50 albums: 1997 - Passive Soul by Orlando

So, by the mid-90s the music inkies had to my eyes become desperately needy and this manifested itself in trying to outdo each other in creating and championing (and then of course knocking back) a new genre. You had "shoegaze" and the laughable post-shoegaze "scene that celebrates itself" which bundled together a bunch of floppy-haired Thames Valley indie-kids, you had the mostly tiresome "Madchester" and it's region-neutral counterpart "Baggy, and many more journalistic attempts at being at being relevant.

When in November 1995 Melody Maker rallied to the Romo cause I was tuned out, there was very little making it onto my radar beyond the guitar-led bands that Galaxie 500 had led me into. Or the Krautrock and post-rock that Stereolab had turned me onto. My copy of "Fiddle While Romo Burns" is in the attic in a box of covermount cassettes, and like so many of them is still in its cellophane wrap.

I've been kept at arms length with industrial strength from the word go

A few years on and my "Galaxie 500" searches found me arriving periodically at Dickon Edwards' blog/diary, then it was the content that kept me going back. I bought and enjoyed his releases as Fosca, and kept reading his diary but for some reason never got the urge to listen to Orlando. The "Romo" thing still seemed a world away from me.

Passive Soul, Orlando's 1997 album, unavailable for years, is now available on iTunes, and so for my 50 albums entry for 1997 I thought it was time to give Orlando a listen...

(play on YouTube)

50 films and 50 albums