Skylab#1

Voici un disque que j'avais acheté en 1994 pour la beauté du graphisme et du digipack cartonné. A l'époque, trip hop et ambient battaient son plein, mais Skylab#1 ne faisait qu'aborder de loin ces courants, car l'album s'écoute plutôt comme une rêverie musicale et poétique inclassable, un ensemble de ballades downtempo imprévisibles, écrites et produites par un certain Howie B, dont on connaîtra davantage les disques parus ultérieurement sous son nom (Music for Babies, Snatch, Mayonnaise). Le rip est chez sleepwalkingdreamweaver.

This album was released in 1994 on Astralwerks. This one of those albums that I bought without hearing or being told about. Have you ever done that? I just saw the album cover, noticed it was on Astralwerks, and bought it. I've discovered a few gems just by looks. That's how I found out about Pizzicato Five, the Tiki Tones, and Pavement. I don't do that so much anymore but back then I was young and could buy whatever since my mom paid the rent. Anyway, back to our album. Here's the rundown. Apparently Mat Ducasse took a lot of acid in his attic and produced tons of mix tapes of weird samples and loops. He mailed them to Howie B who then, with Love TKO (from the Japanese hip hop Major Force label), put them together to create a very trippy and mind expanding movie like album. You could call it downtempo but that word wasn't being thrown around back then. It's like ambient trip-hop. Or ambient breakbeat. It's ambient. It's weird. The song "Seashell" got used on a lot of chill compilations. That song is pretty great but the album is so much more than that one track. The album is an experience. It starts out strong and then gradually slows down by the middle to almost minimal sound and then it slowly builds back up to about the same speed as the beginning. If you've heard Howie B's "Music for Babies" it's probably closest to that as far as his catalog goes. Check it out. Excerpt from MOG - fistula spume's Posts