The one hundred and sixty-first classical recording: #677 Joaquin Turina - Danzas Fantasticas
Turina's dances are full of energy, with even the more lamentful parts bursting with energy even if the middle section isn't as excited as the other two. It's a welcome burst of energy in the morning.
The four hundred and fiftieth album: #450 Michael Jackson - Off the Wall
Off the Wall is a good disco album, with some good funk songs and some great ballads in there, with Michael Jackson's voice as impeccable as you'd expect. All that's missing, compared to what I expect I'll hear in Jackson's later albums on the list, is the production and breadth of sounds - at this point, it still sticks to the disco sound he became famous with, but the real progress that I believe created his legacy is still on the way - lurking, but I know it's going to step up. As an album, it really works best to show off his early work.
The four hundred and fourty-ninth album: Public Image Ltd - Metal Box
Metal Box becomes a post-punk mess at times, a collection of sounds that feels thrown together without much of a thought. The album was improvised, and that's clear from the different directions the tracks take, but it's done with a level of skill that keeps it listenable - as much as it may seem like a cacophony, it's one that draws you in with its ideas rather than becoming off putting. There's not much of an identity to the album, but the different parts are interesting to listen to with each song its own new turn.
The one hundred and sixtieth classical recording: #591 Arnold Schoenberg - Five Orchestral Pieces, op. 16
There's something threatening about these five pieces. Wikipedia describes it as partially referencing madness, but there's more menace in the pieces, with the dark tones really creeping up through the works, sometimes overtaking an otherwise pleasant and friendly piece until it's warped by it. Haunting but lovely.
The four hundred and fourty-eighth album: #484 Pink Floyd - The Wall
As I said yesterday, this is a double album with a plan. There's a story to the songs, with tracks being brought back in different interpretations and parts going back and forth. As a listener, this becomes very satisfying - you pick up on the flow of the track and can follow along with everything that's going on, picking up on a story that's not too complicated and adds a bit of flavour to the various tracks. It's all fairly effective and I quite liked the rock album.
The four hundred and fourty-seventh album: #447 Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
There are two options, it seems, for the contents of a double album. One, which we'll see tomorrow, is a coherent set of tracks that really seeks to tell a story. The other is today's Tusk, which is a mix of styles (almost divided based on the different band members writing them), where it feels more like the band is doing their best to get their different ideas out. While staying on the calmer side, with some of the rock tracks getting into pop ballad territory, it's hard to pin that down as the definite evolution. It's not as folksy, not even as upbeat, but there's a really reassuring flow to the album that makes it lovely to get immersed in.
The one hundred and fifty-ninth classical recording: #962 George Benjamin - Ringed by the Flat Horizon
There's something that leans more towards music and storytelling through music in more modern pieces. Composed in 1980, Ringed by the Flat Horizon has an at times cacophonous sound, with a chaotic mix of sounds punctuated by heavy percussion that makes it difficult to follow. It's content to feel that way rather than striving for a pure beauty of older pieces, invoking stronger emotions that aren't always just pleasing. It invokes that feeling of dread and anticipation of an oncoming storm really well and I quite liked how sinister it got.
The one hundred and fourty-first book: #081 The Betrothed - Alessandro Manzoni
I've noticed that I've been struggling to focus on these historical life stories - this one a love story of a couple kept apart by a nobleman who wants to marry Lucia, half of the couple. They run away from the village and get caught up in the military movements in Milan in the 1600s as well as the plague that struck the area at that time, and there are several chapters dedicated to the historic descriptions of the events of the time, rather than the central love story that takes a while to connect. It didn't read as well, and I think I need to go for a more contemporary novel soon to clear my palate.
The four hundred and forty-sixth album: #446 Cheap Trick - At Budokan
Crowd noises and echo aside, At Budokan's hard rock shows off Cheap Trick's music quite well - the driving guitars and hard music that doesn't veer into a shoutier metal track, but keeps it musically contained with some nice moments of composition between the on going pushes. Despite the style, the tracks are quite distinctive even when they stay within that ball park, without a ballad in sight, and even the live version of I Want You To Want Me is that much rockier even as it stays very poppy. While drowned out by the glut of rock bands in this era, Cheap Trick still stays very listenable.
The four hundred and forty-fifth album: Gang of Four - Entertainment!
There's a lot of punk in Entertainment!, which leads to a problem I've had with similar albums before - lulled into a bit of complacency, I'm on the fourth track before I know it as the songs blend together - and as accessible as Damaged Goods is, in my head the sixth song Guns or Butter is the first that sounds distinctive. The second side brings some more musical variety, but it shows some of the limits on their vocals and the main interest continues to come from the lyrics, which have the more interesting counter culture bend, as well as talk of (failures of) sex that feel subtle enough to past censors but still quite a push for the most part. It's not the best punk I've heard, but it's fine to fill that gap for now.