6. Big Audio DynamiteThe Globe
I discovered this album when I was first getting into alternative music, and now one of my favourite songs of Megatop Phoenix is ‘Union Jack’ which I used to play all the time – it’s such a fucking good song. The Globe though, is I think, another masterpiece. Every song on it is fantastic and I feel like this and The KLF record have a lot in common around this time, just in the worlds they create like on the record. The songs flow into each other, it’s a party record yet in the middle of it there’s this song called ‘Innocent Child’ and it’s gorgeous, and there’s another ballad called ‘When The Time Comes’ which starts out uptempo and then turns into this real trippy, Pink Floyd-y robo vocoded thing. What I love about it at the end of the album is a song called ‘The Tea Party’ and conceptually it’s so brilliant, and I don’t know who the female singer is, but they basically made a medley of the entire album – you get to the end of the record and the whole record is sung back at you, and you hear it all over again, which I think is genius. The nice thing about this piece you’re doing and this column is I still believe in albums and I really can’t stand the way we listen to music now – it drives me crazy. I’m just closing on a house up here in New Orleans and I can’t wait to get my record player back and get all my records. I don’t love the way we consume music and I know it’s just the way that it is and blah blah blah, but when I find an album that I can sink my teeth into there’s just nothing like it. I think songs are stronger when in conversation with other songs. Songs have more meaning depending on the other songs around them and they speak to each other. I think this playlist culture that we have, I think there’s something missing from that, and that’s why I love that you’re doing this column.
