As a Man Grows Older

I've listened to Flying Saucer Attack pretty much non-stop since I first heard them in 1993 or '94. I stopped purposely listening to either Built to Spill or the Replacements about 10 years ago. Not sure what any of this says about me, or about aging. The one big change I have seen in my taste the last few years is increased openness for electronic music with beats. I didn't hear anything remotely like the Cog-Polmo Polpo 12" or Denzel & Huhn's Paraport in 1997--there wasn't much that resembled them to hear. Had I heard them, though, I know I wouldn't have had the patience to appreciate them. When I listened to both the other night, I enjoyed them. I could weigh in on strengths and weaknesses of each, but I'll leave it at the fact that both are weird and fascinating and worth a listen.

I'll weigh in for longer on things I've been familiar with for many years.

1. OMD, Dazzle Ships One of my favorite records in 1995. Its insane use of compression sounds weird to my ears today, but it gives a really distinct synthetic character that resembles little else. The pop songs are memorable, and the "futuristic" lyrics don't seem embarrassingly dated (an impressive feat). The interstitial material is more charming than distracting, and the whole thing flows quite well. It's no longer one of my favorite records, but I remain a committed fan. While everyone is probably familiar with later OMD records, their commercial phase didn't start until later in their career. This record and Architecture & Morality, which are my favorites, came after the "goth" singles ("Enola Gay", "Electricity") and before the later Top 40 style.

2. Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Durch Die Wuste. I've been a Cluster fan since 1995 or so, but this record is newer to me. It's not as consistent as the Cluster & Eno record from the same time, but is definitely similar in many ways, with Conny Plank recording both. There's a lot of compression here too, but they're more traditional sounding compressors, that bring the drums into the sound-world of the synthetic instruments without sounding as syntactically modern. I'm a huge fan of the floaty repetitions of the Cluster and related records of this era, and this one is a good example of why.