____twoism

2020k wrote:sometimes I feel like I turn into way too much of a Pop Tart on Twoism. (I feel like I singlehandedly destroyed the "Twoism Classics" thread because I mentioned Lone's work on the Azealia Banks album, but, dammit Lone used to post here and Lone deserves praise for bubbling up like that).

pfft. Pop music is fine, it's just another genre of music.

Like every other genre, there's equal amounts inspired and interesting as shitty and boring.
The only reason we see more of the latter is because pop music has more exposure.

Anyone who digs at pop music simply cuz it can appeal to a wide audience has problems, and that's coming from a guy who's virtually scared of his own shadow.

Madonna is one of the more inventive pop artists, for sure, but I will agree that she became less of a figurehead and more of a trend chaser with her last few records. Kinda disappointing, because she used to have edge, but now it's kinda pathetic to see her talk about "holy water" at 56.

I was just about to say 2020, you're not a poptart, TTK is!

No but really, there isn't anything inherently wrong with something labelled Pop.

the only one i can think of now is: for wanda by a silver mt zion.
sad, yet happy and so emotially uplifting, yet downlifting.

Meddle wrote:

The Telepathic Kid wrote:I'm not just going for "good songs at the end of an album", I'm making sure that they actually are good ways to close their respective records, some what summing up what the album has said.

Sly & the Family Stone - Thank You For Talkin' To Me Africa
Blur - Battery In Your Leg
Linda Perhacs - Delicious
They Might Be Giants - End of the Tour
Fleetwood Mac - Gold Dust Woman
Beck - Ramshackle
Van Morrison - Slim Slow Slider
George Harrison - Hear Me Lord (No one counts the jam side)
Joni Mitchell - Hejira
The Unicorns - Ready to Die
Cocteau Twins - Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires

more to come maybe if I'm bored

I was going to post Beck - Ramshackle here actually. Supposedly it was the only remaining track from the version of Odelay that he otherwise completely scrapped before writing all the stuff that eventully went on to appear on the album.

Most definitely!

And as for someone who posted some St. Vincent..
"Just the Same but Brand New" off of Actor. It's perfect.

"Puncture Repair' off elbow's Leaders of the Free World. Also perfect. Kills me.

When I said awful pop stuff, I was referring to madonnas latest album. It's nowhere near as original or jawdropping as her other albums.

Ray of light is, in my opinion, one of the best pop albums I've ever heard and I would strongly recommend it to anyone. American life and Music are also amazing.actually I completely agree that Gone is a beautiful album closer.

my mistake,

and in the quoted post up there I said "Joni Mitchell - Hejira", it's actually Refuge of the Roads.
Hejira is the record which that song appears on.

Im actually suprised none has mentioned Bonobo yet! So here it goes!
Black Sands - Bonobo
It ain't hard to tell - Nas
We Are Alone In A City - The Flashbulb

Nas' Illmatic has a strong bid for best album opener and closer of all time, if we're considering the opening track to be N.Y state of mind. I don't think hip hop will ever capture the ambience of American housing projects quite like that album did, besides maybe Mobb Deep's The Infamous. Illmatic is such a monumental landmark in hip hop, and music in general, it's a shame Nas strayed so far from that jazz infused style which was so rich.

This is a very new addition.

I would not have put this sort of thing in this sort of thread most likely had I not been really attentive. Now that I've processed the Future Sound of London's "The Isness", released under the Amorphous Androgynous moniker for the most part but each version with a varying tracklist, I've realized what a great tribute to the psychedelic music of the 1960s and 1970s it is on top of being a very good slow burn. It's a love it or hate it...I don't like all of it so much but its closer is probably their best and it somehow transcends its niche and ends on a really cerebral high note.

There's a certain sense of "...oh..." when all of this music finally breaks out of its cheesy homage and a competent work of its own is heard underneath. It's not dissimilar to what that Daft Punk album from a couple years ago felt like, except that album never left its obsession/homage and drowned in it. It's like that done well.

fujee wrote:Nas' Illmatic has a strong bid for best album opener and closer of all time, if we're considering the opening track to be N.Y state of mind. I don't think hip hop will ever capture the ambience of American housing projects quite like that album did, besides maybe Mobb Deep's The Infamous. Illmatic is such a monumental landmark in hip hop, and music in general, it's a shame Nas strayed so far from that jazz infused style which was so rich.

Yeah I agree totally, Illmatic is a fucking classic. If you like the jazzy style of the album you should seriously just check out the producers of the album, Pete Rock, DJ Premier & Large Professor

So many good ones here. I will restate...

Echoes by Pink Floyd
Insight and Higher Love by Depeche Mode
Third Eye by Tool
Untitled by The Cure

I will throw in...

Black Sabbath - Into The Void - Master Of Reality (1971)
Black Sabbath - Under The Sun - Vol. 4 (1972)
Led Zeppelin - How Many More Times - Led Zeppelin I (1968)
The Flaming Lips - Slow Never Action - Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (1993) *Love those drums!*
The Comsat Angels - Our Secret - Sleep No More (1981)
The Cure - Pornography - Pornography (1982)
Fad Gadget - Arch of the Aorta - Fireside Favourites (1980)
Killing Joke - Struggle - Extremities, Dirt, and Various Repressed Emotions (1990)
King Crimson - In The Court of the Crimson King - In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)
The Moody Blues - The Balance - A Question of Balance (1970)
Tangerine Dream - Sequent C' - Phaedra (1974)
Global Communication - 12 18 - 76 14 (1994)
Zombi - Through Time - Spirit Animal (2009)
Korn - Daddy - Korn (1994)

Unison - Bjork
Happy Cycling - BoC (A serious contender for my favourite song of all time. Nuff said really)
Corsair - BoC
From One Source All Things Depend - BoC (Seriously, I think both endings to Geogaddi are pretty much perfect closers for this album. The emptiness, total despair and desolation of Corsair is just a gut wrenching way to finish, but it suits the album perfectly. But then From One Source All Things Depend is the glimmer of hope. The "everything might actually end up alright". And the way it comes after Corsair and the silence of Magic Window just makes it that much more powerful. Seriously. Two absolute classic closers in one album!)
Death and All His Friends - Coldplay
Transmission 3 - DJ Shadow (So creepy. Seriously, shiver inducing)
Life In A Glass House - Radiohead
Videotape - Radiohead
Take It or Leave It - The Strokes
Stab Variation - Tim Hecker (So epic. The sound of the universe collapsing)
Silene - Biosphere
Too Fragile to Walk On - Biosphere (This guy knows how to leave the best til last. Awesome, other-worldly ambient tracks)

I totally agree with that Coldplay song^ . Viva la vida is a really good album and that ending with Jon Hopkins is so good

Well for some synth pop/rock closers I love The Chauffeur at the end of Duran Duran's Rio.
Simple Minds - King is White and In The Crowd (One hell of a brilliant album really and still in my top 10 of all time)
Peter Gabriel - Melt - Biko

Pulse - Run Like Hell (Live version and I do think it's better than the original)
The Doors - The Doors - The End.

I happen to think all BoC's closers are brilliant really. The work perfectly for each album and leave you with that feeling.

Boxing Day Blues - Courtney Barnett

squid wrote:Death and All His Friends - Coldplay

Excellently well reminded. That song is shiver inducing and perfect from beginning to end. And the "secret" ending The Somnambulist also helps add a pinch of mystery to that finale, and a cyclical structure to the whole album. The fact that such album could come from Coldplay is pretty unreal.

Also, Biko is a good song on its own, but it did motivate Gabriel to go into his horrible, abhorrent, rip-my-eardrums-off-in-rage inducing industrialised "souvenir music" pseudo-ethnic phase. Why did he have to smear his plastic, synthetically oversweetened, industrialised bullshit on the music of other peoples? Why couldn't he just stick to Solsbury Hill?

Sorry. Rant over.

FernieCanto wrote:

squid wrote:Death and All His Friends - Coldplay

Excellently well reminded. That song is shiver inducing and perfect from beginning to end. And the "secret" ending The Somnambulist also helps add a pinch of mystery to that finale, and a cyclical structure to the whole album. The fact that such album could come from Coldplay is pretty unreal.

Yeah, I think Coldplay gets way too much flak really. Viva La Vida is a legit great album.

squid wrote: Yeah, I think Coldplay gets way too much flak really. Viva La Vida is a legit great album.

For me, Viva la Vida and A Rush of Blood to the Head are impeccable albums (especially the former), and Parachutes is a hell of a solid record as well. I wouldn't call the others bad, but I kinda stopped caring after Mylo Xyloto (I haven't even heard Ghost Stories yet). I guess they get flak because, well, they're big, and they have a mostly inoffensive (mostly harmless?) sound that moms like, but what the fuck should I be concerned about that.

It's more that they found a signature sound, and then kept to it so rigorously that all of their tracks seem to blend together into an echoey, keyboardy, and yes entirely inoffensive mass.

I don't hate them or anything, though. They're just a bit boring to me.

Aerial Boundaries wrote:I don't hate them or anything, though. They're just a bit boring to me.

And I'm more likely to take seriously later work like the album mentioned. Parachutes and A Rush of Blood are not albums I can take seriously for the same reason I can't take Oasis seriously.