| 68 Million Shades... | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1996 | |||
| Genre | Jungle, drum and bass | |||
| Label | Trade2/Island | |||
| Producer | John Coxon, Ashley Wales | |||
| Spring Heel Jack chronology | ||||
| ||||
68 Million Shades... is the second album by the English musical duo Spring Heel Jack, released in 1996.[1][2] It was released in the United States in February 1997.[3] The duo supported the album with a North American tour that included shows opening for Orbital.[4] "Midwest" was released as a single.[5]
The album was produced by the duo, John Coxon and Ashley Wales.[6] They recorded from Monday to Friday, mostly from 11 in the morning until 6 in the evening.[7] The duo felt that they complemented each other in the studio, with Wales the more easygoing of the two.[7] They strove to create an album interesting enough to be enjoyed at home, divorced from nightlife and stimulants; they found that they kept adding musical elements to any attempt at a "regular" dance track.[8][9] Coxon and Wales considered Ennio Morricone and Brian Eno to be among their primary influences.[10] The duo produced a disc of remixes of the album, Versions.[11]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [12] |
| The Atlanta Journal-Constitution | [13] |
| Robert Christgau | A[14] |
| Los Angeles Times |  [15] |
The Guardian noted that "Spring Heel Jack are routinely described in the music press as studio geniuses, but this sleekly produced masterwork suggests that a state-of-the-art studio has booted out the mere humans and set its own controls for the heart of the sun."[16] Robert Christgau called the album "prog jungle," writing that Wales and Coxon "recontextualize drum 'n' bass's redolent lingo—its triple-time superdrum pitta-pat, its impossible deep tremblors that modulate whole power plants in repose—by subsuming densely frenetic techno cum dancehall in a witting synthesis of electronic composition and another of Wales's passions, On the Corner-era Miles Davis."[14] The New York Times said that the duo "merges strings and horns that sound as if they come from movie soundtracks with a beat that can fluidly change from a rapid-fire drum-machine roll to a conga rhythm."[17]
Entertainment Weekly concluded that "the record has moments of airy, disquieting tranquility... But it could double as Muzak for a department store’s Gen-X section."[18] The Atlanta Journal-Constitution determined that Spring Heel Jack "is equally an inheritor of punk's do-it-yourself aesthetic and 1950s 'exotica' auteur Les Baxter's distinctly mondo notions about mood music."[13] Rolling Stone stated: "Surrounding their break beats with a reverberating drone, Spring Heel sample sweeping strings, elastic saxophone, sitar, car horns, steel guitar, piano and trumpet, as well as cryptic, treated sounds, into a reverberating clamor that is equally tuneful and enigmatic."[19] Spin included 68 Million Shades... on its list of "The 10 Best Albums You Didn't Hear in '96".[20]
AllMusic wrote that the album "continues the duo's dense, dub-inspired take on jungle."[12]
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Take 1" | |
| 2. | "Midwest" | |
| 3. | "60 Seconds" | |
| 4. | "Plan" | |
| 5. | "Plates" | |
| 6. | "Bar" | |
| 7. | "Eesti" | |
| 8. | "Roger Tessier" | |
| 9. | "Island" | |
| 10. | "Suspensions" | |
| 11. | "Take 2" | |
| 12. | "Take 3" |
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