Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992)

1) Xtal; 2) Tha; 3) Pulsewidth; 4) Ageispolis; 5) i; 6) Green Calx; 7) Heliosphan; 8) We Are the Music Makers; 9) Schottkey 7th Path; 10) Ptolemy; 11) Hedphelym; 12) Delphium; 13) Actium

The humble beginnings of Aphex Twin, but with a blatantly melodic touch he'd later forego, and which makes it something special.

Key tracks: "Xtal", "Ageispolis", "Heliosphan"

Many artists try to conjure a mysterious aura around themselves but Richard D. James takes the cake. I'm of the type who loves reading about the things they listen to, be it Wikipedia articles or various interviews, so that I can understand the context around the music further. So, the Wikipedia entry for Selected Ambient Works 85-92, which is the very famous and highly influential debut from a man commonly cited as one of the key figures in electronic music, includes a caveat or a weasel word for nearly every statement about the album's history, to the extent that we don't even know for sure whether the date range of the title is factual to begin with given Richard would have been around 14 in 1985 (which, I mean, is possible but...). The title is about as blatant as Aphex Twin gets, and it's still a question mark. Not even the genre part of the title is accurate because this isn't ambient as you'd come to expect it. The atmospheric focus of the genre is fully and heavily present on SAW 85-92, but there's a kick and a backbone driving these songs forward, sometimes at surprisingly high speeds. Ambient techno would be a more accurate moniker, even if less catchy - the songs are soundscapes first and foremost, but they're ones that actively take the jump to life.

For an Aphex Twin record SAW 85-92 is pretty straightforward as well; no swerves or twists, largely just calm and collected compositions that stay where they started in. James hasn't yet started to experiment with structures and hyperactive beat programming, and so while the songs clock at an average 6-7 minutes for most parts, they often showcase all their ideas within the first minute or two and then stretch and subtly build on them across the remaining length. This is fine, because I am an inherently boring person and I find that some of James' later works, full of their wizardly programming magic and off-kilter twists, obscure the more melodic aspects of his craft which I appreciate the most. When it comes to instrumental electronic music in general, much of the magic is in the production and chosen sound elements for me, and the sound world of SAW 85-92 is the most gorgeous thing about it. The record is full of lovely, warm analog synth tones, blessed by time rather than coming across dated. There's a little bit of fuzz throughout in its audio that could just as well be an intentional stylistic choice as it could be a limitation of James' recording technology, but which makes its atmosphere even deeper; it sounds like it's underwater, somewhere distant from anything else. They're the kind of sounds that I find to instantly invoke a setting or a tone, guiding the listener down into particular atmospheric paths and worlds that the music begins to create. They're the sort of sounds I could sink into forever, which is exactly what ambient should conjure at its most ideal. 

Saying that, there's a hint of irony in that statement because the 74-minute SAW 85-92 is definitely too long for its own good and it creaks in places where James goes askew from the general scope. "Green Calx", for example, has a more abrasive, aggressive tone which sits a bit unwell with the rest of the class even if on its own right it's a fine song, and the migraine-pounder "Hedphelym" is one of the handful of songs where shaving off a few minutes would have actually done a world of good. But most of the album's running length feels absolutely essential, and the record's opening salvo especially is the kind of introduction that instantly makes you understand why the album holds the clout it has. The first four songs represent everything great about the album's sound: the shimmery synths and ethereal vocal samples of "Xtal", the sustained atmosphere of "Tha", the playful bounce of "Pulsewidth" and the lush shine of "Ageispolis", all marvellous pieces of dreamlike moods with a tight, melodic skeleton underneath. The bulk of the album from thereon offers variations on the same elements these songs are made out of, to varying degrees of success, but one stands out and steals the show: "Heliosphan" is by and far the fantastic peak of the album right in the middle, a perfect mixture of an urgent, sci-fi metropolitan drive with an intensely dreamy ambient touch taking it somewhere further into the galaxy. It's basically the album's recipe honed down to a T and then amplified on both the ambient and the techno ends, to produce something instantly immortal. It's one of my all-time electronic songs and to this day it gives me pleasant chills down the spine.

If not already obvious, I wouldn't call myself a general Aphex Twin fan and I am ready to admit I have a limited knowledge of the actual historic quality or context of SAW 85-92 (partially thanks to James' own obscuring of it). What the blank slate nature of the record and how I've experienced it (from semi-random shared mp3s to the physical release, which is the most bare-bones CD packaging I own) has done though is that the album experience has become all about the personal context I've built for it over the years. It's music that not just has the atmospheric zone-out qualities that ambient by nature possesses, but those additional melodic and rhythmic ideas throughout help latch it onto the world around it. So this album is about the university study sessions, the revelatory discovery of "Heliosphan", the late night trips it's soundtracked, all echoing in my head - all which I can recall more clearly than I can some of the track titles. The two Selected Ambient Works records are arguably the most single-mindedly focused Aphex Twin albums, which gives them a very distinct character among his works, and out of the two this one is where the melodic touch is more present. It makes it "accessible", I guess, if that's how you want to call it, but maybe moreso instantly welcoming. You know right from the invitingly comfortable synth waves of "Xtal" that you've landed on music that can really transport you elsewhere, and it's a journey for the ages from there, through the waves of sound that wash through.

Rating: 8/10

Disney - The Legacy Collection: Robin Hood (2017)

CD1: 1) Main Title; 2) Whistle Stop; 3) Oo-De-Lally; 4) Hail John; 5) It's Only a Circus; 6) Fortune Tellers; 7) Enter the Sheriff; 8) Skippy's Birthday Gift; 9) A Lost Arrow; 10) Meeting Maid Marian; 11) To the Winner; 12) The Archery Affair; 13) Fooling Ol' Bushel Britches; 14) Archer's Processional; 15) Sir Hiss Suspects; 16) Well, Well; 17) The Loser; 18) Seize the Fat One; 19) Fight on Wisconsin; 20) There You Are; 21) Love; 22) The Phony King of England; 23) Double the Taxes; 24) Not in Nottingham; 25) Not Yourself Today; 26) Bird Brain; 27) Lower the Bridges; 28) All's Well That Ends Well 
CD2: 1) Whistle Stop (Ragtime Demo); 2) Oo-De-Lally (Country Western Score Demo); 3) Not in Nottingham (Prince John Demo); 4) Love (Robin Hood Version); 5) The Phony King of England (Country Western Version); Louis Prima Audio Book Tracks 6) King Louie & Robin Hood; 7) Robin and Me; 8) Sherwood Forest; 9) The Phony King of England; 10) Friar Tuck; 11) Merry Men; 12) Love; 13) Robin Hood

Oo-de-lally, oo-de-lally, golly what a gift for the fans.

Key tracks: "Whistle Stop" "The Phony King of England", "Not in Nottingham"

Disney's 1973 animated rendition of Robin Hood is an odd one. The film had a long, ever-changing gestation period before finally becoming reality, with a number of tonal changes during the production; the final product even features recycled animation loops from prior films as a cost-cutting method. It has barely any plot; things happen in a sequence to form a narrative but there's no sense of drama or progression to it, and instead it resembles pocket stories that interconnect in a fairly relaxed fashion. There's no Big Disney Song moments and the presence of the occasional sung song is almost coincidental. And yet, it's one of Disney's most charming films: much greater than the sum of its parts, it's a movie that simply feels good to watch. It's so full of personality, brought to life by the wonderful art and the fantastic voice acting, that few Disney films can actually match it in that department. Part of its magic is in fact in how it's relatively low-stakes; it's a film you can put on in any kind of mood and be guaranteed to enjoy and be captivated by.

The act of releasing the score as part of Disney's Legacy Collection soundtrack reissue series to begin with is worth an applause. Despite being beloved by many especially in Europe, the film hasn't really had the right amount of financial clout to be acknowledged by the US-centric Disney and so has been stuck in an unfortunate limbo when it comes to any peripheral material. The Legacy Collection release is the first official release of the soundtrack since the 70s, and the first time the entire score has been released, beautifully remastered but keeping the warmth of the original. This means that we finally get the chance to hear some of the score cuts fully audible and unedited, and truly appreciate the score that's otherwise gone somewhat unsung.

Much like the film itself, its score went through some redesigns and tweaking. The film was originally intended to feature a deliciously contrasting combination of British and American folklore, set in the High Sierras of the American west. By the time the film design had toned down the Western flavours and returned the setting to its country of origin, enough work had been done on its initial musical themes that they made it to the final film to an extent. The final score is an interesting mix of worlds, operating somewhere between whimsical cartoon orchestral songs of yore, a more traditionally Disney-esque cinematic approach with period-accurate instrumental flair, and the folk/country approach inspired by the original drafts. The score, largely composed by George Bruns, is a delightful, memorable little thing: matching the film's tone its cosy and down to earth, more in favour of quaint and subtle melodic pieces rather than big set piece compositions (even the climactic ending scenes are covered by a single composition). It's not a score that jumps out and shouts for attention, and it's clearly been made with a supporting role for the visual side in mind. But listening to it outside the film reveals all kinds of little touches and details you may have missed out when the dialogue has been set over it, and it's a testament to how well the music marries with the film that each song here is so fully evocative of the scenes they're set to that they replay clearly in your head as the music plays. Of the fully instrumental songs, it's e.g. the variations on the regally bombastic Prince John's theme (e.g. "Hail John") and the light-hearted scene-setting of "Skippy's Birthday Gift" that are particularly close to my heart; they're also good examples of the film's rich use of leitmotifs, that then get fleshed out by the vocal songs later on, which is always an aspect I appreciate in soundtracks.

Speaking of the vocal tracks, Robin Hood was released near the start of Disney's transitional period from the fairytale musicals of their older features, and the airplay-enticing hit song extravaganzas of more modern Disney, and so while a few sung songs are scattered throughout the film, they're treated more like narrative interludes than big centrepieces. The closest thing to it is the Oscar-nominated "Love", sung by Nancy Adams, and even it is an atypically gentle song for the big love theme of the film; but thanks to its softer touch, it does manage to reach something actually genuinely romantic. Three out of the film's five vocal songs are sung by the omnipresent troubadour narrator Alan-a-Dale, voiced by the country legend Roger Miller: "Oo-De-Lally" is little more than an establishing intro piece though it's thoroughly lovely in its own right, but "Not in Nottingham" really showcases the value of getting a proper soundtrack release, because now its gorgeous church organ outro gets the chance to finally play in its entirety, uninterrupted. Getting the full version had been a personal daydream for many years, and the Legacy Collection feels worth it for that alone. Miller also contributes his charisma to "Whistle Stop", which oddly might just be the film's most iconic song even though its vocals are fully wordless - it runs through the gamut of film's styles in its three minutes and has a dangerously catchy hook, andit  has managed to establish itself as the first thing that comes to mind musically from the film. The most elaborate song of the lot is "The Phony King of England", the closest the film gets to the kind of sing-along number you'd come to expect from most Disney films. It's a load of good fun, full of quotable lines, and it's where you can hear remnants of the film's original musical direction the clearest.

In terms of the extra things that The Legacy Collection issue brings to the table, it's a fantastic set for a fan and a collector. The packaging is incredible, full of gorgeous custom artwork as well as a long, detailed history of the film's and the score's production, full of information about the various changes and plans both went through; the sheer level of love clearly put into the overall set makes it one of my favourite physical packagings in my collection. The second disc is devoted to various bonus material, from demos to alternative versions cut from the film to songs from Let's Hear It for Robin Hood, an obscure musical storybook version of the film, featuring Louis Prima as a facsimile of The Jungle Book's King Louie narrating the film. The demos are particularly great as they really highlight the original country western direction, with the full-on country hootenanny version of "The Phony King of England" being the creme de la creme of the set. With the alternative versions/reprises, you can understand why they were ultimately chopped and it's especially disappointing that the otherwise delightful Robin-lead version of "Love" isn't sung by Brian Bedford himself, but elsewhere it's still fun to hear Peter Ustinov chew the scenery as Prince John in his own reprise of "Not in Nottingham". The big band style cuts from Let's Hear It for Robin Hood are interesting supplemental material; the original songs aren't the most memorable perhaps but they retain some of the original source material's charms, and by this point "The Phony King of England" has fully established itself as the kind of song that I can happily listen to in countless different versions (why it hasn't become a canonical Disney classic is bewildering). The bonus material doesn't account to much in terms of runtime, only around 26 minutes in total, but it's fascinating archival material for fans of the film. I.e., the exact kind of thing you'd hope from a celebratory re-release.

And honestly, this whole set and this review are effectively preaching for the converted. In the wide sea of Disney films Robin Hood is more of a cult classic, and while its score is a very good one it's arguably not flashy enough to swoon anyone who hasn't already drank the Sherwood kool-aid. But as someone who at the very moment of writing this has two sets of artwork related to this film on the nearby wall and whose second copy of a similarly themed mug is a permanent fixture of his PC desk, and as someone who is a big enough music fan to review things, this is about as essential as a piece of merchandise can get. You can also tell that they wanted to make the release as comprehensive as possible, from liner notes to bonus material (the notes even lament a few particular archive takes they learned about while researching for this edition, the recordings of which are seemingly lost forever); it's a celebration of something that hasn't had its day in the spotlight yet. It's opened up a way to fully enjoy a specific aspect of the film in a way that hasn't been possible before, and for a fan of the film it's only made the entire experience even greater. Oo-de-lally.

Rating: 8/10

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go (1996)

1) Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier; 2) A Design for Life; 3) Kevin Carter; 4) Enola/Alone; 5) Everything Must Go; 6) Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky; 7) The Girl Who Wanted to Be God; 8) Removables; 9) Australia; 10) Interiors (Song for Willem De Kooning); 11) Further Away; 12) No Surface All Feeling

Loss and determination projected through orchestrated guitar anthems. Not just a new chapter but a grand new start.

Key tracks: "A Design for Life"; "Enola/Alone"; "Everything Must Go"

The Holy Bible had always been an anomaly. Their third album wasn't part of the expected trajectory for Manic Street Preachers, it was something that burst out of its context: a high-strung band lashing out their internal intensity. They would have never been able to follow it up like-to-like, and certainly not after Richey Edwards vanished without a trace in February 1995. Manics' entire legacy was looking to finish there and then, three best friends uncertain whether they could continue without the fourth. It took the coming together of one particular song to convince the band to continue, to assure them that they still had more to say by staying together.

The Manics didn't fit in with the Britpop scene raging on in the mid-90s UK, but "A Design for Life" briefly made them part of it. Much like Pulp and "Common People", this was a seasoned band striking a chord by painting the ever-present British class tensions clearly visible and dressing it up in a form that captured the attention of those who heard it over the radio. The Manics had been plenty anthemic before, see Gold Against the Soul for the 101 class on that, but "A Design for Life" is something else. It's refined, with its leading jangle and the petite guitar strikes punctuating every beat. The strings feel alive, swiveling around the structure of the song with class. The chorus is a grand act, each appearance like a rousing finale in its own right, Bradfield shouting his lungs with the belief of his band's namesake. There's a weighty gravitas to his voice and to the sound that the band had never had before. It lead to "A Design for Life" becoming a career-defining hit in the UK and it launched the band to mass consciousness in an unprecedented way. For a band who had semi-jokingly started their career with the manifesto of becoming global superstars from day one (and then split immediately afterwards but let's forget about that one), it was a huge moment purely from a personal perspective; just completely unintended this time around.

That moment of triumph was something the band deserved after everything they had gone through, as they resurrected themselves from a moment of darkness in a phoenix-like fashion. Everything Must Go is an album about loss and learning how to deal with it, finding the will to live again no matter how hard it seems - if The Holy Bible was a dark, fearful storm then its follow-up was the day after, everything in the neigbourhood damaged and blown down but the gentler skies above giving the chance to rebuild again. "A Design for Life" is uncharacteristic in its directly political nature for the rest of the album, with Wire spending most of his debut as the band's sole lyricist reflecting on loss ("Enola/Alone" was inspired by a photo of Richey and the band's former, deceased manager Philip Hall posing together), the internal guilt of moving on from it ("Everything Must Go") and the instinctual desire to run away ("Australia", so named because it was the furthest place geographically that came to Wire's mind). Songs that the band had started with Richey and still featured his lyrics were chosen to be finalised as a form of tribute; to cap it off, the reverb-drenched outro to the album-closing "No Surface All Feeling" is the only known instance of Richey's guitar playing making it to a studio album. None of the three men were fully comfortable moving on without Richey but while the album is surrounded by his ghost, the music itself plays with clarity and liberation: it's a three-legged dog learning to run again and embracing the unity their band still brings to them.

Everything Must Go sets up what we can consider the archetypical Manic Street Preachers sound: big guitar walls, a helping of strings and a sense of uplifting melancholy permeating throughout, where quiet introspection meets grandstanding choruses. The key difference is how the band tone things down from the flashiness of the earlier albums; where the band formerly embraced the dramatics of their whole performance, now the actual song has become the key thing that everything else works in service to. This includes Bradfield cutting his guitar histrionics down and placing less emphasis on showcase solos, sometimes even opting for a less-is-more approach as seen on "A Design for Life", and overall paying more attention to the overall arrangement of each part rather than just letting himself lead the way at all times. Everything Must Go offers the band's best melodic work to date and it matches it perfectly with the triumphant rock choruses that the bound found themselves drawn into following the initial conception of "A Design for Life" serving as the launch pad. These anthems are the best parts of the album as well, with the bittersweet "Enola/Alone" and the gloriously sweeping title track easily rivalling their famous hit sibling, and the escapist joy of "Australia" and the heartache of "No Surface All Feeling" providing the late-album counterparts that more than match up. They're all phenomenal songs, full of heart as much as they have sheer power. The only thing you could count against them is the overall middling drum sound that discolours the entire album, which lacks the punch needed for these types of songs; it's not a major complaint but it's been my bugbear since day one and I had to interject it somewhere here.

The more nuanced direction also gives way to some sudden breaks from its guitar volume. The primarily acoustic "Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky" most obviously of all; it serves as the unofficial direct tribute to Richey, utilising one of the more directly sad lyrics he left behind as the guiding force for a solemn, melancholy number that gets a gentle lilt from a delicate harp behind Bradfield's otherwise bare-bones arrangement. "Removables" is the other most identifiably Edwards-heavy song of the set and it's also similarly moody, with a brooding, growing intensity which points out that The Holy Bible days weren't that long ago, remixing that album's musical landscape into something more befitting of the band at the present. The best thing about the sequence where both of these tracks appear is that the song sandwiched between them,  "The Girl Who Wanted to Be God", is the album's single-handedly most musically jubilant number, and it makes the entire trio of songs sound stronger thanks to the contrast; "The Girl Who Wanted to Be God" itself is a jubilant, sweet number full of strings and love for vintage pop swoons, and it jumps furthest and brightest into the orchestral accompaniments that the band saw fit to include across the album. There's also a leap to suddenly acknowledging rhythm which paves way to some of the album's best deep cuts. "Kevin Carter" is an iconic single on its own right but somewhat hidden in-between the more obvious anthems, but its borderline funky groove and Moore's trumpet debut is something previously unheard for the band and somehow perfectly underlines the song's neurotic lyrics. "Interiors" is the album's hidden gem, similarly dominated by its janky bass groove which gives way to a musically poignant, swooping chorus where James' voice resonates far more than the song's biographical nature would allude to.

That extra oomph of resonance - or feeling, or however you want to call it - is at the heart of Everything Must Go. The songs are great (though "Further Away", which is a good enough tune, always felt a bit in the wrong crowd even if it's grown on me over the years), not just musically top-notch but they bear the sound of the formerly almost cartoon-like band finally revealing their true selves, and letting the emotion underneath subsequently wash over. Manics accidentally tapped into the musical zeitgeist of the time but Everything Must Go has always been an awkward fit to the Britpop canon, not just because of the history of the band themselves but because it's too sincere, too heartfelt among the company of posers and patriotic cosplay that most of its peers were characterised by. The songs have the bombast of a stadium-soaring fist-pumper (and they'd naturally become such for the band), but beneath the walls of sound is a heartbroken band putting absolutely everything of themselves into every single note, because they needed it to survive and to go on. It doesn't matter if the subject matter was a political lambast, a biographical narrative of whoever they last read about or something thus-far uncharacteristically sincere - it's made to sound like the band depend on it to survive. It's the most characteristic element of Everything Must Go and the aspect that splits it apart from the numerous attempts the band would try to recreate its sound in the coming decades: come in for the catchy choruses, stay for the sudden emotional swells.

When the Manics debuted with Generation Terrorists, they were characterised by the album's pure conviction for the music and what it represented, in the way that the ideal kind of debut from a hungry young band only can. Only five years had passed in-between, but the raggedy glam punks were now melancholy, experienced craftsmen and Everything Must Go stands as a new debut album, re-establishing Manics' new identity. Everything Must Go carries the legacy of its preceding album trilogy on its back but it is in the purest possible way a true reinvention for the band. While it's massively different from the albums before it, its sound and style are a natural fit for the band, as if this is what they were born for all this time along, it just took an odd way to get there. It's not a shout against the former albums, nor its me saying this is absolutely one of the band's very best: but it's a life-affirming record that's more special than it mayhaps initially comes across as.

Rating: 8/10

R.E.M. - And I Feel Fine... The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987 (2006)

CD1: 1) Begin the Begin; 2) Radio Free Europe; 3) Pretty Persuasion; 4) Talk About the Passion; 5) (Don't Go Back To) Rockville; 6) Sitting Still; 7) Gardening at Night; 8) 7 Chinese Bros. 9) So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry); 10) Driver 8; 11) Can't Get There from Here; 12) Finest Worksong; 13) Feeling Gravity's Pull; 14) I Believe; 15) Life and How to Live It; 16) Cuyahoga; 17) The One I Love; 18) Welcome to the Occupation; 19) Fall on Me; 20) Perfect Circle; 21) It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Limited Edition CD2: 1) Pilgrimage; 2) These Days; 3) Gardening at Night (Slower Electric Demo); 4) Radio Free Europe (Hib-Tone Version); 5) Sitting Still (Hib-Tone Version); 6) Life and How to Live It (Live); 7) Ages of You (Live); 8) We Walk (Live); 9) 1,000,000 (Live); 10) Finest Worksong (Other Mix); 11) Hyena (Demo); 12) Theme from Two Steps Onward; 13) Superman; 14) All the Right Friends; 15) Mystery to Me (Demo); 16) Just a Touch (Live in Studio); 17) Bad Day; 18) King of Birds; 19) Swan Swan H (Live Acoustic); 20) Disturbance at the Heron House; 21) Time After Time (AnnElise)

As comprehensive a best of as you could get, really. And for the fans, that bonus disc has some surprisingly nice rarities.

Key tracks: It's a best of album!

R.E.M. knew how to write a brilliant song right from the very start. While they're mainly known for jangling and mumbling during the days represented here, they knew how to vary their recipe and push their own boundaries, leading to a five-album streak that while varied, sounds like a logical path from A to B. The now-defunct I.R.S. and whatever labels that have since absorbed its material into themselves have been pumping out compilations of the band's early material at a steady pace throughout the years, and they've been doing an alright job in condensing the highlights from the period: after all, we're talking about only five albums and an EP here so it's not like picking up the key tracks is particularly difficult. 2006's And I Feel Fine... The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987 seems like an unnecessary release in that sense, but rather than pushing out yet another pointless copy/paste compilation, this one actually has the band behind it. It's a fully curated, carefully compiled selection that for the first time involves R.E.M. themselves influencing the song selection, with the idea that this would become the definite I.R.S. era R.E.M. compilation that clears out the rest into the bargain bins they were destined to.

It's a success. Whether you're a newcomer wanting to get a summary of the early days or already familiar with the material but wanting to just run through the best bits, And I Feel Fine is a successful cut-through the period. The 21 songs represented feature all the singles (bar The Clique cover "Superman") and most of the major album cuts; each of the five albums is represented with an equal, respectable amount of songs and the Chronic Town EP is rightfully represented by "Gardening at Night". Everything has been remastered well and the cross-era sequencing forms a brilliant, natural flow. The only nitpick is the lack of "Maps and Legends", which to me has always been one of the key tracks of 80s-R.E.M., but it's hard to really complain about it when the rest of the collection is so well done. It absolutely blows away the previous budget compilations and should do its job perfectly as an introduction.

And then the established fans can move onto the deluxe edition bonus content.

The second, extra disc starts from where the main package left off. Each of the four band members has selected a personal favourite deep cut, nicely picking some highlights left off the compilation proper. In addition you've got the excellent version of "Superman" that was missing off the main disc, the 'last song left off the compilation' ("King of Birds") and the original pre-Murmur single versions of "Radio Free Europe" and "Sitting Still" to round off overflow studio material. From there, the disc starts branching off into more uncharted waters. The deluxe edition bonus disc is primarily a collection of non-album choice selections, with an emphasis on variety - no studio b-sides have been included, probably because Dead Letter Office compiles all those pretty comprehensively. In their place are live highlights, including a storming version of "Life and How to Live It" that blows the album version off the charts with its sheer manic energy, and alternate takes such as an intriguing slowed down "Gardening at Night", and and some demos. Some of these demos offer the album's biggest fan-snags, by including the original demos of "All the Right Friends" and especially "Bad Day" (which is one of the few things here previously unreleased): songs which the band wouldn't actually finalise until the 00's, and it's fascinating how close the band kept the final versions to these demos. 

Some effort and quality checking has gone into compiling the second disc as well because it's far more consistent than simply the collection of thrown together curio rarities it looks like at first sight. A lot of the alternative versions, live or otherwise, are actually genuinely good and worth one's time beyond the initial listen, and the few pure archive clear-outs do not overlap with any other widespread R.E.M. release so they have a reason to be included. It's a treasure trove for any fan, and the cherry on top are the liner notes. The whole band including Berry go through each and every song, revealing historic anecdotes and personal feelings about them, in a thoroughly interesting way (as a disclaimer, the 2-disc version only contains descriptions for all the bonus disc songs, so I can't say for sure if the 1 disc version features the same for primary disc).

Whether it's the main content or the bonus disc, And I Feel Fine is far more a labour of love than your average compilation. A clear goal was set out here - to focus on quality above all else while presenting an accurate summary of a period that very few casual appreciators ever even think about. The second disc is the missing companion piece to Dead Letter Office that fans should seek out, covering everything essential it was missing and then a little extra. I'd be lying if I said this is a regular listen but out of the best of compilations I've heard across the years from artists I love, this is easily in the top tiers.

Rating: 9/10

Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile (1999)

Disc 1: 1) Somewhat Damaged; 2) The Day the World Went Away; 3) The Frail; 4) The Wretched; 5) We're in This Together; 6) The Fragile; 7) Just Like You Imagined; 8) Even Deeper; 9) Pilgrimage; 10) No, You Don't; 11) La Mer; 12) The Great Below
Disc 2: 1) The Way Out Is Through; 2) Into the Void; 3) Where Is Everybody?; 4) The Mark Has Been Made; 5) Please; 6) Starfuckers, Inc.; 7) Complication; 8) I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally; 9) The Big Come Down; 10) Underneath It All; 11) Ripe (With Decay)

Two hours of angst and intensity, and none of it's reaching me. It's a blog about everything I own, but not everything gets a fair cop...

 

Key tracks: "La Mer", "Starfuckers Inc"

I have a great deal of respect for Trent Reznor for always going his own way and making a remarkable music career out of it, but that respect hasn't really translated to a deeper appreciation for Nine Inch Nails. I like it when Reznor moves a little closer towards his own understanding of what makes a catchy hit; I got close with "The Hand That Feeds" when it was an airplay hit during my first summer job, "Hurt" was good even before Johnny Cash made it his own, "Discipline" is unironically my favourite NIN track, etc. There is absolutely none of that on The Fragile. What it is instead is an ambitious double album ode to depression, paranoia and turmoil, stretched over segueing soundscapes, harsh interludes and headphone-savouring production moments; woven together into a sonical experience intended to be immersed into as a whole. Based on my experience it's the furthest Reznor has sunk into his own production, the ambient albums perhaps excluded, and has the kind of a neon-lettered sign saying "magnum opus" hanging over it that you'd expect from a hefty double album. It's a daunting record both in its mood and its sound design.

It's obvious that The Fragile is nowhere close to where Nine Inch Nails blip on my radar, call me basic if you will. I don't want to call it dull or even uninteresting - there's a lot going on and you can really feel the intent coming through the album. Reznor's on a mission and on a personally important journey, and you can hear that for someone out there, The Fragile will mean absolutely everything. I can easily draw parallels between it and double albums of similar ambition and ilk that do work for me, not in sound but in the ambition and fearless artistic endeavour of it all. The difference is that none of it sticks to me. Sometimes Trent murmurs, sometimes he screams, sometimes he says nothing at all, but very few of them register beyond that. The instrumentals are actually some of the better parts of the album, "La Mer" above all, as they go all-in on the heftiness of the album's atmosphere and turn it into a score of sorts. The noisier parts mostly just repeat one another, though "Starfuckers Inc" sticks mainly because it's a well-needed jolt of something raw and concrete among the extended soundscapes, even if it's title-repeating chorus flirts with being overwhelmingly corny no matter how enraged Trent sounds. For most parts though, even in its more distinguishable parts, The Fragile comes and goes without a reaction and certainly two discs of this is way too much of it.

I try to have it so that every album I own has something to it that makes it an established entity in my collection and which gives me a spark to talk about it - some have developed personal stories behind them, others have a contextual place by being part of a wider discography picture, some are just too good to not own. The Fragile is there by happenstance. Some time back one of my great friends and a fellow music geek donated me a huge box of an incredibly varied selection CDs following a spring cleaning sweep he had done through his shelves. After going through everything in that big cardboard box some CDs were donated forward to other friends of mine who might enjoy them more, some of them were traded for others, and a good number found a new home in my own collection. The Fragile is one of the ones that I kept, but mainly because the digipak packaging was showing rather heavy signs of wear and as a frequent connoisseur of used music myself, I didn't feel like I could sell that forward with any integrity. As a result I've been coming back to it occasionally but no matter how many times I hear it, despite its purposed intensity, it mostly just gets lost in the background with zero reaction.

Rating: 4/10