Vinyl Review: "The Difference Engine" by Graham Reynolds

The Difference Engine

During my younger days, Babbage's was the store to go and check out new video games. After all, it was the 90's and specialty shops were only starting to spring up here in Middle America.

Then you couple that with my disdain of corporate shopping being a few years out and it was pre-rise of video games as more than just nerd culture, and we didn't have any local shops that we could look into.

So Babbage's it was.

In later  years, I even spent time doing some seasonal work at Babbage's in South County Center in order to help make ends meet when I was still in retail...and that 25% discount off of video games sure as hell didn't hurt.

Back then I was crazy into games.

You know what no one ever asked me, nor did I ask either, was who in the hell was this Babbage character? I mean, the store was clearly named after him. They certainly didn't work for Nintendo or Sega...or Sony.

My Sam Beckett memory has hazy images of an old man's picture on a bag. Something to with computers or the like?

Well, it turns out that Babbage's was named for Charles Babbage. This was a computer scientist who lived in the 19th Century who worked on what he called The Difference Engine. It was the forerunner to the modern computer.

He never finished it and in true rock star fashion, he died without seeing how important his work was to the world at large.

Now, here's an idea....why  not make an instrumental metal record about this guy and his work? The great thing about this is you can get heavy, get spacey, and just melt faces off with shreds.

Oh, this is a piano concerto?

Um.

Well, the violin solos are metal as fuck. It would be impossible to listen to them without thinking about Steve Vai and that Jem of his.

There may be nary a distorted note on this entire double LP set, but it's still about the heaviest piano concerto known to mankind.

Probably Vulcan kind too for that matter, but not the Wookiees.

Hmm. Remember that thing about no distortion? Well, I'm writing this on the fly and I just got caught up. Here I sit about halfway through side three and I'm confused.

This started in Vienna circa Mozart and all of a sudden we ended up on Cybertron with Optimus Prime....

Imagine a Beethoven pieces combined with Bonzo's Montreaux and you might have an idea of what this is like with melodic violins sliding down the middle.

The choice left is do I take you along the path with me, or do we part here?

Considering the first few sides have been absolutely mind blowing, it wouldn't be right to take you by the hand and spoil all of the surprises now would it?

I've lost count of how many different kinds of music that Mr. Reynolds has mixed up into this insane record about Charles Fucking Babbage.

It took me a bit but I found the metaphor. Disc one is the 1890's and Disc two is the computer age. That's absolute genius.

But even though I'm wrapping this up...you damned well better believe that I'm going to play it again tomorrow morning.

Everyone I know will hear this record and you should too.

This one is a double LP in a gatefold cover. Granted, the tracking on this confuses me a touch. Sides one and two aren't terribly long, so there's a lot of flipping.

But the whole package is quiet and the music full and lush.

Out Now Order Facebook