Ten album titles that are puns - the good, the bad and the willie

Recently, Drowned in Sound's Twitter account posed the question: Has there ever been a good song or album title containing a pun?

Let's find some kind of answer. Here are ten albums with punny titles along with my thoughts on each and every dang one of them. 

The Orb: Orblivion
Plays into the ever-pulsating galactic dramatics of The Orb. Certainty works better than "Armageddorb" or "Catastrorbphe". Undermined by their other album UF Orb which sounds like a pun but really doesn't work. In fact, it's terrible.

Sleaford Mods: UK Grim
Nottingham’s mouthiest geezers have been knocking about for yonks, but it’s only until now that they’ve concocted the perfect album title. This play on ‘UK grime’ speaks to the core of the band: rap music, British vibes, everything being crap. This is excellent pun work from the guys that gave us Tied Up In Nottz and Eton Alive.

Blink-182: Enema of the State 
Just thinking about this album title makes me empty my bowels. Which is exactly what the California rock imps wanted. Even the cover is awful, with its sexy gloved nurse. A childish embarrassment to puns everywhere. Jeez, guys, what’s your age again?

Salt-N-Pepa (pictured): A Salt with a Deadly Pepa
For a band with a wordplayed DJ in the form of Spinderella, you'd think everyone's fave condiment-themed rappers would nail a pun. Not so. The album title starts well, but like the album it runs out of ideas. "Pepa" is standing in for the word "weapon". Unless you're talking about pepper spray, this doesn't cut the mustard gas. Poor. 

The Shirehorses: Our Kid Eh
As suggested by Thomas Ragdale on Twitter. It feels like puns come with the territory with Mark & Lard's parody project, and indeed the first track on the album is If You Tolerate This Piss by the Manic Street Sweepers. What raises this above the average pun is the delightful audacity of knocking off Kid A only a mere seven months after that seminal album's release. Talk about poking sacred cows with a stick. Impressive.

Rednex: Sex & Violins
Sparks: Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins
No.

David Bowie: Aladdin Sane
Bowie really didn’t have many options after Ziggy Stardust. He’d been to Mars, he’d invented the bisexual alter-ego as icon, he’d made a synthesiser sound like a saxophone. A-Lad-Insane is a pretty solid pun which carries all the weight of the craziness of stardom. It's a bit naff but, whisper it, Bowie often was. (Complaint letters to the usual address.)

Will Smith: Willennium
Big Willie Style is perhaps a more famous album for this freshest of princes, which is unfortunate because in UK slang this is definitely not the kind of pun you need. Willennium is Will Smith’s wild wild western era, and it feels like there were greater puns to be found here rather than this millennial mediocrity. The Good, the Bad and the Willie, maybe.

Bola: Soup
Bola: Fyuti
Bola: Gnayse
Bola: Kroungrine
Bola: DEG
I had to include Manchester’s downtempo maestro in this listing. The albums listed here are puns on a bowl of soup, a footballer, bolognese, crown green bowler, and boiled egg. This should be awful, but Bola somehow managed all this while maintaining his creative integrity. Quite frankly, I’m Bola-d over.

Phats & Small: Now Phats What I Small Music
Sometimes you don’t know whether something is absolute genius or the worst thing ever invented, like Marmite or crocs or the jelly toaster. I may have made that last one up. The jury is still out on the title of Phats & Small’s debut album. Considering the album is only ten tracks long and Turn Around features twice, let’s not lose any sleep over it.

Punning album titles are still all the rage, as evidenced by the title of Orbital's brand new album Optical Delusion. Which punning album titles impress you? Which make you feel all Blink 182ed? Let me know on Twitter.

Further Fats: 26 Mixes For Cats: gratuitous twits and puns (2011)

Further Fats: Insert clever Bola pun here (2017)

Insert clever Bola pun here

Oh my pants, Bola's back.

Bola's debut album Soup came out around the same time as Boards Of Canada's Music Has The Right To Children, and I would spin from one to the other like some kind of techno mother trying to choose her favourite child.

Darrell 'Bola' Fitton also had a hand in Autechre's Incunabula and the Gescom project. About a decade ago, after releasing a properly decent fourth album called Kroungrine, Bola disappeared. Piff paff poof, in a burst of smoke, he vanished.

By the way, it took me about two years to realise his debut album was a pun. And it's taken me until now to realise his follow-up albums were also puns. Look:

> Soup (1998) - as in, Bola Soup = bowl o' soup;
> Fyuti (2001) - as in Fyuti Bola = footballer;
> Gnayse (2004) - as in Bola Gnayse = bolognaise - well done, you're catching on now;
> Kroungrine (2007) - as in Kroungrine Bola = crown green bowler;
> D.E.G. (2017) - as in Bola D.E.G. = boiled egg.

Yeah, it got a bit tenuous there.

On first hearing, there's plenty of chunky techno warmth on new album D.E.G.., with all the signature digital growls and spun-out ambience. The slow motion electro loops of Avantual are already nestled under my skin. Have a listen yourself on Boomkat. Or just hit play below to hear the first part of a triptych dominating the second half of the album.

I'm going to enjoy this one. A great Manchester musician making a welcome return. Eee, Bola.



Further Fats: My greatest idea once more crumbles to dust like a great big crumbly bit of dust (2010)

Further Fats: There goes the hear: Manchester has enough gigs (2011)

My greatest idea once more crumbles to dust like a great big crumbly bit of dust

Once in a mauve moon, I come up with an idea so eyeball-shatteringly amazing, I literally spend 24 hours patting myself on the back like some goggle-armed freak.

I include some of my radio ideas in that (such as inventing the name Fryer Tuck Shop and conniving with my radio co-presenter Lee to come up with a game based on it). I also include the Formula One Losers League in that (which I hope to resurrect next year).

So I was quite excited about my idea for a music comparison site that went beyond the pathetic attempts by Amazon and iTunes to hopelessly recommend Cascada to Aphex Twin fans*.

Music comparisons. How hard can they be? This is like falling off a blog. Dead easy. Like pissing on a duck. Let's test my big new idea with a basic comparison question:

If you like Orbital, what else do you buy?

Here is my list of bands that sound like Orbital, or at least, music you may want to listen to if you haven't the foggiest about electronic music but you happen to have bought an Orbital album or two. The list includes suggestions from other people given to me when I first started researching this 361 frickin' days ago.

Remember. This is the start of my Big New Idea. I am a genius, so this cannot possibly go wrong.

If you like Orbital, try...

- µ-Ziq. He has that melodic thing going on along with a crunchiness of rhythm that Orbital fans like.

- Boards of Canada and Bola. Both artists ooze with Orbital-style melancholy and are both fairly accessible.

- The Black Dog and Plaid. Experimentalism meats warm analogue techno goodness.

- Kruder and Dorfmeister. Maybe, although I'm not quite sure.

- Photek. Feel the darkness. The complexity in the rhythmic structure. No? Next!

- Crystal Castles, but only their track Untrust Us.

- Long Range. This is the guy from Orbital. This list is useless.

- Lemon Jelly. Oh now come on, that's taking the Michaelangelo.

- Mannheim Steamroller? Trans Siberian Orchestra? Nah. Pentatonik! Closer with that last one, although it's the old techno band not the more recent rock band.

- The theme tune to the Equalizer. Well, actually, now you come to think about it...

- Lowfish. And the second track from Wahn's Alt.binaries. Hello? Is anyone still reading?

Well, that was a pile of hairballs. It's my worst list since I listed Orbital's albums by colour.

Scrap that idea. I'm off to draw up blueprints for my next brilliant scheme, which will involve (in no particular order) the chair George Clooney made in Burn After Reading, the complete works of Dan Brown, a blowtorch and sixty-two gallons of bathtub gin.

*Actually, they're a lot better these days, but iTunes used to be shiiieeeeet.

Monthly mop-up: top class joy, too many leggings and the theme tune to the Equalizer

Here are some scabby flakes of putrid bloggery that I didn't have time to squeeze into my blog in April.

As a proud Mancunian, I like the look of Top Class Manager. Lesley Gilbert, the widow of music manager Rob Gretton, created this book from notebooks, posters, letters, and studio notes, all chronicling the short history of Joy Division. I think it came out some time ago, but I've only just noticed it - here.

Speaking of the holy land, the Manchester International Festival is approaching fast. Uber-techno-mecha-gods Kraftwerk will appear with Steve Reich, while Elbow will strike up with the Hallé Orchestra. I once performed with the Hallé, but that's for another post. Oh and the Same Teens will be doing one of their gigs for, um, teens. I found myself at one of their events once, and everyone, absolutely everyone, was wearing leggings.

Time for a B12 update. (I feel like I am a TV presenter updating you on the longest marathon in the world.) The legendary techno label is issuing lots of lovely old goodness on a series of Archive albums. I last reported them when they released Volume 3. They're now up to Volume six of seven, which spans 1992 to 1994 - read more about the whole lot at Boomkat.

Finally, I've been working on a piece called Bands From The Last Few Years That Sound Like Orbital But Aren't Orbital. I'm struggling. I'm trying to avoid obvious bands from 'back in the day' like Leftfield that Last FM or iTunes would obviously point out. So I've got Mike Paradinas, Boards of Canada, Plaid, maybe Bola, the Crystal Castles track Untrust Us, and the theme tune to the Equalizer. Long Range doesn't count because it's an Orbital spin-off. It's not a good list, is it? I thought this piece would float, but it seems to be drowning. If you can help, throw me a lifeline in the comments.

Some lists containing rhyming Autechre, Orbital in colour, and the entire history of dance music

I've been rather busy in a studio making up stupid jingles and idents for a series of radio programmes, so my post today will be a little half-hearted, pathetic and, quite frankly, lukewarm enough to make you vomit.

Which is a shame, because I want to tell you about a really good gig by an electronic musician who seemed constantly surprised by his own sound.  Maybe I'll write about that later in the week.

So for now, here is the standard blog fall-back. Lists.

Five Autechre tracks that don't quite rhyme:

1. Gnit

2. Glitch

3. Slip

4. Krib

5. Theme Of Sudden Roundabout

The entire history of dance music traced through five significant number one hits:

1. Donna Summer - I Feel Love

2. Steve 'Silk' Hurley - Jack Your Body

3. Black Box - Ride On Time

4. Livin' Joy - Dreamer

5. Crazy Frog - Axel F

The most played artists on my Last FM page, including one imposter:

1. Autechre

2. µ-Ziq (artwork pictured)

3. Bonnie Tyler

4. Plaid

5. Bola

The biggest Roland songs in UK chart history:

David Whitfield With The Roland Shaw Orchestra - Adoration Waltz (#9 in 1957)

Roland Rat Superstar - Rat Rapping (#14 in 1983)

Armand Van Helden featuring Roland Clark - Flowerz (#18 in 1999)

Roland Rat Superstar - Love Me Tender (#32 in 1984) ... does anyone actually remember this?

Honorary mention goes to: Grange Hill Cast - Just Say No (#5 in 1986)


What Orbital's albums would have been called if they had continued the colour theme:

1. The Green Album

2. The Brown Album.

3. The Grey Album

4. The Blue-ish Album

5. The Blue And Black Album (original soundtrack)

6. The White Album

7. The Black Album

8. The Brown Album (greatest hits)

9. The Black Album (original soundtrack)
10. The Blue Album

11. The White Album (USA greatest hits)

12. The White-ish Album (live at Glastonbury)

Berlin's Vector Lovers are marching like an army with pinheads for shoes

Vector Lovers' (pictured) spanking new album Afterglow is just a little too pristine, like Future Sound Of London's rambling era without the ever-present peril of descent into hell.

At first listen, it seems to live closer to the surface than the usual subterranean Soma techno, but the shallow end is deeper than you think.

Half-Life is all breathless synths and sinister crackles, while Last Day Of Winter is watery and hesitant.

A Field marches like an army with pinheads for shoes. The delicate Piano Dust is heart-breaking and intimate, and that's the key; the album is so well produced, every padding bassdrum and swooshing chord pours straight into your eardrums.

Afterglow will reward you with what it says on the tin. Go buy.

At the other end of the spectrum, maybe on a secondary spectrum complete with its own biohazard label, is the tumultuous mayhem of Shitmat's new offering Grooverider.

Don't be hoodwinked by the reference to the drum and bass legend; this is old skool Britney-sampling jungle cut and pasted into fresh genres that didn't even exist five minutes ago.

It's inevitably formulaic: cranked-up breaks stabbed with broken vocals and sporadically laid to waste by doom-mongering sirens or pant-wobbling sub-bass.

But it's fun tee-hee, just like his earlier track Agricultural Ardcore, which was the god-awful Archer's theme tune hacked to a stump.

If Shitmat is Red Bull laced with amphetamines, Bola's latest album Kroungrine is peppermint tea laced with nothing. Not so much a downer as, well, a bit boring.

It lies somewhere between DJ Shadow and lounge jazz, but it is certainly neither. They should nick a trick or two from the Vector Lovers.