Jerk Music Critic: The Best of the Art of Noise

This is a mildly challenging review to write not because of the music but because of the sheer number of editions that exist. In broad strokes, however, you've got a Blue and you've got a Pink (and at least one release has both), and one is clearly better than the other. As with many proto-ambient acts sometimes the quantity is just as important as the quality, and the 12" mixes on Blue — particularly the CD release — frankly deliver. While the lead-in "Opus 4" is a little underdeveloped, the big hits are mostly here, including the classic "Beat Box" (especially glittering on the long-play CD as "Beatbox (Diversion One)"), the slightly ominous "Close (To The Edit)," "Dragnet '88" (I liked it, but the music is clearly better than the movie), and my personal two favourites: the extended Max Headroom feature "Paranoimia," Matt Frewer gabble intact, and the so sumptuous it brought tears to my wife's eyes "Moments in Love," this 7 minute form eclipsed only by the 10 minute ecstasy on the vinyl of Into Battle (which you can find on the CD of Daft). Low points, but only by comparison, are eight minutes of Tom Jones trying to get in your pants ("Kiss," although I appreciate the smarmyness as contrast) and the harsh and lugubrious "Legacy;" this, plus the peculiar omission of "The Army Now" from their first EP, loses that fifth star but is still a must-have for any collector of synthopop. Pink, however, is almost atavistic in its choices, reverting to 7" mixes for virtually all the tracks. There are also some appallingly suspect substitutions, such as the complete absence of "Beat Box" (replaced by "Yebo," its world beat fusion being fun to listen to, but hardly revolutionary) and "Moments" (replaced by "Instruments of Darkness" which is just trite in its message); only the replacement of "Close (To The Edit)" with "Robinson Crusoe" is anything close to an even swap. There is still "Peter Gunn" with the wacky Duane Eddy twang, but less of it, and another version of "Paranoimia" with a slightly different script that Edison Carter fans will want to find. The rest is the same but in abridgment, and abridgment is pretty much the entire theme of Pink: a meagre compilation that only hints at luxury, but enough remains to tempt listeners back to the superior release. Will I still be perfect tomorrow? Perhaps, but only one of these two will be. (Content: Tom Jones' hormones.)

Blue: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Pink: 🌟🌟🌟

Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟🌟
A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟
Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

🌟🌟
Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

🌟
Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

💩
How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.