93. 2 Many DJs - As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt.2 (2002)

The question is: what makes this album so much better than Girl Talk's far more popular entries into the world of DJ mixes and sampling? I think it's because the 2 Many DJs guys allow the samples room to breathe, allow brilliant pairings to gain in power by adding and subtracting elements, rather than just going from one bit to another over a 50-minute span. Also, everything is perfectly sequenced here; this thing's like a dance party on a disc, with hardly a dull moment and some brilliant combinations (Destiny's Child and Dolly Parton!) that, again, are allowed to develop into distinct tracks of their own. I'm sure somebody's sent you a mashup or two on Youtube or whatever; think of this album as an hour of brilliant mashups. I suppose you could denigrate this album by simply saying it's no more than a "dance record", that by focusing on the more recognizable elements of the samples the group is going for the lowest common denominator, that what other electronic artists do with sampling is far more subtle and nuanced, etc. All of which is true. But it's not fair to knock an album for not doing what it isn't even trying to do; what this album is clearly trying to do is be the most kickass sample-based album of the decade, and at that it succeeds completely.

MY RATING: 9.0

2 Many DJs - "ELP - Peter Gunn (Live); Basement Jaxx - Where's Your Head At (head-a-pella)"

125. The Books - Thought for Food (2002)

First off, let's be perfectly honest: I have no clue what in the hell the Books are trying to do here (both on this record and its equally lauded followup, The Lemon of Pink). I have no clue what's going on, I have no clue why it's supposed to be any good, I have no clue why anyone would like it, I have no clue why I should like it, etc. So what this is is basically obscure spoken-word vocal samples taken from old advertisements, instructional videos and so forth set to calming, amelodic washes of acoustic guitar, rumbly-sounding percussion and dinging noises. The whole thing is aggressively quirky and weird and nothing is really allowed to stay around long enough to make much of an impression. I don't understand why this is any good at all. Occasionally a good melody will jump out of the murk (like on "All Our Base Are Belong to Them") but that's the exception more than a rule. I suppose this kind of stuff makes the most sense as an attempt to inject some interest into "ambient music", which is laudable I guess, but this isn't the way to do it. So 1. I've never heard anything else much like this and 2. that might be a good thing.

MY RATING: 4.4

The Books - "Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again"

159. Girl Talk - Night Ripper (2006)

The issue here is not whether this is done well (it certainly is) but whether or not it should have been done at all. What Girl Talk does isn't new, at least in the macro view: he's a sampler, a plunderphonics guy. His music is constructed entirely from samples of other music. This isn't original: it had been going on for a good decade before this record came out. But what GT did to differentiate himself was simple: when he chose music to sample, he didn't do what most other samplers did, i.e. find obscure samples that gain interest when placed in a new context. He just took the best parts, the stuff that everyone recognizes. While this adds up to an incredibly fun album, it also produces the inevitable question: does this mean anything? does it have any lasting value? The fact is that as fun as this is, it's fun like eating at McDonalds can sometimes be fun. It isn't bad, exactly (it is, after all, scientifically designed to be good) and you know what you're getting, but nobody would mistake it for the best you could get, or in fact anything with any lasting value at all. A huge problem with this album is there is no tonal variety: on far superior sample records like Endtroducing or Since I Left You or As Heard On Radio Soulwax there is actual ebb and flow in the music, slow parts and fast parts, reflective and excitable. Here it's all coming at the same pace with no variation. Familiar rap verse over familiar rock backing--repeat. Over and over.  Basically, the interest lies in the quality of the original samples, not in what GT does with them, which is pretty much nothing. It's its own thing, but it's its own thing like a six-legged dog: there's a reason there aren't very many.

MY RATING: 4.8

Girl Talk - "Once Again"

 

171. The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike (2004)

At its best, this sounds like the music that would play when you and your motley crew of well-trained misfits jump in your specially outfitted van and drive around the city solving crime and other related mysteries. At its worst it sounds like a cheap, tinny dance record recorded on some guy's boombox. I found a copy of this at Walmart (!!!) six years ago for five dollars and picked it up and loved it right away, thinking it was one of the best records I've heard in years: it smacks you in the face immediately. It's the opposite of a "grower"; it kicks your ass the first time, and then seems progressively weaker each time you listen to it. It's musical candy, in that a tiny bit of it is great, but after even fifteen minutes it gets tiresome and annoying and you want to throw in something with real substance (It reminds me more than a little of Sleigh Bells' Treats, actually: although this album's much better overall). The followup record has a little bit more of that, but unfortunately not enough, and the songs on that one are weaker overall, so it's a bit of a toss-up as to which one is better. Anyway, the point of this album is EXCITEMENT. There are no moments of quiet or reflection, except for a few interlude-y tracks, which sound like a group of first-graders banging on the school piano when the music teacher is out of the room. Again, is some of it fun? Yes. "Panther Dash" kicks ass, bursting through the gate right away with a gigantic surf guitar riff, as good as anything the Ventures ever put out. The problem with this is that four or five of these songs are just weaker versions of the good stuff, and it just isn't fun to sit through, and the final track is a bizarre, five-minute series of "western" noises (banjos, Ennio Morricone-aping orchestration) that just doesn't work. The best of this is great, but the whole thing is shallow as a puddle of spit on a sand dune and will probably end up like those thousands of "Sounds from Outer-Space!!!" records from the fifties and early sixties you can find in used bins.

MY RATING: 6.9

The Go! Team - "Junior Kickstart"