N&G AOTM /// Vol. 60 - June 2024 /// U.N.K.L.E.'s "Psyence Fiction"

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1. Heavy Metal (mixed genre album with cartoon aesthetic)
2. Weird Al Yankovic - "Twister" (they twist up the songs?)
3. Tricky - "Hell Is Around The Corner," Massive Attack - "Eurochild" (from England)
4. At The Drive-In - "Napoleon Solo" (?)
5. John Candy (played Uncle Buck)
6. Frank Zappa - "Apostrophe" (released by Mo' Wax)
7. Badly Drawn Boy - "Pissing In The Wind" (cover is badly drawn)
8. Drum Solo Of Life, but the opposite of it (drums of death)
9. Samples Sun Ra and a million other.
 
Congratulations @Hemotep for getting the closest with the clues.

In related news, the album of the month IS........


U.N.K.L.E.'s Psyence Fiction!
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When I started researching clues for this album, I honestly was not sure if they were going to be impossible to decipher or if the album was going to be guessed in a single day. The reality is that they seem to fall somewhere in the middle... people had fantastic interpretations of the clues that I had not considered, but sometimes were not exactly hitting the nail on the head.

Let's dive in with this.

CLUE 1 - Heavy Metal movie poster
CLUE 5 - John Candy

The movie Heavy Metal is a series of vignettes, much in the way that the album of the month is a collection of collaborations. Also, and I'm surprised no one even jokingly made this connection, the name itself of the album of the month is printed on the poster (albeit in a different spelling)!
John Candy was featured in one of the heavy metal vignettes and the interpretation of him being "Uncle Buck" was actually spot on...
In other words: Uncle (Buck) was featured in a Science Fiction movie.
I also would have accepted that metal musician Jason Newsted is featured on the track "The Knock (Drums Of Death Part Two)."

CLUE 2- Weird Al Yankovic - "Twister"

Actually, no one was close to my original intent of this clue.
This is a style parody cover of a commercial song, performed in the style of The Beastie Boys, whose Mike D features on "The Knock (Drums Of Death Part Two)."
The fact that the song in itself is a cover of a song from a commercial points directly to track 6 on this album, "Getting Ahead In The Lucrative Field Of Artist Management," which is the audio of the commercial for the game Ball Buster by the company Megos.



CLUE 3 - Tricky - "Hell Is Around The Corner," Massive Attack - "Eurochild"

On a surface level, I anticipated that there would be at least one person to point to the album being British in origin and/or having some sort of emphasis on hip hop, trip hop, downtempo, or electronica.
What I was really getting at was the lyrical content. Both songs feature some of the same lyrics, as Tricky recycled his content from one performance for another. On the album of the month in question, Mike D does the exact same thing when he reuses the rhythmic rhyme delivery schemes on "The Knock (Drums of Death Part Two)" as featured on the Beastie Boys song "Intergalactic."





CLUE 4 - At The Drive-In - "Napoleon Solo"

Napoleon Solo is the name of one of the main characters from the series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which is where the band appropriate their name from.

CLUE 6 - Frank Zappa - "Apostrophe"

A heavily sampled song featured across the album, particularly on both "Drums Of Death" tracks.

CLUE 7 - Badly Drawn Boy - "Pissing In The Wind"

Badly Drawn Boy is a featured performer on the album.

CLUE 8 - Drum Solo Of Life, but the opposite of it

Yup. Drums of life are the opposite of drums of death.

9. www.whosampled.com
10. Sun Ra is sampled on the album

Now that you know what the album is, I hope you will do a deep dive into source materials like I did :)

WRITE-UP AND RELATED SWAPTIONS COMING IN THE NEXT DAY OR TWO!
 
MadLucas said:
Congratulations @Hemotep for getting the closest with the clues.

In related news, the album of the month IS........


U.N.K.L.E.'s Psyence Fiction!
View attachment 202672

When I started researching clues for this album, I honestly was not sure if they were going to be impossible to decipher or if the album was going to be guessed in a single day. The reality is that they seem to fall somewhere in the middle... people had fantastic interpretations of the clues that I had not considered, but sometimes were not exactly hitting the nail on the head.

Let's dive in with this.

CLUE 1 - Heavy Metal movie poster
CLUE 5 - John Candy

The movie Heavy Metal is a series of vignettes, much in the way that the album of the month is a collection of collaborations. Also, and I'm surprised no one even jokingly made this connection, the name itself of the album of the month is printed on the poster (albeit in a different spelling)!
John Candy was featured in one of the heavy metal vignettes and the interpretation of him being "Uncle Buck" was actually spot on...
In other words: Uncle (Buck) was featured in a Science Fiction movie.
I also would have accepted that metal musician Jason Newsted is featured on the track "The Knock (Drums Of Death Part Two)."

CLUE 2- Weird Al Yankovic - "Twister"

Actually, no one was close to my original intent of this clue.
This is a style parody cover of a commercial song, performed in the style of The Beastie Boys, whose Mike D features on "The Knock (Drums Of Death Part Two)."
The fact that the song in itself is a cover of a song from a commercial points directly to track 6 on this album, "Getting Ahead In The Lucrative Field Of Artist Management," which is the audio of the commercial for the game Ball Buster by the company Megos.



CLUE 3 - Tricky - "Hell Is Around The Corner," Massive Attack - "Eurochild"

On a surface level, I anticipated that there would be at least one person to point to the album being British in origin and/or having some sort of emphasis on hip hop, trip hop, downtempo, or electronica.
What I was really getting at was the lyrical content. Both songs feature some of the same lyrics, as Tricky recycled his content from one performance for another. On the album of the month in question, Mike D does the exact same thing when he reuses the rhythmic rhyme delivery schemes on "The Knock (Drums of Death Part Two)" as featured on the Beastie Boys song "Intergalactic."





CLUE 4 - At The Drive-In - "Napoleon Solo"

Napoleon Solo is the name of one of the main characters from the series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which is where the band appropriate their name from.

CLUE 6 - Frank Zappa - "Apostrophe"

A heavily sampled song featured across the album, particularly on both "Drums Of Death" tracks.

CLUE 7 - Badly Drawn Boy - "Pissing In The Wind"

Badly Drawn Boy is a featured performer on the album.

CLUE 8 - Drum Solo Of Life, but the opposite of it

Yup. Drums of life are the opposite of drums of death.

9. www.whosampled.com
10. Sun Ra is sampled on the album

Now that you know what the album is, I hope you will do a deep dive into source materials like I did :)

WRITE-UP AND RELATED SWAPTIONS COMING IN THE NEXT DAY OR TWO!
Click to expand...


Phenomenal choice @MadLucas and great sleuthing @Hemotep!!
 
WHY PSYENCE FICTION?

When the idea of the forum selecting its own albums of the month started, I immediately knew that I wanted to sign up to pick an album and this was my first choice. At the time, it was out of print and awaiting a reissue. I'm glad I finally am getting to do this album.

But why did I choose this? Well, there are several reasons.



COMMUNITY. To be fair, I realize that most people who listen to this album are probably going to be listening to it by themselves... However, that is not how I discovered the album back in 1998. This was an album that brought people together: spun at parties and dances, shared in practice rooms as we tried to decipher individual parts to play the songs ourselves, made a staple of mixtapes, etc. I believe the same is still possible, as years later a go-to for me in a group listening setting. This is music that is meant to be a shared experience, and I hope that all discovering and rediscovering this album will be able to find others to enjoy this album with.


("Rabbit In Your Headlights" sample around 18:48)

WORLD WITHIN WORLDS. There has always been and always will be conceptual albums designed to tell a story or transport The Listener into a world or plot line: Mother Of Inventions first three albums, Prince Paul's A Prince Among Thieves, and Shooter Jennings' Black Ribbons all spring to mind as masterful examples of this. However, I contend that this album transcends the possibilities of all of those. In utilizing numerous vocalists across several genres throughout the albums listen, U.N.K.L.E. have created a truly cinematic experience.
While each song in itself stands up as its own entity, listening to them straight through as one cohesive unit tells the true tale. The characters are ghosts, villains, children, parents, griots/narrators, aliens, outcasts, kings, and vagrants. The settings are nightclubs, back alleys, deserts, the sky/stars, countryside porches, quiet streets in the smallest town or the largest city under sun, moon, aurora borealis, and any color of sky you can imagine.
As the album unfolds, you are convinced you are experiencing a world foreign to anyone else's imagination. However, in the last minutes of the album you are confronted by the doctor's speech from the movie Jacob's Ladder:

"If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But, if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth."



It is in this moment that you realize you are having a Planet Of The Apes moment, where you never actually left the Earth. Nothing you could have imagined was unreal. And then you remember the Star Wars quote that opened the album: "Somewhere in space, this may all be happening right now."

And it is.



DOESN'T BELONG TO ANY STYLE OR PLACE IN TIME. This perhaps is the biggest triumph of the album and overall why I chose it. The music is composed of samples from jazz, funk, rock, hip-hop, classical, metal, folk, etc. and blended together to make something entirely new from track to track. The samples don't belong to any one genre and the final results don't either. The vocalists timbres guide each track into new stylistic territory. The overall experience of this series of vignettes is ultimately something cohesive, each revealing another part of a story and another texture in the fabric of music. There is literally something for everybody on this album.



Further, by not adhering strictly to one style, and by utilizing samples and performers from across decades, it creates something immediately as classic as it is forward thinking. It belongs to the past and the future at the same time. It draws a line along time's plane and allows us to step foot anywhere we want to simultaneously.

This album belongs to no one because it belongs to everyone.

This album belongs to nowhere because it belongs to everywhere.

This is truly (pun intended) science fiction.

The Jules Blattner Group - Birth
 
RELATED SWAPTION #1

DJ Shadow, Endtroducing

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I feel like I shouldn't need to explain this one, but I will briefly.
DJ Shadow was one half of U.N.K.L.E. for the AoTM. His debut album is a landmark recording that I still use as the example by which I compare other albums like it. I actually started with U.N.K.L.E. and came back to this a few years later, floored still with each listen.

You know what, if you don't know either album, just grab both. You won't be disappointed.
 
RELATED SWAPTION #2

Jay Some, Everybody Works

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The second of hopefully many, many albums that Melinda makes, this album was a classic and a masterpiece the day that it was released. A one-man band album recorded at home, Melinda creates the illusion of a community affair and a universe where everything is as warm and soft as it is abrasive and commanding.

This is easily my most listened to album of the last 5 years, and I would be remiss not to recommend it.
 
CURATED SWAPTION #3

Beat Happening, Black Candy

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One of my all-time favorites. I did not make this my AoTM because I wanted to cover as many stylistic bases as possible with my pick. This album is the soundtrack to being a weird 5-year-old kid and everyday is summer and every night is Halloween. It's as playful as it is dark, absolutely the darkest album they made. But there isn't a single second of the 30 minutes. It takes to listen to this that I would change and I come back to it at three or four times a year. If you don't know, now you know :)

Here's a photo of Krist Novoselic, someone who always knew.

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The past several AotMs I have been enjoying with a drink. This month's record I have been a bit stumped, so in the name of psyence, I did some experimenting.

1oz vodka
2oz black currant liqueur
Top with tonic (trying to add bubbles)

Turned out fairly sweet, but good!

As for the music, I already have and enjoy a few of DJ Shadow's records, so this does fit into my collection perfectly. Glad to have picked it up upon your recommendation! 🍸

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