The turn of the century was a funny old time. The climate thing was surely far enough away, and anyway Al Gore looked on course to be elected president in the States. He’d sort everything out.The OJ Simpson Trial seemed to have delivered the wrong verdict, but it wasn’t directly affecting too many people’s lives. Anyone with investments or a pension pot was quite happy with how their portfolio had performed during the ‘90s. The UK had elected a dynamic young prime minister. Tech companies were sprouting up all over the place, solving everything forever. Was life just going to get better and better for everyone?
Of course, it wasn’t. It’s been going backwards ever since.
But one album did pop up in May 2001, that was, in its own way, a Space Odyssey. I like to think of it in retrospect as a Janus-like album, in the best possible sense. Harking back to old verities but open to the possibilities of the twenty-first century. Machine-based but essentially human. The chatter of the office and the languor of the park. As one “jasonh” put it in a user review:-
“A one-man mission to bring folk music kicking and screaming into the 21st century...slips effortlessly between genres, adding hip-hop and R'n'B to an already potent mix of influence... has the ability to create exquisite soundscapes that are also moving expressions of human emotion.”
So, this is where I first came across the word “folktronica” though I’m not certain where. Possibly in the NME. And here’s an episode about how the genre unfolded (though, as with punk, it turns out it kinda existed already – the episode starts with the pastoral-electronic amalgam of Ultramarine’s 1991 album “Every Man And Woman Is.A Star”).
It won’t be for everyone, but I hope it works for you.
Tracklist:
Discovery, Ultramarine
Turquoise Hexagon Sun, Boards of Canada
Everything is alright, Four Tet
Now there’s that fear again, Mum
Hendrix with KO, Caribou
Space walk, Lemon Jelly
Tiger, my friend, Psapp
What’s a girl to do, Bat for Lashes
No.1 Lent et Douloureux, Isan
Mountaintops in caves, Talkdemonic
Haikuesque (when she laughs), Bibio
Yay, Zammuto
Worth it, Moses Sumney
Widow’s peak, Odetta Hartman