The N&G Listening Club V1 - Archive only

Savages - Adore Life is a great revelation. This is the first I'd ever heard of them. The album opens up more with each listen so who know where I will be by the end of the week, but right now I'm at the really digging it stage. I'm currently fixated on Evil, Sad Person and Slowing Down the World (great bass line in this song). The first listen, only the starred tracks in Apple Music stood out to me (The Answer, Adore) . There are several moments on the album where I think of Nick Cave (Adore, Slowing Down the World and Mechanics). This album has some pretty visual lyrics that just add to the experience of it all (When in Love). I think Surrender is my least favorite song as of this writing. I'm not sure how all of that fuzz settles with me for most of the track...I like it in the opening...but it remains pretty constant (I bet it is a cool song to hear live though). T.I.W.Y.G is absolutely rockin! Great pick...thanks for sharing.
 
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The music is really pretty fantastic. The lyrics and especially their presentation grate on me severely. This chick takes herself entirely too seriously. I can’t vibe with her at all. I gave this 3 proper listens. The music really grew on me but so did my distaste for the singer. I am generally way into female lead singers but not this one.
 
The thing I appreciate about this place is the introduction to bands and performers I've never heard of. Been streaming this the last few days and outside of the opening track, don't know why that one isn't working for me, the album is great. It does take a few listens to get into most of it, but I have been enjoying it ;)
 
Prologue:
The following write-up was made a few months ago when this thread first started up. I spent maybe a week trimming down picks and arrived at this one. The pick was formed around a speculation on the listening group’s potential tastes and exposure based on very few picks to date to build such a profile. Now that my turn has come up I have had quite the crisis as to whether this is an appropriate pick for this group. I seriously considered alternative picks.
One was a turntablist funk experience that I think would still push the comfort zone for plenty here but is such a rip roaring good time it couldn’t fail. Another was a quiet, intense folk album that simply would blow anyone away. I polled our JQBX room with just the genres as identifiers and there was zero support for this particular pick which only added to my anxiety. @Goatfish did tell me I should go with the one I had the write up ready for. I listened to all 3 albums over this past weekend and said screw it, you get the original pick and, if you’re lucky, I’ll come around in the drawing another time and you can have one of the other two (or maybe not!)

Introduction:
The year is 2001 and we are looking for our apes at the monolith. Electronic music has grown from a niche “genre” to an all-encompassing, burgeoning industry unto its own right. The mode has managed to acquire hordes of eager young fanatics without really shedding its’ mainstay proponents. It’s grown from the bleep bloop of the likes of Kraftwerk through radio friendly singles such as Prodigy’s Firestarter or the Chemical Brothers’ Block Rockin’ Beats and grafted itself permanently into traditional forms of music delivery with the likes of Depeche Mode, Garbage, and Underworld.

The genre has begun to idolize the DJ who can simultaneously illuminate musical taste both new and old as well as fill up dance floors the world over. There are superstar names with trademark skill sets such as Fatboy Slim, Keoki, and Carl Cox who bring their own fresh takes to a preexisting media. There are also the huge name producers like LTJ Bukem, Roni Size, or BT who carry their own road shows while spawning labels, collaborations, and new artists with clearly unsustainable speed. But here, in 2001, is no time to concern ourselves with the bubble or the excess. It is time to bask in a time when Moby, Meat Beat Manifesto, and The Orb are somehow and suddenly household names and festivals the world over are forming overnight to serve millions of literally raving fans.

Behind all of this is a massive groundswell of artists who are producing music from a standpoint that has little to nothing to do with the big stages, the overt drug culture, or the reborn hedonism not seen since 1960’s Haight Ashbury. Artists like Portishead, Massive Attack, or Morcheeba have set the precedent for truly luminary electronic music that espouses a slower pace with stronger organic components. Trip Hop is standard vernacular, chillout/downtempo is a genre unto itself that hasn’t yet been turned into watered down ambient music.
Enter Matthew Herbert who operates under several monikers most of which are not necessarily dance music related. For this album though, we want to look towards his House music related moniker of Herbert. He had a modicum of success in this vein until he released Scales in 2006 which charted at #20 for a few weeks. But we want to look prior to his mainstream successes and rediscover the roots of what makes him the man he is.

In 2000 Matthew Herbert published a manifesto entitled Personal Contract for the Composition of Music (Incorporating the Manifest of Mistakes) in which he outlined several purist and even ascetic ideals. Included were the concepts of not using drum machines or pre-existing samples. Both of these things could be considered at the time to be largely prerequisite components of electronic music production. His overarching goal being to replicate in live performances the exact same processes used to create the recordings without relying on automated mechanisms that relegated the performer to essentially “pushing buttons”.

In 1998 Herbert established himself as an esoteric house music producer when he released Around The House which combined obligatory house style beats with easily replicated samples from around his house (primarily the kitchen). This album also sees him collaborate with Dani Siciliano who he met by chance at a friend’s house for whom she was serving as a nanny while also spinning funk records as a DJ in San Francisco. Dani is a fundamental aspect of the Herbert sound which may be why he ended up marrying that particular girl. After you’ve heard her voice you may fall in love yourself.

Continuing with his purist ideologies, pure vocals now-wife, and creative themes of accessible sampling we are treated to Bodily Functions. The samples used in this album are primarily those of the human body or at least the bodies of living things (the opening sample being a mouse that got trapped in his studio trash can). Herbert expertly weaves the sound of blood rushing through veins with near virtuosic piano playing and home grown beat structures.

This was the first record I experienced from Matthew Herbert. At the time I was working at the now defunct Tower Records on West End Avenue in Nashville, TN. A great deal of my late 90’s and early 2000’s vinyl collection is owed to my employee discount at that store. I would often just grab 5 random records and buy them sound unheard. Bodily Functions was one such record. I vaguely recall blindly trusting it to be good due to it being on the Studio K7 label which I was familiar with thanks to Kruder and Dorfmeister, Ladytron, The Herbaliser, Tricky, Rae & Christian, and A Guy called Gerald. The label affiliation is likely what even allowed the record to brought stateside for me to have access to it.

I hope this album challenges anyone who may have a preconceived notion about what electronic music must sound like, how house music must be made, and whether these forms of music are on equal footing with more traditional music outlets. I hope you enjoy the outright jazz creations that spontaneously erupt alongside the soulful near-folk songs written by Siciliano herself. Over the years this album has slowly gotten the attention it deserves but somehow I’ve never met anyone in person who had heard it when I brought it up in music conversation. So my deepest hope is that I get the privilege of introducing someone else to an album that has stood the test of time with me.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3834-bodily-functions/

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/1144

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17491-bodily-functions/



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