Café Kaput - Applied Music Vol. 3

  Quote

Land & Sea is the third in a series of albums released digitally on Jon Brooks' own Café Kaput label and given a vinyl incarnation in association with Belbury Music (a sub label of Ghost Box Records). Land & Sea is inspired by natural land and seascapes and by the golden age of electronic library music.

https://ghostbox.greedbag.com/buy/applied-music-land-and-sea/

finally got this.

it's okay- but thematically- i feel like brooks is still stuck in his ambient 'agri montana / autres directions' mode - so much so he even forgot to credit a (fake) personnel for the tracks. mainly this lacks variety and instead keeps up with the idea that these vague sketches of ideas.

I insta-bought since I insta-bought the previous two, but am heavily underwhelmed*; it seems to be mostly filler, though the track which was available pre-purchase on bandcamp is indeed excellent.

more and more i've found this with brooks: his albums have maybe 1-2 good tracks (which are available pre-purchase), and the stuff he hides behind the paywall is filler.

this is very sad for me, since years back when i first discovered him, i was blown away by his variety and consistent quality.  but multiple releases now are dominated by filler (annoyingly hidden behind paywall), and i've also seen enthusiasm for him hear on watmm decline...

oh well

  On 10/7/2020 at 12:54 PM, conjugacy said:

I insta-bought since I insta-bought the previous two, but am heavily underwhelmed*; it seems to be mostly filler, though the track which was available pre-purchase on bandcamp is indeed excellent.

more and more i've found this with brooks: his albums have maybe 1-2 good tracks (which are available pre-purchase), and the stuff he hides behind the paywall is filler.

this is very sad for me, since years back when i first discovered him, i was blown away by his variety and consistent quality.  but multiple releases now are dominated by filler (annoyingly hidden behind paywall), and i've also seen enthusiasm for him hear on watmm decline...

oh well

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@conjugacy100% agree with this. Jon Brooks decline (ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration) seems to have coincided with the (IMO) lack of quality in the Ghostbox output. Sometimes, he's put out amazing stuff - '52', The Advisory Circle, (except the last one which was not so good) and the amazing 'Walberswick'.

Lately, I've even gone back to the 'King of Woolworths' stuff - although back when I bought that in 2001, It was because 'Bakerloo' had been used on a TV advert for 'Orange Mobile', a UK network carrier.

I'd been listening to Advisory Circle for years before I made the connection with King of Woolworths.

An interesting wrinkle when discussing any perceived decline in Brooks' material is that a decent chunk of his solo works over the last decade have been partly comprised of library music that he's done over the years. So, you have something like Shapwick on Clay Pipe that plays out as a great album, but is actually a mix of material from a large span of time.