Phonomancy Mixtape 3: The Holy Dark

Phonomancy Mixtape #3: The Holy Dark

1. Tom Waits - "Way Down in the Hole" - Franks Wild Years


AWHENYA WAWK THREW TH' GAHDEN! YEW GOTTA WAHTCH YAW BACK!

Nowadays best known as the theme to Possible-Best-Show-Ever The Wire, with a different version for each of its five seasons, the original version by demon-voiced troubadour Tom Waits was used to open Season 2, which focused on drug smuggling and was devised by the creator to be "a mediation on the death of work and the betrayal of the American working class". Fittingly, Waits's version is sinister and understated, with gentle tambourine rattles at the very back underscoring the slinky horn section, and features the man himself in fine voice, demanding his procession fear God and All His Angels like a preacher in a cheap white suit. No less is expected from Waits, the poet laureate of America's seedy blue-collar underbelly.

2. Peter Gabriel - "Come Talk to Me" - Us

I've already talked about this before with regards to Bon Iver's cover, so I won't go into too much detail here. The original does contain everything you need to know about Peter Gabriel - bizarrely beautiful lyrics that sound like an Eliot poem ("With reptile tongue/the lightning lashes/towers built to last", "The earthly power/sucks shadowed milk/from sleepy tears undone"), a massive arrangement that draws upon world music and overstretches itself (it opens with bagpipes, features an African choir, and somehow crams a duduk solo before the song's out), and a big emotional plea to ground it all. This is what saves Gabriel from merely being pretentious - he sings with genuine love and passion.

One final comment: the lyrics make more sense for this than Bon Iver's, considering it's about Gabriel trying to reach through to his daughter, rather than a lover as Justin Vernon appears to be.

3. The Rolling Stones - "Gimme Shelter" - Let it Bleed

There's probably a High Canon of songs associated with the Vietnam War by now, and I'd be very surprised if this isn't in there. Written and recorded during the American campaign, it's dark and moody like a gathering thunderstorm, with Jagger and Merry Clayton singing of an oncoming hurricane of bullets and napalm and screaming babes. It's just so...ominous and foreboding; I can almost smell the sweat and Agent Orange. The song really belongs to Clayton, who allegedly suffered a miscarriage after laying down the vocals. It's just so powerful and brilliant, the Stones have tried to fill the gap with Florence Welch, Mary J. Blige and (most bafflingly of all) Lady Gaga, but - as with so many things - the original just can't be topped.

4. Gackt - "Birdcage" - Crescent

A few years ago, I was crazy into J-rock. It was melodic, it was daring, it was grandiose; goddamnit, this is what rock was meant to be! The obsession petered out a while ago, due to a few factors: 1) My discovering the classics of rock and pop; 2) All those melodramatic ballads where the singer shrieks over an orchestra tended to blur together; 3) X Japan taking too fucking long with that comeback album. (Seriously, any day now guys.)

Gackt was one of my favourite musicians during this time, and while I don't listen to him that much, he still earns a place in my iPod. He's like the Japanese David Bowie - androgynous and artsy, capable of elevating films by his mere presence, and more than willing to try new things musically. Crescent, his 2003 masterpiece, is the best example of this, an eclectic mix of folk, prog, hard and art rock. "Birdcage" is unusual on its own merits - it starts as a gentle acoustic, and then, around the 2:20 mark, a squall of electric guitar enters, and it turns into a completely different song, all high-tempo drums and manic violin. It works surprisingly well and builds to a nice conclusion, guided along by Gackt's melodramatic lyric.

5. Scott Walker - "The Seventh Seal" - Scott 4

The doomed magnum opus of Walker's time in the 60s. Consisting entirely of self-penned material, Scott 4 failed to chart anywhere, despite its composer's status as pop music's premiere brooding artist; given that it was released under his birth name of Noel Scott Engel, it probably isn't that surprising. While I love this record, it does lean towards the self-indulgent a few times, and I can sort of see why the few who did buy it might have been jaded. There aren't any major pop hooks, the songs just kind of drift in their own little worlds. Scott was studying Gregorian chant and lieder (German romantic songs) while working on it, making them more European than his other work at the time, and hinting at his modern albums that lead the viewer into little universes of their own.

"The Seventh Seal" is in the same vein. The melodic structure of the verses remains constant throughout, with the accompaniment gradually unfolding into a more storming, rousing Spaghetti Western-esque backdrop. Not the one I'd have chosen for a song that's literally a re-telling of Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece, but hey, it works. This was the first Scott Walker song I ever heard, and it won me over right away. It's self-indulgent and ambitious, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

6. Gackt - "Mizérable" - The Sixth Day: Single Collection


Gackt's debut single, this version is from a 2004 compilation and was re-recorded to match his deepened voice (probably due to his smoking habit). I have to say I prefer this one over the original, since Gackt is better as a baritone with occasional bursts of tenor-ness, and it makes him distinct among the many, many, many J-rock pretty boys out there.

Goddamn do I love these strings. I've toyed with the idea of learning the violin for a while now, and I think this song is why - they give the song a strong opening, they're lush and romantic when they need to be and become crazy awesome at about 2:48, just as energetic as a guitar solo.

7. David Bowie - "Where Are We Now?" - The Next Day

I remember getting the news from this in the morning, checking Twitter then Facebook then the official Bowie page to confirm that no, this isn't a put-on, the Dame is coming back to music, he did it in a way that nobody saw coming, and you can get the new song right now. Having gotten used to the idea of Bowie never releasing new material after Reality in 2003, this was like Christ coming back on the third day for me. I was so happy.

Bowie's choice of a lead-off single, "Where Are We Now?", was an unusual choice - it's a slow-tempo ballad from an album mostly dominated by rock n' roll, it doesn't have obvious (or even any) commercial appeal, and his voice is frail and plaintive. Some assumed his fragile vocals were signs he wasn't up for a comeback, but he's been peddling that voice out for a while now. This one took a while to warm up to, to get used to and identify all the textures and layers within, but oh boy was it worth it. Poignant, sad, yet hopeful, it's a sign that Bowie has aged gracefully, and that his music has evolved and matured with him.

8. The Smiths - "How Soon is Now?" - Hatful of Hollow

Everyone has a Smiths phase when they're young. They just had this knack of encompassing the heartaches and tribulations of being a bright young thing within a series of perfect pop songs. Yes, as much as I dislike that pretentious miserable contrarian old sod Morrissey, his lyrics are some of the best I've heard. "It takes guts to be gentle and kind" is my creed.

"How Soon is Now?" is just the best synthesis of everything great about The Smiths - Johnny Marr's sterling vibrato guitar work, and Morrissey's artful, passionate writing. A lot of Morrissey's work has connections to gay culture, but this is so universal; whether it's a guy from Manchester bursting to come out, or a disenfranchised girl in Sussex wanting someone anyone to notice her, it fits together so nicely.

9. Kanye West ft. Lupe Fiasco - "Touch the Sky" - Late Registration

Kanye West is the idiot savant of rap music. In interviews, he has no filter, no little angel on his shoulder to stop him saying absolute clunkers and taking potshots at his contemporaries, and I don't think I'll truly get what he sees in Kim Kardashian and what makes him think, "Y'know what? She'll totally never leave me!" As a musician, though? He's one of the best producers in the game, more than making up for his weak flow and endearingly banal lines. Let me put it this way - for a while, I didn't listen to a lot of hip-hop, and I rarely bought whole albums. Come My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, I purchased the whole thing.

Late Registration is the second part of what's referred to roughly as the "College Dropout Trilogy" of Kanye albums, coming in between The College Dropout and Graduation. Kanye definitely stepped his game up for the sophomore effort - he brought in film composer Jon Brion to create a more intricate textured sound, got in some top players in music (Jamie Foxx, Adam Levine, Cam'ron, Nas and Jay-Z) to make guest appearances, and added some pretty funny skits about the fictional fraternity Broke Phi Broke (WE AIN'T GOT IT!), who take pride in having no money or girlfriends.

"Touch the Sky" opens with one hell of a bang - a slowed-down sample of "Movin' On Up" by Curtis Mayfield that gives the song the right amount of opulence and cool. The lyrics themselves are your typical rags-to-riches narrative, coloured by Kanye's trademark ego ("I was havin' nervous breakdowns/Like 'Man, these niggas that much better than me?'") - decent, but nothing remarkable. Then Lupe Fiasco swoops in and runs away with the track, referencing Lupin III, Thundercats and Mrs Butterworth's syrup in 16 bars, seemingly without effort. Awesome.

(Also, if you're one of those people who joke about how rap is spelt with a silent 'C', do me a favour and punch yourself in the face.)

10. John Cale - "Hallelujah" - I'm Your Fan

Ah, back before "Hallelujah" was touched by The X Factor and everyone grew really fucking tired of it. I'm willing to bet most, if not all of you, first heard this in Shrek, and were perplexed as to why this version wasn't on the soundtrack. John Cale's cover first appeared closing out a Leonard Cohen tribute album by French music magazine Les Inrockuptibles, and it's Cale's piano arrangement that has proved the most enduring - it formed the basis of Jeff Buckley's ever-popular cover. Where Cohen sounded beaten down and weary on the original, Cale sings with haunting sincerity. Where Cohen's moves at a funereal tempo, Cale's has a steady drive to it. The original is like a gospel, with percussion, choir, bass and keyboard; Cale's is a simple piano hymn sung by a devout believer.

Phonomancy Mixtape 2: Ladytron

Well, the first "mixtape" seemed to go alright, so let's try it again. In celebration of International Women's Day, and taking inspiration from Phonogram: The Singles Club, all the tracks featured are ones by female artists; all of you about to come in going "but where's international men's day jack you gender-traitor", go face the fucking wall.

Phonomancy Mixtape #2: Ladytron

1) Arianne - "Komm, süsser Tod" - The End of Evangelion


Another soundtrack choice, this one coming from The End of Evangelion, aka the Final Boss of Anime. An  alternate true well, definitely an ending of sorts to the apocalyptic mecha TV show Neon Genesis Evangelion, it's a feature-length animated film where the fate of the world rests in the hands of a manic depressive 14 year old and his godlike giant robot. Without giving too much away, it goes about as well as you'd expect, with all manner of lurid hyperviolent psychotic chaos breaking out.

And it's all scored to a pretty little pop ditty (unusually for an anime, this song is entirely in flawless English and is played in End of Evangelion with no subtitles for Japanese audiences). There's not much about this that's completely original - the organ at 0:24 is similar to Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale", and the big chorus sounds an awful lot like the singalong part of "Hey Jude" - but it works as a slice of morbid melancholy pop, given wings by Arianne Schreiber's gorgeous singing voice. Despite its pleasant piano-drums-strings backing, the narrator sings about a deathwish, a desire to fade away and for the world to end. Even the title, borrowed from Bach, translates to "Come, Sweet Death". Arianne wants to die, and she couldn't be more bubbly about it. It's really quite disturbing.

Now everybody sing along! "It all comes TUMBLING DOWN TUMBLING DOWN TUMBLING DO~OWN!"

2) Kate Bush - "This Woman's Work" - The Sensual World


It's a source of pride for me that one of the most influential female musicians of modern times (if not the most) comes from my hometown of Bexley. Despite all the legions of clones and imitators in her wake, Kate Bush still stands without compare, her crown still untouched. As ostentatious and "artsy" as her work can be, like Peter Gabriel, her music never comes across as pretentious because a) she commits to it entirely, and b) she's really, really damn good at it.

The Sensual World saw Bush continue to explore her artistic palette, what with songs about unrequited love,  Molly Bloom from Ulysses, and going on a date with a man who turns out to be Hitler. There's nothing like side 2 of Hounds of Love, but it's a solid album regardless, and comes with this rather beautiful track about childbirth. Featured in the John Hughes film She's Having a Baby (not one of Hughes' finest moments, admittedly), the song is unusual since, despite the female vocalist, it's from the point of view of the film's male lead, played by Kevin Bacon, as he waits for his child to be born and hopes his wife will be alright. Bush brings it home with an octave-spanning vocal that never feels forced or mannered. Sublime.

3) Yoko Shimomura - "Scherzo di notte" - Kingdom Hearts Original Soundtrack


Say what you will about the Kingdom Hearts series, like how it's stopped really being about Disney properties and how the newer games have appalling storytelling; the music has always been top-notch, and this is one of my favourite tracks. Having spent most of my childhood trying in vain to complete the Hollow Bastion level, the soundtrack is now ingrained firmly into my brain, especially the battle theme "Scherzo di Notte" (Italian for "Joke of the Night"). An elegant rousing melody with a dramatic string section and piano coming in at just the right time.

4) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds & Kylie Minogue - "Where the Wild Roses Grow" - Murder Ballads


This one's kinda pushing it since Nick Cave plays just as big a part in this as Minogue, being one of the narrators, but the focus is always on the woman, the tragic Eliza Day, so it gets in. The UK has Kylie as something of a patron pop goddess, so it came to a surprise when I learnt how adored she is overseas, particularly the States where - as a lesser-known pop star - she has the same amount of indie cred as European artists like Robyn and Annie.

Between her cameo in Leos Carax's bizarrely beautiful love letter to cinema Holy Motors and this song, Minogue has earned that cred. The song's parent album, Murder Ballads, is full of songs old and new about spilling someone else's blood, and like Komm, süsser Tod, the dissonance between its lovely cinematic musical backing and its dark haunting lyrics makes it all the more disturbing. A song about a mad young man beating his lover's head in with a rock to keep her forever beautiful doesn't deserve to sound so beautiful, and it isn't helped by how Minogue sounds so innocent and naïve here.

5) Hikaru Utada - "Passion" - Ultra Blue


More Kingdom Hearts, this one being the theme song for the seco technically third game if you include Chain of Memories. Japanese-American superstar Hikaru Utada recorded English versions of her songs for the international releases, and both "Simple & Clean" and "Sanctuary" are good songs, but they're trumped somewhat by the original Japanese.

Recently I've developed a taste for electro-pop, but I liked "Passion"/"Sanctuary" ever since I first booted up Kingdom Hearts II many moons ago, with Utada's ethereal vocals about moving on despite still clinging to the past complementing the militaristic drums and mournful strains of electric guitar. Maybe we can consider this Year Zero for "Jack's Sudden Weird Liking of Synth Pop". Both versions are very atmospheric: it opens with breathy backing vocals and spacy synths, then the guitar kicks in and it explodes into life, the near-constant presence of percussion adding weight and gravity to a track awash with airy synthesizer and pulsing guitar chords. The use of reversed English in the chorus and the bridge (with "Sanctuary" using it a wee bit more) is a delightfully weird touch and only adds to the idea that we're somewhere completely alien, yet beautiful.

What edges "Passion" out as the victor over "Sanctuary" for me is Utada serving as her own choir in the choruses through multi-tracked vocals; it just adds a little something extra.

6) Kate Bush - "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)" - Hounds of Love


More Kate Bush? Aren't you guys lucky?

Hounds of Love came out in 1985 when Bush was being a better David Bowie than the actual Bowie, who was out recording mediocre tripe like Tonight, and it leads with its best foot forward in "Running Up That Hill", a wonderfully atmospheric track with haunting synthesizers, a driving beat, and another typically strong Bush vocal about trying to further connect with a significant other. The couple are so scared of hurting the other during intimacy, the woman thinks about making the titular deal with God to swap their roles, so they can better understand each other - an inspired idea. A lot of Hounds of Love is inspired by Low, what with its attempts at crafting alien atmospheres and a second side of instrumentals, but as much as I love Low, it never had something as great as "Running Up That Hill".

7) Kate Bush - "Wuthering Heights (New Vocal)" - The Whole Story

This song is awesome, and I will hear no word against it. This is also the best version.

8) Arcade Fire - "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" - The Suburbs



One of those wonderful Arcade Fire tracks where Régine Chassagne takes lead vocal, "Sprawl II" is possibly the finest track on what is already a pretty damn fine album about trying to escape the stagnation of suburbia. The arrangement is wonderfully baroque, with burbling synths pushing it forward and I'm suddenly aware this is just one of many tracks in this post that includes mentions of synthesizers. In Arcade Fire's defense, they rarely use them. There's something retro about the track, from the odd disco feel of the music to Chassagne's Debbie Harry-esque performance; it's a time bubble of the past generation, where disco and New Wave were king.

Every time I listen to this, I'm amazed at how good Régine is. She starts the song singing timidly about her small-minded parents/neighbours/asshole high school classmates ("They heard me singing and they told me to stop/"Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock"), but as it goes on, she becomes full of energy and fire, laughing at them for being so stuck in the past, repeating the opening line with fresh defiance. For a while, I didn't get the hype behind Arcade Fire; then I heard this, and it all clicked.

9) Anthony Hamilton & Elayna Boynton - "Freedom" - Django Unchained



I love Django Unchained. I really do.

The soundtrack is one of many reasons, chiefly because a Tarantino film soundtrack is going to be 24-karat gold quality, both with his choice of existing film music and the original songs. "Freedom", a duet by Anthony Hamilton and Elayna Boynton, is one of the latter, and boy is it a beauty. It sounds like a 60s folk-soul ballad without feeling too much like a throwback, and both singers give powerhouse performances. In light of today, I'm going to single out Boynton, whose warm smoky voice sounds tired yet hopeful, but Hamilton's ace as well. If you don't have the Django Unchained soundtrack, or at the very least don't have this song, there's something wrong with you.

10) Metric - "Breathing Underwater" - Synthetica


And rounding off this post is yet another synth-pop song with a female lead vocalist! Gosh, my playlist sure has a lot of variety, right?

"Breathing Underwater" almost feels full to burst at times, opening with what sounds like a video game console booting off and bombarding the listener with synthesizers, keyboards, guitars, and probably a little bit of the kitchen sink too. It almost approaches stadium rock, the kind of genre U2 have been successfully cultivating for years (and often snidely referred to as "corporate rock") that relies on a big arena to get the most out of. Having not seen Metric live, I can't comment on its effectiveness, but this is the best kind of stadium rock, in the same vein as "With or Without You"; it's bursting with life.

Phonomancy Mixtape 1

Somehow, in the past year, I've become a massive music geek. In retrospect, this isn't too much of a leap forward; ever since I got my first iPod, I've always had a pair of headphones on me, and now the world without music seems so drab and dull. Now, I'm actively seeking out new bands and acts, and even went to my first gig on Wednesday (Chvrches at the ICA, and they were uh-mazing).

The result is an iPod that has, at the time of writing, 1694 songs. This translates to a couple of days worth of music, which is more than I can probably get through, like a smorgasbord the length of Oxford Street; sounds great, but there's a good chance you'll collapse before the end. Out of these 1694, I've gathered a playlist of 500 songs, constantly changing and very, very eclectic. Genres on here range from grandiose cinema soundtracks to slick electro-pop, from hip-hop dripping in braggadocio to rock of all stripes. As a writing exercise, I'll post ten songs from here every week on Friday - what the song is, why I like it, and why it's worthy of your time. Hope you enjoy.

Phonomancy Mixtape #1

1) Scott Walker - "Mathilde" - Scott

Oh, we're off to a good start. My last Phonomancy post was me extolling the virtues of dear Mr Walker, and as starting points go, you can't go wrong with the first track from his first solo album, an English-language cover of Jacques Brel's "Mathilde". What's so extraordinary about this is that Scott had just come out from a teen idol band whose repertoire mostly consisted of covers of lovelorn ballads given sumptuous Spector-esque orchestration. Then they disband, and the most beloved of them releases an album full of gloomy ballads about death, prostitution, the goings-on in a shared house, and - leading the charge - a grand charging number about a man in a sadomasochistic romance, who fears the titular Mathilde and yet, in a repeat of the first verse, embraces her, eagerly telling his mother "Your baby boy's gone back to Hell!" Hard to see any of the current wave of teenyboppers pulling that off.

The original French version is ace as well, but that's because Jacques Brel was a god and could do whatever he liked. The arrangement there is mostly piano-led with a horn section adding bite, but the arrangement by Wally Stott (later Angela Morley) opens with a timpani roll, segues into a triumphant brass section, and later adds Hitchcockian strings as Scott whimpers "My hands, they start to shake again/When you remember all the pain", his mental shell peeling away. Stott's arrangement work would always come closer to truly replicating the Wall of Sound better than the Walker Brothers' albums, which still did a sterling job considering they were comprised of British session musicians.

Scott believed his solo album would flop; John's effort, If You Go Away, had disappeared without a trace, and the doomy young Mr Walker always had the least desire to be a pop star. Somehow, a sombre baroque pop album by a troubled musician ended up being what the public wanted.

2) Japandroids - "Fire's Highway" - Celebration Rock



Canada seem to keep producing good alt-rock bands - Arcade Fire, Tegan and Sara, Metric, all of these have discographies worth your time. It's a bit early for me to say if Japandroids can join that Elite Indie Corps, given they have two albums and I've only just started listening to them, but they're definitely on the shortlist.

Really, if you name your album something like Celebration Rock, it needs to do two things: it needs to be about having a good time; and it needs to rock. And Japandroids succeed admirably on that count, not just on this song but the whole album, which opens and closes with the sounds of fireworks in the sky. This isn't just about a good night out, it's about every good night out. The guitarwork is so relentlessly energetic, you can't help but start dancing like a dork to it. The percussion keeps it surging forward. The lyrics are a call-to-arms to fuck everything else and just enjoy the moment, about letting it overtake you. It's elemental - the narrator's blown away by gale force winds, and finds salvation in a girl with "a soul of fire and eyes of flame that overwhelm her tender frame".

No, this isn't the deepest thing in the world, the lyrics are ridiculous, and an album about one's right to party does eventually get tiring. But goddamn it, this is fun.

3) London Music Works - "Requiem for a Tower" - Requiem for a Tower | Dream


The Music to Every Modern Film Trailer Ever™. The original version is "Lux Aeterna", composed by Clint Mansell for Darren Arofonsky's Requiem for a Dream, better known as Super-Smile-Happy-Fun-Time to those with a bitter sense of humour. I'll admit, that version will always be the victor: the Kronos Quartet give it the proper sense of discomfort, tragedy and of falling into a pit of despair that the film needs while still sounding full. The fact it isn't as overplayed as "Requiem" probably helps as well.

Still, this isn't to be sniffed at. It takes considerable arrangement to change a sad disturbing composition into a rousing blood-pumper, even if it was to get audiences excited about Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. If "Lux Aeterna" was the mental apocalypse, the ever-consuming black hole of depression, "Requiem", with its full orchestra and choir, is the actual apocalypse; that moment when the hordes of Hell are at your back, and you're the only thing that stands between them and all you hold dear.

Also, essay writing becomes a manner of life and death when you have it playing.

4) Plan B - "ill Manors" - ill Manors


This one had me hooked right from its opening frantic burst of strings, the musical equivalent of a pure shot of adrenaline, and which are sampled from Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. Shostakovich completed it in 1941 as a tribute to the city of Leningrad for holding out against the invading German forces, and is very much a middle finger to a giant faceless power looking to consume and assimilate all it approaches.

So you can see why Ben Drew, alias Plan B, thought it would be useful for a protest song (the strings were already appropriated by Peter Fox's "Alles neu", but I think Drew would have looked up where it came from as well). 2012 was a golden year for him - having gotten the mainstream's attention with his blue-eyed soul/R'n'B crooner concept album The Defamation of Strickland Banks, Drew switched gears back for ill Manors, the best-selling soundtrack to the film of the same name, which he also wrote and directed. An intelligent, perceptive young man, Drew wrote the title track in response to the 2011 London riots, viciously laying into Britain's failure to truly provide for its disenfranchised youth. He weaponises the idea of the chav, the estate kid, sneeringly telling the listener everything they read in the Daily Mail is true "so stay where you're safest/there's no need to step foot out the 'burbs", and for every chav to "be the joker/play the fool". Middle England doesn't care about you, so you might as well live up to the hype, right?

As a middle-class kid from a Kent suburb, I'm definitely not the target audience, but listening to this, I can't help but feel pumped.

5) David Bowie - "I'm Afraid of Americans (NIN V.1 Mix)" - Earthling



It was only a matter of time before Bowie showed up on here. The 90s are largely a forgotten period for the Dame, but then to the public, any time past 1983 probably counts as a lost period. People still remember the Let's Dance album, but have you ever heard "Blue Jean" on the radio? Following the collapse of Tin Machine, where he recharged his creative batteries and make us all suffer for it, Bowie began stretching his wings and adding new elements from the world of music, particularly electronica and techno, into his work, to mixed results. Earthling is one such offering, and is often thought of as Bowie's drum n' bass album even though not many of the tracks take after it.

"I'm Afraid of Americans" is a good example. Composed by Bowie and Brian Eno, and originally intended for his rock-opera album Outside, the original track is an aggressive slice of industrial rock full of buzzsaw guitars, synth-strings and white noise. This is a remix by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and where the original frequently goes off the rails, this is more like controlled, tightly controlled insanity; the bassline and synthesiser dominate, the chorus changes in intensity as the song progresses until all hell breaks loose towards the end and the drum machines come in DRRDRRDRRDRRDRRDRRDRRDRRDRR, before they all fall away to a restrained bass and Bowie numbly going "God is an American".

Even if you don't like Nine Inch Nails, this remix should leave you with no doubt that Reznor is a fantastic composer.

6) Björk - "Army of Me" - Post


One of the newer additions to the playlist. Björk is someone I've been meaning to get into, considering she's basically Kate Bush turned up to eleven, and "Army of Me" seems a good place to start. For someone who has a reputation as being away with the fairies, this track has a surprising amount of steel, opening with feedback and seguing into one hell of an industrial bassline, complemented by her deadpan crooning. It sounds like an outtake from the Blade Runner soundtrack, and it's icily cool.

7) Bon Iver - "Come Talk to Me" - Flume/Come Talk to Me


Peter Gabriel released Scratch My Back in 2010, an album where he covered various artists with no instrumentation other than an orchestra. It was a diverse range - Elbow, Paul Simon, Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Lou Reed, and Bon Iver. Scratch My Back was planned to have a sister album, I'll Scratch Yours, where all the artists he covered would respond with a Peter Gabriel cover, but with some of the acts bowing out, the project dissolved into a series of one-off singles containing both covers.

In this case, Gabriel's cover of "Flume" was matched with Bon Iver's cover of "Come Talk to Me", a song about growing emotional distance set in an esoteric...nightmare-scape? References to "shadowed milk" and deserts transforming into jackals mean your guess is good as mine. In true Gabriel tradition, this becomes strangely beautiful with the right arrangement, and Bon Iver's suits that, being a lovely mix of banjos, synthesised chords, acoustic guitars, and voiceless chants. If anything, it makes the bizarre setting more mystical; it could be a hallucination from a desert in an Alejandro Jodorowsky film.

8) Yasushi Ishii - "A World Without Logos" - Hellsing Original Soundtrack - RAID


This may sound like English on the track, but it's basically just Japanese musicians scat-singing anything that might vaguely be called Anglophonic. The original Hellsing anime was not particularly strong, with a subpar horror script married to ugly limited animation, but soundwise? It was fucking ace. An English dub with actual British voice actors for a show set in London, and Crispin Freeman's delightful turn as everyone's favourite mass-murdering vampire assassin Alucard? What's not to love?

If nothing else, the makers were going for "cool", and there's not much cooler than the blues. A nifty Barrelhouse piano riff anchors the song, the ghostly wails after the first chorus are a nice touch, and then you have what sounds like a haunted organ breakdown followed by whistling synth chords. In short? This is awesome.

9) Scott Walker - "Farmer in the City" - Tilt

And here we are, back to Walker. Or rather, moving forward to latter-day Walker. Having outgrown the rich baroque instrumentation after years and years of doing contractually obligated albums that nobody bought, Scott moved to the sound of Bowie and Eno circa "Heroes" for a track on the last Walker Brothers album, which marked his beginnings as a modernist composer. Yet the ghost of 60's Scott still clings - the sound is as full as ever, but it's not a ray of golden light; it's funereal, stark, sorrowful.

As is par for the course with Walker, the lyrics are abstract stuff that feels like what would have happened if T. S. Eliot turned to songwriting: if you can figure out the meaning of "Can't go by a man/with brain grass/go by his long/long eye gas", you stand to win a major prize! "Farmer in the City" is loosely inspired by a poem by Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini for his protégé and lover Ninetto Davoli - the song's subtitled "Remembering Pasolini", the song's narrator drifts from Pasolini ("Hey Ninetto, remember that dream?/We talked about it/So many times") to Davoli ("Paolo, take me with you!"), and the chant of "Do I hear 21?", combined with the rest of the lyrics, suggest someone who was drafted into the army and then left. He's a country boy in the big city, but only darkness and torment await him, so he has to flee, being careful not to run into the wrong man.

The strings are hauntingly beautiful throughout, whether they rise and fall through the main body (that "dah-DAH, dah-DAH, DAH-dah, dah-DAH" motif), or when they reach a crescendo as Scott screams how he pleads Pasolini to come back for him. The song rests on the Sinfonia of London's playing, no mean feat considering it's just a few chords repeated over and over, and the result is a work of dark beauty.

10) Queen & David Bowie - "Under Pressure"

Dun-dun-dun-dadadundun. Dun-dun-dun-dadadun-DUN-DUN. God, I love that bassline.

Hearing that and trying to figure out whether it was Queen and Bowie being awesome or Vanilla Ice's bare-faced theft for "Ice Ice Baby" is this generation's Vietnam moment, at least until the gestalt horror that is Jedward mashed the two up and now the whole system's fucked. It feels weird to get defensive about this song because it's essentially a glorified demo. This really shouldn't work when you think about it - it barely changes key, the lyrics are abstract social commenatries about how terrible it is that people live on streets, and a good chunk of it is comprised of scat-singing. It's incomplete. Yet the two acts will this into being so much more than it is by performing these two-bit lyrics with real passion and emotion. The zenith of "Under Pressure" has to be the bridge when Mercury reaches a devastating falsetto, the calls for "love! (love, love, love, love...)" echo into the aether, and Bowie sings with ferocity "insanity laughs/under pressure we're CRACKING!"

From there, it becomes a hymn, Bowie and Mercury shouting "LOVE" at the heart of the world. It's cheesy when put down in words, but it's delivered with such sincerity, especially when they talk about how "love's such an old-fashioned word", that you can't help but be swept up in it. It's big, it's ridiculous - it's everything beautiful about pop music.