What A Concept!

You know what I like? I like concept albums. I like when an album is truly a sum of its parts, without one track outshining any other as merely a “single” that is meant to sell you on the rest. I mean, okay, there are exceptions to the rule; I’ll fully admit that I originally bought Aqua’s “Aquarium” because of “Barbie Girl” and Savage Garden’s self-titled debut for “I Want You” (after seeing them perform it during Nickelodeon’s Kid Choice Awards), but I eventually discovered that those albums were straight up bangers with every single track (to me). No, really!

Regardless, albums without a cohesive story or theme tend to be like a salad bar; you take what you want and leave the rest. Which is perfectly fine, as I really do enjoy plenty of albums like that, but to me there’s truly something to be said for an album which is an all around “experience” from beginning to end. Especially in these days of streaming music where it does seem like, for the most part, “whole” albums take a bit of a backseat to being merely a collection of random songs or just releasing singles instead. Some like croutons, some don’t, y’know?

Advertisement

Computronic: Even the Score

Recently, over on their blog, Bandcamp wrote up an article about how artists have been utilizing synths to create soundtracks for imaginary movies. I have not only seen this stated in a number of interviews that I have read, but personal discussions I have had with a few producers collaborate this as well, for many of those within the synthwave community were indeed inspired by the synth-ladened soundtracks of yesteryear.