Go Insane
 

I just bought this and have just heard it for the first time. I've been a fan of Lindsey's for years, and have heard everything but this album. The reason being that the only other time I'd seen a copy of it (on vinyl -- has it ever been put out on CD? I've never seen it...) was about five years ago at least and for some reason I didn't buy it. Anyway I bought it today and it's fantastic! I love the way Lindsey re-interprets his songs over time. The title track is much different than what I expected, and I love the way he re-does Eyes of the World (as Bang The Drum). His acoustic guitar style still shines through on most of the tracks, I love is vocals on Bang The Drum.

I love the album but I disagree that his acoustic playing shines. Let's see...he plays one at the end of Slow Dancing, the beginning of Loving Cup, ..., he sort of plays one chord at the beginning of I Must Go. That's about it, apart from any funny sounding processed guitar sound that could easily be some synthesizer.

That may be one of the reasons I like it so much though. We get to hear what he can really do in the studio (all cheesy 80's effects aside) and he's not just playing guitar, which we've all heard plenty of times before. We get to hear his avant-garde side which I feel is always being supressed by the fact that he's a guitar player. Such innovative and unusual works cannot come out when there's a guitar in the way, the most conventional instrument out there. He may try valiantly, but he's not as special and unique as he can and should be when he's just playing a guitar. But on Go Insane, we get to see the artist, the musician, much more clearly than the guitarist, or the songwriter. And I enjoy it. Am I rambling?

Most of this difference that Little Nicki speaks about was made possible by the Fairlight, which at that point had broken itself through as the first keyboard - sampler combination (it even had a realtime sequencer in it). In the '80s people were obsessed with samplers as an easy way to create sound effects - transfer a sound to a keyboard and play it at different tonalities and put a variety of effects to it. Lindsey had done some digital processing in the studio before (VSOs being the most notable example), but this time he went WILD with it, all due to the mighty Fairlight. :nod:

A couple of funny YouTube videos on the Fairlight here.

Herbie Hancock on Sesame Street

Peter Gabriel around 1982. Watch how sampling the sound of a TV screen being smashed can sometimes be very difficult (at 1:27 or so)!

Also, let's all be happy that Lindsey didn't use the ORCH5 sample (one of the samples that were in the Fairlight floppy disc library) to death like so many other musicians did. ;)

Lindsey used the fairlight in a very creative way. Best example is his totally groundbreaking track Play In The Rain. That is sampling in a way it was never presented before in my opinion. His writing style is perfect for exploring the fairlight. He builds a compostion with sounds, like he normally does with rythms and guitarpatterns. His brilliance in tape-rape is out of this world normally, but here it brings him on an all new level. Go insane is still the best thing he's done imo, due to the fact that his songwriting and engineering the whole proces is so connected to eachother.

PS, I bought the damn thing on CD early 1985, so shortly after the vinylversion that I had played to pieces already by then.

From Wikipedia - one of the more creative hip-hop musicians, RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan, has this to say about sampling:
Seems like Lindsey's repetitive "sonic painting" & "left side of the palette" mantra makes some sense after all. ;)

I've always understood exactly what he meant with the sonic painting since Go Insane.

man, those are FANTASTIC YouTube clips, Glass - thanks for posting.

And while I can definitely appreciate the GI album and LB's experiments within, I feel it has aged rather poorly, a fate that many, if not most, of the albums from that era suffered.

I agree with the core of what you're saying. And I appreciate it 100%. But now, many parts of GI sound dated to me... that's not a bad thing, it just means I have to be in the mood. Whereas Lindsey's other albums sound more timeless..throw them in any day, any mood..and they're perfect. In any mood, I'd still enjoy and appreciate GI, I just might not be able to sit all the way through it, and it just so happens that Play in the Rain is about the point where I have to stop, or at least skip.

It is brilliant, though. No dispute from me there.

I finally discovered the album in 1988 after searching for it without success for a year or so. To be honest even back in 88 I thought the album sounded dated. :laugh: