--taken from: CBC music
by Vish Kanna
When you’re an influential musician, people tend to ask you what you’ve been listening to lately. Here at 5 for 20, we’re just as keen to find out what records loom large in our favourite artists’ memory banks. So, we’re asking folks for their top five records of the last 20 years.
Andrew Scott actually co-founded Toronto-via-Halifax’s Sloan just over 20 years ago. And while he’s most often found pounding out rhythms on the drums, he’s also an accomplished visual artist, a producer, a father, a husband and a multi-instrumentalist, who usually contributes one or two songs to every Sloan record.
Sloan will be reissuing its most popular album, 1994's Twice Removed, on Sept. 4 in a super deluxe edition and will embark on a unique tour across North America, playing the record from front to back. That trek begins on Sept. 5 in Portland, Ore.
The band’s latest album, however, is The Double Cross, a well-received and dynamic release that came out in 2011, which marked Sloan's 20th anniversary. The milestone is significant for this particular exercise, Scott notes.
“The last 20 years of music production and evolution hold a particular impact for me because I have lived it and evolved through it myself musically,” he says. “I'm not one to usually keep mental lists of faves and top 10s but that said, here’s my top five from the last 20 in no particular order.”
Bee Thousand by Guided by Voices (1994)
This is one I had heard about but could never have predicted the immediate treasure hunt it unleashed for me. Dizzying and frustrating at times but never uninviting.
Alien Lanes by Guided by Voices (1995)
It continues. This was the beginning of the end, along with the need to go fully in reverse and hear what preceded these two back-to-backs. Before and after is all a dysfunctional quicksand with relief interspersed. These records are fully solid ground.
Food For The Moon by Al Tuck
Al has been writing and recording out of Halifax and P.E.I. for years and I always considered him a true genius. This continues to prove my point and I am not the only one who thinks this highly of his talent. This is concept writing without trying and the finest version of “Snowbird” I have ever heard. A monument, as directed.
Under Your Shadow by Al Tuck
Another, in relative quick succession. So simple and beautiful and a beacon of light in a very dark sea of incredibly difficult listening.
Kid A by Radiohead or Check Your Head by Beastie Boys
Radiohead I was really resistant to. I didn't like them at all when they first arrived on the scene. They smacked of something that really turned me off altogether, but when I heard the opening lines of Kid A, I couldn't tear my ears from it. It stands alone and holds up against anything before it or after — so strange and unexpected. Check Your Head came out and really knocked the whole genre (at the time) out of the park. They played their own instruments and it was heavy as hell. When Licensed To Ill arrived, it seemed like the joke was to be short-lived, but when this one came out, it proved that the joke was on all of us.
--taken from: CBC music
No comments:
Post a Comment