The Ideal Stash

Here we are, barely crawling into our infancy at the start of this very shiny new century, things my friends, are good. The “digital era” is beginning to take off in ways that no one could of predicted. And yet, we’ve left something behind, the art of the album. People preferring instead to buy one or two songs from a band off iTunes and leave it at that. Yet, there are a small group out there in analogue land (it’s a place) who long for the days of trawling through dodgy record stores, furrowing our brows for one single album that might just change our lives.
So, if you, like me, long for those days of having a physical record, yet don’t have the time for an afternoon of trawling and trawling through said record store waiting for a memory of someone somewhere telling you when you were out about a band who “has this song, and it goes like this and the singer has this thing that happened to him when he was young…” The albums I have chosen are something of forgotten classics, lost for whatever reason to a world of trendy haircuts and iPods.

These records are: Guerrilla by the ever eccentric Super Furry Animals, The Three E.P.’s by The Beta Band and The Ideal Crash by Deus.

I first bought Guerrilla on a tip off from an old work colleague of mine. And , if it wasn’t so illegal and so strange. I would take my copy of Guerrilla by the Super Furry Animals to Las Vegas and marry it. It’s not a strange fetish or anything like that. I just think it would be a nice thing to do.

It is a sublime record, filled with songs about drinking, smoking and crying. From the moment you hear the first song “check it out” build bounce and crash into “do or die” you will suddenly have an insight into Gods mind, the insight being; that he invented ears in the hope that everyone would hear this album. The album is full of 21st century psychedelia mixed with the imagination of five welsh men that clearly have more talent in their baby toe than the whole of The Klaxons put together.

The next album to help you through the sometimes overwhelming selection you’re bound to face while staring thousands of unknown records directly in the face is the Beta Bands slow burning genius The Three Ep’s.

“This is the definition of my life, lying in bed in the sunrise”. -Dry the rain.

The first words you hear on this c.d. sums up the whole album. When you listen to this album it’s just like going on a holiday that you never ever want to end. The Beta Band made people like Noel Gallagher realize that Oasis were never going anywhere but to the bottom shelf of everyone’s c.d. collection. Don’t worry though this album sounds nothing like Oasis or anyone else for that matter. It sounds like nothing you will ever have heard before. But at the same time it sounds like the album you have always wanted to hear.

The stand out point is 3 minutes and 5 seconds into B+A where suddenly the drums get louder and more definite rather than maybe, and in essence blows your mind. Also, it’s a little known fact that if you listen to B+A while walking down the road you will suddenly notice that your walk will get a 29% more confident and your 72% more likely to attract members of the opposite sex.

The album is safe haven of versatility and imagination, where you can feel free to revel in the knowledge that this album given the chance could solve any of the worlds problems.

Belgium?

What has Belgium done for us? Oh yeah, that’s right they knocked us out of the play-offs for World Cup ’98. Well don’t get too angry, because a bunch of Belgian musicians have made an album so beautiful in melancholy that you will easily forgive them for making the Summer of ’98 a Summer of “what if’s”.


When I bought the Deus album The Ideal Crash for a friend of mine, I got stopped in the middle of Grafton Street by a complete stranger, he just started telling me how much he loved The Ideal Crash. Such is the power of this album.
The Ideal Crash is comprised of 10 tracks that will make you over pour with emotions that you never thought you could feel. It has lyrics in it that will make you want to ring the Belgian embassy and thank them for producing the genius that is Deus.

The opener ‘Put The Freaks up Front’ burns with sincerity and makes you almost live inside the music. It even issues you with instructions for listening to the album “put your panic on hold, amplify your very soul and keep breathing”.

Every time this album ends I take a deep breath and wonder how a group of people could of produced an album of such stark honesty and unbelievable truth. It twists your heart and makes you forget about everything else other than somebody you’ve loved and lost. An old cliché maybe, but this record will make you remember feelings and moments you have some how forgot for whatever reason.

So there you are, three albums that have somehow been criminally left on the hard shoulder somewhere at the start of the Information Super Highway. And yet, isn’t there something marvelous about the forgotten? So don’t go straight onto some dodgy mp3 site and download a song off each record. Take an old fashioned journey into town, find a lovely independent record store, have a root around for these masterpieces. Then go home sit back, and have a listen. Who knows, they could change your life.