My Favourite Albums of 2016: #15 Various Artists - Space Echo The Mystery Behind The Cosmic Sound Of Cabo Verde Finally Revealed

My 15th favourite album of the year is probably something you wouldn’t expect to see on Breaking More Waves. It’s an album of music from 350 miles off the west coast of Africa. Furthermore, it’s not new music, although it was released in 2016. It’s also a compilation. 

However, I’m making the rules here, not you – and I’ve included compilations before. In fact, Ten by Girls Aloud (their greatest hits album – and boy were there some hits on it) was fourth in this list in 2012. 

But before you even get to the music there’s plenty to love about the record. First the title. I mean, come on, who wouldn’t love an album called Space Echo – The Mystery Behind The Cosmic Sound Of Cabo Verde. It sounds so intriguing. 

Then there’s the back story of how a ship carrying Korgs, Moogs and Hammond organs that was headed for Rio de Janeiro became marooned on the São Nicolau island of Cape Verde with the crew vanished. An anti-colonial leader named Cabral asked for the retrieved instruments to be distributed equally among the archipelago’s schools and overnight the young generation of Cape Verde’s population gained access to cutting edge musical electronic equipment and inspired an explosion of newly electrified sounds in the 1970’s. Those sounds can be heard on Space Echo – The Mystery Behind The Cosmic Sound of Cabo Verde.

The result is a high energy analogue tropical synth dance party with influences that range from all over the world, not just Africa. And whilst there are electronics on the album there’s plenty of intricate guitar jives, rhythms and grooves to get you on your feet. An album of absolute jams. 

Dionisio Maio - Dia Ja Manche 

Kitsune Maison 9

The danger of hitting the skip button on a compilation album is almost inevitable. By their multi-artist nature the likelihood of enjoying every track is incredibly low. Kitsune normally score higher than most with their electro-dance-pop releases and the latest instalment - number 9 in the series - continues this pattern, although with this edition Kitsune seem to be following rather than leading; a significant number of these tracks having already gained exposure elsewhere and there is nothing radically innovative or new about any of the songs on the record. The album is in places a little less full throttle than other Kitsune compilations, the label themselves describing it as ‘snuggly, peaceful and motherly.’ That is if your mother is the type who likes synths, studio trickery and danceable beats.

Diving in there’s the slow-flo jam of Belong by Ernest Greene, aka Washed Out, a sleepy-just-waking-up moment of distant lo-fi bass bliss which stretches lazily out over the opening of the album. Also hanging around you can find laptop dudes The Twelves having a tweak of Two Door Cinema Club’s Something Good Can Work, Arthur Baker bringing back his eighties street-sound electro dance clicks and beats to the elegant pop tune Wonderful Life by Hurts and Silver Columns hitting the perfect beat (boy) with their Bronski Beat disco rave-up Brow Beaten. All of these tracks and artists have been out there for sometime now, Kitsune bringing them all together as one happy family.

Elsewhere a number of the songs sound like they’ve jumped shipped from the glossier, funkier end of an early 1980’s Now That’s What I Call Music compilation. Gamble & Burke’s Let’s Go Together (which the Breaking More Waves I Tunes bizarrely names as Gamble & Prison) is a commercial blend of sugary r’n’b flavoured soul synth pop, the kind of song that could easily clog up the Radio 1 play list as it nods its head towards Hall and Oates and Lionel Ritchie. (Go ask your dad kids) Likewise the mellow vibe of The Phoenix Alive by Monarchy is classy piece cut from the cheeseboard of division one dancefloor disco pop.

Cooler Couleur by Crookers featuring Yelle is one track not to press skip on. A hot bassy carnival stomp of a track, it’s the kind of number that makes the so called hip bloggers proclaim phrases such as “This shit is one hot jam,” or other such nonsense, but with its distant sonic relationship to Paper Planes by M.I.A it’s easy to understand why. Elsewhere Berkshire’s The Good Natured seems to have thrown away the battered keyboard borrowed from lead singer Sarah’s grandmother to deliver something electronically sharper. Your Body Is A Machine is the sound of Dubstar partying on an iceberg with its chanting melancholy robopop sound. Mention must also be given to Fenech-Soler whose infectious Calvin Harris-hands-in-the-air jabbing synths on Stop and Stare may lack a little in the originality department, but manage to succeed as a whopping floor filler. If you file your CD's in alphabetical order this one slots neatly near Faithless and Friendly Fires.

With 18 tracks, it’s inevitable that even the most ardent of Kitsune fans will be tempted to hit the skip button a few times, but there’s enough here to keep the average electro-pop connoisseur happy and dancing around their bedroom in just their pants until volume 10 is out. Nothing earth shatteringly original here, but nothing dire either.

Kitsune Maison 9 is released on the 26th April 2010.

Now That's What I Call Music - The Romanian Harvest

As fans of the Now That's What I Call Music compilations this shocking, tragic and monumentally sad video is probably the most harrowing thing we have seen all year. Watch and be moved.

Kitsune Maison Compilation 8

Do you remember that girl at school? The obscenely cool, outrageously super confident, super attractive one who all the boys fancied? Well at the age of twenty one she was a burnt out single mum, pushing a pram, attending drug dependency clinic once a week. She still got out of her council flat now and then for a night of drunken debauchery with her best friend, but even those nights out felt awkward and forced, her cool factor replaced with a hint of desperation. Sometimes when the lights were shining behind her it was possible to see what made that girl so attractive in the first place, but you had to be standing in the right location.

Rather like that girl, the French electro label Kitsune Maison compilations have always held their place as the super confident, super cool taste forming albums. But with their 8th release there are signs that things have gone a little off track. The label isn’t pushing that pram yet, but there are signs that it could happen. Kitsune’s compilations are focussed on bringing the hipster party to the home stereo, but there are a number of times on this album when the music sounds as if too much time has been spent trying to make it sound hip and not enough on bringing quality in inventiveness to the dance floor.

There are still plenty of hits, but in places the quality control is urinated away, leaving things sounding cheap and shabby. Have Kitsune Maison taken their eye off things a little? Maybe. This is the sound of electro pop getting a little too drunk, sliding up against the wall of the nightclub, flashing its knickers and snogging the first laptop carrying cool kid that passes by.

That’s not to say it’s full of duffers though. Memory Tapes create something fresh and dreamy with Bicycle. It pedals its way with a blissed out groove and adds snatches of New Order / Cure like guitar together with a choir sample over its trippy loopy backing. Maybe it’s more of a home listening track than a club banger, but it’s a languidly beautiful tune. Our only complaint is that it would have been better positioned right at the end of the album. This Momentary by Delphic with its washes of keyboards, soft chanted vocals and crashing warlike drums has a tidal build that grows and grows into a dry ice and strobe induced moment of Hacienda glory. Even if the track sounds more like a remix than a song on its own right it’s still very good. The Drums Let’s Go Surfing has been well documented on this blog previously here and seems a little out of place on an electro dance album, but it remains a fun whistle-a-groove-along pop song. French Horn Rebellion also succeed by whipping out the cheesy synths, camp vocals and keeping a pop sensibility that cheers easily on their lead track Up All Night.

But then there’s the bad. Le Corps Mince De Françoise are just too wacky for their own good. Like a nursery rhyme CSS, they may be fun to listen to once but the second attempt leaves us slamming our head against the wall screaming “No more.” If electro pop is made for the clubs, Le Corps Mince De Françoise were out the back popping far too many pills. Even worse is I Love London by Crystal Fighters. An infuriating mix of percussion and dirty synth bass it’s as if Bonde Do Role were tasked with recording the most annoying sounding hipster track ever. This song is that girl we mentioned just as she got pregnant. So full of confidence, it forgets what it is doing, jumping up and down shouting "Cool kids please love me." It is utterly terrible. Further tracks by Parallels, Jolie Cherie and the Crystal Castles gone even more wrong of Heartsrevolution are all the kind of toss that hipsters will proclaim are the future of music, but we can’t imagine anyone listening to any of these tunes in six weeks let alone six months.

Come on Kitsune Maison. This is not the essential electro collection that we know you can do. Your vision has become blurred. We don’t want you ending up as a sad single mum yet.

War Child - Heroes

The War Child Heroes album is no ordinary compilation album. Rather than a series of casts off and B sides that form the usual charity CD, War Child take a highly prescriptive approach in the formation of their releases. This approach leads to a much greater focus on the quality of the music. The concept for Heroes combines some of the greatest icons of rock music with some of the most popular contemporary artists of today. The charity asked fifteen rock greats, from U2 to Bowie to Iggy Pop to choose a song from their back catalogue and to nominate a modern act that they would most trust to create a unique interpretation of that song. The end results of these new cover versions are such that irrespective of the charitable status of the project, the album is worth buying for a significant amount of musical merit alone.

Most surprising is how some of the covers that you would expect on paper to be disasters are very good indeed. Take Duffy covering Live And Let Die; whilst at Breaking More Waves we were fans of the Duffy album, the recent screeching on previous single Rain On Your Parade left a sour taste in our mouth. Here Duffy redeems herself with Bernard Butler on production duties and his long time collaborator David McAlmont providing sweet soulful backing vocals. Her version is restrained and sultry, a torch song version of the classic.

Lily Allen also shocks with a very modern middle of the road pop version of Straight To Hell by The Clash, with Mick Jones on backing vocals. It should be a disaster, but Lily gives Joe Strummers difficult anti war lyrics a delicate sugary touch that actually makes them stand out more.

Elbow fare even better, taking Running To Stand Still by U2 and making it sound even more tender and intimate than the original. It’s worth buying the album for this song alone. Bono chose wisely. Elsewhere TV On The Radio deliver a bold mountainous electronic beat laden version of Heroes that follows neatly on from the Dear Science album whilst The Hold Steady, who let’s face it sound like a Bruce Springsteen covers band, get to cover The Boss on Atlantic City.

There are very few duffers on the album. Hot Chips minimal electro calypso of Transmission will probably be hated by most Ian Curtis fans, but one track out of fifteen isn’t bad.

It would seem almost a disservice to review a charity album and give it the thumbs down. Fortunately in the case of War Child Heroes there is no need to do such a thing. Rather than going out this Friday night and spending your spare cash on a round of drinks, buy this album, stay in, listen to it and know that you have helped provide vital funds for War Childs essential and unique work in helping children who live with the brutal effects of war.

Now That's What I Call Music Selected Track #3 - Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse Of The Heart

Our final choice cut from Now That's What I Call Music Volume 1 has to be Bonnie Tyler and Total Eclipse Of The Heart. Born Gaynor Hopkins in Skewen, near Swansea, South Wales, Bonnie Tyler wrapped her husky noduled vocals around this semi operatic rock power ballad which was written by Jim Steinman, the man responsible for the production of Meatloaf’s best selling Bat Out Of Hell albums. The song was a Number 1 hit in the UK and sold a phenomenal 5 million copies worldwide.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart is one of the ultimate guilty pleasures and features the most warped 1980’s video you will ever see. In it big haired Bonnie fantasises about young schoolboys as she wanders around the gothic school building where curtains blow in the breeze, backlighting and dry ice abound and half naked men cavort.

They just don’t make them like this anymore do they ?

Now That’s What I Call Music Volume 1 is re-released on the 12th January. Now That's What I Call A Challenge is a further blog that chronicles every track on the album.

Now That's What I Call Music Selected Track #2 - The Cure - The Love Cats

The Cure are probably one of Breaking More Waves favourite all time bands. From the dark despair and decay of Pornography and the morbid grandeur of Disintegration to some of their perfectly twisted sugar coated pop songs such as Friday I’m In Love, In Between Days and Close To Me, The Cure’s back catalogue must be the envy of many other bands.

Often seen as gloomy outsiders, this has never stopped The Cure embracing the mainstream singles charts, and hence when the cartoon jazz of The Love Cats reached their highest chart position to that date in the UK at Number 7 it felt like the freaks and weirdo’s had been let in through the back door. Still played at indie clubs around the country, The Love Cats is a bona fide classic pop tune and is one of the highlights of the first Now That's What I Call Music Vol 1 album.

Now That's What I Call Music Selected Track #1 - Howard Jones - New Song

Not only is it twenty five years since the first Now That's What I Call Music was released, but it is also twenty five years since solo synth pop wizard Howard Jones released his debut single New Song. It is Breaking More Waves favourite song on that first Now album. Regular visitors to this blog will already know of our warped obsession with Jones and his one man band of retro synths such as the Moog Prodigy. This obsession lead last year to Breaking More Waves giving birth to its own one man comedy DJ Act known as DJ Hojo Hits, whom appeared at Rob Da Bank’s Bestival, alongside acts such as Underworld, My Bloody Valentine, Amy Winehouse and Aphex Twin, playing an hour long set of nothing but Howard Jones tunes.

New Song was a big hit in the UK, spending 15 weeks in the charts, getting as high as Number 3. This simple song bears a resemblance to Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill in its melody whilst lyrically it is a message of positive and open thinking with Jones preaching his message of not being “Laden down by the doom crew,” whilst “challenging preconceived ideas,” unusual lyrics for a pop song.

Of course most people will remember Jones for his very eighties spiked haircut, his mime dancer Jed who performed with him and the “Ooo ooo ooo” chorus of this song, which is a shame as many of his lyrics had a vision and philosophy behind them that set him apart from many of his peer group.

Now That's What I Call Music

The 12th January 2009 will see the re-release of one of the most important albums of the last twenty five years. An album that has lead to the development of a brand that has chronicled the evolution of pop music over this time. An album that changed chart rules. An album that along with its successors has to date sold seventy five million copies.

That album, released in the UK in December 1983 is Now That’s What I Call Music Volume 1.

The Now That's What I Call Music compilations are the most successful compilations of all time. Born through a collaborative partnership deal between Polygram, EMI and Virgin the Now series could beat all other hits compilations by offering excellent value, all killer and no filler, through being able to source so many hit singles through the label partnership.

Twenty five years on from Now That’s What I Call Music and the series is still being produced at a rate of three editions a year, recycling chart hits from the previous few months, giving a musical snapshot of a time and a place. The artists who have benefitted most from the albums are Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue who have had the most number of songs included throughout the series. So successful were the early Now albums that UK sales charts were changed, otherwise the Top 10 albums weekly chart would have been simply full of compilations, particularly the Now compilations. Of course these days the charts for artists and compilations are separate. But when a Now compilation is released it is almost guaranteed a number 1 spot.

And in a few days time the original Now That’s What I Call Music album is being re-released. Like all the Now albums it featured songs that are now regarded as pop classics, songs that are best forgotten and songs that have been forgotten but shouldn’t have been. Of the thirty tracks on the first album, a third of them were number one hit singles in the year of issue.

So how long can this series continue ? The Now brand certainly shows no sign of stopping yet. CD consumers continue to recognise the value that they offer. The download market is somewhat different however, with consumers being able to pick and choose tracks, effectively making their own personalised Now That’s What I Call Music compilations. But at this moment in time, for many the beauty of being able to walk into a shop and pick up a compilation of forty of the latest chart sounds for around the same price as an ordinary album, knowing every song on the album, is still a big factor in their music purchasing. When the physical release market dies then it is likely that so will the Now albums.

So happy 25th birthday Now That’s What I Call Music. Breaking More Waves is here and ready to celebrate your birthday. We’re going to do this by selecting one song from the original thirty tracks each day for the next three days. These are our personal favourites. Enjoy each one of them. We continue to do so. And come 12th January we’ll be updating our worn out cassette copy of the album for a pristine CD.

Our first selection follows later today.