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"i"
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7 new or used available from £7.73
Average customer review:
Track Listing
- Hello
- Crack Up
- What's All This Then
- Off Into Space
- Yeti
- Honeysuckle Swallow
- In A Circle
- Miles Apart
- Mars
- Sugar Wings
- Down
- Insect Love
- Catch My Drift
- Love From Outer Space
- Timewind
- Snow Joke
- And I Say
- Conundrum
- Long Body
- Fast Ka
- Pop
- Spook
- Back Home
- Super Vixons
- Sorry
- Challenge
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #66030 in Music
- Released on: 1999-03-22
- Number of discs: 1
- Dimensions: .22 pounds
Customer Reviews
A London Labyrinth favourite
This is one of the most criminally undervalued albums of all time. I'm not sure any good comes from debating the extent to which the music press like to keep black musicians assigned to safe stereo-typed genres but AR Kane's redefinition of the threads of popular music and refusal to specialise in anything less than the big picture was largely overlooked in the eighties in favour of contemporaries such as My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus And Mary Chain. AR Kane had a superior melodic knack and a far broader palette. This album is a dreamworld bursting with ideas. Not that it's merely an index of possibilities. Tracks like 'Sugarwings' are perfectly realised heavenly moments while, on the dark final side, they manage to playfully nod towards the legacies of punk, dub and pop as they single-mindedly delve deeper into their unique, emotionally-charged world. " I just challenge anyone to listen to them and not cry..." And smile.
Eclectic classic from 1989...
AR Kane were a band who received much critical acclaim in the late 1980's, notably for the albums '69' and 'I' - letting music critics go off on one with adjectives such as "crystalline", "oceanic", "ethereal","uterine", "dreamlike", "(insert suggestion here, if you like)." Comparisons included Cocteau Twins (Robin Guthrie produced their 'Lolita' e.p.), Robert Wyatt (notably 'Rock Bottom'), 'Get Up With It'-Miles & the otherworldly records of Tim Buckley ('Star Sailor','Lorca').
AR Kane, like My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3 & Ultra Vivid Scene, advanced pop and rock hugely - predicting the penchant for head-music in the early 1990s. The eclectic nature of 'I' which encompasses electronica (Love from Outer Space),dub (Catch My Drift), Sun-Ra style space-jazz (many of the interludes/much of the album), pop (er, Pop), classical (In a Circle), soul-pop (What's All This Then?), Cocteaus-style ambience (Sugarwings), goth-rock (Insect Love) & feedback-drone music (Supervixens, sort of like Associates circa-'Sulk' fronted by Robert Smith thinking of 'Playing With Fire.').
'I' was much more adventerous than the truly popular indie-records of the time- 'Nowhere' by Ride, 'The Stone Roses','The House of Love' & 'Bummed'/'Pills, Thrills...' by Happy Mondays - which were all less adventerous. Perhaps AR Kane were too rich a notion at the time? - ironic when they technically had a number #1 with their Colourbox-collaboration 'Pump Up the Volume' as M/A/R/S! The 26-tracks flow together, wonderfully linking the eclectic elements together, and predicting acts like Main, Massive Attack (circa 'Mezzanine') & Seefeel. 'I' could even be seen as a precursor of such eclectic joys as 'Screamadelica' by Primal Scream, 'Every Man & Woman is a Star' by Ultramarine, 'Giant Steps' by The Boo Radleys & Radiohead's 'Kid A/Amnesciac'-set...
80% brilliant double album
It takes a very courageous artist to change their methodology when it has brought them critical and to some extent commercial success. But after the diaphanous ambitious anthems of "69" that's exactly what AR Kane did for the follow up "I", a sprawling double album which with its esoteric all over the place approach brought to mind The Beatles "White Album". It's not as good as that, but it doesn't fall that far short either.
Taking a pick and mix method "I" is to a large extent a retreat back to the barbed wire pop of their earlier recordings like "When You're Sad" in that it embraces melody and resurrects the song .But in doing that it flies off at obscure tangents with head spinning fervour. "Love From Outer Space" for instance is pop, but has the physicality and thumping bass of house music. Before they used to glide slowly like some oceanic leviathan, now they high step across the dance floor. Ironically there is a song called "Pop" which is fairly...uuhh pop!...With soul undertones marbled through it like rich blue sediment ...while still leaving space for squalls of feedback. "Snow Joke" delights in one of the most infectious string arrangements lent to a song since My Life Story, s "You Don't, Sparkle". "Catch My Drift" is an elegant entropy of dubbed reggae while "Crack Up" springs about like a demented lamb. "Hello" the albums opener, is repetitious but sizzles with intent and vigour. "Spook" is the sort of razor sharp /honey coated pop/rock song the Jesus And Mary Chain made their trademark. "Insect Love" is all hard brilliantine surfaces, proud stern rock.
In amongst all this some echoes and refractions of the more traditional AR Kane remain. "And Sai" is the torpor belied explosion of some deep space mass, all glittering embers and diffuse shafts of luminescence ."Yeti "is a carousel of feedback as is the more somnambulant "Honey Suckle Swallow" a Cocteau Twins title if ever I heard one. "Down" is Alex and Rudi at their most aloof and disdainful, a reserved pristine flowing of sound. There are snippets of songs and random noises that add nothing to the album, either as means to segue from one track to the next or as pieces in their own right.
20% of this album is rudimentary ( no pun intended) indulgent tat and the oft heard cliché, which is presumably why it's a cliché, about there being a brilliant single album is probably pertinent here. But AR Kane were never about commercial prostitution or laurel resting .Indeed they could have cashed on the success of their collaboration with Colourbox- "Pump Up The Volume" but they never considered it. They could have churned out another "69"....138 maybe, but they didn't ...they made "I". A sometimes infuriating but quite often superb double album. AR Kane made music for them selves and sod the rest of us...which is how it should be. Maybe that's why they called it "I" and not U?
