u/Gullible_Stock_9659

This album is incredible.

Pitchfork has it number 4 of the 2020's, and it belongs fully.

https://chuquimamani-condori.bandcamp.com/album/dj-e

Anyone listened? What you thinking?

Just finished. On pellet grill with oak chunks added near fire box.

I found The Cure at Wish and fell in love with their whole catalogue (except for the Top—half in love with that one). Then I bought Wild Mood Swings when it released. I liked some tracks (Want, 13th, Jupiter Crash, Strange Attraction), but I was pretty disappointed. It didn't hit the level of everything else I'd heard from the band (even The Top).

Then I bought Bloodflowers shortly after it released. I liked it better than Wild Mood Swings, but I felt the mood across the album was too similar and low-energy, and that this album also did not reach the heights of the old work.

I didn't listen to the self-titled album till after 4:13 Dream had also been released. I liked 4:13 Dream a lot. Porl/Pearl was back. The guitars sounded good again. The drumming sounded better, and it felt like the band had put everything, a complete effort, into the album.

Self-titled sounded slapped together by comparison. I liked some tracks, but the whole thing didn't hold together for me.

Recently, I've suspected that the changes in band lineup after the Wish tour were significantly responsible for the following 3 albums not hitting for me. A sonic complexity and cohesiveness was gone, and not enough replaced it on these albums...but I wondered if one good album might be made from the three of them? What if the work during this period had been more condensed? Would it change anything?

So I made a compilation-album playlist from WMS, Bloodflowers and self-tiltled, and I like it. I think it would hold up with the rest of the band's catalogue.

My "Wild Cure Flowers" album:

- 1.The Promise (self titled)

- 2.The Loudest Sound (Bloodflowers)

- 3.The 13th (WMS)

- 4.The Last Day of Summer (BF)

- 5.This Morning (self-titled B-side off End of the World single)

- 6.Before Three (ST)

- 7.Strange Attraction (WMS)

- 8.Anniversary (ST)

- 9.Out of This World (BF)

- 10.I Don't Know (What's Going On) (ST)

- 11.Jupiter Crash (WMS)

- 12.39 (WMS)

I could get behind this. This album would stand up to any other of the band's quite well, imo.

I made a first version with Want on there, and tried some different self-titled tracks and WMS tracks, but too many tracks sounded like The Cure being a bit derivative of themselves to me. This collection here has the band doing things they never did anywhere else, imo. This tracklist has freshness, cohesiveness and a full total experience, I think.

What do you think? Many favorites will be missing for many, I'm sure, but these three albums scream for some editing, imo.

Here's a youtube playlist link to my list:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRK\_U\_0FyYOU&si=wGFzCQOMlOTmMwso

Sonetimes book thrifting is about hitting the right town, I think. under $5 for this stack.

Full disclosure: Wish is my top Cure album. I'm going to describe how I experience it, by going through the tracks, so that even if it isn't *your* top, maybe you can see where I, and people who like it best, are coming from.

- Open: The guitars are louder than ever. Perry's bass is grinding with a new level of growl and groove here. The guitars are also both pretty heavily distorted, for the band, and quite reverb-drenched. There are always two, sometimes three intertwining guitar parts, all echoing all over each other on this track. Boris' drumming has never sounded this free and this syncopated before. Robert's voice is clear and loud enough, but more muffled and competed-with in the mix than ever before. This is a new Cure sound. A more rock-n-roll sound than ever. And the production quality is both new for them and pushing the envelope for popular music a bit. The mix is very dense and chaotic. The mid-range is a very loud tangle of reverby vocals and guitars. It pulses and weaves and wails and echoes. I think there's a decent amount of compression on these midrange parts—otherwise the whole track would probably just sount like a muddy mess. But restricting the low and high ends to the bass and percussion almost exclusively anchors all the distortion and jangle...and the total effect is powerful. This general sound will carry throughout the album, in the loudest tracks at least. Robert's vocal sounds despairing and lost...a song about feeling like one is losing control and losing touch with meaning in a shallow public-party social situation. The track is as anguished as anything they've ever done, imo—Pornography-esque even, but with a more personal, lived-experience and grounded feel, whereas the Pornography album can feel a bit abstract and detachedly philosophical at times.

- High: The oppressive atmosphere immediately lightens with a pop track. The fun drumming syncopation continues with a bouncy groove. The guitars are jangling, light and very melodic. Windchimes keep chiming. The lyric is happy. The only element of unease comes from the heavy, heavy reverb. So echo-ey, which gives even this simple pop tune a psychedelic, trippy feel. There are some cool phasing effects on background vocals that add to the psychedelia too. Wind chimes wrap the track up too.. Like in the Plainsong intro from Disintegration, but here they're just all over the place.

- Apart: Speaking of Disintegration, the third Wish track sounds a lot like it could have been on that album. A dirge tune. The bass part is quite steady, and EQ-ed a bit thinner here than on Open. Keyboards play a larger role. But whereas Disintegration tracks often feel abstract, Apart is a straightforward and specific breakup/failing-relationship song. For me, the specificity gives it a new kind of punch. It sounds real and concrete, and pretty devastating. We're not "praying for rain" or feeling vaguely "homesick" here—we're at the rock bottom end of a real-life love relationship.

- From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea: The guitars crank again. The ascending bass groove sounds like it's coming at us through a jet engine in a 500ft concrete cave-tunnel. The guitars answer it wailingly in the same tunnel. The groove keeps looping on itself for seven epic minutes. The phasers are phasing at eleven as the solo swirls through the bridge part. What an epic track. The Cure had never reached this kind of apex before this released. Every cylinder firing. A dark epic dream.

- Wendy Time: Lightening the mood again. A funk song with extreme wah-pedal guitar swirls and a dance beat. Just sexy funk, but with a growing, threatening, dark undertone of excess, and a confession of either over-pleasured or circumspect numbness and coldness toward temptation.

- Doing the Unstuck: The threat level decreases as this pop song more innocently encourages a purer joyful attack on life. The reverb-soaked echo here just feels like swirls of hope and happiness...if perhaps a BIT bipolar-y and over-loose, but fuck it..."throw back your head and kiss it all goodbye," "get up and GO!" Definitely an upper, and a good tune.

- Friday I'm in Love: The pop tendencies of the album congeal into three minutes of absolute perfectionist pop precision. Melody and skillful instrumentation don't get much more polished and successful. The wrench thrown in it is the cynicism of the lyric. The shallowness of the "up" is highlighted lyrically, so the lyric brings a level of irony which is very satisfying.

- Trust: From a tryptic of pop happiness to another dirge. Wish is the real "Wild Mood Swings" album, in the best way. A piano melody anchors this one. Strings and soft arpeggiated guitar enter and accompany, but the highlight of this track is the drumming. I think it's my favorite Cure drum part. Boris throws all these snare grace notes in at surprising places, and then does some cymbal artistry that takes this track to another level. The lyric is another sincere personal relationship testament, like Apart.

- Letter To Elise: *Another* personal-relationship-journal-entry type song. Rather mellow mooded. Great tune. Jangly guitar and bass. Neither happy nor sad. Just thoughtful, a bit yearning and sincere. A real love song, or breakup song. Bit of both. About persevering through life's changes, I think, this one. The band sounds so loose and groovy. Some of the back catalogue, great as it all is, sounds kind of try-hard-y or something up against this version of their music making..

- Cut: Maybe my favorite Wish track. Kind of like Edge of the Deep Green Sea on speed, here. Fast groove, pounding bass, wailing vocal and absolutely wailing guitars. Maximum thrash. The Cure have never thrashed like this. Another love song, lyrically. The higher register Robert sings in on this makes it pop emotionally on the album. Kind of the emotional mountaintop of the album really.. and it's both anguished and absolutely infused with jam and funk. Trippy as hell.

- To Wish Impossible Things: Or this might be my fav Wish track. A meditation. So dreamy. The Wish echo reverb wash is in full effect. Some neat african slap-drumming and atmospheric violin give this one uniqueness. Yet another love song, but a rather philosophical, contemplative one.

- End: Last track is a slammer. We won't be let off easy. The guitar is churning us into butter. A ringing, distorted groove and rollingly harmonic grinding bassline underneath. Then the wah-guitar wails on top, and Robert does an extreme, near suicidal misery impression. Punishing tune, but what really matters in the track is the arrowlike intensity and passion in it, because it's not actually a song about limply giving up as the lyric wants you to believe. It's a furious fight song musically, one that outfights "Fight" from Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. Just pure, pointed, obsessive sonic fury here, behind the lyric. And it leaves you on a... a complete high? A complete low? Which is it? Well, it's fully both, which reflects the genius of this band's work.

Wish is incredible. The sound is just peak and overwhelming. I don't think the band ever equalled it sonically except maybe close to it on Songs of a Lost World. Disintegration is a great record, but it's exploring a narrower range of emotion. Wish expands to everything. And the sonic palette is fuller and freer and louder and more complex. Wish is the record, for me.

How do you hear it?

3 cheers for Robert, a real one 🎉🎉🎉 🍻🍻🍻

5 hrs at 180°, 8 at 250° and 1 at 300° with a 5 minute spike to 400° at finish for bark. Cooled to 170° and warmed at 170° in oven for 2.5 hrs.

Favorite brisket yet. Using basic (Blatomic) pellet smoker with smokin pecan pellets to start and regular to finish, and chunks of oak placed strategically around firebox for additional smoke (see fifth photo for ash and wood residue after cook finished). I've had great offset brisket all around Texas, and this one rivalled them, seriously. Great smoke flavor, not dirty, and cook was right on. Rub is heavy restaurant-course pepper, heavy seasoned salt, lighter celery salt and light tandoori rub for hint of spice and heat. No binder. Did a foil boat at 190° internal, took off smoker at 209° at edges and 206° dead center.

🍻🍻🍻

This is mine, ranked best to "worst" (with a casual eye towards a listenable track order).

How would your list be different? Which versions of tracks would you substitute (obscure live recordings maybe?)? What's missing?

I included some duplicate track versions when pretty distinct, and some co-authored tracks, but no Orb remixes of other acts. The video tracks are either Live '93 tracks or tracks from the BBC-Sessions release.

Here's a youtube-playlist link, if interested:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuW2uTxDhNtvNZsHqFs5mYUYzNcRaWbTd&si=I0Rv4sKnz8KwC7HK

A couple days ago, Kris Weston posted on this sub requesting that his name be kept off it, which got me to research his part in the Orb story, which I'd never done before. As a result, I'm doing the opposite of his request here.

After reading his entries on band history, here is my condensed current take on the genesis of this band's music, offered here for anyone to disagree with or add to if interested.

- Alex is part of the late '80's London dance music scene, DJ-ing and adding trippy dub-effects, friends with the KLF crew and Youth. He wants to start his own act.

- He hooks up with young Weston, who is deeply creative, technically competent, and eager, but shy. A dynamic where Weston makes the music and Alex does the other stuff (fronting, dealing with public more) develops.

- Weston's music (with a few dub touches, and rather distant blessings, from Patterson) is a hit. Ultraworld and UF Orb do great, are great.

- After experiments of Pomme Fritz, Weston hits full creative stride and creates masterpieces on Live '93 and FFWD (with Robert Fripp), and does 9/10ths of the Orbus Terrarum music before leaving the group.

- The Orb are now most of the way to a band without a music maker/writer after Weston leaves. Patterson starts collecting help in Fehlman and others to patch this gaping hole.

- A string of weaker albums commences, with Orblivion, Bycycles and Tricycles and Cydonia. A lot of the magic is gone. But Weston has lit a path and cemented a style. Patterson and the other collaborators follow it, and keep improving. Some of the more recent albums are the best of the later linups' releases: Chill Out World, Alpine, Orbservers in the Starhouse and Buddhist Hipsters (and The Dream and Moonbuilding have moments).

I value Weston as the primary genius behind the band's music and style, although Alex's dub love, pop sensibilities and curating vision for the group were important early too (as well as general influence from the wider London scene and figures in it).

And I value Alex and all the collaborators for keeping the flame alive, working to improve the late music over the years, and logging some significant album and track accomplishments.

I wish Weston had stayed, although I'm sure his path was necessary. I'm not surprised that there has been more struggle and pain behind the great early music, and the band's history, than I knew before. Greatness and struggle usually travel together.

I've gone through the catalogue, and these are my favorites. There's a hard lean toward melodic tracks and the cleverest, tightest, most satisfying songwriting. There's less of the looser, punker, more jarring, screamy tracks here. That side of the Pixies is important, but I'm not as drawn to it these days. What do you think of this list, and what does yours look like?

youtube playlist:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuW2uTxDhNtsVyxLPetMEZPYFw4QdeZAN&si=uUtUvZATO3ecVpXe

pictured youtube playlist:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuW2uTxDhNts11mQUBzPHuf6dEDidi1GF&si=g\_HUMzZzC57FJGY5

Spooky, threatening, mysterious, ominous is the vibe here. How many do you like, and how would you rank them? I've ranked them in a personal best-to-worst order (not spookiest to least spooky). Any missing?

- 1.Monty Got A Raw Deal

- 2.Low Desert

- 3.Crazy

- 4.Old Man Kensey

- 5.Drive

- 6.Texarkana

- 7.9-9

- 8.Oddfellows Local 151

- 9.High Speed Train

- 10.How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us

- 11.I Remember California

- 12.Circus Envy

- 13.Disappear

- 14.Swan Swan H

- 15.I Took Your Name

- 16.Feeling Gravity's Pull

- 17.The Wrong Child

- 18.Accelerate

- 19.Auctioneer

- 20.Rotary Ten

- 21.You

youtube playlist:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuW2uTxDhNtuIrN07F6qq-CYRHyEvJ7k0&si=wSFN-akqP-lam7GM

"mysterious" list idea was suggested by Ok-folkie909

(All, hopefully) goofy REM songs arranged in a personal best-to-worst order.. Do you like them? And how would you rank them?

- 1.Strange

- 2.We Walk

- 3.King of the Road

- 4.Underneath the Bunker

- 5.It's the End of the World as We Know It (AIFF)

- 6.Lotus

- 7.Voice of Harold

- 8.Wanderlust

- 9.Bandwagon

- 10.Beachball

- 11.Readhead Walking

- 12.The Wake-Up Bomb

- 13.Burning

- 14.Chance (Dub)

- 15.Radio Song

- 16.Stand

- 17.I'm Gonna DJ

- 18.Superman

- 19.The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite

- 20.Shiny Happy People

- 21.Alligator_Aviotor_Autopilot_Antimatter

youtube playlist:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuW2uTxDhNttWmNOEEXB2T4pl-IirCf0s&si=wH\_x2q8kMUlM7j5j