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: Sander Kleinenberg - This Is Everybody Too

A number of years ago when I already owned this album, I asked a mate of mine if he'd heard of Sander Kleinenberg. His response was "No, nobodies heard of these people you listen to".

Generally speaking I know who in my music collection is known to many and who is known to few. With Sander Kleinenberg though I wasn't sure. On one hand he had a big tune with "My Lexicon" in 2000 and his Essential Mix in 2001 was voted Essential Mix of the Year. On the other hand, whilst clearly a big name in the dance music world, maybe he wouldn't be so well known to the wider public.

I put it to test by asking pretty much everyone I knew at the time whether they'd heard of Sander Kleinenberg, bearing in mind most of my friends aren't into dance music. Only 1 person I asked said yes.

They were missing out, as this album is amongst the best ever. Some of them did get to hear it in my car, where I played it a lot. Obviously not everyone liked it, but I managed to convert some people I think.

I think over analysing the album by speaking about the different genres it incorporates isn't going to do it any justice, so I won't. Just think about it as simply being a house album.

The first CD starts off with a couple of ambient numbers. Once we're into dance mode it's still more of the chill out variety but gradually get's heavier as the mix goes on with penultimate track "Don't Stop Go" by Hydroponix perhaps being the heaviest of them all. Not that heavy though, it is house music after all. The final track in the mix is one of his own, "The Right Time".

The second CD more of less goes straight into it, with the 2nd track being his own composition "The Fruit", which is perhaps one of his better known tunes. It finishes with 2 different versions of the same tune, "Waves" by Redanka.

The best way to understand what makes this album so great though is to give it a listen.