Machine - Soul - Various Artists [2 CD, Amazon US]
Disc: 1
1. Robots - Kraftwerk
2. Warm Leatherette - The Normal
3. I Feel Love - Donna Summer
4. Number One Song in Heaven - Sparks
5. Electricity - Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
6. Cars - Gary Numan
7. Adrenalin - Throbbing Gristle
8. Yashar - Cabaret Voltaire
9. Planet Rock - Afrika Bambaataa
10. Jam on Revenge (The Wikki-Wikki Song) - Newcleus
11. Clear - Cybotron
12. Blue Monday - New Order
13. Strings of Life - Rhythim Is Rhythim
Disc: 2
1. Pump Up the Volume [Radio Edit] - M/A/R/R/S
2. Big Fun - Inner City
3. Enjoy the Silence [Single Mix] - Depeche Mode
4. What Time Is Love? [Live at Trancentral Mix] - The KLF
5. Little Fluffy Clouds [Dance Mix Mk I Edit] - The Orb
6. Go - Moby
7. Move Any Mountain [I.R.P. in the the Land of Oz Remix] - The Shamen
8. James Brown Is Dead [7" Version] - L.A. Style
9. Charly [Alley Cat Mix] - The Prodigy
10. Rez - Underworld
11. Life Is Sweet - The Chemical Brothers
12. Absurd [Mighty Dub Katz Vox Mix] - Fluke
13. 2 Kool 4 Skool [Short] - Überzone
14. For an Angel [PVD Angel in Heaven Radio Mix] - Paul Van Dyk
15. Godspeed [BT
A surprisingly perceptive Amazon.com review gets it right: Andrew Weatherall's "Nine O'Clock Drop" is a far superior compilation of cutting edge late 70s/early 80s music. "Machine Soul" is a bunch of tracks, many individually good, with too many previously released on innumerable other compilations; as an "odyssey" it's a dud. - Grantc, Australia
It's difficult discerning just who this collection is aimed at. Covering 25 years, "Machine Soul" regurgitates a heap of old, vaguely electronica-related commercial tunes. Anyone with even a passing interest in the pop-electronica genre would have collected these tracks years ago. As for any others, there's nothing here that would remotely interest. It's a tragic title, too: there's no flow, nor relationship, between the tracks, suggesting Rhino thinks "Machine Soul" is some clanking, grinding monstrosity. With this release, they're right.
To its defence, I like the title (from Jon Savage) and it has the smashers Clear and Strings Of Life, Planet Rock, Cars and maybe a couple of others, ...
2002, Sep 08; 14:39:
Art in Theory 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas - edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood [1 Book, Amazon US]
Since it was first published in 1992, this book has become one of the leading anthologies of art theoretical texts in the English-speaking world. This expanded edition includes the fruits of recent research, involving a considerable amount of newly translated material from the entire period, together with additional texts from the last decades of the twentieth century. The features that made the first edition so successful have been retained: The volume provides comprehensive representation of the theories, which underpinned developments in the visual arts during the twentieth century. As well as writings by artists, the anthology includes texts by critics, philosophers, politicians and literary figures. The content is clearly structured into eight broadly chronological sections, starting with the legacy of symbolism and concluding with contemporary debates about the postmodern. The editors provide individual introductions to each of the 340 anthologized texts. Material new to this expanded edition includes texts on African art, on the Bauhaus and on the re-emergent avant-gardes of the period after the Second World War. Post-modernist debates are amplified by texts on gender, on installation and performance art, and on the increasing globalization of culture.
2002, Sep 06; 23:39:
Some of the great days of disco, in 1976 and 1977, coincided with punk, but if you read any received history of popular music, you wouldn't know it. The inveterate rock bias in the music papers, magazines and academia has left much dancefloor history still undocumented. The trad agenda set by commentators in the Sixties, heavy with value judgments - glorifying the work of the Velvet Underground over Motown releases, the production skills of Brian Wilson over those of Norman Whitfield, and the social significance and songwriting talent of John Lennon rather than James Brown - persists. Clearly, too, most rock writing foregrounds lyrics, whereas most dance music works through texture, beats and effects. Back in 1976, punk set itself against disco wholeheartedly. In July 1979, at the home stadium of the Chicago White Sox baseball team, thousands of disco records were set alight while the crowd chanted 'Disco sucks, Disco sucks!' The 1989 edition of the Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music describes disco as 'a dance fad of the Seventies with a profound and unfortunate influence on popular music'. -- David Haslam [David Haslam ...]
2002, Sep 05; 22:39:
