Honcho Overload

Ohio Players, “It’s Your Night / Words of Love”

Daaaaaaaamn. The mid-70s Ohio Players albums were all ridiculously good.

Karl Hendricks Trio, “The Official Shape of Beauty”

I have a hard time picking my favorite album from the Karl Hendricks Trio. I often lean towards the first couple records from them because it felt special I was listening to them that early, and I saw them so often in those early days. But the later albums probably on-balance have better songs? I think the sweet spot might actually be this record, A Gesture of Kindness. Pre-Merge Records, but Karl’s songwriting had advanced from his earliest stuff.

The Orb, “Into The Fourth Dimension: Essenes Beyond Control”

Little Fluffy Clouds was one of the first things that ambient electronic artists The Orb released, and I picked it up as part of a foray into whether I liked electronic music at that time. I knew some folks that were into going to raves and things, and thought, eh, I like industrial enough, maybe I’ll like this too. I never really got into it, though, at least not at that time. Wasn’t too wild about raves either. It wasn’t until I encountered more frantic genres of electronic music that I really got it.