Inspired by the Aaron Giles page where he talks about ripping his entire cd collection, I have decided to listen to every record (and CDs and Bandcamp purchases) and give tiny blurbs on them. I’ll do these posts on a weekly basis so they won’t get overwhelming and people can just skip them. Collecting records for 15 years and marrying someone who also collects them means I have a pretty decently sized music collection in my basement, with a lot of records I haven’t heard in a long time or have never listened to. I can’t imagine this will be interesting to most people but it will be a lot of fun for me since I listen to a ton of music while programming or after work anyway. Plus maybe it will help people find new music to listen to. I actually already ripped all my CDs earlier this year so I’m not getting to those yet. Most of these reviews will have links to Bandcamp pages as well. I’m also working on a page where all of these reviews will be listed.
His Name is Alive: How Ghosts Affect Relations 1990-1993 (2024, Bandcamp)
This preorder actually arrived a bit early so I got to listen to it on vinyl before I can listen my download of it. An incredible box set containing 3 albums I love, along with some bonus tracks and booklet. The remasters sound fantastic and I can’t recommend these albums enough to people who are a fan of the dream pop/shoegaze sound that a lot of 4AD bands had at the time. It will never be weird to me that these albums were being recorded almost directly behind my childhood home while I was a kid. The main person behind this band, Warren Defever, apparently lived grew up here and then bought the home from his parents to use as a studio up until the mid 90s and I was just riding my bike by it every day. Weird! All 3 albums are great but I think my ranking of them is 1. Livonia 2. Mouth by Mouth 3. Home is in Your Head. Livonia is the first album released and named after the city where I grew up. It probably has the the most experimental sound, with the albums drifting to a more radio friendly sound with Mouth by Mouth sounding the most approachable to me.
Jean-Michel Jarre: Magnetic Fields (1981, YouTube)
I’m not an expert on him by any means and he definitely has more famous albums, but this is still a good one IMO. Just some nice electronic bleeps and bloops. It sounds more poppy and dance than I would expect from him, but again, I’ve only heard a tiny bit of his work (the Oxygene albums).
Love Spirals Downwards: Flux (1998, Bandcamp)
I feel like with the resurgence of Y2K nostalgia, especially among Gen Z folks, this seems like an album that they would be really into. This drum & bass and ambient album was released in 1998 but the version I listened to is the vinyl rerelease that came out in 2024. I think the rerelease sounds great. City Moon is the first song I heard by LSD so it will always have a soft spot for it, but I think all the songs on here are solid. To be honest, I don’t actually know the band’s discography that well outside of this and their compilation Temporal. I should probably listen to more of them since I like these two releases and have a lot of nostalgia for this era of music. I’m linking to the vinyl rerelease but there’s also a deluxe digital edition on Bandcamp that has a lot of bonus tracks. The vinyl release also features an essay and thoughts about the album too.
Mint Mile: The Bliss Point (2016, Bandcamp)
I believe this is the first EP by Tim Midyett’s band Mint Mile. Tim is more famous for being a member of Silkworm, but I really like this band too. This was not the first album I heard by them, but I think it’s a good intro for anyone curious. It’s just a very good and straightforward rock album consisting of 4 songs, maybe with the tiniest bit of a country sound in some songs
Same Eyes: “Parties to End” (2021, Bandcamp)
A synth pop/dark wave band from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I think it’s an enjoyable collection of songs if you’re a fan of 80s new wave bands. I hesitate to call it synth pop since it’s a little darker, but I think there’s also an element of cheese that makes me want to associate them with that genre too. Even though it’s clearly inspired by a lot of classic new wave/dark wave bands, I still think they have their own sound. It’s not like when a vaporwave band is just copying the same sounds as many other vaporwave bands and ends up sounding like “generic 80s synth song” (I know that’s not all vaporwave btw). Lots of Michigan connections with this album too. I discovered them through my local NPR station, local musician legend Fred Thomas helped record the album, and Warren Defever from local band His Name is Alive mastered the album at Third Man Records in Detroit