Detour-nment

PopMatters has a running feature going on this week called "Detours" that explores some of the more prestigious abortions and oddities from amainstream artists. It's worth checking out if you're interested in such arcane histories, liminal phases, or the like. I have a brief spot on Devo's E-Z Listening Disc. Probably should have contributed more, but I was falling behind on reviews and pretty busy with other stuff. There's definitely a couple they missed. (of course the features not over, but I know what they're publishing).

Off the top of my head:

Elton John- Visions of Love (his lone eurodisco album)

Amon Duul II- Only Human (their only eurodisco album)

Sun Ra and The Blues Project- Batman and Robin (remarkable for how tepid and commercial a Sun Ra project could be)

Prince- Batman Soundtrack (remarkable for how tepid and lame a Prince project could be and confounding as to why Tim Burton would choose Prince of all people for freiking Batman)

Neil Young- Arc (composed entirely of feedback and instrumental fragments from years of touring)

Moby- Animal Rights (the ill-advised, though not entirely career-killing foray into an odd mixture of post-hardcore and ambient)

The Beastie Boys- Aglio E Olio (their ill-advised, though not entirely career killing reforay into hardcore)

Daryl Hall- Sacred Songs (to be the first in a trilogy of Robert Fripp-produced albums, which later included one of the untitled Peter Gabriel albums and Fripp's own Exposure. Hall amazingly pulls off a madcap Bowie here before he sailed off into smooth pop stylings with longtime partner John Oates).

Also, a nice addition to my one published item would be an album any spudboy would be remiss not to check out at least once; Devo 2.0. Devo repositioned Kids Incorporated style, being sung by pre-teens for modern audiences. This apparently sells really well too. I could think of nothing more inappropriate or properly devo in and of itself.


Think of any other ones?


I've also got another review at PopMatters of Vibert/Simmonds's Rodulate, an odd artifact of tail-eating nostalgia, odd mainly because IDM seems to be the odd electronic genre that mostly sounds now as it probably did when it was released.