly from different band members related to Godspeed You! which came to be the connecter amongst bands like Silver Mt Zion, Fly Pan Am and HRSTA. The second-wave came to be mainly from Godspeed's second full length (an album which I'll get to in a later review) but this record, F#A#infinity, was the one that started the transition into the second wave.



For those unaware, this record might seem like an odd one. It's an album built upon three long songs, all with a play time of over 15 minutes, containing drawn out passages, spoken word, and a heavy focus on strings alongside the ordinary drums and guitar. There are no sung vocals and most of this record, aswell as most of Godspeed's other releases sound a bit like a modern day rock band attempting to recreate something classical and orchestral, with 20 minute symphony's containing a huge band lineup and lots of different instruments, even if it is rooted in the modern day guitar, drums and bass.

The Dead Flag Blues opens up the album with the few spoken lines of the record. A man is retelling his encounter with a dystopian, destroyed world, speaking of the destruction of crumbling buildings, the empty burning cars on the driveway as a pair of haunting strings come in to take over the retelling of the story for him. It's one of my favorite uses of spoken word in music and it does a phenomenal job at both capturing the desolate atmosphere of something akin to Cormac McCarthy's The Road or something along the lines of the nuclear wasteland's from the Fallout games. The opening line of "The car's on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel" holds an almost iconic place in modern rock music as its spoken over a pair of heavy drones. About six minutes in, the man leaves us as the sound of a train enters the frame. This is where the song enters its second suite, opting for a more progressive and evolving way, going from a pair of sparse guitar chords into a more fully orchestrated place.

The Dead Flag Blues is an experience, a journey through dark and brooding imagery and haunting spoken word. It's one of the best examples of what Godspeed You! Black Emperor were to be capable of during their career, which is still ongoing.

The second track is the last one on the original vinyl release of the record, where East Hasting closes of a couple minutes earlier than it does on the CD-version that most people are familiar with, as it sets into the locked groove that has given the album its name. F# into A# into a locked groove that repeats it in its entirety. It's an idea that can be read into and interpreted in many different ways, possibly as how the dystopic nightmare of the apocalypse goes on forever, or that of a never ending journey. I personally don't think its supposed to be seen as a metaphor or similar, instead being a gimmicky idea that adds some flair to the record.

Both East Hasting and Providence share a similar buildup, being focused on a shapeshifting track that reaches and reaches until it finally reaches the crescendo that it's built around, reaching a certain climax like many other classical works also intended, which is what leads me to the comparison between the two. Be it through the suddenly hectic strings on East Hastings, the change in pace and tempo as suddenly the world is bursting at its seems, or how the electric guitars come in like galloping horses on Providence, as a burning army alongside the harmonius strings, it is these climaxes that are the main force of Godspeed's music and its also these that have inspired and shaped the genre for almost two decades.

This kind of crescendo-based post rock is what further would lead the genre into the "third-wave" which is mostly monkeying after Godspeed's music while shortening the track lengths down to only really fit in short buildups and strong, lasting crescendos. It's a kind of music that I'm not particularly huge on seeing as it's mostly just the same but for people with no patience. It loses so many of the elements that makes Godspeed's music great and completely wrecks the idea of classical orchestral based rock music.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor's debut LP is a phenomenal work and one of my all time favorites. It's beauty meets chaos in an original and unique way which hadn't really been done in a similar fashion when it was first released in 1997. It was a ground breaking record who's influence is still heard of today even if they were going to shape the mold even more in the three coming years. It's one of the staple albums for post-rock and while it's an unfortunate bit down the list in my opinion, it doesn't really remove any of its impact on modern musical history.

F#A#oo

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

8/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Kind Of Blue [1959] #11

If there's one album on this list that I find absolutely essential and a must hear for almost any human being out here in the world, it's this one. Kind Of Blue is Miles Davis' most well known release (and he, like most jazz musicians, has a ton) and it's also one of the genre's most prolific and revered albums.

When people who aren't acquainted with the genre think of jazz, it's most likely something in this kind of vein, or some rendition of a song like Monica Zetterlund's Sakta Går Vi Genom Stan which they've picked up from some radio channel or tv show. Kind Of Blue is the most essential jazz record of all time and one that I think is a necessity to have experienced for any person even remotely interested in music.



While Kind Of Blue almost resembles the The Godfather or the 2001 of jazz music; a ridiculous pick for one's favorite jazz album, it's one that's almost unanimously hailed as one of the greatest achievements in the genre aswell as in music overall. It's without a doubt the best stepping stone for someone even remotely interested in the genre, being a compilation of songs that rely on atmosphere as much as the incredibly important musicanship that plays a huge part in jazz. It was recorded by some of the biggest names in jazz at the time and containing musicans who still live on today as some of the era's greatest, being Davis himself, playing the trumpet, John Coltrane performing on the saxophone and Bill Evans in a quite modest role on the piano.

Kind Of Blue came to be incredibly influential and while jazz headed into wilder, more experimental territories only a couple of years later, it still became the most important piece of any lounge playlist that wants to have a piece of jazz in it. It's an album that captures the city life atmosphere almost perfectly and it's a record that's paired perfectly with New York penthouse mingle parties, where Freddie Freeloader plays in the background and Blue In Green comes of as the closing signal for the night, while young adults are leaving for a yellow taxi.

The record is mostly focused around Bill Evans' modest, intimate piano play, as Davis and Coltrane's brass comes in on top of James Cobb's sparse, downplayed drumming, where monotonous ride's and hi-hat's carry the groove behind the brass that controls the direction. Most of the songs on Kind Of Blue work in a similar fashion, with All Blues being the wildest the band ever gets to, and the least repetitive of the bunch, where Freddie Freeloader and So What both are centered around a simple reccuring melody, All Blues sees the brass head into more daring territory as Davis' is allowed to do his thing completely. All Blues is unfortunately the in my opinion weakest moment of the album, mainly for how it doesn't quite fit with Evans' and Cobb's playing, where they both are tucked away in the back of the mix while Davis' takes the front, which creates a clash that isn't as pleasing as when they're all on the same page, working towards the same goal.

Another issue I have with the album is that it's a bit too homogenous. While what it attempts is incredibly well executed, I don't find that I'm incredibly eager to hear it all over again unless I'm really in the mood for some down played jazz, and most of the time I'd probably just listen to Bill Evans' solo albums. Just like Led Zeppelin's IV, it's easy to appreciate it for doing something incredibly well, it's another thing entirely to love the music for that thing and that thing only.

What I do think is the strongest suite of Kind Of Blue however is the atmosphere it resides in. It feels like the big city nightlife and while there are a ton of albums out there that attempt a similar atmosphere, there really isn't one that does it just as well as Kind Of Blue does and it's what makes me enjoy the record so much and also what makes me hold it so dearly.

Maybe my review isn't the selling point you need to hear this record but if you ever get the chance, then do yourself a favor and go for a bike ride or just even a walk through town, watch the night life, the people, their behavior all while listening to Kind Of Blue, from So What until Flamenco Sketches. I hope it's an experience you'd cherish as much as I would.

Kind Of Blue

Miles Davis

8/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Led Zeppelin IV [1971] #10

I'll try to write a shorter review since I kind of need to head to bed and get some sleep before I get up for another day of work.

Led Zeppelin IV is the most well known record by the legendary brittish rock band. It features many of their most well known songs like Stairway To Heaven, When The Levee Breaks and Black Dog and might be the quintessential rock'n roll record.

Now this kind of subgenre to rock music isn't my favorite and one I mostly attribute to cliché, gimmicky bands like Guns 'N Roses and Kiss; rock bands featuring cool guitar solo's and banshee-esque vocals, wailing screams and lots of "Yeah baby!". While Led Zeppelin does conform to a similar kind of stereotype, it's their flirt with blues that makes their kind of music stand out. Tracks like Black Dog and When The Levee Breaks rely on repetitive guitar riffs a la Jimmy Paige next to the thundering drums of Jon Bonham all accompanied with Robert Plant's shireking vocals, kind of similar to The Black Keys just not very similar at all and also better in almost every way.

While there's no doubt that Led Zeppelin were terrific musicians who executed their style of rock music incredibly well, I do feel that their music can feel kind of shallow at times. While I keep coming back to a track like When The Levee Breaks, I do find that there's little more to it than just a fine song which kind of hampers the replayability of the band for someone who wants more engaging and thought provoking music (oh God, am I really this pretentious?)

Led Zeppelin IV is a quality record and one of the greats amongst rock music, atleast from the 70's. It's more straightforward than something like Pink Floyd ever was and I think that definitely works to its favor. This was my first brush with the band's music outside of a few key singles that have been hard to avoid and it's one that I'm not disappointed in even if I wish it had taken me a bit more by storm.

Led Zeppelin IV
Led Zeppelin
6/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Abbey Road [1969] #7

Moving down the top 10 and we reach the highest rated Beatles record on this chart. Not too surprising, it's of course Abbey Road, yet another iconic record on the top 10, with an album cover that's cemented itself in pop culture history alongside The Velvet Underground & Nico and The Dark Side Of The Moon.

I personally hold this record on par with Revolver, two of their in my opinion strongest records (neither being The Beatles' best work though) similarily built on simple pop songs with catchy melodies and a bunch of studio magic that makes them unique for their time and honestly quite innovative. Songs like Come Together and Something attempt to break the mold that the band previously had set for their kind of pop rock and they do a fine job at creating something unorthodox compared to their contemporaries.

Now a lot of credit that this record has taken should be given to their producer George Martin who had been the man turning the levers and the wheels for the band since the beginning of their career. Martin is often considered "the fifth Beatle" and rightfully so, Martin wasn't just any producer, he was the perfect fit for the band and the force that often drove them that extra mile, making tracks like Taxman and I'm Only Sleeping stand out from the previously worn mold of pop music.



This is in my opinion the time when Martin's work truly shone and most of the success of Abbey Road is definitely to be credited to George Martin, becoming one of the staple records cemented in pop culture history that still to this day is a known classic amongst young and old.

Unforunately Abbey Road suffers from a weak b-side. While the first half of the album is packed full with memorable songs like Come Together, Octopus' Garden, Something and Here Comes The Sun, the second half lacks the same momentum, energy and pillars of hit singles to lean on. It doesn't quite match the potential that the record had, containing a bunch of the bands' greatest singles and an unfortunate amount of songs that I personally don't think make the cut.

Abbey Road signaled the end of The Beatles' carreer, being the penultimate record coming in the year before Let It Be came and with it, the chapter that was The Beatles ended, This is also an contributing factor to the legacy of Abbey Road, an album which felt like a culmination of everything the band had worked for all coming together (heh) under the same roof. Let It Be might be The Beatles' encore, but Abbey Road was the finisher you'd been waiting to hear.

Abbey Road

The Beatles

7/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Film Review: Un Homme Qui Dort [1974]

Indifference has neither beginning nor end: it is an immutable state, an unshakeable inertia.

Un Homme Qui Dort (translates to A Man Who Sleeps) is a French art-house film directed by two men named Bernard Queysanne and Georges Perec. The film follows a student who seems to be suffering from depression and a strong apathy which seems to be the result of his alienation from society. The film is narrated through a female voice, most likely the characthers conscience, who acts as a guide and as the vividly explaining poetic prose of the film. The voice is constantly there, colorizing the experience and interpretations of the emotions that the character is feeling all throughout the film which leaves the viewer with a lot to take in.

I saw this movie described as "the film-equivalent to drone" which is what initally piqued my interest for Un Homme Qui Dort, and while I understand the comparison to a certain extent, both being slow, drawn out and uneventful, relying on atmosphere and outside elements to create a certain state of trance for the viewer, I find that the focus of this film isn't supposed to be as inactive as something like Coil's Time Machines can be.

Un Homme Qui Dort is instead quite vivid and eventful, with the constant narration being what really makes the movie and the interpretations of it interesting. It's a film that's occassionally beautiful but that visually doesn't add that much to the experience. It often works better with only the appearance of the narration, almost as an audio book, and I can't help but believe that it's a narration that would have worked much better as a novel, seeing to how that make the story flow better and allow for more time to interpret and take in what's being constantly spewed out.

The film often reminded me of Jean Paul Sartre's La Nauséa for its slow tempo, the cynicism and alienation of the main characther and the almost nihilistic view of the world that becomes more apparent the closer we get to the end of the film. It's a character that almost feels Dostoevskian for its spite against humans, its perceived superiority to a majority of the living world, a character that I feel has been done to death and who's edgy nihilism makes it hard to actually take the character seriously.
This is most likely my main issue with the film, aswell as how I don't think that film is a good way to interpret the story being told. The narrator is a fine idea and without a doubt executed very well but I don't find that viewing the character's card games played in solitude or his different ramblings around the streets of Paris add a lot to the depth of the film and mainly exist as a layer that just has to be there.

It doesn't evolve on the visual aspect until close to the end when we see more from the character's own point of view which is drenched in a bright light that distorts the faces of the people on the streets as the character dives through a huge crowd of people, their eyes faced in a sort of disgust towards himself as the narrator explicitly describes the monster's that people are.

Maybe this was just a bit too deep for me but it's yet again the same issue that I had with La Nauséa when I read it, I find it hard to relate to the character at hand for his nihilistic view of life and the cynicism that drowns out a majority of the story, swallowing everything and taking it to the level of the mind of a 13-year old who's just discovered Nietzche.

Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: In The Court Of The Crimson King [1969] #5

Oh boy! More anglo prog!

As I stated in my review for Wish You Were Here, I'm not a huge fan of most of the brittish progressive rock that I've heard throughout my life. They do stand out as the more interesting part of rock music from the 70's and 80's but most of the time I find them a bit too theatric, and I guess cheesy, for my own tastes.

There's definitely a couple of expections, and even if they are few, this album is one of those that I'd count amongst the ranks of brittish prog rock that makes me actually interested in the genre and curious for more.



I believe that for the most part of this record, King Crimson completely pulled of the aspect of theatrics in the genre aswell as combining it with a certain cohesiveness and almost narrative feel to the record that ties it all together in a nice little package and making up one of the best full albums that progressive rock has to offer, atleast seeing to the whole package containing album art, record pressing and more. It's a beast of a debut which quickly came to solidify King Crimson's role as one of the legends of the genre and is most likely the most notorious of the earliest conceptions of progressive rock.

The album kicks of with 21'st Century Schizoid Man, a classic in the genre and today also quite well known for being sampled by Kanye West on the album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, considered by many critics to be one of the greatest contender's for a modern classic. 21'st Century Schizoid Man is instrumentally not too far away from the first suite of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, borrowing influences from jazz (an idea that most likely originated with Soft Machine a couple years prior) with a bombastic trumpet solo sitting in the middle of the track, working as a segue between the grandiose interlude and the free ranging solo's that make up the closing part of the album.

21'st Century Schizoid Man opens the album on a high note, through robotic heavily filtered vocals over the clashing instruments, creating an almost futuristic feel to the music, as something foreign and almost science fiction-esque sets the atmosphere. It's an atmosphere that's hard to put words to but it's a feeling that stays throughout the record, holding a similar form all throughout Epitath, Moonchild and I Talk To The Wind.

Now the album unfortunately loses a bit of steam after the grandiose power house that is the opening track, slowing down it's pace on I Talk To The Wind and not quite finding its footing until the album reaches the closing point. I Talk To The Wind aswell as Moonchild both feel quite out of place on the record, slowing down the tempo and drawing the focus away from the already proven strong points of King Crimson. It's an issue of cohesiveness which I think hampers the record that could truly have benefited a bit more from a more homogenous focus and more constant flow of songs. While I Talk To The Wind atleast stands as a strong track on its own, the track Moonchild does not and only drags the quality of the record down even further.

The band tries to tie it all back together with the title track closing it off. The Court Of The Crimson King takes you back into a song that seems awfully similar to 21'st Century Schizoid Man both instrumentally and seeing to the atmosphere it's play. It's a nice trick that I wish had more of an effect but it kind of feels trite and unnecessary when the mid-section doesn't really add anything to the theme started on the opener.

In The Court Of The Crimson King often feels like it could have been so much more, had a narrative and concept found more of a grip in Fripp's vocals and the middle section of the album. It is a debut afterall and taking that into account, it still stands as a prog rock legend with the screaming red man remaining almost as much of an icon as the prism that graces The Dark Side Of The Moon.

Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on this record but revisiting it has only let me down and left me with an even stronger bitter sweet taste regarding this record. Maybe it's one that just has lost its charm.

In The Court Of The Crimson King
King Crimson
6.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev