Imagine pouring your, um, your absolute heart
and soul into this massive sprawling creative
project. Like you finally release it into the
world. You're holding your breath for the reaction
and the feedback just starts rolling in. Yeah,
the moment of truth. Exactly. And one person
looks at it and calls it this fragmented, calculating,
spotty mess, like a complete disaster. But then,
and this is the crazy part, another person looks
at that exact same project, listens to the exact
same audio, and declares it an underappreciated
masterpiece that literally predicted the future.
I mean, it is the ultimate creative whiplash,
right? Totally. But you see this happen frequently
with art that just, you know, refuses to fit
neatly into a predetermined box. When you break
the rules of a genre, you alienate the purists,
but you might just be writing the blueprint for
the next generation. Which brings us to exactly
why we are here today. So welcome to today's
Deep Dive. We are so thrilled you're joining
us because today we are exploring a piece of
art that generated exactly that kind of wildly
polarized head scratching reaction. It's a really
fascinating one. It really is. We are pulling
our insights today from the Wikipedia article
detailing the 1989 album titled I by the British
musical duo A .R. Kane. And our mission for you
today is to basically investigate how a single
album can simultaneously be dismissed as an overly
ambitious train wreck by some and, well, hailed
as a prophetic visionary triumph by others. It
serves as a fantastic case study. And not just
for music history nerds either, but for anyone
who's interested in how we evaluate any complex,
rule -breaking project, you know, the tension
between those two extremes tells us a lot about
the expectations we place on creators. Okay,
let's unpack this. To really understand the sheer
whiplash of the reaction to I, we have to look
at the pedestal A. R. Kane was standing on before
they, well, essentially jumped off it. There
were just some run -of -the -mill pop act throwing
things at the wall. They had a very specific
identity. Context is absolutely everything here.
So the album I was released in October of 1989
on a label called One Little Indian. This was
their second studio album. They were coming off
their debut record, which was called 69. Sometimes
that's just written out as the numbers, six and
nine. And the critical consensus around that
debut was incredibly specific. How so? Well,
critics praised it for possessing a quality of,
quote, organic and uncontrived otherness. Oh,
wow. Organic and uncontrived otherness. I mean,
that is one of those critical phrases that sounds
beautiful, but also sounds like a complete trap.
It really is a trap. Right. Because if your entire
brand is being uncontrived and organically strange,
like making this ethereal, floating avant -garde
music, then any move toward structure or mainstream
accessibility is instantly going to look like
a massive betrayal. You hit the nail on the head
when you establish yourself as the kings of the
underground by being formless and strange, suddenly
writing a catchy hook is viewed as a cardinal
sin by your core fan base. Yeah, they feel like
you sold out. Exactly. And that stylistic pivot
is exactly what A .R. Kane executed with I. They
didn't just subtly tweak their sound, they took
a massive, aggressive left turn directly into
pop, dance, and electronic styles. Though they're
trading those like floating guitars for the dance
floor. Heavily. The album overtly incorporates
received rock structures, reggae, and house music.
It is a dramatic shift from that floating otherness
to the very grounded, heavily structured worlds
of clubs and pop charts. Wait, hold on. By received
rock structures, do you just mean they started
using like standard verse chorus, verse formats,
the kind of predictable pop map that everyone
else on the radio was already doing. That is
a great translation, yeah. The predictable pop
map, they adopted the traditional architecture
of a rock or pop song, and they brought in the
pulsating repetitive bass lines of house music
and the rhythmic offbeats of reggae. Wow. So
they were aggressively engaging with genres that
had very strict rules, which is the exact opposite
of being uncontrived. It makes me think of an
eccentric indie filmmaker, you know. the kind
who makes those moody three -hour black -and
-white films about staring at a wall in silence.
Oh yeah, the festival darlings. Right. And suddenly
they announce they're going to direct a massive,
big -budget superhero blockbuster. But on the
way to the studio to shoot the superhero movie,
they get completely distracted and spend a week
in an underground dance club. I love that. So
the final film is this bizarre hybrid, right?
Moody black and white shots spliced together
with neon strobe lights, massive explosions,
and a pulsing techno soundtrack. That is a fantastic
way to visualize the friction of this album.
You have the ambition of a blockbuster, the accessibility
of pop, but the weirdness of the underground
club all violently fighting for space on the
exact same record. Which has to be a marketing
nightmare. Oh, absolutely. And the commercial
reality of this pivot is just as paradoxical
as the music itself. Because you would assume
that leading into pop choruses and house music
in 1989, like right as dance music is exploding,
would guarantee a massive mainstream hit. You're
building songs designed to be liked by a wider
audience. You would assume that, but commercially...
I actually mirrored its experimental predecessor,
69. Really? Yeah, it had moderate overall sales
figures. It wasn't a global chart dominator in
the mainstream sense. However, it still managed
to top the UK independent charts. That is such
a bizarre place to be trapped in. I mean, they're
the reigning champions of the indie chart, but
they're making an album full of pop choruses
and house music that the mainstream isn't actually
buying in droves. Yeah, they were entirely caught
between worlds. And because they abandoned their
ethereal indie roots for the dance floor, the
rock and indie critics were practically lying
in wait to tear them apart. Oh, I bet. This drastic
genre mashing leads us directly into the core
tension of our deep dive. Because the negative
and mixed reviews are incredibly revealing about
the cultural tribalism of the late 1980s. Let's
look at the skeptics then, because they did not
hold back at all. Greg Tate. writing for Artforum
back in 1990, so this is the immediate reaction
to the release, was not buying the pivot at all.
He claimed the incorporation of rock, reggae,
and house was, quote, spotty. Yeah, spotty implies
a serious lack of cohesion. He's essentially
saying the genre experiments feel pasted together
rather than naturally integrated. Like it's forced.
Exactly. But his main critique was even sharper.
He said that compared to the organic and uncontrived
otherness of their first album, I felt, and this
is his phrasing, more rudimentary and more calculating.
Oh, calculating. That is the kill word right
there. He is accusing them of artificially constructing
these pop and dance tracks to chase a trend rather
than letting their art flow naturally. He's saying
the math is showing. The math is showing. And
to a critic who is looking for underground purity,
that is unforgivable. And that sentiment didn't
just fade away after 1990 either. No, the skepticism
followed the album for decades. If you jump forward
to 2004, Chris Ott reviewed the album for Pitchfork.
He gave it a 7 .7 out of 10, which is, you know,
technically a positive score, but his written
analysis was brutal. What did he say? He called
it a stylistically incontinent album. Wait, stylistically
incontinent? That is a wildly vivid insult. It
really paints a picture, doesn't it? It paints
a picture of a band that just cannot control
their own output. Like they're just leaking genres
all over the place without any discipline. He
argued the album was fragmented by unchecked
ambition. Ott acknowledged the drastic shift
toward clearer production and pop choruses, but
he concluded that a listener really had to endure
the chaos and wait until the final quarter of
the album for it to be capable of convincing
anyone of A .R. Kane's genius. So you're saying
the first three quarters are just garbage? Pretty
much. For him, the first three quarters of this
massive experiment were just a sprawling mess
of ambition without an editor. I genuinely have
to push back on that pitchfork perspective, though.
Framing unchecked ambition as a negative thing
in art feels incredibly backwards to me. Oh,
interesting. How so? Well, isn't pushing boundaries,
breaking the container, and just throwing everything
at the wall exactly what artists are supposed
to do? If you are constantly checking your ambition
and making sure your genres don't bleed into
each other, aren't you just playing it safe?
That is the eternal debate, isn't it? When ambition
shatters the listener's expected experience,
critics often reach for words like incontinent
or fragmented. They want a guided tour, not a
chaotic sandbox. Here's where it gets really
interesting, though. Not everyone saw this chaotic
sandbox as a failure. Let's look at the complete
opposite side of the spectrum, because the All
Music Review paints a vastly different picture
of what A. R. Kane was actually doing. Right.
So Jason Ankeny reviewed the album for All Music
and His take is a complete 180 degree turn from
the pitchfork review. He doesn't hear a spotty
rudimentary mess at all. What does he hear? He
unequivocally calls I, an underappreciated masterpiece.
I have to admit, I'm a little skeptical there.
Going from stylistically incontinent to underappreciated
masterpiece is a massive leap. Is Ankeny just
projecting modern musical trends onto a past
failure just to make it sound deeper than it
actually was? What's fascinating here is Ankeny's
specific reasoning for that leap. He argues that
the album, despite being largely overlooked and
misunderstood upon its original release, actually
functions as a crystal ball. A crystal ball?
Yes. He says it was prophesying virtually every
major musical development of the 1990s. Okay,
so he's suggesting that the genre -mashing, the
aggressive blending of rock, reggae, house, and
pop that sounded like a calculating mess to Greg
Tate in 1990 was actually just A .R. Kane mapping
out the sonic landscape of the entire next decade
before anyone else had the vocabulary for it.
That is the core of his argument. Think about
the alternative and dance scenes of the 1990s.
They would go on to seamlessly blend electronic
beats, indie guitars, and pop hooks. A .R. Kane
was doing it in 1989. People simply didn't have
the framework to understand it yet. It just sounded
like friction. It's only in retrospect once the
rest of the culture catches up that you can look
back and realize the mess was actually a map.
But how does an album physically sound like a
crystal ball while also driving professional
music critics absolutely crazy? To understand
that, I really want to look at the literal structural
anatomy of this record. Let's do it. Because
when you see how it was physically built, you
start to completely understand why Pitchfork
used a word like incontinent. Yeah, the sheer
scale of the project is staggering, especially
for the time. We are talking about an album that
runs for 67 minutes and 49 seconds. Nearly 68
minutes of music. I mean, the compact disc era
had just really taken hold, allowing bands to
push way past the time limits of a standard vinyl
record. And A .R. Kane clearly took full advantage
of that. extra real estate they filled every
inch of it packed into that 68 minutes is a track
list of 26 individual songs 26 tracks yeah and
it is not just the volume of songs it's the chaotic
pacing You look at the runtimes and there is
zero consistency. You have these sweeping epic
anchors holding the album down. Like a love from
outer space is over five minutes long. Down is
five minutes and 14 seconds. Supervixens and
Catch My Drift are both exactly five minutes
and 40 seconds. Right, those are massive immersive
deep dives into pop and house music. They require
the listener to settle in and lock into a groove.
Right, but then sandwiched directly between those
massive immersive tracks are these obscure short
interludes, but I do not mean a minute -long
transition. Track seven, titled Off into Space,
is exactly four seconds long. Four seconds. You
barely have time to register the sound before
it's gone. And track 24, sorry, is five seconds
long. Hello, the very first track that kicks
off this entire massive 68 -minute journey is
27 seconds. It's a completely dizzying way to
sequence an album. You are constantly being pulled
in and out of the experience. It shatters any
sense of traditional album flow. You are forced
to constantly readjust your attention. It honestly
sounds exactly like scrolling through a modern
social media feed. Oh, that's a good point. Think
about it. You get a four -second micro - of a
meme smashed right up against a five -minute
video essay immediately followed by a 10 -second
joke. It is constant aggressive context switching.
Ankeny was entirely right. They really were predicting
the future. They predicted the fractured attention
economy in 1989. That is a brilliant analogy.
The structural chaos of the album perfectly mirrors
the media consumption habits of today. But, you
know, to pull off that level of friction to seamlessly
or aggressively transition from a five -minute
house track to a four -second burst of noise
requires an incredibly dense, sophisticated level
of production. I can imagine. To make 26 tracks
that bounce between reggae bass lines, classical
strings, and four -second interludes, you can't
just have two guys tinkering in a garage. They
must have had a small army in the studio with
them to execute this. They absolutely did. The
album was co -produced by A .R. Cain themselves,
alongside Ray Schulman. And just a quick note,
A .R. Cain, which consisted of Art Cain and a
second musician, just listed as A .R. Cain in
the credits they handled arranging, audio production,
engineering, guitars, vocals, and multiple instruments.
OK, so they were busy? Very busy. But the personnel
list surrounding them is massive. So who was
in this army they built? Well, you have a sprawling
roster of engineers. Nine different engineers
are credited. on this album. Fine. Nine, including
notable names like Lincoln Fong, Paul Kendall,
and Ken Thomas. You have Benny DeMassa holding
down the drums, Colin Karens on bass, and the
vocal textures are wildly varied because they
didn't just rely on themselves. Right. They brought
in multiple outside vocalists, including Maggie
Tamballa and a mysterious vocalist credited simply
as Girl Lorna. Girl Lorna? That is incredibly
iconic. It adds this perfect layer of mystique
to the whole production. It does. But the real
density, the element that truly thickens the
sound and creates that friction with the dance
beats, comes from the strings. They utilized
extensive string sections. Classical strings
on a dance record. Oh, yeah. Ginny Ball, Sally
Herbert, and Jeremy Metcalf on violin. Sue Dench
and Jocelyn Pooke on viola. Martin McCarrick
and Audrey Riley on cello. plus an entire additional
string group credited as the false harmonies.
Okay, the false harmonies. That sounds like the
villainous rival band in a 1980s teen movie.
It is a spectacular name for a string section.
It really is. Just imagine trying to mix a delicate
classical viola arrangement from the false harmonies
over a heavy synthesized house music bass line.
The technical headache of making that sound cohesive
must have been immense. Which is exactly why
they needed nine engineers. Seriously. And this
brings us to my absolute favorite detail in the
entire Wikipedia personnel list. I'm ready. Because
amidst all these highly technical engineers,
all these classically trained string players,
and all this serious heavy musical architecture,
there's a credit for a musician named Chris Tombling.
I am almost afraid to ask. What instrument did
Chris Tomling contribute to this 68 -minute masterpiece?
Well, Chris Tomling is credited with playing
the violin and a balloon. Wait, a balloon? Like
an actual literal balloon? An actual balloon.
Right next to the viola, the cello, and the house
music drum machines, we have an official album
credit for a balloon. That is incredible. I can
just picture the scene in this grand... Serious
recording studio, right? You have nine engineers
sweating over the mixing board, the false harmonies
are meticulously tuning their cellos, the reggae
bass is warming up, and Chris Tomlin is just
standing completely deadpan in the corner, aggressively
rubbing a balloon into a microphone. It's absurd.
That is the exact kind of unchecked ambition
I was defending earlier. Yeah. It is pure chaotic
creativity. I agree completely. And if we connect
this to the bigger picture, this massive roster
perfectly validates every single critic we've
discussed today. both the negative and the positive.
Think about it. If you were Greg Tate in 1990
and you are looking for the organic simplicity
of their debut, this massive 26 -track balloon
-infused, genre -hopping, nine -engineer production
absolutely looks like a calculating, spotty mess.
It looked entirely incontinent, as Pitchfork
argued. It is bloated. But if you are Jason Ankeny,
looking back from the modern era, you see that
throwing all those disparate elements into a
blender, the house music, reggae, classical strings,
micro tracks, and literal balloon noises was
exactly the blueprint that alternative music
would eventually follow. So the chaos was the
prophecy. Exactly. Both critics are looking at
the exact same data points, just through different
historical lenses. So what does this all mean?
What can you, listening to this deep dive right
now, take away from the strange, polarizing 26
-track story of A. R. Cain's I? I think the fundamental
takeaway is a defense of unchecked ambition in
your own life. Whether you are an artist, an
entrepreneur, trying to build a business, or
just someone trying to solve a problem in a completely
new way, do not be afraid to be a little stylistically
incontinent. Do not be afraid to put the four
-second absurd idea right next to the five -minute
serious master plan, because the messy, fragmented
balloon -rubbing project you are stressing over
today might just be recognized as a crystal ball
tomorrow. I love that. It is about trusting your
own process, even when it looks completely chaotic
to the outside world. Which brings me to one
final fascinating detail from the source material
that I want to leave you with today. The Wikipedia
page notes an interesting paradox regarding the
title of the album, and it raises a really profound
question about the nature of the ego in collaborative
art. Ooh, okay. Lay the puzzle on us. The title
of this sprawling album is just the letter I,
and importantly, it is stylized as a lowercase
I. A lowercase I. Just a tiny single letter.
Yet, as we have just spent this entire deep dive
discussing, this is a 67 -minute, 26 -track mammoth
of a record. It features a massive ensemble of
string players, nine different engineers, multiple
vocalists, and balloon players. Right. It is
the very definition of a sprawling, highly collaborative
effort. Furthermore, the text notes that A .R.
Kane was no stranger to massive, crowded collaborations.
They were actually part of the supergroup Mars
and had a massive hit single together called
Pump Up the Volume. Oh, wow. Pump Up the Volume
was a massive cultural touchstone, so they absolutely
knew how to play nicely in a crowded room. They
weren't just isolated hermits. Exactly. So here
is the puzzle for you to mull over today as you
go about your work. Why name the specific album
the most bloated, creatively dense, highly collaborative
project imaginable after the smallest, most singular
concept of the self? That is a wild contrast.
Right. Is the lowercase i simply an ironic inside
joke by the band about how massive the project
got? Or does it represent something deeper about
the creative process? Does the lowercase i represent
the shrinking of the individual ego dissolving
into the massive collective chaos of the art
itself? Is it the ultimate ego trip to name a
universe after yourself or is it the death of
the ego entirely? That is a brilliant question
to leave off on. We hope you enjoyed this deep
dive into the chaotic prophetic world of A .R.
Kane. Thank you so much for joining us and keep
exploring those messy masterpieces. Until next
time.