The Hip Hop mixtape started with the DJ recording their live mixes, the whole reason it's called a mix tape is because it was often a mix of several artist mixed together in a cohesive flow & not just one singular rapper, singer or DJ.
@WilliamMorgan-rc5ud absolutely, I made so many tapes back in the day. A large part of the public at least in my hood, we didn't have the gear to make cassettes till early mid 80s.. seems like it more accessible to artist & djs at first.
@@vincelfk and also y'all must have seen how in High Schools' boys would give their 'crush's' a mix tape of usually ballads or something that the guy A/ knows she likes or B/ hopes the lyrics can say what he isn't quite able to or C/ that the girl actually wants to take the tape at all!
The Beach Boys' Smile comes to mind. It was certainly conceived as a "normal" album, but it was of course never finished. At the same time, more versions of it exist than any other album, some official and many more unofficial. Smile is something in between a fully fledged concept album and a collection of recording sessions. When you're reading about its history or digging through the many recordings, it seems like a complete mess. When you're listening to a carefully constructed bootleg on TH-cam, it's just as much an album as Pet Sounds. You can take any version of Smile and listen to it as you would any completed and released album. But part of what makes that album so special, is that there is no definitive version. It's an interactive album.
have you heard the version where they put murray's drunk ranting on child is the father of the man? that one has such a playful undercurrent to it, i think it's my favorite
in the vein of _Everywhere At the End of Time,_ another great ambient "non-album" is William Basinski's _Disintegration Loops_ project. He was in the process of digitizing some old tape loops he'd made when he realized that, as the tape went through the reader over and over again, it would start to degrade and the magnetic data on it would flake off randomly. So he took his old tape loops and ran them all for long stretches of time until they degraded into ambient noise. He happened to run the last loop through on the morning of Sept. 11 2001, and realized the feeling of decay and destruction that came out of his work felt deeply fitting with that morning's tragedy, so he dedicated the released project to the victims of 9/11
Basinski really laid the foundation for Everywhere At The End Of Time with that release, The Disintegration Loops is a beautiful project that, albeit tragic, isn't absolutely terrifying to listen to.
I really like the idea in ambient music that the music can go on forever, and you’re just joining it for part of the journey. This is one of the things I appreciate most about Eno’s generative music, from tape-loop works like Discreet Music and Music for Airports to more algorithmic pieces. The most explicit example of this is Reflection, which is primarily contextualised as an app rather than an “album”, which can play infinitely without repeating. There’s also a standard album release for static media, but that’s intended as only a fixed snapshot of the actual piece.
There is some precedent for picking an album up from where you left off. For those, like me, who grew up in suburbia with cassette decks in cars, it was the primary way we listened. Listening this way also breeds its own curiosities. Arriving at your destination early and staying in the car to finish the song. Stopping the music early if you want that next song to be your first after work or school or whatever. Neither of these behaviors are 100% exclusive to cassette listening, but they can be a big part of it. All of my cassettes (factory tapes or dubbed from CD) had bad clips in between songs, because if you left the tape in the deck in a hot car, the tape touching the head would get permanently damaged. The cassette equivalent of a record skip.
When LP was the standard in music, most albums we're crafted with switch in the middle in mind so each side would stand on it's own. That actually never went away. Few albums even in turn of 2000 still did that. And since 2006-2010 with comeback of LP lot of artists have gone back or started to doing it again.
I love that you shouted out Everywhere at the End of Time by The Caretaker. It is such a powerful piece of media that it is a challenge but worth it to get through. The entire story behind it is one of immense pain and beauty too, from the covers to the songs, just an intense piece.
What I never liked about it is what you just said: the fact that most people are impressed because of the supposed story behind it, the declared authorial intent, and not by the actual music.
Growing up in the UK in the 80s and 90s I have a slightly different view of mixtapes because the scene here was dance music not Hip Hop, so the mixtapes would usually be a DJ showing off their mixing skills and/or a bunch of white label tracks or remixes from a bunch of different artists that you otherwise would only hear on pirate radio. At least those were the mixtapes I would come across when one of my mates would put one in my car stereo or on the boom box in the 6th form common room.
This is one of the reasons anybody even knows about House Music outside of Chicago, Frankie Knuckles & Ron Hardy mixtapes sold all across the east coast (and word of mouth from the club goers)
Diamond Jubilee is absolutely the album of the year for me. My experience with it is quite different from yours, however, as I have grown into the habit of spending the full two hours with it anytime I want to give it a spin. I simply can’t imagine many of the tracks existing on their own, outside of this wide, surreal world it has crafted for itself. And yet, I also think it’s really cool that the record is as colorful and abstract by its nature that it can be experienced in a number of ways that never invalidates the very core of its beauty. In a way, it’s an album for everyone.
I agree. I listen to it as a coherent album every time too. I would say that the way he listens to it doesn't mean it is not an album, it just means he doesn't consume it as an album
This might be hot take of the century, but I think Taylor Swift's recent output (specifically Midnights and TTPD) has degraded what we collectively think of as an album, for better or for worse. With Midnights in particular, there are at least 4 official editions with different song lists plus a random vault track that appears on none of the official versions but ties the whole thing together. And don't get me started on TTPD.
I almost see that as a creeping of the "special edition" ethos from the video game industry, into the music industry. Listeners encouraged to purchase multiple editions specifically because of the way the product is packaged, or because of bonus or extra bits that are inconsistently distributed. It decouples the value of the album from the experience of listening to the album, in a way that abstracts away something about the product that I can't quite put my finger on.
@@ICantStopMakingNoise The first time I noticed that was with Def Leppard's "Yeah!". At least Wal-Mart had the decency to put its exclusive tracks on a separate disc you could buy by itself.
My immediate reaction of another form is a DJ set! While they can have some similarities to a "Playlist" there is so much more to it than that! It can be any sort of mixtures of songs, transitions, synths, effects, and so much more that often attempt to portray or elicit a certain feeling, emotion, vibe, or energy that can be interpreted differently by every listener. They are their own art form and is one of my favorite ways to listen to music
something i think is pretty cool is when electronic albums are made to be like a tool for DJs. Skee Mask specifically, all of his albums feel like they’re meant to be on the decks and blasted to a huge space. iunno. pretty cool
Once again, and I say this every time I comment, I greatly appreciate the hard work you put into your videos. It is obvious you love what you do. The production values are ridiculous.
Old enough to remember when a mixtape & what we now call a playlist were the same thing, made with varying levels of skill & not necessarily with additional vocals. People keep saying the album is dead but I don't think it'll ever completely go away, if the original medium of a 12" vinyl record or even a CD isn't essential to the definition. As long as kids keep going back & finding the favorites of their parents & grandparents, I expect there will still be a few trying to perpetuate the idea without it being married to that original medium Maybe the term "album" is becoming an umbrella term for this expanding number of ways to make, arrange, and release music...?
Cindy Lee's Diamond Jubilee is fantastic and i can't recommend it enough. it's going into a dive bar and hearing the blues and rock tunes on the jukebox and questioning, 'huh, i don't remember this verse' or 'did this blues track always have surf rock guitar?' or 'never heard this version of a 50s girl group song' -- this flexible misremembering, this magical realist element feels like a sonic version of one of the best videogames of this century, Kentucky Route Zero. bonus: Cindy Lee is a drag queen and single-handedly provides stellar male and female vocal takes throughout, alongside nearly every instrument.
@dubstepwalrus like Polyphonic says in the video, Diamond Jubilee was only available as a Geocities webpage (lossless download) or as a TH-cam video. Physical CD and vinyl copies should be shipping soon too.
They're still called albums, but artists are experimenting with changing the lengths of the album on streaming. Watsky released an album, Intention, that was also an ARG. The final song ended with a URL that took you to a series of puzzles that fans solved to unlock the second half of what turned out to be a double album.
I've always thought that an album must include artwork and be a packaged piece of media, ideally physical. But streaming does kind of turn that on its head, and I do primarily listen to streamed music... I guess I should change my own definition of what an album actually is today.
Did you ever get the Best Of Ska Parade CD? That compilation was so good, and I lost it sometime along the way. Now the only track I can find online is Ocean11- Solid As A Rock.
@smeagle3295 the PunkORama comps were released by Epitaph, and were as mainstream as punk record companies came. Not that they didn't turn me on to some music that I still listen to today, but there were better punk producers, bands, and compilations in those days. This was before everyone could burn a CD, so some of it was on tapes and records. I do still remember my the?) first PunkORama CD with fondness though, although it had some definite misses. The 2 NOFX songs, Don't Call Me White and Liza and Louise were immediate favorites even before I had the Punk in Drublic cassette, but the Offspring were such clearly lamo posers from the start, before they were on MTV.
The Cover Up from the Protomen is an interesting case as I feel like it transcends a couple of the scenarios you mentioned. On the face of it, it's a cover album of iconic 80s tracks, so the tracks have a couple degrees of separation from their original context (not only from their album, but from their original artist). However, the album is portrayed as a soundtrack to a fictional movie, and includes little musical interludes that sound as though they're audio from the movie that doesn't exist. In doing so, it gives new context to these otherwise disconnected tracks and turns them into more of a cohesive whole with a new narrative from the parts.
I think Mac DeMarco's One Wayne G can be considered a non-album,it's like he throws in that record all his creative process and cut outs into the thing,it's an original concept. Artist tend to do the other way round, prevent the "work in process" material from being published.
Diamond Jubilee is definitely an album, and the enevitable triple vinyl release one day will cement that. Many of us only have the means to listen to music digitally nowadays, so it doesn't even matter that much.
Good video! I have to add that mixtapes are still a thing. For example Pop2 by Charli XCX and Caprisongs by FKA Twigs are both called 'mixtape' by the artists, to differienciate those from their actual albums.
There are some soundtracks which are conceptualized and sequenced like an album (believe it or not, the Bodyguard soundtrack started out more conceptual than it ended up), I wish it was more common. I also like when a "best of" collection is sequenced for flow rather than chronological order (I always sequenced for flow when I made my own best-of mixed tapes and CDs).
I'd like to throw out a relevant shoutout to Starcadian, an artist whose works are "soundtracks to movies that don't exist." He also has a couple songs where I'd swear he was Prince reincarnated.
I would say the contemporary equivalent of a mixtape is a playlist, not an album. As you said an album is a collection of dongs unified by theme or mood. Playlists usually not unified in any tangible way
Man, outside the topic of your video essay, I just wanna say THANK YOU for inserting the sponsored segment right at the end. This makes it less annoying and makes us viewers feel like you get us. And for this reason, I stayed all the way 'til the end 'cuz I too understand that you need our view time, likes and shares to keep making these vids. Nice job, man 👍
Disagree in may respects on classical music. At least since Vivaldi wrote his Four Seasons (published 1725), we've had a classical album. A symphony (in most cases, since Mozart and Haydn developed it beyond a certain point) is a type of album. I would argue a Tone Poem is also an album. The calssification works well. If you rip your own classical library it maps perfectly to have the composer as the artist and the extended work as the artist and album, with the movement as the track. I'll generally lump the performers in as secondary information on the album. If streaming services followed the pattern it wouldn't be too bad.
Thank you for this thought-provoking analysis, great stuff as usual! I have my music on Bandcamp, and my second release this year had four tracks on it. I agonised a little over whether to call it an E.P. (because people will expect that), but in the end I resisted. It's actually all instrumentals, but I have in my head a storyline that links them like four chapters, so I see it as a cohesive work. Therefore, it's an album. By this definition, an album could have as few as two tracks on it, and I think that's fine. I'd be interested in your thoughts about that. Thanks for the tip re Diamond Jubilee - I will go and check that out! Bandcamp Friday soon :)
Not to say I didn't enjoy the video, but I want to push back on one thing. 2:29 To paraphrase: "The 78rpm 10 inch record is why pop songs are 3 minutes". This has gotta be bs. You're really telling me that if these records had been 33rpm we would be listening exclusively to 7 minute pop songs? Be real. In my opinion, the reason pop songs hover between 3 and 5 minutes is because that's just works really well as a song length. The amount of time people want to listen to, sing along to, and dance to one song has an upper limit. Note that even the symphonic music played by middle and high school bands will hover around the three minute mark, despite the lack of an explicit time limit. Certain types of musical engagement will result in increasing fatigue as time adds up (dancing, singing, playing instruments). So what about the 9 to 50 minute songs we love? We contemplate, meditate or otherwise bathe ourselves in the worlds of longer songs. But that kind of engagement is hardly fitting to the world of popular media and the lifestyles of many people (not to mention that recording a 15 minute song would have probably been a nightmare in the early days, let alone playing the thing in full). The reason pop songs are around 3 minutes is based on the preferences of the average listener and musician, NOT arbitrarily determined by the limitations of physical media almost 80 years ago. What COULD actually be a true claim is that the reason albums tend to be around 40 minutes or slightly longer is actually based on the physical limitations of LPs. I don't see why albums couldn't be 70 minutes or even 90 minutes, given enough variety and space not to overwhelm the listener. I rarely in my life tend to listen to music for exactly 44 minutes and then stop. Generally, I will put on an album, then have to find something else later to fill in the other 30 minutes. So perhaps album length is the real arbitrary limitation we still use today. Also thanks for the Diamond Jubilee rec, I really dig it so far.
This makes me rethink the way I compile music for my "non album things." I had a classic period where an album had a beginning, middle and end and the period where my creations became triple and quadruple albums with my poetry interspersed. Before this video, I thought of my early years as the place where it all happened, never minding all the things I've had to say since that time ended eight years ago.
I agree that the album as a cohesive, creative collection of music, like a concept album, is something bigger and more meaningful than just a collection of songs. And therefore it makes sense to call a mere collection of songs as something other than an "album". I'm just not sure what term or terms work best for this, plus a lot of people still consider albums as just collections of songs, and not necessarily a larger, creative project. Mixtapes? Maybe, but mixtapes tend to be a collection of songs by different artists, and not the same artist. Soundtracks? As you say, those are usually tied to something else, usually a movie, although non-movie soundtracks exist. Greatest Hits collections usually are just collections of an artist's hit songs, but some of them are more than that. For the Carpenters The Singles - 1969 to 1973, Richard actually went in and made musical sequences that tied the first few songs together in a kind of suite, making it more than just a 'greatest hits' album. John Denver's first Greatest Hits album included re-recordings of some of the songs, instead of just collecting the songs as they were on the original albums, which gave a more cohesive continuity of sound, even if the songs weren't connected. Maybe we're going about this backwards. Maybe an "album" *should* just be considered a collection of songs, and some other term, like concept album or suite should be used when the artist is trying to make a more cohesive, artistic statement over several songs.
Theres a few contender for aoty. For me, its between three albums: Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us, Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere, and Kamasi Washington - Fearless Movement I know thats not the point of the vid, but I hear 'my aoty' I like to share lol
BI is def in my top 10 metal albums this year. But i didn't super connect with the new KW. But new Bloto, Nala Sinephro, Corto.Alto & jasmine myra were great. Need to go through again though as their were so many good records.
Didn't listen to a ton of new music this year but was very into the new albums by 2 older bands, The Cure's Songs of a Lost World and GY!BE's NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD. I think both bands kept that artistic commitment to explore the sounds they want to explore and it makes for very impactful work.
Ichiko Aoba's album Windswept Adan is also a Soundtrack for an imaginary film. Higly recommend it, its a beautiful work of art! Neat video, thank you for this, very thought provoking!
Pink Guy's self-titled is the first example that comes to my mind. It's a sonic landscape through Frank's channels. And for that reason, you can find more than 1 configuration of it (re-arranged by fans, or the (yt/bandcamp/w/downloadable bonus tracks) versions as well)).
You have no idea how surprised and happy I am that someone finally acknowledge diamond jubilee as an amazing album, it seemed almost overlooked by the other more popular pop centric albums that came out this year like Imaginary Disk and Brat
I think listening to everywhere at the end of time in one sitting is good if you havent listened to any of it before and know what the meaning behind it is so you can get the full experience of a 6 hour long work of art that is Everywhere at The End of Time
One thing this reminded me of is the supplemental songs that were released alongside Lord Huron’s Long Lost. Their albums are usually meant to be taken from the perspectives of various characters despite all being performed by the same people in a similar style, and this album really went the extra mile with it. Long Lost is basically meant to be a glimpse into an old radio show that has since been lost and forgotten in the following years, and what’s on the record is just a portion of what it used to be. To further enhance this, they put out all these extra songs not on the album and under the names of these various characters so they couldn’t be directly traced back to them. They’re all in various styles, and one is even framed as if it’s from the soundtrack to a film that also doesn’t exist. I wouldn’t have have found out about these songs if I hadn’t looked into the details in the LP’s artwork. It really gave me the sense of following this mystery and uncovering something lost in a way I wouldn’t have gotten if they were all on the same album and all attributed to the same band.
I have a broad conception of an album: it’s when an authority (the author, the publisher or someone else) state that particular set of recordings in the particular order is an album. I prefer when there is some idea behind that but that’s about quality, not the definition. For me, authority is key. It says: this collection of recordings is a unit, something is binding them.
I have to nominate Aesop Rock's Spirit World Field Guide for this kind of consideration. It's a rap driven field guide to the spirit word, and the intro implicitly states that it's meant to be flipped through like you would a field guide. Hadn't ever considered it to be in this realm of things like is described here but it's a brilliant project, and next time I might just have to listen differently. Fantastic video!
Symphonies, Concertos, Tone Poems, Suites, definitely. Ballets and Operas are soundtracks though, as they aren't purely music to be enjoiyed alone, but to be enjoyed visually and narratively.
Something comparable to the mixtapes would be metal demos and the tape trading scene. It was hugely important for the development of metal and making it more extreme. Death for example released 6 demos (also some live/rehearsal demos) before their first album. The packaging and art on demos is also really it's own style and thing, the black and white album art just screams demos. Because it wasn't seen as too serious, there would be shout outs to other bands/people in the tape trading scenes, or even lists of bands that they don't like. It's very common for a band to release a couple demos first and it is often seen as the bands first true release.
I think this has been the best year for music since 2016. I'm doing a thread on Bluesky of everything I've heard that came out this year and from classical to metal, it's going to top out at 300+ albums. And I hadn't even heard of Diamond Jubilee until now.
Lifeforms by the Future Sound of London is a good experiment in sounds in a conceptual way esp when you have a good look at the sleeve art and take some additional ahem, “mental brain food” before you listen😂. I can recommend it as can a lot of my friends as we used to listen at 3am in the morning after a night out. Have a listen sometime. 🎉
This idea makes me think of TECHDOG by Patricia Taxxon, which is a series of 7 experimental electronic albums (totaling 12 hours in length) that were released as youtube videos over the course of a week in october of last year. And while it is available as a compilation on patricia's bandcamp I feel like it does alot with the premise of them being seperate albums. For example they all have unique album covers, the youtube descriptions of each part denote an emotion that is being "felt" and the track lengths of each part increase as the series go on (1 being 2 mins per, 2 being 4mins, etc). Additionally, before it was released the series was refered to as "TECHDOG 1-4" by patricia with the parts 5-7 being a complete surprise that come with a shift in tone, adding an extra depth to the project in the way it was released; the experience of opening my youtube feed and seeing a new video with a black thumbnail and the title "TECHDOG 5" is one I won't soon forget.
Had to look it up, but way back in 1997 Digital Hardcore artist Patrick Catani put out “The Horrible Plans Of Flex Busterman” the soundtrack to a video game that did not exist. (Yeah, I found some weird music working in college radio.)
There’s a bit too much black and white on the idea the albums used to have a complete narrative. Selecting a random song on (for an easy example) Dark Side of the Moon, you’ll find that the intros and outros of the songs feels no different than any memories of your life that could have only occurred in the context of your life, and not in pure isolation. To get even more ‘meta’ your whole life is record that plays until you die, unless you believe in reincarnation then the record gets flipped lol
"Legend Of God's Gun" by Spindrift is a soundtrack to a spaghetti western movie that doesn't exist. However, I discovered their music as some of the songs are featured in the soundtrack of the ski movie All.I.Can, making it a soundtrack to a movie that does exist
You make a really good point. You have a very artistic way of looking at things. Challenging the way common things are looked at in a way I never thought of before. Thanks for that.
Jar of Flies by Alice In Chains comes to mind for me. While it’s certainly album length, by definition it’s an EP. This might be because of how many different themes are on the project and how experimental they were getting at that time, but that collection of songs is some of their best work. While there are some consistent themes, I wouldn’t say it’s as coherent and concise as their projects leading up to that point. I’ve always found it fascinating when artists break their own barriers and make the music they want to hear instead of what the label or audience may be expecting.
I'd do an honorable mention of Blood Incantation's "Timewave Zero". After two releases of straight up death metal, they release an ambient synth album, under the same band name and brutal death metal logo. I think it's an interesting bridge to their subsequent (and most recent) release, Absolute Elsewhere, which incorporates more synth parts amidst the prog/death sections.
Something i find interesting with soundtracks and album is C418s minecraft soundtracks. While they are soundtracks, daniel presents them as they are a regular album aswell. The first one (volume alpha) have transition between eachother and both albums have extra tracks not present in the game. The second one even ends with a vinyl crackle that transitions into his 2015 album 148
Old guy here. The mix tape FAR predates hip hop. My friends and I were exchanging mix tapes we put together back in high school (mid-70s), first on 8 tracks and then cassettes when that medium took over. Another thing that belies my age: I love albums as discrete works of musical art. When I listen to a playlist on a streaming service, it’s often to explore new music that I can then pursue by going to find the album. And shuffle play is a useless feature for me. That, to me, is like taking a painting or sculpture, cutting it into small parts and rearranging them randomly, obliterating any context or coherence.
I think their is a distinction around mixtapes as a format for creating your own 'compilation', mixtapes as a collection of the artists songs (but considered more throwaway - or only for a small number of people), mixtapes as a method of having a bunch of bootleg samples that would never get cleared, and mixtapes as a DJ mix.
It's interesting to think about mixtapes outside of hiphop. Lots of other more niche genres had a lot of artists who used mixtapes in their underground years, such as hyperpop. You also see it when artists have works they want to put out but the major label has issues with it. But even moreso, kpop has 'mini-albums' which often or longer than EPs but aren't considered to be 'real' albums. I even wrote a review earlier this year about how one group's recent album didn't deserve the pressure of being called an album and that while it was good, the presentation of the release was a detriment to the enjoyment of the experience.
I'm a high school psychology teacher and I make listening to Everywhere at the End of Time and writing a reaction paper an extra credit assignment for my students
you're a douchbag, I'd report you to the police if you made me listen to that horseshit; I hate that plagiarist, he's exposed how braindead the average music listener is. There's my essay for you teach, it's an A+++++ whether you realize it or not.
Check out The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski for another example of a long piece that disintegrates in quality over time. It’s great, and the story behind the album cover(s) is equally interesting.
Greatest hits compilations have always been a creation of record companies with the sole intent of hopefully drudging up some extra cash-whether for the artist or company themselves-but usually for the company. Now they are practically obsolete due to streaming listeners being able to compile their own lists.
Greatest hits compilations are some of the best selling albums ever. They're not a cynical ploy for money by record companies, they're something people wanted very much. A lot of people actually only wanted the 10 most popular songs from a band, and didn't want to buy a bunch of albums full of songs they didn't want to hear to get them.
@@perfectallycromulent Both of those things can be true dude. Yeah, ppl bought the greatest hits. And record companies made a shit ton of money from them. If you dont think that greatest hits albums were conceived with the idea of making more money off of already existing music, I mean thats kind of naive…
I think you could make a case for some albums extending beyond being just albums when the artist’s live shows further realize the ideas behind the music, ex. Pink Floyd’s on-stage props and costumes for The Wall and Peter Gabriel’s props and costumes for The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway among other early Genesis works. Interconnectivity between albums also breaks the limits of just an album, such as Alice Cooper’s character Steven connecting one album to another by way of sequel, or Frank Zappa’s conceptual continuity across his works. Adopting an album into a movie, ex. The Who’s Tommy & Quadrophenia, also builds on the art beyond just the album. There’s also folklore that can become inseparably tied to albums, such as Wizard of Oz supposedly syncing with The Dark Side of the Moon, the conspiracy theories with The Beatles’ White Album and other works, or the claims that Klaatu’s 3:47 EST was a Beatles reunion album. I think soundtrack albums for musicals or other shows built around the music (ex. Peter Gabriel’s OVO) are distinct from soundtracks made just to accompany another piece of media and are therefore bigger than just the album in that way.
if we talk about popular music before album concept was introduced, many artists work not only in idea of single song, but also in concept of concert program/setlist. and many jazz/blues/folk artists from 20s/30s/40s existed only as live music band.
Leather Teeth sounds really cool. It seems reminiscent of the work of Barry Adamson. Specially his debut album Moss Side Story which was a soundtrack to a fictional crime noir film. Released in 1989 it’s a fantastic piece of work and you swear you can see the movie in your mind.
Speaking to mixtapes, in the black metal and dungeon synth world, the word “demo” is used in roughly the same way. Not quite an album but also kind of an album
I think that these definitions have definitely shifted, but I think that this is good and necessary in music. Artists can use the different conceits to give their art an appropriate frame. People use the ideas of album, mixtape, etc. to determine how to approach a project, and so using those frames in service of the art is really cool. What I'm really excited for is whatever conceit that the digital era will bring. If LPs were the mid-20th century conceit, mixtapes the late 20th century one, what will the 21st century one be? Playlists and mixtapes feel too conceptually similar to me to disaggregate, so I'm really expecting to see something else.
To me, the modern conception of the mix tape is the playlist. And, many, many times mix tapes were of several artists, or made for Individual persons. Quite similar indeed
Another type of album that isnt really an album is the Live Album. There is typically little cohesion between the songs and if you have went to a live performance of the band or even the live performance of the album itself then there is a change in how it is interacted with coming from other experiences, similar to soundtracks. Sometimes live albums are made to be actual albums, but most of the time its just greatest hits live. Bootleg live albums and demos fit the description even better since there is almost never an intention by the band to release them.
It is so wild to me that someone younger than I am is so wound up in an older view of a medium that functionally stopped being anything other than a box a long time ago. An album is a collection. I feel like what you're focused on is more the *concept* album, which is entirely different. I feel like the last time albums as a norm were any sort of cohesive package was back in the 70s prog-rock era. After that (and honestly, likely even well before it,) albums more often than not were collections, rather than cohesive works of their own. There were always exceptions, always things more like concept albums than the standard, but almost every single "album" I've owned that was younger than I was is a "Here's 3 singles and 6 other tracks that the radio probably wouldn't play even if we wanted them to" collection. Then once mp3 sales made it so people could cherry pick which tracks they wanted, the whole thing kinda fell apart. (And even then, there were always compilations, mix CDs, samplers, etc that would let you get which tracks you new you wanted in a bundle rather than going after singles.) So... yeah. So much of this just felt alien to me because this has never been my world. Singles on the radio informed if I wanted to buy a tape or CD or not, and the single (to me, at least) was acting as a preview of the type of music you could expect. And the moment mp3s came around, everything got ripped to MP3, shoved in a giant playlist and shuffled around to make a personalized radio station. (Which is still basically how I listen to music, only now said playlist tends to be build from streaming rather than rips from physical media.) The definition of album has moved on. Best not to get too hung up on it when saying what your favorite collection of music put out this year was, yeah?
6:33 Counter argument: since the song itself is a complete and whole experience that can be enjoyed on its own (unlike the individual parts of Mona Lisa's face), a better analogy might be "A Greatest Hits album is like an Exhibition of an artist's work. You're not seeing it in its original context, but damn aren't these pieces nice?"
In my day..the 70’s😂 Album Oriented Rock (AOR) radio stations were the norm. Our local station had “All night album replay” starting at midnight Saturday night they would play 5 albums front to back until about 5:00 am.
I'll give you two examples that are interesting to me, both from the same band, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. Their 2nd album Eyes Like the Sky behaves less like an actual album and more like an audiobook. There's no singing or lyrics, but instead the band plays a particular kind of music (spaghetti Western theme music) underneath narration of a story about an Indian warrior kidnapped when he was 6 from a white family. The narration is complete with chapters and grandiose titles, and is done by the father of King Gizz's keyboard player. The other is their 8th album, Nonagon Infinity. You mentioned how Diamond Jubilee breaks the typical album mode by not really having a starting point or endpoint, and how most ambient music can played in a loop without much issue; Nonagon Infinity goes for both of those things. It's structured so each song flows naturally into the next, with the last track flowing logically into the first, creating an endless loop. And you can start the album of any of the 9 tracks and as long as you play it sequentially, the effect will be the same.
The Hip Hop mixtape started with the DJ recording their live mixes, the whole reason it's called a mix tape is because it was often a mix of several artist mixed together in a cohesive flow & not just one singular rapper, singer or DJ.
It’s also derived from home taping, like people who recorded existing songs onto blank tapes,
@WilliamMorgan-rc5ud absolutely, I made so many tapes back in the day. A large part of the public at least in my hood, we didn't have the gear to make cassettes till early mid 80s.. seems like it more accessible to artist & djs at first.
@@vincelfk and also y'all must have seen how in High Schools' boys would give their 'crush's' a mix tape of usually ballads or something that the guy A/ knows she likes or B/ hopes the lyrics can say what he isn't quite able to or C/ that the girl actually wants to take the tape at all!
@@TheEverSoTalented I still give my crushes mixes lol
@@vincelfkI had a cassette recorder in 4th grade that must have been 1976 or 1977? They seemed common enough for me at the time.
The Beach Boys' Smile comes to mind. It was certainly conceived as a "normal" album, but it was of course never finished. At the same time, more versions of it exist than any other album, some official and many more unofficial.
Smile is something in between a fully fledged concept album and a collection of recording sessions. When you're reading about its history or digging through the many recordings, it seems like a complete mess. When you're listening to a carefully constructed bootleg on TH-cam, it's just as much an album as Pet Sounds.
You can take any version of Smile and listen to it as you would any completed and released album. But part of what makes that album so special, is that there is no definitive version. It's an interactive album.
same thing with LIFEHOUSE by The Who
have you heard the version where they put murray's drunk ranting on child is the father of the man? that one has such a playful undercurrent to it, i think it's my favorite
@@iamnobody2 which one is that?
Didnt they finish it and perform it live a few years ago? Brian and session people, not the Beach Boys.
@@silentm999 they did in 2004. and that was then used to cobble together "The Smile Sessions" in 2011
in the vein of _Everywhere At the End of Time,_ another great ambient "non-album" is William Basinski's _Disintegration Loops_ project.
He was in the process of digitizing some old tape loops he'd made when he realized that, as the tape went through the reader over and over again, it would start to degrade and the magnetic data on it would flake off randomly. So he took his old tape loops and ran them all for long stretches of time until they degraded into ambient noise. He happened to run the last loop through on the morning of Sept. 11 2001, and realized the feeling of decay and destruction that came out of his work felt deeply fitting with that morning's tragedy, so he dedicated the released project to the victims of 9/11
Basinski really laid the foundation for Everywhere At The End Of Time with that release, The Disintegration Loops is a beautiful project that, albeit tragic, isn't absolutely terrifying to listen to.
this was the first thing i thought of when he described everywhere at the end of time
I really like the idea in ambient music that the music can go on forever, and you’re just joining it for part of the journey. This is one of the things I appreciate most about Eno’s generative music, from tape-loop works like Discreet Music and Music for Airports to more algorithmic pieces. The most explicit example of this is Reflection, which is primarily contextualised as an app rather than an “album”, which can play infinitely without repeating. There’s also a standard album release for static media, but that’s intended as only a fixed snapshot of the actual piece.
There is some precedent for picking an album up from where you left off. For those, like me, who grew up in suburbia with cassette decks in cars, it was the primary way we listened.
Listening this way also breeds its own curiosities. Arriving at your destination early and staying in the car to finish the song. Stopping the music early if you want that next song to be your first after work or school or whatever. Neither of these behaviors are 100% exclusive to cassette listening, but they can be a big part of it. All of my cassettes (factory tapes or dubbed from CD) had bad clips in between songs, because if you left the tape in the deck in a hot car, the tape touching the head would get permanently damaged. The cassette equivalent of a record skip.
Absolutely.
When LP was the standard in music, most albums we're crafted with switch in the middle in mind so each side would stand on it's own.
That actually never went away. Few albums even in turn of 2000 still did that. And since 2006-2010 with comeback of LP lot of artists have gone back or started to doing it again.
CARPENTER BRUT MENTIONED!!!!
Was going to watch anyway but saw that album cover and clicked with much more quickness!
I read this as it came up
CARPENTER BRUT MENTIONED!!!!!!
Literally only reason I clicked
That’s what I said
I love that you shouted out Everywhere at the End of Time by The Caretaker. It is such a powerful piece of media that it is a challenge but worth it to get through. The entire story behind it is one of immense pain and beauty too, from the covers to the songs, just an intense piece.
Everywhere at the end of time moment
I remeber the interviews where Caretaker himself didn't had thought of the album so deeply than the people who listened it. 😅
What I never liked about it is what you just said: the fact that most people are impressed because of the supposed story behind it, the declared authorial intent, and not by the actual music.
As someone who's seen it First hand I can tell you nothing about dementia is beautiful.
The actual music never said anything to me. The story behind the project is interesting tho
Growing up in the UK in the 80s and 90s I have a slightly different view of mixtapes because the scene here was dance music not Hip Hop, so the mixtapes would usually be a DJ showing off their mixing skills and/or a bunch of white label tracks or remixes from a bunch of different artists that you otherwise would only hear on pirate radio. At least those were the mixtapes I would come across when one of my mates would put one in my car stereo or on the boom box in the 6th form common room.
Good point. I get the impression similar applied to the early house and techno scenes here in the States, too
This is one of the reasons anybody even knows about House Music outside of Chicago, Frankie Knuckles & Ron Hardy mixtapes sold all across the east coast (and word of mouth from the club goers)
Diamond Jubilee is absolutely the album of the year for me. My experience with it is quite different from yours, however, as I have grown into the habit of spending the full two hours with it anytime I want to give it a spin. I simply can’t imagine many of the tracks existing on their own, outside of this wide, surreal world it has crafted for itself. And yet, I also think it’s really cool that the record is as colorful and abstract by its nature that it can be experienced in a number of ways that never invalidates the very core of its beauty. In a way, it’s an album for everyone.
I agree. I listen to it as a coherent album every time too. I would say that the way he listens to it doesn't mean it is not an album, it just means he doesn't consume it as an album
This might be hot take of the century, but I think Taylor Swift's recent output (specifically Midnights and TTPD) has degraded what we collectively think of as an album, for better or for worse. With Midnights in particular, there are at least 4 official editions with different song lists plus a random vault track that appears on none of the official versions but ties the whole thing together. And don't get me started on TTPD.
What a spicy take
This would only degrade your perspective of albums if you cared this deeply about the details of the T Swift catalog
I almost see that as a creeping of the "special edition" ethos from the video game industry, into the music industry. Listeners encouraged to purchase multiple editions specifically because of the way the product is packaged, or because of bonus or extra bits that are inconsistently distributed. It decouples the value of the album from the experience of listening to the album, in a way that abstracts away something about the product that I can't quite put my finger on.
@@ICantStopMakingNoise The first time I noticed that was with Def Leppard's "Yeah!". At least Wal-Mart had the decency to put its exclusive tracks on a separate disc you could buy by itself.
Nobody cares about Taylor Swift.
My immediate reaction of another form is a DJ set! While they can have some similarities to a "Playlist" there is so much more to it than that! It can be any sort of mixtures of songs, transitions, synths, effects, and so much more that often attempt to portray or elicit a certain feeling, emotion, vibe, or energy that can be interpreted differently by every listener. They are their own art form and is one of my favorite ways to listen to music
something i think is pretty cool is when electronic albums are made to be like a tool for DJs. Skee Mask specifically, all of his albums feel like they’re meant to be on the decks and blasted to a huge space. iunno. pretty cool
Once again, and I say this every time I comment, I greatly appreciate the hard work you put into your videos. It is obvious you love what you do. The production values are ridiculous.
Old enough to remember when a mixtape & what we now call a playlist were the same thing, made with varying levels of skill & not necessarily with additional vocals.
People keep saying the album is dead but I don't think it'll ever completely go away, if the original medium of a 12" vinyl record or even a CD isn't essential to the definition. As long as kids keep going back & finding the favorites of their parents & grandparents, I expect there will still be a few trying to perpetuate the idea without it being married to that original medium
Maybe the term "album" is becoming an umbrella term for this expanding number of ways to make, arrange, and release music...?
My album of the year is "Cartoon Darkness" by Amy and the Sniffers.
Cindy Lee's Diamond Jubilee is fantastic and i can't recommend it enough. it's going into a dive bar and hearing the blues and rock tunes on the jukebox and questioning, 'huh, i don't remember this verse' or 'did this blues track always have surf rock guitar?' or 'never heard this version of a 50s girl group song' -- this flexible misremembering, this magical realist element feels like a sonic version of one of the best videogames of this century, Kentucky Route Zero. bonus: Cindy Lee is a drag queen and single-handedly provides stellar male and female vocal takes throughout, alongside nearly every instrument.
is it not on streaming? can't find it on apple music
nevermind i watched the rest of the video!!
@dubstepwalrus like Polyphonic says in the video, Diamond Jubilee was only available as a Geocities webpage (lossless download) or as a TH-cam video. Physical CD and vinyl copies should be shipping soon too.
They're still called albums, but artists are experimenting with changing the lengths of the album on streaming. Watsky released an album, Intention, that was also an ARG. The final song ended with a URL that took you to a series of puzzles that fans solved to unlock the second half of what turned out to be a double album.
I've always thought that an album must include artwork and be a packaged piece of media, ideally physical. But streaming does kind of turn that on its head, and I do primarily listen to streamed music... I guess I should change my own definition of what an album actually is today.
Yeah that's a dumb af definition
Warped tour in the late 90’s always had tables full of punk and ska “mix CDs”
Sounds awesome
Did you ever get the Best Of Ska Parade CD? That compilation was so good, and I lost it sometime along the way. Now the only track I can find online is Ocean11- Solid As A Rock.
They are called punk o rama
@smeagle3295 the PunkORama comps were released by Epitaph, and were as mainstream as punk record companies came.
Not that they didn't turn me on to some music that I still listen to today, but there were better punk producers, bands, and compilations in those days. This was before everyone could burn a CD, so some of it was on tapes and records.
I do still remember my the?) first PunkORama CD with fondness though, although it had some definite misses.
The 2 NOFX songs, Don't Call Me White and Liza and Louise were immediate favorites even before I had the Punk in Drublic cassette, but the Offspring were such clearly lamo posers from the start, before they were on MTV.
The Cover Up from the Protomen is an interesting case as I feel like it transcends a couple of the scenarios you mentioned. On the face of it, it's a cover album of iconic 80s tracks, so the tracks have a couple degrees of separation from their original context (not only from their album, but from their original artist). However, the album is portrayed as a soundtrack to a fictional movie, and includes little musical interludes that sound as though they're audio from the movie that doesn't exist. In doing so, it gives new context to these otherwise disconnected tracks and turns them into more of a cohesive whole with a new narrative from the parts.
I think Mac DeMarco's One Wayne G can be considered a non-album,it's like he throws in that record all his creative process and cut outs into the thing,it's an original concept. Artist tend to do the other way round, prevent the "work in process" material from being published.
Your Segway into that ad read was impeccable
Diamond Jubilee is definitely an album, and the enevitable triple vinyl release one day will cement that. Many of us only have the means to listen to music digitally nowadays, so it doesn't even matter that much.
Great vid as always! I’d love to see a Bob Wills video essay he’s very under appreciated!
Does anyone else think Noah sounds like Big Joel?
Yeah, I hear that too,crazy right but what's the odds on both of us being....nerdy aaaagh !?
I look forward to all of your shows! Keep up the great work. Also, I love the book! You're so cool!
LEATHER TEETH CARPENTER BRUT MENTIONED!!!
Good video! I have to add that mixtapes are still a thing. For example Pop2 by Charli XCX and Caprisongs by FKA Twigs are both called 'mixtape' by the artists, to differienciate those from their actual albums.
There are some soundtracks which are conceptualized and sequenced like an album (believe it or not, the Bodyguard soundtrack started out more conceptual than it ended up), I wish it was more common. I also like when a "best of" collection is sequenced for flow rather than chronological order (I always sequenced for flow when I made my own best-of mixed tapes and CDs).
I'd like to throw out a relevant shoutout to Starcadian, an artist whose works are "soundtracks to movies that don't exist." He also has a couple songs where I'd swear he was Prince reincarnated.
I would say the contemporary equivalent of a mixtape is a playlist, not an album. As you said an album is a collection of dongs unified by theme or mood. Playlists usually not unified in any tangible way
My ex girlfriend has a collection of dongs. Wait, where the hell am i?
A collection of wha..?
🤣
Dumb af take
Man, outside the topic of your video essay, I just wanna say THANK YOU for inserting the sponsored segment right at the end. This makes it less annoying and makes us viewers feel like you get us. And for this reason, I stayed all the way 'til the end 'cuz I too understand that you need our view time, likes and shares to keep making these vids. Nice job, man 👍
Disagree in may respects on classical music. At least since Vivaldi wrote his Four Seasons (published 1725), we've had a classical album. A symphony (in most cases, since Mozart and Haydn developed it beyond a certain point) is a type of album. I would argue a Tone Poem is also an album. The calssification works well. If you rip your own classical library it maps perfectly to have the composer as the artist and the extended work as the artist and album, with the movement as the track. I'll generally lump the performers in as secondary information on the album. If streaming services followed the pattern it wouldn't be too bad.
Thank you for this thought-provoking analysis, great stuff as usual! I have my music on Bandcamp, and my second release this year had four tracks on it. I agonised a little over whether to call it an E.P. (because people will expect that), but in the end I resisted. It's actually all instrumentals, but I have in my head a storyline that links them like four chapters, so I see it as a cohesive work. Therefore, it's an album. By this definition, an album could have as few as two tracks on it, and I think that's fine. I'd be interested in your thoughts about that.
Thanks for the tip re Diamond Jubilee - I will go and check that out! Bandcamp Friday soon :)
Not to say I didn't enjoy the video, but I want to push back on one thing.
2:29
To paraphrase: "The 78rpm 10 inch record is why pop songs are 3 minutes". This has gotta be bs. You're really telling me that if these records had been 33rpm we would be listening exclusively to 7 minute pop songs? Be real. In my opinion, the reason pop songs hover between 3 and 5 minutes is because that's just works really well as a song length. The amount of time people want to listen to, sing along to, and dance to one song has an upper limit. Note that even the symphonic music played by middle and high school bands will hover around the three minute mark, despite the lack of an explicit time limit. Certain types of musical engagement will result in increasing fatigue as time adds up (dancing, singing, playing instruments).
So what about the 9 to 50 minute songs we love? We contemplate, meditate or otherwise bathe ourselves in the worlds of longer songs. But that kind of engagement is hardly fitting to the world of popular media and the lifestyles of many people (not to mention that recording a 15 minute song would have probably been a nightmare in the early days, let alone playing the thing in full).
The reason pop songs are around 3 minutes is based on the preferences of the average listener and musician, NOT arbitrarily determined by the limitations of physical media almost 80 years ago.
What COULD actually be a true claim is that the reason albums tend to be around 40 minutes or slightly longer is actually based on the physical limitations of LPs. I don't see why albums couldn't be 70 minutes or even 90 minutes, given enough variety and space not to overwhelm the listener. I rarely in my life tend to listen to music for exactly 44 minutes and then stop. Generally, I will put on an album, then have to find something else later to fill in the other 30 minutes. So perhaps album length is the real arbitrary limitation we still use today.
Also thanks for the Diamond Jubilee rec, I really dig it so far.
Thank you! I will definitely be checking out Everywhere at the End of Time! fwiw - The 1967 release, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, is essential!
6:37 this kinda goes hard as an album cover
This makes me rethink the way I compile music for my "non album things." I had a classic period where an album had a beginning, middle and end and the period where my creations became triple and quadruple albums with my poetry interspersed. Before this video, I thought of my early years as the place where it all happened, never minding all the things I've had to say since that time ended eight years ago.
This is the overall best music channel on TH-cam
not even close
I agree that the album as a cohesive, creative collection of music, like a concept album, is something bigger and more meaningful than just a collection of songs. And therefore it makes sense to call a mere collection of songs as something other than an "album". I'm just not sure what term or terms work best for this, plus a lot of people still consider albums as just collections of songs, and not necessarily a larger, creative project.
Mixtapes? Maybe, but mixtapes tend to be a collection of songs by different artists, and not the same artist. Soundtracks? As you say, those are usually tied to something else, usually a movie, although non-movie soundtracks exist. Greatest Hits collections usually are just collections of an artist's hit songs, but some of them are more than that. For the Carpenters The Singles - 1969 to 1973, Richard actually went in and made musical sequences that tied the first few songs together in a kind of suite, making it more than just a 'greatest hits' album. John Denver's first Greatest Hits album included re-recordings of some of the songs, instead of just collecting the songs as they were on the original albums, which gave a more cohesive continuity of sound, even if the songs weren't connected.
Maybe we're going about this backwards. Maybe an "album" *should* just be considered a collection of songs, and some other term, like concept album or suite should be used when the artist is trying to make a more cohesive, artistic statement over several songs.
Theres a few contender for aoty. For me, its between three albums: Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us, Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere, and Kamasi Washington - Fearless Movement
I know thats not the point of the vid, but I hear 'my aoty' I like to share lol
the new jpegmafia is pretty good
BI is def in my top 10 metal albums this year. But i didn't super connect with the new KW. But new Bloto, Nala Sinephro, Corto.Alto & jasmine myra were great. Need to go through again though as their were so many good records.
Didn't listen to a ton of new music this year but was very into the new albums by 2 older bands, The Cure's Songs of a Lost World and GY!BE's NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD. I think both bands kept that artistic commitment to explore the sounds they want to explore and it makes for very impactful work.
Ichiko Aoba's album Windswept Adan is also a Soundtrack for an imaginary film. Higly recommend it, its a beautiful work of art!
Neat video, thank you for this, very thought provoking!
Everytime I am on the bus at night I put Diamond Jubilee on shuffle :) It feels so good especially now when it's colder
Pink Guy's self-titled is the first example that comes to my mind. It's a sonic landscape through Frank's channels. And for that reason, you can find more than 1 configuration of it (re-arranged by fans, or the (yt/bandcamp/w/downloadable bonus tracks) versions as well)).
So happy when you said Cindy Lee! Our Winnipeg treasure ❤
You have no idea how surprised and happy I am that someone finally acknowledge diamond jubilee as an amazing album, it seemed almost overlooked by the other more popular pop centric albums that came out this year like Imaginary Disk and Brat
I think listening to everywhere at the end of time in one sitting is good if you havent listened to any of it before and know what the meaning behind it is so you can get the full experience of a 6 hour long work of art that is Everywhere at The End of Time
One thing this reminded me of is the supplemental songs that were released alongside Lord Huron’s Long Lost. Their albums are usually meant to be taken from the perspectives of various characters despite all being performed by the same people in a similar style, and this album really went the extra mile with it. Long Lost is basically meant to be a glimpse into an old radio show that has since been lost and forgotten in the following years, and what’s on the record is just a portion of what it used to be. To further enhance this, they put out all these extra songs not on the album and under the names of these various characters so they couldn’t be directly traced back to them. They’re all in various styles, and one is even framed as if it’s from the soundtrack to a film that also doesn’t exist. I wouldn’t have have found out about these songs if I hadn’t looked into the details in the LP’s artwork. It really gave me the sense of following this mystery and uncovering something lost in a way I wouldn’t have gotten if they were all on the same album and all attributed to the same band.
Thank you for this eye opening lesson!
My album of the year: one of a kind - by the heavy heavy
You consider this douchebag spurging out on something so simple is a "lesson"?
I have a broad conception of an album: it’s when an authority (the author, the publisher or someone else) state that particular set of recordings in the particular order is an album. I prefer when there is some idea behind that but that’s about quality, not the definition.
For me, authority is key. It says: this collection of recordings is a unit, something is binding them.
I have to nominate Aesop Rock's Spirit World Field Guide for this kind of consideration. It's a rap driven field guide to the spirit word, and the intro implicitly states that it's meant to be flipped through like you would a field guide. Hadn't ever considered it to be in this realm of things like is described here but it's a brilliant project, and next time I might just have to listen differently. Fantastic video!
Recently I have been discovering how great a well crafted album is. I'll take Deadmau5 "While(1
Symphonies and ballets are arguably closer to what we define as albums than anything else when directly translated.
Symphonies, Concertos, Tone Poems, Suites, definitely. Ballets and Operas are soundtracks though, as they aren't purely music to be enjoiyed alone, but to be enjoyed visually and narratively.
Something comparable to the mixtapes would be metal demos and the tape trading scene. It was hugely important for the development of metal and making it more extreme. Death for example released 6 demos (also some live/rehearsal demos) before their first album. The packaging and art on demos is also really it's own style and thing, the black and white album art just screams demos. Because it wasn't seen as too serious, there would be shout outs to other bands/people in the tape trading scenes, or even lists of bands that they don't like. It's very common for a band to release a couple demos first and it is often seen as the bands first true release.
I think this has been the best year for music since 2016. I'm doing a thread on Bluesky of everything I've heard that came out this year and from classical to metal, it's going to top out at 300+ albums. And I hadn't even heard of Diamond Jubilee until now.
Legitimate question, why does christmas equate to dread?
Lifeforms by the Future Sound of London is a good experiment in sounds in a conceptual way esp when you have a good look at the sleeve art and take some additional ahem, “mental brain food” before you listen😂. I can recommend it as can a lot of my friends as we used to listen at 3am in the morning after a night out.
Have a listen sometime. 🎉
This idea makes me think of TECHDOG by Patricia Taxxon, which is a series of 7 experimental electronic albums (totaling 12 hours in length) that were released as youtube videos over the course of a week in october of last year. And while it is available as a compilation on patricia's bandcamp I feel like it does alot with the premise of them being seperate albums. For example they all have unique album covers, the youtube descriptions of each part denote an emotion that is being "felt" and the track lengths of each part increase as the series go on (1 being 2 mins per, 2 being 4mins, etc). Additionally, before it was released the series was refered to as "TECHDOG 1-4" by patricia with the parts 5-7 being a complete surprise that come with a shift in tone, adding an extra depth to the project in the way it was released; the experience of opening my youtube feed and seeing a new video with a black thumbnail and the title "TECHDOG 5" is one I won't soon forget.
Had to look it up, but way back in 1997 Digital Hardcore artist Patrick Catani put out “The Horrible Plans Of Flex Busterman” the soundtrack to a video game that did not exist. (Yeah, I found some weird music working in college radio.)
My albums of the year for the past few years
2024 Pearl Jam - Dark Matter
2023 Boygenius - The Record
2022 Wet Leg - self titled
There’s a bit too much black and white on the idea the albums used to have a complete narrative. Selecting a random song on (for an easy example) Dark Side of the Moon, you’ll find that the intros and outros of the songs feels no different than any memories of your life that could have only occurred in the context of your life, and not in pure isolation. To get even more ‘meta’ your whole life is record that plays until you die, unless you believe in reincarnation then the record gets flipped lol
"Legend Of God's Gun" by Spindrift is a soundtrack to a spaghetti western movie that doesn't exist. However, I discovered their music as some of the songs are featured in the soundtrack of the ski movie All.I.Can, making it a soundtrack to a movie that does exist
1:16 You are wrong. DJ's in electronic music since Techno and House have made Mixtapes. Early 80's and so on
Awesome mix vol.1 exists somewhere between the realms of soundtrack and playlist
You make a really good point. You have a very artistic way of looking at things. Challenging the way common things are looked at in a way I never thought of before. Thanks for that.
Jar of Flies by Alice In Chains comes to mind for me. While it’s certainly album length, by definition it’s an EP. This might be because of how many different themes are on the project and how experimental they were getting at that time, but that collection of songs is some of their best work. While there are some consistent themes, I wouldn’t say it’s as coherent and concise as their projects leading up to that point. I’ve always found it fascinating when artists break their own barriers and make the music they want to hear instead of what the label or audience may be expecting.
"Personally I don't listen to a ton of new releases"
- A TH-camr who's entire channel is about music
I'd do an honorable mention of Blood Incantation's "Timewave Zero". After two releases of straight up death metal, they release an ambient synth album, under the same band name and brutal death metal logo. I think it's an interesting bridge to their subsequent (and most recent) release, Absolute Elsewhere, which incorporates more synth parts amidst the prog/death sections.
Something i find interesting with soundtracks and album is C418s minecraft soundtracks. While they are soundtracks, daniel presents them as they are a regular album aswell. The first one (volume alpha) have transition between eachother and both albums have extra tracks not present in the game. The second one even ends with a vinyl crackle that transitions into his 2015 album 148
For me, album of the year is absolutely Geordie Greep's "The New Sound". I've been waiting for this kind of album since i first discovered Zappa.
Old guy here. The mix tape FAR predates hip hop. My friends and I were exchanging mix tapes we put together back in high school (mid-70s), first on 8 tracks and then cassettes when that medium took over.
Another thing that belies my age: I love albums as discrete works of musical art. When I listen to a playlist on a streaming service, it’s often to explore new music that I can then pursue by going to find the album. And shuffle play is a useless feature for me. That, to me, is like taking a painting or sculpture, cutting it into small parts and rearranging them randomly, obliterating any context or coherence.
I think their is a distinction around mixtapes as a format for creating your own 'compilation', mixtapes as a collection of the artists songs (but considered more throwaway - or only for a small number of people), mixtapes as a method of having a bunch of bootleg samples that would never get cleared, and mixtapes as a DJ mix.
just superb
It's interesting to think about mixtapes outside of hiphop. Lots of other more niche genres had a lot of artists who used mixtapes in their underground years, such as hyperpop. You also see it when artists have works they want to put out but the major label has issues with it.
But even moreso, kpop has 'mini-albums' which often or longer than EPs but aren't considered to be 'real' albums. I even wrote a review earlier this year about how one group's recent album didn't deserve the pressure of being called an album and that while it was good, the presentation of the release was a detriment to the enjoyment of the experience.
I'm a high school psychology teacher and I make listening to Everywhere at the End of Time and writing a reaction paper an extra credit assignment for my students
you're a douchbag, I'd report you to the police if you made me listen to that horseshit; I hate that plagiarist, he's exposed how braindead the average music listener is. There's my essay for you teach, it's an A+++++ whether you realize it or not.
Check out The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski for another example of a long piece that disintegrates in quality over time. It’s great, and the story behind the album cover(s) is equally interesting.
Greatest hits compilations have always been a creation of record companies with the sole intent of hopefully drudging up some extra cash-whether for the artist or company themselves-but usually for the company. Now they are practically obsolete due to streaming listeners being able to compile their own lists.
Greatest hits compilations are some of the best selling albums ever. They're not a cynical ploy for money by record companies, they're something people wanted very much. A lot of people actually only wanted the 10 most popular songs from a band, and didn't want to buy a bunch of albums full of songs they didn't want to hear to get them.
@@perfectallycromulent
Both of those things can be true dude. Yeah, ppl bought the greatest hits. And record companies made a shit ton of money from them. If you dont think that greatest hits albums were conceived with the idea of making more money off of already existing music, I mean thats kind of naive…
I can detect the Big Joel influence
I was first tuned in to Cindy Lee by his album What's Here To Eternity. I highly recommend it.
I think you could make a case for some albums extending beyond being just albums when the artist’s live shows further realize the ideas behind the music, ex. Pink Floyd’s on-stage props and costumes for The Wall and Peter Gabriel’s props and costumes for The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway among other early Genesis works. Interconnectivity between albums also breaks the limits of just an album, such as Alice Cooper’s character Steven connecting one album to another by way of sequel, or Frank Zappa’s conceptual continuity across his works. Adopting an album into a movie, ex. The Who’s Tommy & Quadrophenia, also builds on the art beyond just the album. There’s also folklore that can become inseparably tied to albums, such as Wizard of Oz supposedly syncing with The Dark Side of the Moon, the conspiracy theories with The Beatles’ White Album and other works, or the claims that Klaatu’s 3:47 EST was a Beatles reunion album. I think soundtrack albums for musicals or other shows built around the music (ex. Peter Gabriel’s OVO) are distinct from soundtracks made just to accompany another piece of media and are therefore bigger than just the album in that way.
if we talk about popular music before album concept was introduced, many artists work not only in idea of single song, but also in concept of concert program/setlist. and many jazz/blues/folk artists from 20s/30s/40s existed only as live music band.
You brought up EPs. I would love to hear your take on the most important or at least interesting EPs ever created.
Mine is either "Sadness Sets Me Free" by Gruff Rhys or "Saviors" by Green Day
Will you someday be explaining other completely mundane objects , pianos or dancing shoes...harmonics? Nice to see you though...!
Nice Shakey Graves original back there
I was pleasantly surprised, too! Album's name is Roll the bones, for anyone caring to know
My fav mixtapes are the ones that Daniel Johnston made and handed out to people.
Leather Teeth sounds really cool. It seems reminiscent of the work of Barry Adamson. Specially his debut album Moss Side Story which was a soundtrack to a fictional crime noir film. Released in 1989 it’s a fantastic piece of work and you swear you can see the movie in your mind.
I have the same existential conundrum when considering whether or not my album of the year is an Autechre live set
You don't look anything like I expected but you rock!
Speaking to mixtapes, in the black metal and dungeon synth world, the word “demo” is used in roughly the same way. Not quite an album but also kind of an album
I think that these definitions have definitely shifted, but I think that this is good and necessary in music. Artists can use the different conceits to give their art an appropriate frame. People use the ideas of album, mixtape, etc. to determine how to approach a project, and so using those frames in service of the art is really cool. What I'm really excited for is whatever conceit that the digital era will bring. If LPs were the mid-20th century conceit, mixtapes the late 20th century one, what will the 21st century one be? Playlists and mixtapes feel too conceptually similar to me to disaggregate, so I'm really expecting to see something else.
To me, the modern conception of the mix tape is the playlist.
And, many, many times mix tapes were of several artists, or made for Individual persons.
Quite similar indeed
Another type of album that isnt really an album is the Live Album. There is typically little cohesion between the songs and if you have went to a live performance of the band or even the live performance of the album itself then there is a change in how it is interacted with coming from other experiences, similar to soundtracks. Sometimes live albums are made to be actual albums, but most of the time its just greatest hits live. Bootleg live albums and demos fit the description even better since there is almost never an intention by the band to release them.
Wrong
first time seeing your face, did not think you were a beardy man, but damn it looks awesome, got some potential there my dude
It is so wild to me that someone younger than I am is so wound up in an older view of a medium that functionally stopped being anything other than a box a long time ago.
An album is a collection. I feel like what you're focused on is more the *concept* album, which is entirely different. I feel like the last time albums as a norm were any sort of cohesive package was back in the 70s prog-rock era. After that (and honestly, likely even well before it,) albums more often than not were collections, rather than cohesive works of their own. There were always exceptions, always things more like concept albums than the standard, but almost every single "album" I've owned that was younger than I was is a "Here's 3 singles and 6 other tracks that the radio probably wouldn't play even if we wanted them to" collection. Then once mp3 sales made it so people could cherry pick which tracks they wanted, the whole thing kinda fell apart. (And even then, there were always compilations, mix CDs, samplers, etc that would let you get which tracks you new you wanted in a bundle rather than going after singles.)
So... yeah. So much of this just felt alien to me because this has never been my world. Singles on the radio informed if I wanted to buy a tape or CD or not, and the single (to me, at least) was acting as a preview of the type of music you could expect. And the moment mp3s came around, everything got ripped to MP3, shoved in a giant playlist and shuffled around to make a personalized radio station. (Which is still basically how I listen to music, only now said playlist tends to be build from streaming rather than rips from physical media.)
The definition of album has moved on. Best not to get too hung up on it when saying what your favorite collection of music put out this year was, yeah?
leather teeth was, interestingly enough, one of my most listened to albums this year.
6:33 Counter argument: since the song itself is a complete and whole experience that can be enjoyed on its own (unlike the individual parts of Mona Lisa's face), a better analogy might be "A Greatest Hits album is like an Exhibition of an artist's work. You're not seeing it in its original context, but damn aren't these pieces nice?"
13:42 you'd love the game hyperspace outlaw!
In my day..the 70’s😂 Album Oriented Rock (AOR) radio stations were the norm. Our local station had “All night album replay” starting at midnight Saturday night they would play 5 albums front to back until about 5:00 am.
I'll give you two examples that are interesting to me, both from the same band, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. Their 2nd album Eyes Like the Sky behaves less like an actual album and more like an audiobook. There's no singing or lyrics, but instead the band plays a particular kind of music (spaghetti Western theme music) underneath narration of a story about an Indian warrior kidnapped when he was 6 from a white family. The narration is complete with chapters and grandiose titles, and is done by the father of King Gizz's keyboard player. The other is their 8th album, Nonagon Infinity. You mentioned how Diamond Jubilee breaks the typical album mode by not really having a starting point or endpoint, and how most ambient music can played in a loop without much issue; Nonagon Infinity goes for both of those things. It's structured so each song flows naturally into the next, with the last track flowing logically into the first, creating an endless loop. And you can start the album of any of the 9 tracks and as long as you play it sequentially, the effect will be the same.