Favorite Albums/Recent Spins
Evangelic Girl Is A Gun - Yeule (Ninja Tune, 2025)
Genre: Alternative/Electronic
The summary: The fourth album from singer/songwriter/producer/artistic polymath Nat Ćmiel see her distilling the electronics of her first two albums Serotonin II and Glitch Princess with the shoedaze/grunge elements heard on 2023's softscars, and then some. Acoustic guitars and syntheizers share sonic space on "Saiko" and "1967", and Nat uses her natural voice more often than not, saving her trademark effects to make more impact when called for. The only real complaint comes from the length of this album: All of Nat's long-playing efforts to date have averaged 40 minutes or so; this one is under the 33 minute mark, and the closing track "Skullcrusher" suddenly ends when you're expecting Nat to go full slow-burn headbanger. But Nat has always teased what direction she intended her next album to go in on previous albums, so perhaps that track is a tease of what album number five will sound like?
Flaunt It! - Sigue Sigue Sputnik (Manhattan/EMI, 1986)
Genre: Electronic
Not too many people wanted to take this album, this band, or their music seriously when it first dropped. The hype surrounding the band at the time may be partly to blame for that -- The story was, ex-Generation X bassist Tony James had roped in five unknowns, then allegedly had them learn their assigned instruments (vocals, guitar, two drummers, and a keyboardist running samples and sequencers; Mr. James himself played "space bass" on a Roland guitar controller). Talk of selling ad space between songs on their album (which they did) and trying to con Sony into paying an endorsement fee to the band for showing Sony products on the sleeve of one of their singles (which Sony didn't go for, apparently). Posing not just as a band but as a cultural corporation offering everything from records to videogames to cybersex. A People magazine article on the band even dissed the band's fanbase (potential and otherwise) as "tineared".
The only problem with those assumptions? The music deserved more respect than that. Tony James may have claimed in interviews that Sigue Sigue Sputnik was about "style over substance", but you don't bring in a heavyweight like synth pioneer Giorgio Moroder to produce your debut album if there isn't any substance in the first place. Tony's musical vision for the band was Suicide, the legendary duo of vocalist Alan Vega (RIP) and keyboardist Martin Rev, if they had been blessed with a million-dollar recording budget and the presence of Moroder in the producer's chair. And they nailed it: Pulsing synth bass, sloganeering lyric sung with an Elvis inflection, samples of classical recordings, sound effects, and movie dialogue, percolating electronic drumbeats... forget about it. This was solid stuff. Too bad they didn't get to buy EMI, as they prophecized on the B-side of "21st Century Boy" and at the end of Side Two of the album -- who knows how things would have gone if that had happened? Maybe the ages of Napster, iTunes, and streaming would have happened fifteen years sooner? Yep, Sigue Sigue Sputnik were ahead of their time back then, and their music still sounds ahead of its time forty years later.
Cherry Red Records issued a four-CD box set devoted to this album a few years ago. Check it out.
One note: the commercials from the original album can be heard on streaming and download, but they aren't on the Cherry Red box set (except for the band's own "Sputnik Corporation" promos).