Tekel Towers » Tek Towers Desert Island Discs #6

Tek · 09/8/2015 1:26 pm

The 6th 'castaway' we are joined by is Sarto Mutiny.

Sarto Mutiny you have been destined to spend the rest of your days on an isolated island somewhere in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.

In an extremely lucky quirk of fate however there is big package washed up on shore.......when you open the said package you find a cd walkman,headphones and what would appear to be a 50 year supply of AA batteries.

If you could pick any 8 albums to take with you on the Island...what albums would those be Sir? And can you give a small insight into why you've chosen each one please?

Tek · 09/8/2015 1:26 pm

You can take 2 books with you.

1 that you've previously read and 1 that that you always meant to get round too.

Which books and why?

Tek · 09/8/2015 1:27 pm

Which person would you miss the most?

Tek · 09/8/2015 1:28 pm

If you could take one Dundee Utd match on video to watch over and over again...what match would you choose?

Tek · 09/8/2015 1:28 pm

What one other inanimate object would you take with you on the island if you could?

Tek · 09/8/2015 1:28 pm

What one alcoholic drink would you take with you if you could?

Tek · 09/8/2015 1:29 pm

What ONE album would you save if the tide started washing them away and you only had time to retrieve just one?

Tek · 09/8/2015 1:29 pm

And finally as the sun set on the Island for the final time in your life what song would you like to play out?

Sarto, I thank you Sir.

Tek · 09/8/2015 1:31 pm

And one last thing.

Could you pick next weeks 'castaway' please Sir?

Macho Man
european_bob
Grantomac
Rocky Raccoon
Edmond Dantes

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 4:22 pm

Finally got round to this. I have various other things happening today so this might take a while, so I apologise in advance. Albums in chronological order, so after album 1 you can all complain about how I've picked nothing from the 60s or 70s.

This is tough though, and I am fully aware if I do this next week again I could come up with 8 different albums. Here goes...

Last edited by Sarto Mutiny (09/8/2015 4:43 pm)

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 4:41 pm

Album 1

Dexys Midnight Runners - Searching For The Young Soul Rebels

This will not be a shock to any of you unlucky enough to follow me on Twitter. I bloody love Dexys. To most, they are those annoying gits with dungarees who did Come On Eileen.

They were, but they were so much more than that. Coming out of the dying embers of punk, dressed like New York dockers, they were so diiferent. Fuelled by Northern Soul and ampetamines, they produced an album which sounded like nothing else at the time.

It starts like a punk record, with radio noises and a shout of "For God's sake burn it down!", until the brass section kicks in. It must have sounded incredible at the time, and it still manages to retain its impact all these years, because even now no-one sounds like this.

Unlike a lot of classic albums, this and its successor Too-Rye-Aye live up to the hype and the legend. So much so that Kevin Rowland never felt he could live up to it, even while being bottled off a stage at Reading while signing The Greatest Love Of All while wearing a dress.

The album is full of life and spirit, and when people talk about "real music" (usually in the context of some soulless whining twat with an acoustic guitar), this is what they should be talking about. Honest, passionate, angry, soulful and without having its edges filed off by overproduction. It still sounds phenomenal.

Everyone knows the number 1 Geno, and There There My Dear, but my highlight is the rather lovely Tell Me When My Light Turns Green.

They're still going, sort of, with more personnel changes than even the Sugababes have managed. 35 years and three more albums later (they were never exactly prolific), they have still managed to change their own sound several times and yet never sound like anyone else.

"Always different, always the same", as John Peel once said about the Fall.

Last edited by Sarto Mutiny (09/8/2015 4:48 pm)

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 5:30 pm

Album 2

Prince and the Revolution - Parade

Yes, the cover is supposed to be that way up.

Now, Prince is a genius. A proper one. And there are a few problems with geniuses.

The main one is that they generally know they are geniuses, so their work often turns into self indulgence. The second problem is that everyone else knows they are a genius, so they are too scared to say "are you sure about that 15 minute guitar solo"?

I adore this album. Prince arguably made better albums, in the sense that Sign O The Times or 1999 are greater showcases for the man's sheer talent, as they cover any genre you could wish to hear.

Frankly, if you don't like Prince there's something slightly untrustworthy about you.

This is his best album in the sense that it's pure pop without slipping into the self indulgence. All killer no filler, as I believe The Kids say.

It has the genre hopping you would expect, with the first four songs covering psychedelia, funk, soul and balladry. And after that you have Girls and Boys, a pop song so perfect they should put it in museums.

It's made up of 11 perfect pop songs, followed by the overblown Sometimes It Snows In April - Prince never could resist ending his album with a Big Closer.

It just sounds so effortless. Prince was always prolific, but this album has the feel of an album written and produced before breakfast, without all of the negative connotations that you would associate with that.

Everyone knows Kiss. So good not even Tom Jones could fuck it up. And Prince, the daft sod, almost didn't put it on the album as he didn't think it was any good.

In the absence of any Prince videos on YouTube, as his lawyers jump on them quicker than Gary Harkins jumps on a fish supper, here's a bloke dancing to Kiss.

Be grateful I didn't put up the Glee version of that song.

ETA: The video for Girls and Boys is actually up. I'll post that too, although I don't think it will be there long.

By the way, as a warning, the film that Prince made to promote the album, Under The Cherry Moon, is one of the most awful films you could ever wish to see. It is just...cockpony.

Last edited by Sarto Mutiny (09/8/2015 5:39 pm)

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 5:57 pm

Album 3

Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

Classic albums should not start with absurd Radio 1 DJ "Dangerous" Dave Pearce shouting "Hammersmith Odeon, are you ready for the Def Jam tour".

Luckily, things improve as this segues into Bring The Noise. And bring it they did.

Backed by the seismic production of the Bomb Squad (which in this context does not sound like hubris), Chuck D delivers a state of the nation address. He was maybe not the best rapper of the time, but his combination of social commentary, vocabulary and rage made him, and the album, utterly compelling. You can hear why Chuck D later referred to rap as "black CNN". It sounds revolutionary even now, given rap's recent penchant for boasting about ice, money, women and guns.

Even with all that, you have Flavor Flav's interjections, which actually work very well in this context, when they could so easily have been awful.

Apparently they used to spend days coming up with song titles, which explains titles such as Terminator X To The Edge Of Panic or Rebel Without A Pause. All done for maximum impact.

This reached its peak on the incredible Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos, a story of a man who gets jailed for refusing to join the US Army on the grounds that "I'm a black man, and I could never be a veteran". Who then arranges a jailbreak. It samples Isaac Hayes to devastating effect, and no rapper ever rapped with more righteous fury than this. They should teach this shit in schools.

Unfortunately, recent events show that race relations in the USA are no better than they were in 1988, depsite a black man being in the White House.

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 6:12 pm

Album 4

Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible

These days, it's almost impossible to listen to this album without doing so through the prism of the disappearance (and probable suicide) of Richey Edwards.

The album is tense, angry, and almost unbelievably harrowing. To read the lyrics are to look inside a desperately disturbed mind, and it still almost feels like an intrusion.

It starts with the awesome Yes, and does not let up. The lyrics cover everything from the death penalty, to anti-consumerism, to anorexia, to the Holocaust, generally as cryptic allegories for the severe depression Richey was suffering from. It's not an easy listen, that's for sure.

The sheer poetry of the words and the incredible delivery of James Dean Bradfield prevents the album from lapsing into self-pity.

If you can listen to a song as bleak and harrowing as 4st 7lbs and stil feel nothing, even without knowing the autobiographical nature of the song, then you'll never feel anything.

As a 16 year old growing up in a shitty town in Fife with a head that was completely messed up, this album was everything. All those thoughts in my head that I could not articulate, someone else was able to articlate them for me. I own better albums, but no album has had a greater impact on my rather meaningless existence.

An album so powerful and intense that when the band performed it live on the radio at Cardiff Castle a few weeks ago, the continuity announcer had to advise that the album contained "bad language and themes which some listeners might find offensive". After every single song.

It was great, just to hear a crowd shout along with "Who's responsible? You fucking are". I am a simple creature.

Last edited by Sarto Mutiny (09/8/2015 6:13 pm)

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 6:33 pm

Album 5

Suede - Dog Man Star

This is me in album form. Overblown, pretentious, theatrical, self-indulgent, and overly wordy. And I love it.

The appeal of Britpop rather passed me by. In the infamous Blur v Oasis week, I bought a Black Grape album. I hated Blur at the time, and was not much more enthusiastic about Oasis.

I always thought it rather unfair that Suede were lumped in with that scene. I can see why now, as the wear their influences on their sleeves as much as anyone, although those influences were generally Scott Walker and Bowie rather than the Kinks or the Beatles.

The first album was great, but this just blew me away. How a guitar band could progress to this so quickly was a testment to the genius of Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler, especially considering how the former was out of his tits on drugs most of the time. In fact, the stress of producing it blew the band apart, as Butler left/was kicked out before the album came out.

The album reflects the turmoil with which it was recorded. It's a record about love, loss, meaningless druggy sex, and sounds wonderfully sleazy. It's hazy and paranoid, yet oddly romantic. But it sounds incredible.

Brett Anderson never sang better than he did here, and Bernard Butler's guitar playing sounds like it should not be humanly possible. Add in the strings, the distorted voices, and the kitchen sink production, and what you have is a masterpiece.

It's a difficult album the first couple of times you hear it, but eventually it will work its way into your brain, and it will never leave. The album was out of place within the mindless crap Britpop spouted out, and didn't really sell. It was the world's loss.

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 6:46 pm

Album 6

Tricky - Maxinquaye

The album was born out of the trip hop scene, which briefly made Bristol the coolest place in the country in 1992.

Trip hop quickly became a dinner party accessory, so the middle classes would put on a Portishead or Massive Attack record when entertaining their equally smug friends. These days, these people would be hipsters. Back then, we had less polite words.

Put this on at a dinner party, and you may not have many guests left after the first course.

I am not exactly lightening the mood here...

Listening to this album, it's very hard not to be aware of the vast amount of dope Tricky liked to smoke. It's dense, prickly, claustrophobic and paranoid. It's a record whose clanking rhythms, murmured vocals, shards of noise, reversed gender roles and sampling all combine to create an album which sounds modern to this day.

Tricky also pulls off the remarkable trick of sounding great while rapping in a Bristol accent, while the singer Martina has a voice as smoky and seductive as a ten year old Islay malt.

The highlight is the cover of Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos (remember that one?), which, like all the best covers, take the song in a direction its original writers could not have even contemplated.

Again, this is not an easy listen by any means. Take Suffocated Love for example, which reduces love to a game of traps, of control, and of obsession. Imagine the mind who comes up with stuff like this.

The rest of the world, including Tricky himself, has not caught up with this yet.

Last edited by Sarto Mutiny (09/8/2015 6:46 pm)

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 8:28 pm

Albums 7 and 8 will follow at some point, if my laptop ever decides to stop being a cunt

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 8:43 pm

Album 7

LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver

The hipster's choice.

James Murphy was a DJ who was much loved by the hipsters of New York, despite his early single Losing My Edge taking the piss out of that cooler-than-you mentality. Sound of Silver was his second proper album, and it allowed him to show he was more than a clever-clever DJ who got lucky.

He takes his influences from anywhere and everywhere, and yet sounds utterly unique.

It begins with the sound of Get Innocuous, which despite being a straight rip of one of his earlier songs (the previously mentioned Losing My Edge), sounds like a rocket being fired up. If it doesn't make you want to dance, you don't deserve to have legs.

The album displays a depth which you don't normally associate with this type of music. North American Scum is funny and self-deprecating, Something Great and New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down are utterly heartbreaking, and All My Friends describes my life better than I ever could.

Most of all, it's a great dance album, which there haven't been too many of in recent history. They broke up in 2011, but the film of their final concert, Shut Up And Play The Hits, is a celebration rather than a wake. They were a great live band as well. I saw them twice in Glasgow, and had a ball both times.

Smart without being smug, clever without being too clever, this album should be owed and treasured by anyone who likes their music with bleeps and cowbells.

And it would allow me to throw some shapes on my desert island knowing no-one would be there to laugh at my pishy dancing.

Last edited by Sarto Mutiny (09/8/2015 8:44 pm)

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 9:03 pm

Album 8

Kacey Musgraves - Same Trailer Different Park

Most new music does not interest me. The two exceptions are Kanye West (I will defend him to the death if provoked) and country music. I was a recent convert to country music, my eyes being opened by seeing a couple of bands in Austin when I was there for the Grand Prix in 2013.

There's nothing too complicated about this album, really. It just sounds great.

It's a very deep album for someone so young, taking in as it does one night stands, small town boredom, dead end jobs, shitty relationships and the like.

All very familiar themes for country albums, but what makes this stand out is Kacey Musgraves's subversive takes on these themes (for country music, anyway). Follow Your Arrow is a prime example, on first listen sounding like the typical "Do what you want and be happy" song we have all heard a million times before.

However, eventually you realise the lyrics extol the virtues of both joints and sexual experimentation (although not at the same time, presumably). This shit is controversial in the Deep South, believe me. It possibly explains her relative lack of airplay compared with safer, but less interesting contemporaries.

Merry Go Round is a beautiful song about being trapped in a small town, which, while focussing on small town Americana, is again something anyone who grew up in a shitty provincial town can relate to. And yet the song comes at this topic with empathy rather than with any sort of smug superority.

Yes, it's a little homespun in places. But, she manages to pull it off with her conversational style and her good old fashioned Southern charm, if you'll allow me to use a horrible cliche.

And, if we must get bawdy about this, the album cover is so much nicer to look at in the privacy of my desert island than any of the other ones, especiallycompared with the man arse on the cover of Dog Man Star.

I'd never claim this was one of the best eight albums I own, but is it one of my favourite eight? God yes.

Last edited by Sarto Mutiny (09/8/2015 9:04 pm)

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 9:18 pm

Tek wrote:
You can take 2 books with you.

1 that you've previously read and 1 that that you always meant to get round too.

Which books and why?

Book I'd like to read again: Red Riding by David Peace.

Strictly speaking these are four books, but it is one overall story so fuck it, my island my rules.

David Peace's writing style is very much an acquired taste, as anyone who has read Red Or Dead will testify, but these books are wonderfully written and compelling.

The story starts off as a fairly conventional murder mystery. However, as the story progresses over the course of several years it takes in elements of true crime, along with tackling police corruption, collusion with the church, bent journalism, mental illness, homelessness and conspiracy theories.

They are astonishingly complex books, jumping from character to character which often makes it hard to keep up, but persistence is rewarded with an amazing and rich story.

It is phenomenally bleak and brutal though. The stories are morally ambiguous, let's just say. It takes a very long time to work out who you should be rooting for.

Book I'd like to read: Ulysses by James Joyce

I have had a couple of gos at this one. However, I find it so hard to get through. The prose is incredible, but I am fucked if I know what is actually going on.

I would love to be able to get further than the first 30 pages, but I will have a lot of time on my hands on my island, so I could have a stab at it. I feel the effort would be worth it.

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 9:21 pm

Tek wrote:
Which person would you miss the most?

I come and go through people's lives. People who I thought I couldn't live without, I found out I could.

I'd have to say my parents. I have put them through so much shit throughout the years. So many times, they'd have been entitled to cut ties, and they never did, no matter now much I fucked up. I will never be able to repay everything they'd have done for me, as without their support I would not be here. Simple as that.

I'm not going to pick one over the other, so there.

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 9:33 pm

Tek wrote:
If you could take one Dundee Utd match on video to watch over and over again...what match would you choose?

The 20th of May 1987. UEFA Cup final, second leg, against IFK Gothenberg.

Now, fans of any given club think that their club is special. Most fans are wrong.

I didn't appreciate the enormity of the occasion at the time. I was only 9, after all. But, I look back on that night and it makes me so proud to support the club I do.

A bloody European final, at Tannadice. No big deal, eh?

It wasn't the result we all wanted, but even now I cannot think of what happened after the game without getting a lump in my throat.

The reaction of the fans, both towards United and Gothenberg, was just incredible. Here we were, the biggest game of the club's history, reacting towards defeat in a truly sporting and magnanimous manner. The reciprocal reaction from the Gothenberg players to the United fans was every bit as amazing.

Imagine supporting a club with supporters so amazing that UEFA had to create an award to honour them. Well, we don't have to imagine it.

How you respond to adversity will tell you far more about character than how you respond to triumph.

I will never forget the events of that night, and what happened will forever remind me of why I am so proud to support the football club I do. We are some club, right enough.

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 9:40 pm

Tek wrote:
What one other inanimate object would you take with you on the island if you could?

Eczema cream. Form a queue, ladies...

I'm damned if I'm going to be on my desert island scratching all the fucking time.

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 9:41 pm

Tek wrote:
What one alcoholic drink would you take with you if you could?

Red wine, for its ability to get me drunk in the shortest possible time. No type in particular, because it ain't gonnae touch the sides.

Sarto Mutiny · 09/8/2015 9:43 pm

Tek wrote:
What ONE album would you save if the tide started washing them away and you only had time to retrieve just one?

Parade by Prince. Even on a desert island, you cannot be in a bad mood while listening to Prince. And God knows, I've tried.

I fucking love Prince.