BrightNeonLights

Bright Neon Lights is where the artists of The Solanaceae Artist Collective will explain to you how your taste is wrong and you need to be more like us. You may be a little afraid of this because in the back of your mind you know that anything unfamiliar is strange. Don't worry, none of this is strange. It is different, but it is not strange.

As I have said in the "About Us" write up of The Solanaceae Artist Collective, in the underground we have discovered and explored every aspect of sound. We have taken music and deconstructed it. Then we have put it back together. What we now have is a new music, we have the new evolution of music.

You are probably familiar with what us pretentious nerds like to call "Surface indie." Interpol and the like. This is a very good place to start, but I assure you this goes much deeper.

You are probably assuming that unpopular means bad. If not very many people like a band, it is probably because they are not good enough to be famous. This is an incorrect way of thinking, a lot of bands are simply unpopular because they do not go bippity bop in a very non threatening way. I will admit, a very large chunk of indie singers are not necessarily great singers. I can only hope that you will learn there is a certain soul in being not necessarily a great singer. Some of you will struggle with this and that is perfectly acceptable, but don't worry, there is still a hell of a lot of underground music with brilliant vocalists, and a hell of a lot of underground music with no vocals whatsoever.

Instrumental music and electronic music can be far more emotional than you would have thought. Again, this is a concept that is unfamiliar to you, a concept you may think of as absurd. I assure you a hell of a lot of intention and emotion can be pulled out of a single note. There are even moments where in order to be emotional, the music must not have any vocals to distract you from the intention of every note. This of course also works the other way, if you have too much going on in the music it distracts you from the vocals.

Some of you are also going to have to start paying attention to texture. How the electric guitar crunches in a very specific way, how the synth line warbles in a very specific way. Texture has basically always been there but it is only recently that texture has become this refined. In the past we noticed we could make neat noises but we were still impressed by silly bleeps and boops. We now reject silly bleeps and boops and only make noises that sound cool. Not all old people are aware of this new concept, particularly if they began listening to music in the 70s and 80s when texture began to flatten, and have only been paying attention to songwriting, which of course is just as important. Then there's some young people listening to the same post-grunge song over and over who never would have realized there is either.

One day the achievements of the underground will be brought into the forefront and your pretty little pop music can go bippity bop with a new sense of artistry.

The following are our favourite albums. We do not rate, we simply show. If an album has made it onto our list, that is because the album is a 10. The newest write ups are always the ones on top. Sometimes some of us will have different things to say about the same album.



Kit Carruthers




Kit Carruthers mostly favours the experimental. Ambient, post-rock, psychedelia, IDM, neoclassical. He listens to a lot of music outside of this. His taste is very dark and he is the most pretentious of all of us.
.: Destroyalldreamers' "À Coeur Léger Sommeil Sanglant"
.: Dont Look Back's "Brighter"
.: Idiot Pilot's "Strange We Should Meet Here"
.: Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia...'s "My Elixir; My Poison"
.: Monolake's "Polygon_Cities"
.: Mono's & World's End Girlfriend's "Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain"
.: Bark Psychosis' "Codename: Dustsucker"
.: iLiKETRAiNS' "Progress•Reform"
.: Bathyscaphe's "-11034m"
.: dredg's "Leitmotif"
.: Cam Butler's "See (Symphony No.1)"
.: 65daysofstatic's "The Destruction of Small Ideas"
.: Godflesh's "Streetcleaner"
.: World's End Girlfriend's "Hurtbreak Wonderland"
.: VNV Nation's "Empires"
.: 35007's "Liquid"
.: Amusement Parks On Fire's "Amusement Parks On Fire"
.: Can's "Ege Bamyasi"
.: Maybeshewill's "Not for Want of Trying"
.: The Orb's "The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld"
.: Eluvium's "Talk Amongst The Trees"
.: Pan•American's "360 Business / 360 Bypass"
.: Esmerine's "If Only a Sweet Surrender to the Nights to Come Be True"
.: Efterklang's "Tripper"
.: Serge Gainsbourg's "Histoire de Melody Nelson"
.: Alessandro Cortini's "Avanti"
.: Sunn O)))'s "Black One"
.: Harold Budd's "Lovely Thunder"
.: Dälek's "Absence"
.: Suicide's "Suicide"
.: September Malevolence's "Tomorrow We'll Wonder Where This Generation Gets Its Priorities From"
.: Flying Saucer Attack's "Further"
.: Röyksopp's "Melody A.M."
.: Spacemen 3's "Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To"
.: Fennesz's "Venice"
.: Caspian's "The Four Trees"
.: Rosetta's "The Galilean Satellites"
.: Boards Of Canada's "The Campfire Headphase"
.: Hammock's "Raising Your Voice... Trying To Stop An Echo"
.: Jesu's "Silver"
.: Sigur Rós' "( )"
.: Rachel's "Selenography"
.: Piano Magic's "Low Birth Weight"
.: Love Spirals Downwards' "Ardor"
.: God Is an Astronaut's "All Is Violent, All Is Bright"
.: Autechre's "Amber"
.: Blind Mr. Jones' "Stereo Musicale"
.: Blueneck's "The Outpost"
.: Auburn Lull's "Cast From The Platform"
.: Bardo Pond's "Amanita"
.: 2814's "Lost Fragments"
.: Loop's "A Gilded Eternity"
.: DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing....."
.: Explosions in the Sky's "Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever"
.: Jóhann Jóhannsson's "Englabörn"
.: Seachange's "Lay Of The Land"
.: Crippled Black Phoenix's "A Love Of Shared Disasters"
.: Gregor Samsa's "55:12"
.: Mono's "You Are There"
.: Aereogramme's "Seclusion"
.: MGR's "Nova Lux"
.: Starflyer 59's "Leave Here a Stranger"
.: Laura's "Radio Swan is Down"
.: The Album Leaf's "In A Safe Place"
.: Shellac's "1000 Hurts"
.: Gas' "Zauberberg"
.: Coil's "The Ape of Naples"
.: Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!"
.: Fbcfabric & Reindeer's "It's Not Who You Know, It's Whom You Know"
.: Grails' "Burning Off Impurities"
.: Hope of the States' "The Lost Riots"
.: Magyar Posse's "Random Avenger"
.: The Samuel Jackson Five's "Easily Misunderstood"
.: The Black Heart Procession's "2"
.: Saxon Shore's "The Exquisite Death Of Saxon Shore"
.: Jean-Jacques Perrey's "Prelude au Sommeil"
.: Yndi Halda's "Enjoy Eternal Bliss"
.: Oceansize's "Frames"
.: The Cooper Temple Clause's "Kick Up The Fire, And Let The Flames Break Loose"
.: Logh's "North"
.: Alison's Halo's "Eyedazzler 1992-1996"
.: Burial's "Untrue"
.: Hood's "Outside Closer"
.: Bowery Electric's "Lushlife"
.: Clogs' "Stick Music"
.: Biosphere's "Angel's Flight"
.: Envy's "Insomniac Doze"
.: 65daysofstatic's "We Were Exploding Anyway"
.: Guitaro's "Futura Black"
.: Kim Hiorthøy's "Hei"
.: M83's "Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts"
.: Vladislav Delay's "Whistleblower"
.: Bethany Curve's "Gold"
.: Love's "Forever Changes"
.: 65daysofstatic's "The Fall Of Math"
.: A Silver Mt. Zion's "He Has Left Us Alone, but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms..."
.: 1 Mile North's "Glass Wars"
.: Venetian Snares' "Rossz Csillag Alatt Született"
.: Plastikman's "Consumed"
.: Murcof's "Remembranza"
.: Kashiwa Daisuke's "Program Music I"
.: Jetone's "Ultramarin"
.: Bola's "Gnayse"
.: Autechre's "EP7"
.: Arovane's "Atol Scrap"
.: Aufgang's "Turbulences"
.: Max Richter's "The Blue Notebooks"
.: Steve Reich's "Music For 18 Musicians"
.: Talk Talk's "Laughing Stock"
.: Sweek's "The Unbelievable Cinematic Crash"
.: Surface of Eceyon's "The King Beneath the Mountain"
.: The Evpatoria Report's "Golevka"
.: The Antarcticans' "Teach Children: Fear All Teachings Of Eternity, The Doom Of Self & Nature"
.: Susumu Yokota's "Sakura"
.: Deaf Center's "Pale Ravine"
.: Christopher Bissonnette's "Periphery"
.: Philip Jeck's "7"
.: Daturah's "Daturah"
.: Redjetson's "New General Catalogue"
.: Jakob's "Sines"
.: Blueneck's "Scars Of The Midwest"
.: Jessamine's "Don't Stay Too Long"
.: Swans' "To Be Kind"
.: Deathprod's "Morals and Dogma"
.: Boards of Canada's "Geogaddi"
.: Tim Hecker's "An Imaginary Country"