What was the last GREAT album you bought?

I know there are some detractors around here, but I'm almost certain I'll still feel the same way about the Walkmen's Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone in a few years as I do now. It's not attached to any movement as such, and it's pretty hard to pigeonhole into a timeframe of relevance.

I got that during summer of last year, though. I'm trying to think of a GREAT album I've heard or bought since then, and I'm drawing a blank.

(I don't know if these qualify as "mellow" or not, but seeing that you consider Radiohead "mellow", I dunno...)

but i bought some new recs yesterday so that might change.

i got some classical stuff too

oh, and the two dexy's midnight runners albums have been really taking me back

the rationale for the LP as a format — a historical market convenience adapted to and exploited by musicians able to find a use and a power in a very specific length* cut up into however many sections of whatever lengths (songs/tracks/cuts) — has been dissolving for several years

the sheer over-production of strategies to exploit it has surely drained it of more than nugatory value: and the world of MP3 exchange and random-order play is any way the format open to creative exploitation, potential, play, power-to-be-found

*(as if ALL books had to be between 350 and 400 pages long)

Old stuff: I bought Tubeway Army's Replicas yesterday and have listened to the first five tracks or so. If the rest of the album is that good (and I sure as shit know that "It Must Have Been Years" is), then yeah, easy classic.

to be honest i tried downloading and got sick of it once i realised that i never once listened to anything i downloaded.

The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
The Streets - Original Pirate Material
Coldplay - Parachutes
R.E.M. - Murmur
Love - Forever Changes
The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
Radiohead - OK Computer
Pink Floyd - The Piper At the Gates of Dawn
Ween - The Mollusk

Flawless stone classics the lot of them.

I've always liked singles a lot more than albums because I rarely have the time anymore to listen to an album from beginning to end with no distractions.

before vinyl albums there were collections on tapes, but way before then there were song cycles and masses, and i think the album, the cd, the collection of short stories for instance, essentially the old song cycle art form has only been strengthened by the thirty years of albums and CDs -- if it goes back to 45 after 45 type song based stuff then i think a few things that albums of songs do well will be lost culturally, and i think that ain't going to happen because it seems lots of musicians like to work in that format and lots of people process music that way

music-for-tape as a project (which spanned everything from Fontana Mix to Kontakte) came into being at more or less the same time as album-as-organisation-of-shorter-pieces, ie the early 50s: the main reason avant garde electronic music was wary of the record-as-medium was that it demanded very fixed lengths of composition, and composers disliked being dictated to by the market

obviously the "song cycle"-as-expanded-by-album-practice won't totally go away: but it'll fall back from a 99.9% dominance of all music back to a smaller presence, and long ago retreated from being the primary cultural expression

"45-after-45-type song-based stuff": why would it go back to this? it's like saying, "seeing as the newspaper is no longer the most dynamic or progressive publishing format for political struggle, everyone will turn back to the satirical cartoon posted in the printer's shop window"

If you don't buy albums from bands that you like, how to you expect them to be able to afford making good music?

montgolfier brothers - the world is flat

(er, if you answered this earlier mark, it wasn't clear)

*or is the market dying too?

I think george mentioned this because you suggested thiat we are returning to 45-after-45: by going forwards towards MP3s (the future!) we are destroying the album (R.I.P).

its still CDs only round here I'm afraid. I am too incompetent with all this internet stuff.

(the "the making of" section of DVDs is totally wide open for creative exploitation, at the art level and the prankster-pop level) (power puff girls DVD has fun with it, though it wears thin quickly)

(DVDs are not a settled medium, i think, too baggy still)

when the vinyl 33 appeared, it was an up-scale marketing tool for uninterrupted classical music in hifi repro, no one predicted the album's emergence (via rock, w. outlier precursors elsewhere) in the form as george g. celebrates it — i don't believe in the calm unsettled continuity forever of something just bcz lots of people still like it (cf vinyl)

the market may well be dying but that's not what i'm counting on

Its very close....probably the closest to what I've been looking for - its a 9 out of 10 ('Things Fall Apart' is also a 9 IMO).

I can't think of too many 10s..."Pet Sounds" (Beach Boys) is definitely my favourite album. The Who "Live at Leeds" is a close second. From 1966-72 The Rolling Stones put out some of the best albums ever - I think "Between the Buttons", "Beggar's Banquet", and "Exile on Mainstreet" are all 10's - their other albums from that era are all 9s or 8s at worst. Its kinda cheating becuase its a compilation, but I've been listening the Buzzcock's "Singles Going Steady" for about 15 years and I still think its awesome.

Sparks - how awful is the remixed Best of Plagiarism? I bought it - and found it totally pointless...why tamper with perfection?

- Shellac at Action Park
- Slint - Spiderland
- REM - Murmur
- Poster Children - Junior Citizen
- Ben Harper - Fight For Your Mind

if you're a indie fan, go for it...

tapes, i suppose they came in lot's of competing formats, but since they're most definitely non-random-access i think people used them to collect things in an orgaised way, as people try to do with their video collections (will the industry try to kill that way of doing things)

i think it's good that the recording industry doesn't know arthur from martha right now -- this is the sort of kick up the arse that bands like the clash provided in the late '70s, which worked

bands have to be sticky again (like web-sites)

best album from last 2 or 3 years
dj marky " the brazilian job- movement 2" very funky D'N'B mix

now the walkmen, thats classic. its so different and fresh and good. rue the day!

Isis' Oceanic is also pretty close. But I damn near killed it from playing it so much, so I'll have to give it another listen after a breather.