A brief & entirely anecdotal history of the album

I must confess that I stole the first album I ever owned, albeit temporarily. The album was Eddie Cochran's greatest hits and I expect it was called something like 'Three Steps To Heaven'. I acquired it from the Mathilda Bazaar, a fair held at the Mathilda Hospital on Mount Kellett in Hong Kong. I guess this would have been 1976 or, more likely, 1977.

At the fair there was a tent full of racks of second hand albums and also full of people. Courtesy of my dad, I was a fan of American singer-songwriters like Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, and, as you'll have inferred, Eddie Cochran. I came across the greatest hits album in the racks and saw it was priced at fifty cents (about five pence at the time). This wasn't unaffordable for me so maybe I just didn't fancy queuing to pay for it or perhaps I saw myself as some kind of musical bandit. I really can't remember.

What I do remember is that I walked the half mile home, felt too guilty to play the record, walked the half mile back to the Bazaar, smuggled the stolen album back to the tent, queued up, paid for it, walked back home again with my now unstolen album, and then I played it, at peace with myself.

The next album I bought was only a couple of years later but a lot had changed. We'd moved back to England from Hong Kong and I had started at a grammar school in Kingston that was very different from the comparatively free-wheeling comprehensive I'd attended in Hong Kong. If I was feeling a little culturally lost, this was assuaged by my introduction to Ska, which led to me buying albums by Madness, The Specials, The Beat, and The Selector, whilst avoiding Bad Manners (as one always should).

However, this musical crush was discarded without a backward glance when I discovered electronic music. I still think of my record collection as having started with these albums: 'Speak and Spell' by Depeche Mode; 'Dare' by The Human League; Soft Cell's 'Non-stop Erotic Cabaret'; Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark's eponymous debut album; Ultravox's 'Vienna'; and Gary Numan's 'The Pleasure Principle'.

Over the years I would go on to buy hundreds of albums but I still remember those six LPs. Indeed, to this day, I am not far off knowing every note on each of the albums. (When I saw Numan playing 'The Pleasure Principle' in its entirety a few years back, I winced at every missed bass fill.)

I could take a break here and sift through my iTunes library and make a comprehensive list of all the great albums I've bought over the years but perhaps it's more true to simply list the ones that spring to mind: The Human League's 'Travelogue'; Bowie's 'Low'; Duran Duran's 'Rio'; Iggy Pop's 'The Idiot'; Japan's 'Quiet Life' and 'Tin Drum'; David Sylvian's 'Secrets Of The Beehive' and 'Blemish'; Nick Cave's 'Henry's Dream'; ABC's 'The Lexicon Of Love'; all of Kraftwerk's albums from 'Autobahn' through to 'Electric Café'/'Technopop'; Radiohead's run of 'OK Computer', 'Kid A', and 'Amnesiac'; The Wedding Present's 'Seamonsters'; Lou Reed and John Cale's 'Songs For Drella'; Peter Gabriel's 'Passion'; The Fall's 'Extricate'; Kate Bush's 'Hounds Of Love'; Brian Eno's 'Music For Airports'; Talk Talk's 'Spirit Of Eden'; Simple Minds' 'Sons And Fascination' and 'Empires And Dance'; OMD's 'Architecture And Morality'; and, well, many, many more.

These are all albums that I have listened to over and over again and if I sat here for a little longer I could probably think of as many again. I see, for example, that I haven't mentioned Tubeway Army's 'Replicas', Einstürzende Neubauten's 'Tabula Rasa'; James's 'Wah Wah', Wire's 'The Ideal Copy', Sylvian and Czukay's 'Plight And Premonition' and... OK, OK, I'll stop now.

But over the last twenty years, whilst I have heard hundreds and hundreds of great songs, I haven't heard that many great albums. Actually, 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac' just scrape into that period but apart from them? Well, two spring to mind: Elbow's 'Seldom Seen Kid At Abbey Road' and Public Service Broadcasting's 'The Race For Space'. But really, just those two.

That is until this week when I discovered UNE and their album 'Lost'. There's a nice little story to this: Mark Radcliffe - yes, him off the radio - had just moved to Knutsford and met a chap called Paul Langley in a pub that someone told him he could take his dog to. The two became friends and ended up talking about making music together. Langley recorded electronic music and Radcliffe wrote the lyrics based on a book his was reading about foreign words that don't translate directly into English.

It turns out the Radcliffe is both a good lyricist and singer, and I love  Langley's electronica, both sonically and musically. As an album it works pretty much perfectly. Indeed, it's a contender for my album of the year (and almost certainly the winner).

As you'll have guessed: would recommend.

****
-11.4 kgs
Reading: 'The Vanishing Half' by Brit Bennett