What are the most anticipated forthcoming albums for the year 2000?

The other thing that's coming out very soon is the Go-Betweens record, which could very well be rubbish but I'm likely to buy anyway.

Will be interesting to hear Momus on the 6ths record - when's it coming out, Tom?

The new Sparks is out and all you crass indier than thou punks that think anything that's written by guys older than 30 aside from Stephin Merritt, who won't even be singing on that album or something, is automatically worth ignoring are already shown up as LAZY POSEURS by a band that has incorporated every musical twist, turn and trend of the past four decades fed through their own world view to create a series of albums that compact Western culture into a vice, destroy America while celebrating it and influenced everyone you love whether you know it or not.

Erm, anyway. ;-) It's called _Balls_, it's very good, buy it. Oh sure, you *can* name that Sixths album, but that means you have smile and rank very high an album that has both Gary Numan and Marc Almond singing on it, which further proves my point! JOIN US! I WIN I WIN I WIN! Synth will eat itself and take all of you with it. Funk is dead. Post-rock died in 1999. ;-)

The Sparks show last night was wonderful. You all wish you were there. I thank me too.

Now I'm not so sure. I wonder whether Momus's tendency to authenticise the fake, incarnate it as a fetish object, make it into a matter of moral principle that everything he likes is traditional on the surface but plastic underneath, is going to turn back on him, and make the folk album somehow unsatisfying, novelty, throwaway, making more sense as a cultural act than as a record. These are my first real doubts of Momus since I've been a fan (January 1997). Having said that, if he *does* make this album work it could be a pleasure beyond description ...

"Kimono My House" is one of the very few albums I can say honestly that I've never tired of. "Alabamy Right"? First time I heard it, I thought I'd never speak the same way again. "Beat The Clock"? That seven-word repetition of "bye" is the most stunning stream of one word in all pop. "Now That I Own The BBC"? It captures perfectly how I *would* feel were I left in charge of such an institution. So I applaud your posting!

How is the new album? These men are among pop's great, men who can take an extraordinarily basic melody line / idea / concept ("I Think I'm Falling In Love With Myself Again") and build it up so it sounds like the *biggest* thing ever recorded. The trouble is, I don't know what a mediocre Sparks album sounds like (are there any?) so I need advice ...

Recommendations? Well, anyone just wanting to find out more about them in the first place should start with _Profile_ on Rhino Records out of the States -- two-disc comp that covers every album through the end of the eighties. Just about every true total classic is on there, from "This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us" and "The Number One Song in Heaven" to "Angst In My Pants" and back.

Specific albums...

_Sparks_/_A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing_ -- the first two albums with the original lineup, often packaged together. *Very* strange stuff that still sounds utterly weird today.

_Kimono My House_, as you mentioned, as well as _Propaganda_, which has the Best Record Cover ever. Both these encapsulate the UK glam era of the band to a fault.

_The Number One Song in Heaven_ -- the album itself is a Giorgio Moroder-produced classic, and for me is easily the equal of his work with Donna Summer. Anyone even slightly interested in how the eighties were invented needs to hear this.

_Angst In My Pants_ -- the glory days of their early eighties Stateside new-wave godhead. The title track is the best and yet most unlikely epic around.

_Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins_ -- their mid-nineties comeback, which essentially demonstrates to the Pet Shop Boys, after their pointless denial that they were influenced by Sparks, how that duo could be trumped at their own game.

...and the new album, _Balls_, which is essentially what happens when Ron and Russell ponder everything from Prodge-style shout-pop musical dynamics to lush neo-house and figure out something else to do with it. Lurvly.

Ned

I hadn't heard that Ed Rush and Optical were coming out with an album. This makes me all warm and happy inside. The new Photek should be dope, and the live Underworld album has a shot at being the first album of theirs that I've liked since _dubnobasswithmyheadman_. Also, there's a live Clan of Xymox album coming out in October, the new Electronic album, Erykah Badu's new one, a new Tom Tom Club album, and countless others that didn't even make it onto the CDNow listing. :)

DJP

Well, that first part sure changed.

(crosspost, referring to keith)

DJ Martian, London http://www.geocities.com/altmartinuk/new.html

Guns'n'Roses!

@_@ !

DJ Martian how do your 25 hold up now?