The Quietus' Top 40 Genre Compilation Albums
March 13, 2018 6:36 PM Subscribe
The Quietus' Top 40 Genre Compilation Albums From The Anthology of American Folk Music to Sushi 3003: A Spectacular Collection Of Japanese Clubpop, a collection of recommendations from the Quietus writers.
Okay, it has Nuggets, which I own.
It doesn't have A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind (any volume)
Overall, I'll say it's a good list, but it should have at least one of those. Probably doesn't meet its criteria for what an anthology album is because they cross eras and genres.
posted by hippybear at 7:37 PM on March 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
It doesn't have A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind (any volume)
Overall, I'll say it's a good list, but it should have at least one of those. Probably doesn't meet its criteria for what an anthology album is because they cross eras and genres.
posted by hippybear at 7:37 PM on March 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
Nice list! I'm not surprised to see Soul Jazz Records represented so strongly. They really do put out great stuff.
I would add Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical. So many of my fellow North Americans who share my love for MPB started with this one.
Soul Jazz' Brazil 70 After Tropicalia: New Directions in Brazilian Music is another good one.
Get Easy! Vol. 3 , a collection of 60s - 70s French pop, is a lot of fun.
I think putting together compilations must be the best job in the world.
posted by hydrophonic at 8:29 PM on March 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
I would add Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical. So many of my fellow North Americans who share my love for MPB started with this one.
Soul Jazz' Brazil 70 After Tropicalia: New Directions in Brazilian Music is another good one.
Get Easy! Vol. 3 , a collection of 60s - 70s French pop, is a lot of fun.
I think putting together compilations must be the best job in the world.
posted by hydrophonic at 8:29 PM on March 13, 2018 [2 favorites]
Great to see Motown Chartbusters Vol 3 on here - if only because that means there's one album on here I've listened to.
Frustrating to find that it isn't on Google Play.
posted by 1head2arms2legs at 9:01 PM on March 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
Frustrating to find that it isn't on Google Play.
posted by 1head2arms2legs at 9:01 PM on March 13, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's a great list, but it's missing a few great ones: The Bridge, A Tribute to Neil Young (Psychic TV example) and The Song Retains the Name
For all their virtues (and they are excellent), those are tribute albums to specific artists and not genre compilation albums, which are rather different beasts.
This list covers a lot of great bases, and I would argue with few of their choices, but like every music fanatic, I have slightly adjacent takes on some of their recommendations.
I’d choose The Positiva Ambient Collection over Artificial Intelligence, and Kitsuné Maison Vol 6 over Vol 2.
I love the inclusion of a K-Tel compilation, but I would choose two others from my childhood: Breakdance (1984) and Dancer (1981).
Disco Not Disco is great for latter-day devotees, but I will always have a soft spot for the original standard-bearer, the Ze Records compilation Mutant Disco: A Subtle Disclocation of the Norm.
And to balance the perennial favorite BBC Radiophonic Workshop, I’d throw in the equivalent set from the Philips Research Laboratories, Popular Electronics.
My own missing links:
More than Mambo: The Introduction to Afro-Cuban Jazz
Berlin Super 80, the Berlin-based equivalent of their Italian proto-synth compilation;
No New York, the original and never-bettered intro to NYC’s No Wave movement;
Victrola Favorites, the astounding box set of international music from the 78 era by Jonathan Ward (Excavated Shellac);
Indian Talking Machine, a companion volume (of sorts) of 78 RPM recordings from the Indian subcontinent;
Goodbye Babylon, the compilation of early American gospel folk which launched the excellent Dust to Digital record label.
And I would be remiss without mentioning David Toop’s compilations, which are (in my opinion) probably the greatest ever assembled by anybody. They trace various veins of “ambient” music, but not in any sense we classically think of it. The first volume, Ocean of Sound, takes in everything from King Tubby and the Beach Boys to Erik Satie and underwater recordings of bearded seals, plus the sounds of ship horns in 1970s Vancouver, the Velvet Underground’s “I Heard Her Call My Name”, water chants, Aphex Twin, Ornette Coleman, and more. It’s probably the most masterful thing I’ve ever heard in 40 years of absorbing sound on this planet. He did a similar survey of the use of silence in music with his compilation/book Haunted Weather a few years later, and while it is a much more challenging listen, it stretches the mind nearly as far. Read the books, too, and you'll appreciate the compilations even more.
posted by mykescipark at 9:15 PM on March 13, 2018 [14 favorites]
For all their virtues (and they are excellent), those are tribute albums to specific artists and not genre compilation albums, which are rather different beasts.
This list covers a lot of great bases, and I would argue with few of their choices, but like every music fanatic, I have slightly adjacent takes on some of their recommendations.
I’d choose The Positiva Ambient Collection over Artificial Intelligence, and Kitsuné Maison Vol 6 over Vol 2.
I love the inclusion of a K-Tel compilation, but I would choose two others from my childhood: Breakdance (1984) and Dancer (1981).
Disco Not Disco is great for latter-day devotees, but I will always have a soft spot for the original standard-bearer, the Ze Records compilation Mutant Disco: A Subtle Disclocation of the Norm.
And to balance the perennial favorite BBC Radiophonic Workshop, I’d throw in the equivalent set from the Philips Research Laboratories, Popular Electronics.
My own missing links:
More than Mambo: The Introduction to Afro-Cuban Jazz
Berlin Super 80, the Berlin-based equivalent of their Italian proto-synth compilation;
No New York, the original and never-bettered intro to NYC’s No Wave movement;
Victrola Favorites, the astounding box set of international music from the 78 era by Jonathan Ward (Excavated Shellac);
Indian Talking Machine, a companion volume (of sorts) of 78 RPM recordings from the Indian subcontinent;
Goodbye Babylon, the compilation of early American gospel folk which launched the excellent Dust to Digital record label.
And I would be remiss without mentioning David Toop’s compilations, which are (in my opinion) probably the greatest ever assembled by anybody. They trace various veins of “ambient” music, but not in any sense we classically think of it. The first volume, Ocean of Sound, takes in everything from King Tubby and the Beach Boys to Erik Satie and underwater recordings of bearded seals, plus the sounds of ship horns in 1970s Vancouver, the Velvet Underground’s “I Heard Her Call My Name”, water chants, Aphex Twin, Ornette Coleman, and more. It’s probably the most masterful thing I’ve ever heard in 40 years of absorbing sound on this planet. He did a similar survey of the use of silence in music with his compilation/book Haunted Weather a few years later, and while it is a much more challenging listen, it stretches the mind nearly as far. Read the books, too, and you'll appreciate the compilations even more.
posted by mykescipark at 9:15 PM on March 13, 2018 [14 favorites]
Man, I bought so many of these in real time, as it were, so it's probably in better taste for me to just nod in soulful approval than to compliment the listmakers on their perspicacity. At various moments of my life, The Anthology of American Folk Music, Nuggets, Artificial Intelligence Volume 1, Sushi 3003, Universal Sounds of America, and Disco Not Disco were in permanent rotation chez moi.
The reason why some of us relied so heavily on curated collections may be a little difficult to understand if all you've ever known is music in the post-file sharing/streaming media era. Before those were a thing, you dig, the act of consuming music involved a certain opportunity cost. LPs, cassettes and CDs were, each in their moment, expensive. I don't think I'm misremembering $17 list prices for LPs at the Sam Goody, slowly coming down to $9 or so over the course of a few years...only to disappear and immediately be replaced by $17 CDs. Buy a single bunk record, and you were out most of your music budget for the month.
So a comp just made raw economic sense if you didn't know that much about a given musical milieu. It offered you a flight, a tasting menu, and then you could dip into the genre in question that much better informed. My musical life is infinitely richer for the terrain opened up for me by compilations, so I'm really happy to see this, and even more so to see it posted here. Thanks.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:30 AM on March 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
The reason why some of us relied so heavily on curated collections may be a little difficult to understand if all you've ever known is music in the post-file sharing/streaming media era. Before those were a thing, you dig, the act of consuming music involved a certain opportunity cost. LPs, cassettes and CDs were, each in their moment, expensive. I don't think I'm misremembering $17 list prices for LPs at the Sam Goody, slowly coming down to $9 or so over the course of a few years...only to disappear and immediately be replaced by $17 CDs. Buy a single bunk record, and you were out most of your music budget for the month.
So a comp just made raw economic sense if you didn't know that much about a given musical milieu. It offered you a flight, a tasting menu, and then you could dip into the genre in question that much better informed. My musical life is infinitely richer for the terrain opened up for me by compilations, so I'm really happy to see this, and even more so to see it posted here. Thanks.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:30 AM on March 14, 2018 [2 favorites]
I won't quibble; I'll bookmark this for later. However, I'd include "This are 2 Tone", a collection from the 80s Ska revival, and "The Indestructible Beat of Soweto", a compilation that meant a lot to people in the anti-Apartheid movement of the 80s. I can't recommend highly enough "Calypsos from Trinidad", a collection of political calypsos from the 1930s.
posted by acrasis at 4:37 PM on March 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by acrasis at 4:37 PM on March 14, 2018 [1 favorite]
mykescipark
Your inclusions are really close to the ones I would make. Particularly, Dust to Digital comps are exceptional.
posted by OmieWise at 7:13 PM on March 14, 2018
Your inclusions are really close to the ones I would make. Particularly, Dust to Digital comps are exceptional.
posted by OmieWise at 7:13 PM on March 14, 2018
I guess, since it hasn't been mentioned yet, I got Legacy: A Collection Of New Folk Music when it came out in 1989, and it's been a regular part of my life ever since. Wonderful.
posted by hippybear at 7:28 PM on March 14, 2018
posted by hippybear at 7:28 PM on March 14, 2018
I really need to shout out The American Song-Poem Anthology: Do You Know The Difference Between Big Wood And Brush, a compilation of highlights(?) from rescued(?) extremely–limited-release 45s, from schemes (somewhere between a vanity press and outright scams) where studio musicians recorded literally any lyrics that were sent in with a check. At their best, the “song poems” (so-called because the producers didn’t trust the marks to understand what “lyrics” were) are outsider art, and their musical accompaniment shows legitimately talented performers in a soul-killing racket staving off boredom with the most inventive arrangements they could churn out in one take.
posted by nicepersonality at 8:17 PM on March 14, 2018
posted by nicepersonality at 8:17 PM on March 14, 2018
I really dug Sushi 3003, was my first introduction to Fantastic Plastic Machine. I listened to it at work quite a bit when it first came out.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:43 PM on March 14, 2018
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:43 PM on March 14, 2018
Yes yes yes yes to everything in this thread.
I'll contribute a few:
-Axé Bahia 2004 (Brazilian Axé music)
-Edan's (in his DJ incarnation) Fast Rap
- Naan Commercial Hits (no, it's not from India -- it's more about odd, early/mid-2000s electronic pop) (YT)
-Soul Sides Vol. 1
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 9:03 PM on March 14, 2018
I'll contribute a few:
-Axé Bahia 2004 (Brazilian Axé music)
-Edan's (in his DJ incarnation) Fast Rap
- Naan Commercial Hits (no, it's not from India -- it's more about odd, early/mid-2000s electronic pop) (YT)
-Soul Sides Vol. 1
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 9:03 PM on March 14, 2018
Just a few of my loves:
Zouk Attack
Hurricane Zouk
Angola 90's
posted by DJZouke at 5:48 AM on March 15, 2018
Zouk Attack
Hurricane Zouk
Angola 90's
posted by DJZouke at 5:48 AM on March 15, 2018
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