Players' Top 20 - Chelsea - Various Artists

Advantages: Lots of great songs from the eighties
Disadvantages: A few not so great

...I was in my local record store the other week browsing for ideas for mothers day for my wife from our two small children when my attention was caught by this particular offering. As most of you will be aware from my previous reviews, one of my great passions is eighties music and I couldn't resist buying this. Not for my wife I might add but for myself. So what was it that caught my attention? Well to be honest the graphics on the CD hardly grab your attention. Basically it consists of a dark blue cover with light blue lettering declaring that it is a Top of The Pops Album, with this letting enclosed to make it appear like a circle. The BBC logo is also detailed but this is hardly prominent either. In red lettering at the bottom of the circle the album stipulates the 80s, and provides details of a selection of artists in... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Brilliant electronic music
Disadvantages: quite strange

...Rephlexions (various artists) is the next installment of compilation albums on the Rephlex record label. It features another set of tracks by the key players on the label and is equally as good as the first compilation (Braindance (various artists)) The sounds are spaced out emotional and very original explorations of electronia. The CD kicks off with some mellow keys on which glitchy drum and bass future breaks are laid on top. The second tracks goes straight into a gentle industrial clanking atmosphere where a glimmering machine sits in a castle basement, blue light floods through the window in the middle of the night, the machine gets more energy as the track progresses.All the tracks seem to have concepts behind them waiting to be discovered. I especially like track 14 'It aint perfect till its perfect' by LIKE-A-TIM, which sounds... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Extremely nostalgic and enjoyable for everyone
Disadvantages: A couple of bad song choices, but not enough to detract from the enjoyment

...seems much more fun. The Three Degrees also give a fantastic performance of another of my favourites. As the decade progresses, the artist's continue to look monged and I begin to wish I'd been born 30 years earlier as I would have preferred to live while this music was in vogue, rather than the manufactured tosh we have to endure these days. I love the shiny silk, and I would have pulled it off well on '70's day' in the office. I tried to grow one of those pimp-style moustaches, as adorned by The Real Thing, or Freddie Mercury, but only managed a small growth of bum fluff, which makes me look like I have a caterpillar crawling over my top lip. Paul Weller delivers a sterling performance with The Jam, as one would expect and 'Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick' (in which a saxophonist plays two saxophones at once, something I didn't think... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful