Excellent Introductions: for those who want to get acquainted (or reacquainted) with the way records used to be made
If you’re a fan of the way albums were once made – often wonderfully conceptual from start to end – and you truly appreciated the way artists approached making music from the 1960s to the 1990s, you’ll appreciate the clever concept track Introducing The Bands.
The song is made up of 14 favourite album openers, all curated, edited and mixed by Cream magazine editor Antonino Tati in homage to the lost art of music making.
Starting off softly with The Beatles – as Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band tune their instruments and the crowd makes its way into the theatre (of course), the opening strains of this ‘opener of openers’ soon sees U2’s Zooropa sinisterly competing with the Fab Four’s optimistic strings and insistence that it was indeed Pepper who taught the bands to play.
Nineties darlings Suede soon take the mantle, teaching us a thing or two about a true show opener – literally taking over from Bowie and segueing spookily into Pink Floyd (for sure!), followed by Eurythmics (a jaunty surprise).
As ’80s drum machine and synths compete with classic Beethoven these wind down to the twinkling keys of Tori Amos’ piano beautifully weaving in – this particular solo consisting of just six notes of Tori’s Pretty Good Year – hundreds of copies of the one sample randomly sprinkled in WAV form, some then strategically repositioned, others letting the whirling dervishes of important musical notes do their thing.
Something somewhat sinister again this way comes as Bowie treks from Station to Station, his notes seemingly mimicked by Marilyn Manson, his iteration getting stuck in the machine before Björk shapeshifts things back for one undefiant statement.
Thompson Twins try to bring things to an old New Romantic level and all goes gorgeously melancholic again as Art Of Noise subtly warn that nature – and quite possibly the world – may soon be disappearing into the ether if the machines do have their way over man.
Tune into this 15-minute mini opus of remarkable album openers and you’ll realise why each artist kicked their original LPs off in such bold, respective ways. I’m sure every artist insists on the first song on Side A being importantly epic, if not a necessary anesthesia to lull the senses for a moment.
Immersive audio trickery that tells a dystopian story that might well lead to a utopia of sorts, depending on whose doing the controlling by 2050. Which is when you might listen back at this and realise it was all right there in the music all along.
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
