360 records from the year 2000: 340-331

340. Joe Satriani: Engines of creation 

I thought I could handle, enjoy even, a lot of guitar, but Satriani has called my bluff. I think it’s really terrible. The only thing that got me through a couple of re-listens (I took this project very seriously!), including liberal use of the forward button, was trying to imagine this as a Disney soundtrack. It’s the sort of hopeless game you make up to bear these unspeakable tasks you set yourself up for. So I thought of ‘Flavor crystal 7’ playing over the scene where Snow White panics in the woods at night, or ‘Until we say goodbye’ in the Lion King. I haven’t found a home for ‘Borg sex’ or ‘Champagne?’ yet though. Really, those tracks sound exactly like their titles. One is called ‘Devil’s slide’ – I don’t know about that, but it’s sure the devil’s set of guitar pedals.

339. Eagle-eye Cherry: Living in the present future 

Sometimes you get these records, and you have to wonder, would anyone like this? It’s just 50 minutes of amiable strumming, where the line ‘we’re going on a roadtrip’ is always followed by ‘easy rider’ for no reason whatsoever, and nothing means anything. Eagle-eye blankly sings through it all. 

At its best: Been here once before (even though the title says it)
At its worst: Burning up – the obligatory ‘Save tonight’ rewrite

338. Tangerine dream: Tang-go. The best of 1990-2000

With successes like these, who needs failure?

337. Fishbone: Psychotic friends nuttwerx

To find out that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are really at the top of a particular food chain, is dispiriting. These guys are at best utterly forgettable, at worst they do awful things to the final minute of Sly’s ‘Everybody is a star’. In between their songs are called ‘Where’d you get those pants?’ and ‘Karma tsunami’. 

At its worst: the final minute trash-fest of ‘Everybody is a star’

336. Black eyed peas: Bridging the gap 

Before they were really annoying and successful, they were unsuccessful and boring. It’s slightly preferable, which doesn’t say much. It is very amusing to hear them pontificate against MC’s seduced by money and the pop charts (‘Get original’, ‘Bringing it back’) though. Original sell-outs.

335. John Tavener: Fall and resurrection

A millennial cantata referencing the history of mankind and the universe, as told in the bible, or an epically boring experience for this listener? There’s no need to choose.
Edit: I’ve not grown to like it, but I’ve softened a little. There’s a lot of brain in the bombast.

334. Einsturzende neubauten: Silence is sexy

Differential Topology and Homology
Unbeknownst to most outsiders, theoretical physics underwent a significant transformation -- albeit not yet a true Kuhnian paradigm shift -- in the 1970's and 80's: the traditional tools of mathematical physics (real and complex analysis), which deal with the space-time manifold only locally, were supplemented by topological approaches (more precisely, methods from differential topology) that account for the global (holistic) structure of the universe. This trend was seen in the analysis of anomalies in gauge theories; in the theory of vortex-mediated phase transitions; and in string and superstring theories. Numerous books and review articles on ``topology for physicists'' were published during these years.
At about the same time, in the social and psychological sciences Jacques Lacan pointed out the key role played by differential topology:
This diagram [the Möbius strip] can be considered the basis of a sort of essential inscription at the origin, in the knot which constitutes the subject. This goes much further than you may think at first, because you can search for the sort of surface able to receive such inscriptions. You can perhaps see that the sphere, that old symbol for totality, is unsuitable. A torus, a Klein bottle, a cross-cut surface, are able to receive such a cut. And this diversity is very important as it explains many things about the structure of mental disease. If one can symbolize the subject by this fundamental cut, in the same way one can show that a cut on a torus corresponds to the neurotic subject, and on a cross-cut surface to another sort of mental disease.
As Althusser rightly commented, ``Lacan finally gives Freud's thinking the scientific concepts that it requires''. More recently, Lacan's topologie du sujet has been applied fruitfully to cinema criticism and to the psychoanalysis of AIDS. In mathematical terms, Lacan is here pointing out that the first homology group of the sphere is trivial, while those of the other surfaces are profound; and this homology is linked with the connectedness or disconnectedness of the surface after one or more cuts. Furthermore, as Lacan suspected, there is an intimate connection between the external structure of the physical world and its inner psychological representation qua knot theory: this hypothesis has recently been confirmed by Witten's derivation of knot invariants (in particular the Jones polynomial) from three-dimensional Chern-Simons quantum field theory.
Analogous topological structures arise in quantum gravity, but inasmuch as the manifolds involved are multidimensional rather than two-dimensional, higher homology groups play a role as well. These multidimensional manifolds are no longer amenable to visualization in conventional three-dimensional Cartesian space: for example, the projective space , which arises from the ordinary 3-sphere by identification of antipodes, would require a Euclidean embedding space of dimension at least 5. Nevertheless, the higher homology groups can be perceived, at least approximately, via a suitable multidimensional (nonlinear) logic.

If you read all that and enjoyed it, congratulations, you’ll love Blixa’s band of music theorists. Everyone else would be better served by anything other than this mind sapping boring non-conformity.

At its best: Sabrina
At its worst: Silence is sexy, Zampano

333. Kenneth Plon: Simplicity

‘Beautiful relaxing instrumental music to enrich your daily life’, says the artist. Zzz.
Btw, I gave this record and the earlier Raha Shah record to my mother in law, and she loves them!

332. Chicago underground trio: Flamethrower

You get a real feeling for how melodic, structured and memorable Tortoise is, by listening to their jazz side projects which generally aren’t. This session including Jeff Parker and Rob Mazurek sets up some engaging moods, but generally fails to deliver anything really…uhm…good.

I wonder if ‘Number 19’ is an instrumental interpretation of ‘Revolution 9’.

At its worst: Flamethrower

331. AC acoustics: Understanding music

To think this was recently reissued. I suppose it’s some precursor to an unbearable strain of artsy/populist indierock with stadium ambitions in the 2000s.

360 records from the year 2000: 360-351

  Here we go...

360. Roni Size / Reprazent: In the mode

Why is Roni so angry?

359. Recoil : Liquid

Women recite their grimy, urban poetry over equally grimy and urban soundscapes. In ‘Want’ they keep asking ‘I want to know how much you hate me’. They make it so easy. Also contains a clumsy gospel meets beats exercise called ‘Jezebel’, you know like that record from Moby nobody wants to be reminded of.
I don’t want to withhold the thrilling setup for the record (at least that’s what AllMusic –who give this 4 stars – tell me): ‘‘Liquid’ is a concept album that serves as a look into the mind of a warped and jaded man whose life is flashing in front of his eyes’.
Wake me up when it’s over.

At its worst: ‘Breath control’ – I haven’t heard such fascinating innuendo since ‘9 ½ weeks’. ‘I’ve heard you’re looking for something that’s hard to find.’
Actually the last couple of songs on this record are even worse, but they’re so vaporous and empty there’s hardly anything there to count as a low point.

358. Gallon drunk: Black milk

Like Primal Scream with a less convincing frontman?

If you aspire to make a disturbing, sexy, sleazy, sophisticated, dangerous noise, that’s fine by me. If you want to name your songs ‘Prostitute’, ‘Hypnotized’, ‘Theme from Black Milk’ and ‘Blood is red’, go right ahead with your safe, romanticized stereotype of danger. But if you succeed in making an anemic, jammed, bloodless record that makes Nick Cave sound convincing, well, I’m out.

At its worst: ‘Hypnotised’ – most unconvincing sighting of a ‘dangerous frontman’ of the year.

357. Anastacia: Not that kind

Hollow gestures fill arenas. She knows it. Why else is the chorus of ‘Yo trippin’’ (has there ever been a worse song title?): ‘There ain’t nothing wrong with the way I sing my song / Yo trippin’’. At least she knows her double negatives.

356. Offspring: Conspiracy of one

God knows why I wanted to give this a fair chance. It’s really as bad as you think it is. Avoid.

At its worst: ‘Special delivery’, or maybe ‘One fine day’ – both just that little bit more annoying.

355. Einsturzende Neubauten: 9-15-2000, Brussels

Goddamn, they do it live too. (see 334)

354. Johnny Dowd: Temporary shelter

I suppose the mongrel genre of depressed alternative country and miserable post-punk had to happen one of these days, but *sigh*, can’t these people stop being so damn miserable. Thanks.
Still, the drummer’s called Brian Wilson. It must be fun to say that every night: ‘On drums, Brian Wilson!’

At its worst: Angel eyes – that’s how long eternity can last

353. David Thomas: Bay city

I’m all for experiments, as long as the artist realises every experiment has the potential to backfire. This deathly dull experiment shouldn’t have been released. The lame melodies and threadbare chord progressions never spark any interest – AllMusic call it ‘a certain melodic dryness’ while giving it 3 stars, because ‘the lyrics are worth focussing on’. Only because they get so comically overblown. And really, the record feels long enough as is, it doesn’t need hidden bonus tracks.

At its worst: ‘Nobody lives on the moon’.

352. Dave Douglas: A thousand evenings

I hate to break it, but sophisticated things can be very boring.

Let’s dissect AllMusic’s review of this record.

By 2000 trumpeter Dave Douglas had etched himself as one of the most versatile, intriguing, and important players and composers on the scene. Right. ’Etched’? Sounds painful.
By leading several groups that successfully focus on particular styles, Douglas had been able to be not only one of the best but also one of the most recorded. Got it.
A Thousand Evenings was his second album for BMG and his third release of that year. Damn.
A Thousand Evenings features his Charms of the Night Sky group (also the name of the quartet's 1998 Winter & Winter label debut) with Mark Feldman on violin, Greg Cohen on bass, and the marvelous Guy Klucevsek playing accordion. Ye…wait, violin, accordion?
As with the initial Charms of the Night Sky release, the set list is comprised of flowing chamber jazz pieces that lend themselves to a strange mix of tango, Eastern European folk, and klezmer, all in the framework of the New York downtown jazz scene. Say what?
The title song is a beautiful engaging opening number that floats along with Douglas blowing right on top. It’s a beautiful performance.
Highlighting one of the most important factors of this group is Klucevsek's accordion playing: He adds a great deal to the density and also to the rhythm of this music. He sure plays a lot on that accordion.
"Variety," a solo accordion piece, clearly demonstrates that fact. But I don’t want a solo accordion piece.
There's also an entertaining reworking of the James Bond theme "Goldfinger." There’s only word here I don’t agree with.
A Thousand Evenings is an example of great musicians keeping their ideals straight in the oft-murky landscape of major-label contemporary jazz, and is highly recommended. But I don’t want a solo accordion piece.

At its best: A thousand evenings
At its worst: Variety

351. Echoboy: : Vol 2

In 2000 some reviewers bent over backwards to hand out some compliments to just about anyone picking up a computer and managing to turn it on. This guy shouldn’t have bothered. Embarrassing sub-Depeche Mode stuff.

At its best: Sudwestfunk No. 5 has a certain groove.
At its worst: ‘Kelly’s truck’, for my money just about the worst track from the year I’ve heard. And it was the single.