Last 10 Years

Yesterdays post about Fenech-Soler brought back memories of other music I was listening to when I first discovered them. Basically I didn't think I was old enough to reach the 'better in the old days' stage of my life and made an effort to keep my music tastes current.

One thing I did was pick my 25 favourite albums. It was a very biased list favouring the more recent albums though, 17 of them were from the 21st century and the other 8 were from the 90s. It also included an album which had only just come out at the time.

Nowadays I'm at a point where I'm not even up to date with a lot of artists I've liked in years gone by. Some went to to make some truly dreadful music and others I just forgot about. I do sometimes seek out new music from an artist if I'm going to see them in concert, but many don't really bother making new music anymore and stick to the classics.

It got me thinking, what albums have the 25 artists of those albums I picked released in the last 10 years. Well here's the answer:

2 Many DJs - No albums

Norman Jay - 2 albums: Skank & Boogie (2015), Mister Good Times (2017)

Portishead - No albums

Massive Attack - No albums

High Contrast - 2 albums: Night Gallery (2017), Notes from the Underground (2020)

Plump DJs - No albums

Jacques Lu Cont - No albums

Erol Alkan - 1 album: Fabriclive 77 (2014)

Spiritcatcher - No albums

Various Artists - N/A

DJ Shadow - 2 albums: The Mountain Will Fall (2016), Our Pathetic Age (2019)

Tiga - 1 album: No Fantasy Required  (2016)

Air - No albums

Fatboy Slim - No albums

Sander Kleinenberg - No albums

Snoop Dogg - 6 albums: Bush (2015), Coolaid (2016), Neva Left (2017), Bible of Love (2018), I Wanna Thank Me (2019), From tha Streets 2 tha Suites (2021), BODR (2022)

Jurassic 5 - No albums

Kruder & Dorfmeister - 1 album: Johnson (2022)

Zero 7 - No albums

Mylo - No albums

Digitalism - 2 albums: Mirage (2016), JPEG (2019)

Underworld - 2 albums: Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future (2016), Drift Series 1 (2019)

LCD Soundsystem - 1 album: American Dream (2017)

London Elektricity - 2 albums: Are We There Yet? (2015), Building Better Worlds (2019)

Propellerheads - No albums

Just 11 of the artists have released an album in the last 10 years and only 3 of them have released one in the decade so far. Only Snoop Dogg has been prolific with none of the others managing more than 2 albums in a decade.

This leads to another question, are these albums any good?

Just one way to find out. I'm going to give each of those albums a listen and post what I think of them here.

My 25 Favourite Albums: Jacques Lu Cont - FabricLive.09

For those who don't know, FabricLive was a series of albums put out by Fabric nightclub which started in 2001 and finished in 2018 when the 100th mix came out.

Being number 9, this was quite early on in the series and came out in 2003. Jacques Lu Cont is an alias of Stuart Price who was also well known as Les Rythmes Digitales and as a member of Zoot Woman. He pretended to be French in the early days, I thought he was French myself when I bought this but later discovered he wasn't.

These day's he's perhaps better known as plain old Stuart Price, the producer of more recent albums by Madonna, Pet Shop Boys and Take That amongst others.

To the album itself then, well it begins with a rip off of "Miss You" by the Rolling Stones which was your typical Dance record of the day. I love the way it mixes into the 2nd track, "Eastern Palace" by Risan. Little did I know until reading the liner notes that we'd now gone back to the early 80s, but somehow it just seemed to fit.

Up next was "Wordy Rappinghood" by the Tom Tom Club, another early 80s tune and I finally learned what that weird but good tune I'd heard a few years earlier actually was. It was then back to the present day with "Steppin" by Chicken Lips, who were 2 former members of Bizarre Inc. Then it was back to the 80s again with "Abracadabra" by Steve Miller Band.

A bit of a mixture at the start then, but still somehow sounded like a typical House mix. It then settled into just that beginning with the excellent "Give it Up" by Crazy Penis and ending with "Remind Me" by Royksopp.

Then things get a bit strange again, with "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Strauss making an appearance which then goes into "Sweet Dreams" by Eurythmics. At first I think it might be a dance remix of it, but then realise no it really is "Sweet Dreams" itself.

We then have a Stuart Price tune in "It's Automatic" by Zoot Woman, then followed by the excellent "David" by GusGus.

Once again we go back to the 80s, but this time to the early days of House music with "House Nation" by Housemaster Boyz, given the nature of the mix so far that didn't seem too unusual, it was still House music after all.

After this though it gets even weirder, if that's even possible. We have "Snowball" by Devo, a notable change in direction. Then it's "I Wanna Rock" by Junior Sanchez, a Rock inspired Dance record. Then it goes completely Rock with "Gouge Away" by The Pixies and then finishes with "Here Come the Warm Jets" by Brian Eno.

Quite a random mix then, but that's what makes it so great. It has some great tunes on it, the Crazy Penis to Royksopp section alone makes it worth buying. I wouldn't have thought having a Pixies record in a Dance mix would work, but somehow it does.

In my pre-London days when I used to drive to work, this was always a favourite to put on in the car on the drive home on Friday, ready for the weekend to begin.

I had hoped one day I would spend the weekend going to see the man himself play, but certainly by the time I moved to London his DJing as Jacques Lu Cont had more or less finished, being a producer for various artists instead. He did briefly start DJing as Jacques Lu Cont again around 2011-2013 but for whatever reason I never went to see him during that time, guess I was getting a bit old for clubbing by then. Maybe it's for the best as his set probably wouldn't be as good as this.