Nialler9

A live podcast recording from The Big Romance about the Smashing Pumpkins' second album, the 1993 record that was made in hard mode.


Nialler9 is joined by guest Mark O'Brien (Royal Yellow, Enemies) for this live album listening party / podcast episode.



I don't indulge it often, but it's really nice when these listening parties speak to the inner teenager in us, and that's certainly the case with Siamese Dream.



It wasn't my first Smashing Pumpkins record. That was 1995's double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which I bought on cassette from Eddie O'Connor's shop in Newbridge on the way to school at the age of 14, in 1996 or thereabouts. I was already paying attention to the band because of MTV and "Bullet with Butterfly Wings", "1979" and "Tonight, Tonight", but I knew of them before that because my sister had a cassette of Siamese Dream that fascinated me. I didn't know what the music was called, but I was thrilled by it, and I loved the artwork and the font.



Siamese Dream is one of defining alt-rock albums of the '90s but it almost didn't happen. The Pumpkins were barely functioning: Corgan was depressed and in ribbons; Jimmy Chamberlin was deep in heroin; Iha and D'arcy's romance had ended. Corgan eventually played nearly everything himself apart from the drums vowing to end the band if the album flopped. Somehow, this strife and tension helped make Siamese Dream one of the finest alt-rock albums of all time.



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5 Things You Might Not Know About Siamese Dream


1. Billy Corgan played most of it himself


Corgan overdubbed most of Iha's and Wretzky's guitar and bass parts, a decision he has since said cut away the gut of his band, even if the album sounds the way he heard it in his head. Chamberlin, who was sent to rehab at Corgan's urging, still played every drum part on the record, and it's his drumming that gives the album its air.



2. They went to Georgia to escape temptation


The band left Chicago to get away from friends, hangers-on and the media, and to get Chamberlin away from his drug connections. According to Butch Vig, it took the drummer about 24 hours to find every dealer in Atlanta. The sessions ran 12-hour days, six days a week, for around three months, and finished four months over schedule and $250,000 over budget.



3. "Soma" has a special guest


Corgan says the song has up to forty overdubbed guitar parts, and Vig had to draw a literal map of the tracks, then flip the track sheet over to carry on. R.E.M.'s Mike Mills plays the piano, credited on the sleeve as appearing courtesy of Warner Bros, a detail plenty of people who've owned the album for 30 years still don't know.



4. The girls on the cover aren't conjoined


Given the title and the lyric in 'Geek U.S.A.', everyone assumed the two girls in white dresses and fairy wings were twins. They were California child models, Ali Laenger and Lysandra Roberts, who had never met before the shoot.



5. The mix came from the Loveless man


By the end, Corgan and Vig were too headwrecked to mix the record, so Corgan asked for Alan Moulder specifically because of his work on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, the famous shoegaze band formed in Dublin in 1983. Moulder booked two weeks and it took him 36 days.



Siamese Dream was our vinyl listening party in the Listen Closely series, and the next one is Burial's Untrue.

A podcast live recording from The Big Romance about the Chemical Brothers second album, - a 1997 dance record classic with guest Mango.
 

When I think of The Chemical Brothers, I think of Irish summer festivals and big nights out. The pure, kinetic energy of thousands of people losing their minds in a field or a packed arena.



Released in April 1997, Dig Your Own Hole was the album that cemented Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons as electronic music’s first true rock stars. Coming up to its 30th anniversary, it remains a landmark achievement: a psychedelic, acid-drenched dance record built out of hip-hop breaks, sirens, samplers, and raw punk attitude.



With crossover chart hits like ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’, ‘Electrobank’, ‘Setting Sun’ and the euphoric closer ‘Private Psychedelic Reel' the album balances dancefloor power with adventurous studio experimentation.



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My Gateway into Dance Music


For me, this album was the gateway. I bought it on CD while on holiday with my parents in Boston in 1999. Before that, my exposure to electronic music was strictly Scooter, along with hearing 'Life Is Sweet' on those iconic Best Album in the World... Ever! compilation CDs.



In his seminal book Energy Flash, critic Simon Reynolds described the Chemical Brothers' signature sound as "Britpop-with-breakbeats." They brought a punk-like assault to techno by emphasizing the same blaring mid-frequencies supplied by distorted rock guitars





While the American press tried to brand it as the "electronica" revolution, calling Tom and Ed the "Beavis and Butt-head of techno", the duo pushed back, citing US hip-hop and Chicago house pioneers like Frankie Knuckles, Juan Atkins, and The Bomb Squad as their true north stars.



5 Things You Might Not Know About Dig Your Own Hole


1. Built for the Sunday Social


Before they were headlining arenas, Tom and Ed were "The Three Blind Mice" at Manchester University—studying medieval history by day and hitting the Haçienda four nights a week. Their legendary 13-week residency at Heavenly’s Sunday Social in London transformed UK club culture, with regulars like Oasis, Blur, Primal Scream, and the Manics coming to watch them blend hip-hop, acid house, and psych-rock.



2. "Setting Sun" Broke BBC Radio 1


Noel Gallagher wrote and recorded his vocal in 20 minutes after hearing the duo spin The Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows' in a sweaty basement set. When the single dropped, BBC Radio 1’s Breakfast Show famously pulled it off air halfway through because it was too intense for morning radio—which only helped propel it to UK #1.



3. Recorded in a 10x10 Room at Orinoco Studios


Recorded in Elephant & Castle (the same studio complex where Enya's "Orinoco Flow" got its name and Gaye Bykers on Acid recorded Drill Your Own Hole), the album was field-tested in clubs using white-label promos (Electronic Battle Weapons 1 & 2) before the final tracking.



4. A Pencil and Sellotape Created the Phase Effect on "The Private Psychedelic Reel"


To get the sweeping phase effect on the 9-minute closer, Tom and Ed sellotaped a pencil across a bank of mixing desk faders to move them simultaneously by hand into a Mu-Tron Bi-Phase processor.



5. Mercury Rev’s Unexpected Cameo


Jonathan Donahue played clarinet on 'The Private Psychedelic Reel.' He later credited the Chemical Brothers' invitation as the lifeline that kept him making music right before Mercury Rev wrote their breakthrough album, Deserter's Songs.

This month's guest returns after her January visit — it's music writer Vanessa Roulston Mooney, fresh from Jack White, Primavera and Féile na Gréine.


We start with the big one: Phoebe Bridgers' Lost Weekend, her first solo album in six years, and whether an hour of cosmic, string-drenched, banjo-flecked ambition is too much of a good thing.



Then James Ellis Ford's Lost In Another World, written and recorded alone from a hospital bed in two weeks during leukaemia treatment, and somehow the most accessible thing he's made referencing OMD and Blue Nile. That leads us to J Dilla, who made much of Donuts the same way, and to Dilligence 2, where Busta Rhymes finally uses some of the 300 beats Dilla handed him before he died in 2006, with D'Angelo, Lil Wayne, T3, Talib Kweli, Ludacris and Jon Batiste along for it.



Also: GB's Heirsprung, its lyrics cut up from free copies of the London Metro and funded by a Jaguar ad; Never-Never's Colour Form, and the Copenhagen music school quietly producing half the artists Vanessa loves - Erika de Casier, ML Buch, Fine, Snuggle and GB all came through the same place; Cornelius' eighth album; Pulp's first ever live album, somehow; the short, sharp MF DOOM vibes of Denzel Curry and Kenneth Blume's 2; the debut from scuzzy, fizzy Dublin rockers Really Good Time; and the electro-clashing, indie-sleazing EP from Mischa And The Bear.



Plus Erykah Badu and the Alchemist, Dolly, Jack White's phone pouches, what we're reading, and the gigs ahead.



Plus Dolly, Jack White's phone pouches, what we're reading, and the gigs ahead.

Follow Vanessa on Substack.

 

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It's a deep dive episode into an absolute legend of music this week - the one, the only Dolly Parton.


The country pop musician and entertainer has written over 5,000 songs since she wrote her first song in 1959, and her status as a songwriter and artist has only grown since.



Andrea and Niall look back at the early years of Dolly, the hits, the pop crossovers, the songs, the legacy, the feminism, the collaborations. It's Dolly the homemaker, heartbreaker, socially progressive, champion of the working class, philanthropist and political tightrope walker.

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Mags Mullaney is the Instagram and Tik Tok music influencer known as Totally Frogaret or now called The Frog Report.


Mags joins us this week to talk about her All Together Now experience and Niall talks about the problematic side of Glen Hansard before we dive into music we are loving at the moment.



Music discussed and chosen on the episode from Kelela, Nirosta Steel, Chanel Beads, Goldbug, Jack White, Mary In The Junkyard, Shy One, Swapmeet and new tracks from Mike D and Trá Pháidín.

Plus, we talk about what we're reading, watching and more.



Listen on Apple | Android | Patreon | Pocketcasts | CastBox | Stitcher | Spotify | RSS Feed | Podlink



* Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and access our Discord community.