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: Portishead - Dummy

The next album in this series, "Dummy" by Portishead, was released in 1994. I would like to say that's where my story begins, but I'm afraid it doesn't, it starts much later than that.

1994 was the year I started as a Grunger and ended as a Raver. As we got into the late 90s I remember Portishead being popular amongst my peers, particularly those who liked Dance Music. However at the time I liked my music hard and fast, which Portishead clearly weren't.

Fast forward to 2008 (yes my story really does begin much later) and Portishead were back in the headlines with a new album. This brought back memories of Portishead tunes I knew, "Numb", "Sour Times", "Wandering Star" and "Glory Box" and I thought to myself that those tunes were pretty good. In the record shop I discovered they were all on the same album. With 10 tracks on the album, knowing that I liked at least 40% of the album coupled with the fact it was on offer, it was a no brainer to buy it.

The album begins with "Mysterons" which is basically a sign of what's to come. If I had to pick one Portishead tune that perfectly sums up their sound then this would be it. Next up was the more familiar "Sour Times", a great tune. The next couple of tracks on the album are even better.

Up next is the more familiar "Wandering Star" followed by "Numb". Then the tempo goes down a notch, which shouldn't be possible but it does. These next 3 tracks in my mind are building up to the big ending of "Glory Box".

Much like the first 2 albums of this series I've been posting about, what makes this album great is more to do with the album as a whole as opposed to the individual tracks. The positioning of the more familiar tracks at the beginning (well track 2), middle and end helps.

Portishead have a very distinctive sound, its downtempo and quite haunting but at the same time it's quite experimental, almost like they're brainstorming ideas for the tune but it is the actual tune.

Despite this, their debut album, coming out 25 years ago they only have 3 albums to their name. The self titled follow up came out 3 years later in 1997 and then their was an 11 year gap till their 3rd album, called "Third" and it's been 11 years since that came out.

They're not exactly prolific at touring either. The first gig they did in London after I purchased this album was in 2011 at the logistical nightmare that is Alexandra Palace which had a 1am finish so I decided to give it a miss. They haven't played a gig in London since so therefore I've never seen them live.