The Official Needles and Grooves 1001 Album Generator Project (aka Preachin’ about the Preachers if today’s selection sucks)

I never spent as much time with Sault as I should. Shame that maybe Inflo sucks although that article raises a whole lot of questions. Anyhow, this is a great album and really is a companion with Untitled (Rise). The first Trump administration did result in some pretty awesome music - like this. So maybe we’ll get more. I do like the trend of R&B artists taking up the social consciousness that we saw in the seventies with releases like this and Solange’s A Seat at the Table, D’Angelo’s Black Messiah and Adrian Younge’s American Negro.
 
Little bit of a take here, this album has yet to really click with me. I was introduced to the group through this:


I grabbed Wildflower and love it. I’m not sure I’ve ever listened to the newer one.
 
4/1/25
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The Avalanches - Since I Left You



* Original album ends at track 18


I still remember picking this one up on CD at The Chicago Virgin Mega Store while up on a weekend visit to a buddy’s dorm, he had just started at DuPaul that fall. I bought this and Ben Kwellers’s Sha Sha both turned out to be absolute winners.

I do want to point out as good as this album is there are a few different iterations as the bigger the album got the more they lost rights so samples. So while the streaming version is still very good. The Zomba Promo version is the definitive and best version of the album.

 
Little bit of a take here, this album has yet to really click with me. I was introduced to the group through this:


I grabbed Wildflower and love it. I’m not sure I’ve ever listened to the newer one.

I'm kind of in the same boat. I've always had trouble listening to this one as it just feels like a bunch of samples thrown together. Wildflower is probably the one I've listened to the least. The newer one is actually my favorite one to listen to because I like all of the collaborations. It's a very different feel from this one. Maybe this will be the listen where this one clicks.
 
I actually really enjoyed my listen last night. I think having some time to decouple my expectations helped. It really is a different animal from Wildflower. It borders on Daft Punk-y.
Yeah TBH, I was super disappointed in their follow up releases since they were so different from Since I Left You. The Zomba Promo version is even more ornate than the versions you are likely familiar with.

Also, not sure if the All Music review touches on this but Since I Left You was originally developed to be a concept album. Chater described its initial theme as a love story, "an international search for love from country to country. The idea of a guy following a girl around the world and always being one port behind. And that was just because we had all these records from all over the world, and we'd like to use all that stuff." The concept album idea was abandoned when the group felt they should not make their themes too obvious.
 
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