Album Clash - a music podcast!

Welcome to Album Clash! Concluding our live dance albums clash, we turn this week to the godfathers of rave Orbital, and their retrospective documenting of their numerous performances at Glastonbury over the years, ingeniously titled ‘Live at Glastonbury: 1994 - 2004’. In doing so we talk about the massive role Orbital played in bringing electronic dance music into the mainstream, not least of all...

Welcome to Album Clash! We start another new clash this week, and continuing our live season we take a look at two rare examples of live albums by dance acts - as into the ring of death Tim enters two acts of whom he has been desperate to speak for a long time - Underworld and Orbital. First up it’s Underworld with their 2000 live album ‘Everything Everything’. And it’s an uncharacteristically sho...

Welcome to Album Clash! In this week’s episode we conclude the second clash in our ‘live albums’ season by going through the Who’s classic 1970 album ‘Live at Leeds’. There’s only six tracks to go through but there’s still plenty for us to get into on this album, such as how the Who’s poor administration led to what Pete Townshend refers to as the stupidest decision of his life - amazingly it’s no...

Welcome to Album Clash! In the latest clash in our live season we pit two ageing behemoths of the rock scene head-to-head, as the Rolling Stones take on the Who. First up it’s the Stones, as Mick, Keith et al treat us to their 1970 live album ‘Get Yer Ya-Yas Out’, compiled from some of the gigs on their 1969 North American tour. Among our usual meanderings we talk about how the Stones recovered fr...

Welcome to Album Clash! In this week’s show we conclude the first clash in our ‘live’ season by taking a meander through David Bowie’s now legendary headline set from the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury 2000. And, much like the first part of this clash, there’s an awful lot of meandering to get through. Don’t blame us, blame Bowie. He’s the one who crammed 22 songs into his Glasto greatest hits set f...

ALBUM CLASH IS BACK! REPEAT, ALBUM CLASH IS BACK! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! ASSUME CRASH POSITIONS AND PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR EARS INVADED!! Yep, we’re back for Season 2. For reals this time. Heralding our return, and to kick off our ‘live albums’ season , we do what we know best - talking for absolutely ages about two ridiculously long albums. It’s a real clash of the titans as we pit two behemoths of r...

WE'RE BACK, BABY! And not before time! Okay, okay, so this is only a trailer. The official return is next week, when Tim and Kev bring you 'Album Clash Season 2 - Electric Boogaloo'!! And this time it's even more tiresome! In this brief trailer to get you excited about season 2 we reveal the theme of our next few clashes and, of course, announce the first two albums to enter the ring of death. We...

To conclude our ‘breakup albums’ bonus clash, Shel takes us through the most famous divorce album of all time (at least according to the 40 million people who bought it), Fleetwood Mac’s eleventh album ‘Rumours’ from 1977. And, as anyone who knows even the tiniest bit about the history of Fleetwood Mac will know, there’s a hell of a lot for us to talk about given that all five members of the band...

And WE’RE BACK!! Sort of. Ahead of our long awaited (dreaded?) return we thought we’d treat you to a little bonus clash. Kev’s not here for this one, so Shel returns to pod duties as we go through two iconic albums of the 70s. And the theme for this special husband and wife helmed clash is, of course, albums about divorce! Yep, we’re pitting two of the most famous breakup albums of all time into t...

Concluding our latest clash, and indeed our ‘Album Clash goes to the movies’ season we have the second of our legendary film scores by Italian composers, as we go back to 1972 and take a look at Nino Rota’s legendary score for the first part of Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Godfather’ trilogy. We talk about Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone’s contrasting approaches to composing soundtracks, as well as t...

We start a new clash this week, and continuing our ‘movies’ season we have a slight change of direction, away from the world of pop music and into the world of film scores. And what a couple of soundtracks (and films for that matter) we have picked to go through - it’s the battle of the Italian composers as the genial Ennio Morricone and his score for ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ goes up again...

We conclude our look at concert movie soundtracks this week by going through U2’s bumper 1988 album ‘Rattle and Hum’. And boy, is there a lot for us to chew on, as we find out how the band looked to capitalise on the runaway success of ‘The Joshua Tree’ and cement their new-found status as the biggest band in the world. We talk about how the album, and the film, started life as a simple tour docum...

It’s new clash week here on Album Clash, and we are continuing with our ‘Album Clash Goes to the Movies’ season by taking a little bit of a sideways look at the theme, as we take a look at two ‘concert movie soundtracks’. Going up against each other inside the ring of death are Talking Heads, with their 1984 album ‘Stop Making Sense’, and U2, with the behemoth that was 1988’s ‘Rattle and Hum’. Fir...

IT’S OUR BIRTHDAY!! Yep, it’s our 52nd ‘proper’ pod this week (not counting a couple of bonus pods) and so we mark our first birthday. MASSIVE thanks to everyone who has listened to us over the past year - whether you have been with us right from the start, whether you dip in and out from time to time, or whether you have just discovered us (and a warm welcome to you guys as well). How will we be...

What’s this? Has Album Clash taken complete leave of its senses? Are we doing films now?! Well, no. Not exactly. We’re doing film soundtracks. That’s right, with Oscars season upon us once again we figured we’d hitch ourselves to that bandwagon and do a new season which I’ve decided to call “Album Clash Goes to the Movies”. At least until next week, when I realise I can’t be bothered typing the wh...

Bringing our electronica season to a close we go through Soft Cell’s 1981 debut album ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’. And, well, there’s quite a lot for us to get into on this one. Not least of all the way that Soft Cell, and Mark Almond in particular, pushed the buttons of conservative middle England with in-your-face sexuality, provocative lyrics and evocations of the seedy, vice-ridden underbelly of...

We begin the final clash in our electronica season today, and you will be delighted to know that Kev is in a much better mood this week. (Three out of ten though mate? Ridiculous.) Which is just as well seeing as this clash was his choice. And a great choice it was too, as we head all the way back to the start of the 1980s and the dawn of the synth-pop era to check out two of the acts that paved t...

Concluding our look back at influential electronic albums from 1991, this week we take a look at The Orb’s debut album ‘Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld’. And boy, are you in for a treat. I could do as I usually do and write some pithy notes about what we talk about this week, but that doesn’t even scratch the surface of this pod. Instead, it’s best to think of this week’s show as a social experim...

Continuing with our electronica season we begin a new clash this week, as Tim takes us back to 1991 to talk about two of the most influential acts in the nascent acid house scene, the KLF, and the Orb. Kicking us off we take a look at the final album from legendary anarchic duo the KLF, ‘The White Room’. And my god is there a lot for us to get stuck into. In fact, I’ll be honest with you guys, we...

Completing the latest clash in our electronica season is… an indie rock album. I know. Blame Kev, he chose this clash. That’s right, going up against Hot Chip we have Klaxons debut album from 2007, ‘Myths of the Near Future’, an album crammed to bursting with abstract lyrics and obscure literary references by the barrelful. Through the course of this week’s pod we discover (via the medium of a cri...

The fourth clash in our electro season sees us make a rare foray into the 21st century, to take a look at two albums from the mid-2000s that spearheaded the short-lived ‘nu-rave’ scene. (Which, despite what the NME tried to tell us, really wasn’t a scene. It was just a name given to a loose collective of young British acts that emerged at a similar time. Some of whom even produced electronic music...

Completing the second leg of our Vince Clarke derby we find out what the denizen of synth pop got up to after leaving Depeche Mode, by delving into Yazoo’s debut album ‘Upstairs at Eric’s’ from 1982. In doing so we learn about how Vince Clarke came to work with Alison Moyet, what was unusual (and ultimately unsustainable) about their working dynamic, and how one of the most famous synth pop tunes...

We start a new clash this week, paying tribute to one of the heavyweights of 80s synth pop. And to kick off the Vince Clarke derby we take a look at Depeche Mode’s 1981 debut album ‘Speak and Spell’. As we get into things we find out who were the chief influences on Vince Clarke’s musical direction both on this album and beyond, how this album sowed the seeds for the band that Depeche Mode would g...

‘What we’re doing when the albums’ clashing!’ Completing our battle of the big-beat behemoths this week it’s the turn of our favourite celebrity fan (hiya Norm!) Fatboy Slim, with his seminal 1998 effort ‘You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby’. We take a whistle stop tour of the many faces of Norman Cook’s pop career, before digging down into the album that made him into a global star and created the conce...

‘Back with another one of those block-rockin’ album clashes!’  Yep, for the second clash in our electronica season we return to our comfort blanket of the late 90s, and in doing so take a look at a couple of the albums that helped propel dance music into the mainstream, creating the concept of the Superstar DJ and making it acceptable for indie boys to get on the dancefloor.  It’s the Ch...