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I Trawl the Megahertz is an album originally released as a Paddy McAloon solo album in May 2003 on Liberty Records. It was later reissued in February 2019 on Sony Music under the Prefab Sprout name, as originally intended, with new artwork, and retroactively considered the eighth Prefab Sprout album. McAloon was rendered nearly blind for a period in 1999 due to detached retinas; housebound, he found comfort in listening to shortwave radio transmissions like chat shows, phone-in programs and documentaries. He recorded conversations from these programs, fragmented them, and introduced new words and lines from other sources, generating source material for the album. The largely instrumental album marks a notable stylistic change from previous Prefab Sprout work, featuring classical passages and orchestration reminiscent of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, McAloon's two favourite composers. Writing much of the music on his computer, McAloon was given help by co-producer Calum Malcolm and composer David McGuinness in translating his original versions into the final recordings, with live orchestration provided by Mr McFall's Chamber. McAloon's radio-sourced material was then integrated with the songs, with spoken word vocals from Yvonne Connors on the title track, TV and radio dialogue samples on "I'm 49" and McAloon's own singing on "Sleeping Rough". With themes of old memories and time passing, I Trawl the Megahertz is a highly personal work, dominated by its poignant title track, in which Connors intones "the story of her life", largely created by excerpts of radio conversation, over an orchestral motif. Despite concerns the album would alienate fans, I Trawl the Megahertz was belatedly released to positive critical reception, with many finding the album powerful and poignant. In the year end polls for 2003's albums of the year it featured at number 22 in Uncut Magazine and number 50 in Mojo, who later included the album in their 2005 list of the top 50 'most out there' albums. The magazine would later describe I Trawl the Megahertz as an "unlikely orch-pop masterpiece."
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Reviews
This album is a concept I’m not into. Only Pink Floyd is allowed to have weird talking with music.
I don’t know anything about this group but this was truly interesting. More an orchestral work, it really made an impact on me. I didn’t expect this but it definitely holds its own on this list. Terrific!
Very interesting and beautiful. Somber and meditative. 4 stars.
This is the least hyped Friday album I have ever listened to what an absolute buzzkill. Ok maybe that was just the first song with the disturbing talking girl. Rest of the album sounded like a Fantasia/Kingdom Hearts mix of songs which was really cool. Confusing album to rank because I will never listen to this again but i am glad I did once. Going 4.
Went into this expecting more pop like "Steve McQueen" from the original list, so I'm pretty sure I saw the eyes of a Sumerian god staring back at me when I put this on and it was actually modern-classical ambient music. Beautiful stuff, loved it.
Rating: 7/10 Best songs: We were poor, Sleeping rough
Well this is beautiful
The fuck is this first song. Went from absolutely hating this to thinking its ok to hating it back to thinking its ok. Idk what to think personally. Ugh low 3 I guess fuck
That was an interesting one. Points for being on the original side. Nothing really stood out to me.
Ok. Interesting.
Ehhh it's fine. Very different from the other album from this group on the OG list. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.
Nice modern take on classical music
Classical, ambient, chamber pop. Ni fu ni fa.
One of the great genre thriller writers, maybe Elmore Leonard, described his technique as writing a first draft, then taking out everything that sounded like writing. The first track on this felt like everything that geys cut out. Its a little pretentious, particularly in its setting of mellow sax riffs and honest to god harp glissandos. I didn't hate it, for all that. And respect for executing a singular vision, but I'm not sure it quite comes together.
I'd say this wasn't bad. But I just listened to it an hour ago and can't remember a single thing. So for that I think this goes into a space of a high 2 / low 3
interesting....
not this one
“Ooo I liked King of Rock and Roll, I wonder what their more modern stuff sounds like….oh” Maybe if it had been a brooding Winter’s day instead of the height of a third heatwave in as many weeks this album may have hit harder, but it missed the mark for me. By a lot.
What