| 68 Million Shades... | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Spring Heel Jack |
| Cover: | 68 Million Shades...jpg |
| Released: | 1996 |
| Genre: | Jungle, drum and bass |
| Label: | Trade2/Island |
| Producer: | John Coxon, Ashley Wales |
| Prev Title: | There are Strings |
| Prev Year: | 1995 |
| Next Title: | Versions |
| Next Year: | 1996 |
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]
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."[12] 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." 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."[13]
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."[14] 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." 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."[15] Spin included 68 Million Shades... on its list of "The 10 Best Albums You Didn't Hear in '96".[16]
AllMusic wrote that the album "continues the duo's dense, dub-inspired take on jungle."