Which of the following is your favourite album?

i have the wyatt and the eno albums but i must admit that i didn't listen often to them. ambient is not really my cup of tea. except that budd/eno collaboration. which i wouldn't call ambient anyway. impressionist piano music maybe. as you wrote the wyatt is a compilation and quite disparate if i remember well. a good album in my book is something coherent. in any case i have chosen my robert wyatt album already...

i don't know any of the other stuff (except human league which i don't care about). 1982 seems to be the weakest of all years i have covered yet. there is not one really outstanding album there...

An easy choice this time, the Talking Heads double album being my personal favorite. Good to see it was finally properly rereleased last year.

Other personal highlights:

Peter Gabriel - Deutsches Album (quirky in some instances, brilliant in others: Der Rhythmus der Hitze ["der Rhythmus halt mich fest!" :-)], San Jacinto)

Richard Hell & the Voidoids - Destiny Street (not as strong as Blank Generation, but a very good 'stingy' [Quine (rip) is on fire on some of the tracks] punkrock album nontheless)

Japan - Tin Drum (Japan look eastward, with stunning results)

Mission of Burma - Vs. (just download "Trem Two", an amazing song)

Virgin Prunes - if I die, I die... (Weldschmerz + New Romantics + Gothic. great yelling-along songs :-))

hi willem, thanks for dropping by. i have seen you have a blog now. welcome in the new interactive world! unfortunately my dutch isn't good enough to understand most of it.

the only album from your list i know is the peter gabriel. somehow i never really warmed up to his solo stuff. he will always stay the genesis singer in my mind.

for the time being i also favour the talking heads. i guess it is their best. of course i have lent my vinyl copy to a friend a couple of months ago and she never gave it back...

mission of burma and japan sound interesting. i often have problems with sylvian's voice though which usually is too much on the heavy scott walker side of things but i really really love "oil on canvas".

If you really really love Oil on Canvas, I think you'll at least like Tin Drum. I don't really agree with you on Sylvian's voice. I think it's far more restrained than Scott Walker. Maybe on the early Japan albums Sylvian's singing style was a bit too theatrical for your likes but I think he really found his 'singing voice' through the years (though I agree that it's probably a very self-concious voice). Have you heard his latest album, Blemish? I found it rather mindblowing. Just consider checking it out.

If your friend's a real friend then surely she wouldn't mind if you inquired after the whereabouts of your vinyl copy?

As far as Gabriel's concerned, I totally agree with you on his solo-stuff, which is mostly a great big 'meh' to me. Somehow this album stood out, probably because it was the first one I got from the library, at an impressionable age...

re: my blog. Maybe some of the future contents will be in English (maybe you 'understand' the Bowie/Pop lovestory? though I'm still not quite sure if it worked out...) Starting a blog has been on my mind over the years and I decided to have a go at it. Totally unaware of where it will go though, we'll see.

I talk too much. I will be back though. ;-)

@phil sorry for not having been very nice in my comment. it probably had something to do with you not liking my choices enough. a totally childish reaction to pick on your suggestions. i am ashamed of myself sometimes. and astonished that you are still giving so much here. the annette peacock is a compilation as well of course. which was only released last year! the songs are from 1978-82 though.

@willem no i didn't understand your bowie/pop lyrics cut-up. i guess it was too long for my short attention-span. and i didn't make the effort to try to understand the dutch explanation at the end. additionally i am no big fan of either of the two. an interesting idea though.

i haven't heard "blemish". but i heard sylvian on the fennesz cd about which i am very ambivalent. and somehow his affected voice on that one track really repelled me. it just seems so totally false. thinking about that fennesz cd which is so misty and heavy his voice fits quite well actually. whatever.

sorry for not having been very nice in my comment

that's alright! imagine a world where everyone agreed on everything - very dull indeed. it's these sorts of conversations that make blogs fascinating. and this project of yours is one that will always make people talk.

in the end i think the eno would be my favourite of the lot - it's not really an ambient album either, more an electronic soundscape thing - very atmospheric.

funny i just put "on land" on after work. to check back. and i absolutely didn't see the point of that music again. what does it give to the listener? or is it supposed to be aural wallpaper not to be listened to? just creating a sort of atmosphere. to be honest i couldn't listen to it. it was absolutely impossible. it transmuted itself into layers of background sounds. can you concentrate on that kind of stuff? there is something intriguing about this kind of music which doesn't ask for the attention of the listener. something very humble and modest. in theory it is great but in practice? i dunno.

i think the whole reason behind it is to link the created sounds back to the places referenced in the titles... or something like that. i find it constantly interesting and complex - the interactions between the people and the sounds they're making is almost magical: like the best improv music should be. but i have a great love for synthetic sound washes anyway so maybe that's why i'm drawn to it so much.

after having read your first sentence my gut reaction was "come on if you have to know the titles to appreciate the tracks that is bull-shit. good music should stand on its own." but then i read the liner notes and put the cd on again. and suddenly i kind of got immersed into it. it is absolutely unbelievable how strong my liking or non-liking of music is depending on the setting. i did some ergometer cycling today and am very relaxed now. maybe that's a reason why i can listen to the album at the moment. you are right about the complexity. i have to dig deeper. i'll listen to it tomorrow on the car trip to the funeral of my aunt (she died saturday night a couple of days after i mentioned her in one of the last posts).

by the way the album is not really electronic. or let's put it differently. it is not the electronic treatment which attracts me.

you are totally on the money concerning the talking heads. it is so much better than "stop making sense". which i heard when at university in the mid eighties in a projection of the film with a really awful sound.

the joni mitchell album is her last great album. quite upbeat for her. joni is doing rockn'roll there. weird that the only album i bought in 1982 or maybe 1983 was the john cale. it is pretty good, probably my fave of his. but still it is by no means a great record. yesterday i relistened to the go-betweens and was very much underwhelmed. they hadn't found their sound on their first lp yet.

the green on red is quite good. psychedelic american guitar folk. the laurie anderson is fine as well.

it will be really hard for me to find my album of 1982. altogether quite a good year. but without any absolute highs.