Blog Archive for April 2025

Album Of The Day: Cutting Edge by delirious?

Album Art of delirious?'s Cutting Edge album - The top and bottom and most of the background is white. Interlaced into the background are pictures of a scissors and a shaver in verital lines, somewhat blended into the white at the top. In the top middle, there's also a small photo of a scissors. There's print that says the album title in black, and then white slightly below and over it. In the top right of the middle section, there's an orange oval with the band name in them, except the 's' is replaced with a '5'. In the middle is a blue rectangle with the letters 'd:' cut out. And a small photo of 5 white men lit by light bulbs in front and behind, with a mirror behind them.

In the early 1990s, a worship band started leading youth-oriented prayer meetings on the small cities of England's southern coast. They were known as "Cutting Edge" and they wrote, recorded and released four EPs on cassette, creatively titled 1, 2, 3 and Fore. When I heard these songs in 1998, they were packaged into this two-CD, 25-song compilation of all four EPs. By that time, the band was known as delirious? and the compilation album was called Cutting Edge. Throughout this album, lead vocalist Martin Smith wrote and passionately sang about a relationship with God in a way to that was much more personal and compelling than most of the old hymns and hippie folk songs that their parents were singing in church. Over the last 30 years as the English-speaking world came to know this album, songs like "I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever" and "Shout To The North" became songs commonly sung in churches with modern worship music. And songs like "Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble?" and "Obsession" showed that while they were definitely a worship band, they also had a rock band creativity and drive to go beyond what a church worship band might normally do. The band delirious? went on to create 7 more studio albums combining pop, rock and worship genres, get played the UK Top 40 pop radio, and tour around the world before saying farewell to their fans in 2009. And I've been enjoying these songs for nearly 27 years now.

Release Year: 1993-1995
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The original UK CD releases looked much like the original cassette covers:
Album Art of delirious?'s Cutting Edge 1 and 2 album - The left half is a bright yellow, with a very light scissors icon just a shade whiter in the background. There's a black circle in the top left that has the band name in it, and a black '1' in the bottom left corner. On the right half it's a somewhat pinkish-purple color, with a black '2' on the top right. Vertically in the middle it says 'cutting' from the top to bottom in white, with 'edge' just to the left of it bigger in gray. In smaller print, the song titles are printed on both the left and right side.
Album Art of delirious?'s Cutting Edge 3 and Fore album - The left half is an orange color, with some blocks of dark blue on the edges. There's a black circle in on the left that has the band name in it, and the words 'Three' written in white in a scripty font above that. Down the middle, in a dark blue box, it has 'Cutting Edge' in a font that looks like it's printed by a labeler machine. On the right, the color is mostly a light aqua blue with white spheres in it, plus a bunch more dark blue boxes. In the dark blue area there's a photo of a golf ball with a much smaller tee and flag photo towards the top. The golf ball has lines encircling it like it's a nucleus of an atom. At the bottom in a serif font in gray it says 'fore'.

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Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Hinterland by Held By Trees

Album Art of Held By Trees's Hinterland album - In the thick white border around the artwork, it has printed at the top in a small, black print the band's name and at the bottom the album name, both centered horizontally. In the middle is a square piece of artwork that is mostly off-white in the top and bottom. In the middle vertically, it's maybe some sort of abstract landscape, with largely gold colors on the right side especially in the lower vertical section, and bits of red, black and purple everywhere. Some thin, dark lines can be seen as well amidst the painted colors that look like they're on a textured canvas.

I'd not heard of "post-rock" as a genre before, but apparently bands I've enjoyed for years like Sigur Rós and Explosions In The Sky are post-rock bands. It seems to me like it's a genre that incorporates elements of rock, but also a lot of various other styles in mostly instrumental works. Held By Trees has been only been around for 4-5 years, but some of the musicians on their albums have done post-rock from nearly its inception working with the band Talk Talk and Mark Hollis. Released just yesterday, Hinterland is the latest release of this English band and provides 40 minutes of instrumental musical exploration. I've only started listening to their albums and EPs in the last few months, but I'm really enjoying the beautiful music they are making. Looks like it's not yet on streaming, but you can listen and buy on Bandcamp.

Release Year: 2025
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Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Cosmic Supreme by John Mark McMillan

About 15 years ago, I heard about a singer-songwriter from North Carolina named John Mark McMillan. He was then known for making his unique brand of "modern worship"—a more contemporary style of music designed for church instead of traditional hymns. But I never thought McMillan was doing that primarily; most of his songs were a lot more artistic and personal than most music written for congregations to sing together. Over the last 10+ years, John Mark McMillan still had religious themes in his lyrics, but the songs were not what would be called "worship". But with Cosmic Supreme, released today, John Mark McMillan is returning to make more worship-oriented music. It still sounds very similar musically to his recent albums—what I might call soft rock or I saw listed as "alternative folk" recently—but more of the lyrics are written directly in praise and worship to God. It's beautiful musical poetry about the creator of the universe, and I really like it. Time will tell if churches decide to sing some of these songs together, but this album has some impeccable production that your church service will probably not have and is a great listen.

Release Year: 2025
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Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: Terraform: The People by Propaganda & DJ Mal-Ski

The People EP - A photo of about 50 Africans posing for a photo on a sandy bit of land with large rocks and the mostly cloudy sky with a golden brown hue added to it. In the midst of the sky, it has a Propaganda text with a pen and brush crossed behind it to be a sort of logo. Below that, it says 'The People' in large letters, then 'Terraform' in much smaller letters, and the 'Food For the Hungry' logo and word mark below that, all printed in white.

"We are the culture." Amen to that! Released 4 years ago yesterday, this is the first of his four Terraform EPs. Rapper Propaganda (with the help of DJ Mal-Ski) focuses on the world's people and how we have to work together and live together on this release. In "We Were Only 10", for example, he draws parallels between gang culture in his childhood growing up in the Los Angeles area and terrorists for kids growing up in the Middle East. Other songs on this celebrate the culture in more of a positive light, including a number of references to Propaganda's African heritage as well as his life in LA. This whole EP is quality rap celebrating that there is more that unites us as humans than divides us. It makes me think, and it's a good celebration of the many places we come from and what we can learn from each other.

Release Year: 2021
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Album Of The Day
Music

Album Of The Day: The Brothers Martin by The Brothers Martin

Album Art of The Brothers Martin's self-titled album - On a dark grey background, a series of lines and circles are plotted in white lines. Vertically down the middle, there's a dotted line. About 30 degrees off vertical counter-clockwise is a solid white line. In the center is a circle, with a solid line bisecting it horizontally. In the center, the all these meet and approaching the solid diagonal line right at the center on each side are two circles and one quarter-circle arc. So it's just a bunch of lines and circles in a geometric design. Where the center circle meets the dotted line and diagonal line, there are arrows pointing to those intersections.

The Brothers Martin are Jason Martin (Starflyer 59) and Ronnie Martin (Joy Electric). Yes, they are actual brothers and both major forces in the indie rock scene. So why not be a force together as well? This album is the only release under this name and it mixes Ronnie Martin's synths and other electronic sounds with Jason Martin's guitars. They take turns on writing and vocals on this 10-track album. I think I like this album more than Starflyer 59 or Joy Electric albums, but I'm not sure why. And I'm pretty sure most people prefer those other bands from the brothers more than this album. It's not a long album, but it's an energetic collection of music mixing fuzzy guitars and waves of synthesizers.

Release Year: 2007
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Album Of The Day
Music

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