Scott Walker - Tilt (Fontana, 1995)
Perhaps the most alarming thing about Tilt (and there are many alarming aspects to this beautiful, beguiling album), is the fact it came out in 1995. 1995 was an appalling year for popular music. The worst song ever written, Wonderwall by Oasis was released in 1995. Country House by Blur. Fairground by Simply Red. You are Not Alone by Michael Jackson. I turned nine in 1995, and I vividly remember how awful music was then. How fascinating to realise that an alternative was just sitting there. Of course, there was plenty of great music being released in 1995, to pull a few out of the air: Quality Time by Whitehouse, Panzerfaust by Darkthrone, Adrenaline by Deftones, Phase 3 by Earth. None of these albums sound particularly of their time either. So why does Tilt stick out so much? It's probably because, despite it's pretentions and sonic experimentation, Tilt is ostensibly and unequivocally a pop album. It's production is warm and inviting. It has verses and choruses. Walker's voice drips like black honey. Yet Tilt does not sound like it came from 1995, apart from a few characteristically textured electric guitar refrains or a characteristically compressed reverb on the title track. It genuinely sounds like it has been released right here, right now.
Atemporality aside, Tilt is a striking and troubling example of chamber pop. Walker's lyrics are both nonsensical and rife with analytic potential. Discordant elements are introduced, and summarily withdrawn. There are moments of beauty, and there are moments that sound ripped out of a horror film. And then there is Walker's voice, eccentric and vulnerable, powerful and ridiculous. Tilt is not as extreme and slippery as his final solo album, Bish Bosch, which flits more with industrial leanings and more striking instrumentation. Yet it is a rewarding and otherworldly effort, that sounds devoid of any marker attributing it to a certain space or time.
Sumire Uesaka - Neo Propaganda (JPU, 2020)
Uesaka's gloriously idiosyncratic and varied approach to HI-NRG Jpop continues in Neo Propaganda, a candy drenched collection of superpop that hits hard despite not quite reaching the heights of her earlier No Future Vacancies. Her greatest strength is variety and tongue in cheek intensity, with 80's style power pop giving way to loving 00's denpa pastiches and pretty much every aspect of cult Japanese pop in between. The production is hyperclean with a big emphasis on Uesaka's largely unprocessed and highly expressive voice. There's less opportunity for her dynamic range to come through here: I would have loved to hear more Jun Togawa esque operatic flourishes which were hinted at last time. But then tracks like the ultra fidgety wall of post-eurobeat Uesaka Dynamic blast out, broken speaker gabba interludes included, and all is forgiven.
Future Sound Of London - Lifeforms (Virgin, 1994)
This sounds like a stack of new age meditation cassettes have accidentally become blended with a particularly surreal 3DO game. It's likely that FSOL and their contemporaries actually influenced my points of reference, but it's a great feeling to consider the malleability of signification as this hulking double disc beast oozes out of the speakers. It's a lot of fun too.
There's a complete unwillingness from FSOL here to provide us with anything approaching a banger. This isn't dance music for the dance floor, it's electronic music for living rooms and particularly comfortable sofas. Acid squelches almost apologetically emerge from the sea of reverb, hang around for a while, before being subsumed in to another dreamy soundscape. There's no pretention here, just a touchingly genuine desire to use electronic music to transport the listener somewhere new. It's interesting how sonic experimentation is turned in to sound furniture as decades corrode the initial intent. This doesn't make the album any less fascinating.