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Most Prolific Recording Acts

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    Most Prolific Recording Acts

    Having a James Last thread had prompted me to wonder if there have been acts who regularly churned out studio albums at a rate of more than, say, one every 3 months. I know that some jazz acts would be milked for live albums (Colombia did this with Monk, for example) but actually going into a studio and laying down an album every few weeks is what I'm looking for here.

    #2
    Definitely Sun-Ra.

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      #3
      Weren't Grateful Dead renowned for doing this?

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        #4
        Originally posted by MarkF View Post
        Weren't Grateful Dead renowned for doing this?
        Not in terms of studio albums. There are tons of live albums and bootlegs though.

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          #5
          Are we excluding classical albums?

          If not, I would expect the list to be dominated by orchestras with major label contracts

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            #6
            Why did I see the title and immediately think of „Hansi“?

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              #7
              There were studio orchestras back in the day who literally only existed to churn out this stuff, and I think people like Horowitz were being recorded constantly. Count Basie on Sinatra's Reprise label would be another potential candidate.

              Jamaica also had studio bands working flat out. Dub artists could churn stuff out because they'd be toasting over tracks that already existed.

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                #8
                Billy Childish has knocked out 120+ albums across 40 years, with some periods much more densely packed than others. Most of his body of work consists of variations upon garage punk & R'n'B with a lot of studio albums that are recorded as live or very close to it.

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                  #9
                  Not quite at the 1 every 3 months rate but the enigmatic SAULT have produced 4 albums over the past couple of years. I've not listened to all of them yet but the most recent, Untitled (Rise) is a magnificent collection of politically charged soul and dance culminating in the exquisite but devastating Little Boy

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by MarkF View Post
                    Weren't Grateful Dead renowned for doing this?
                    Nah. Studio album every two years or so. Breakneck pace of live gigs and seeing off keyboardists, though.

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                      #11
                      Mitch Miller must be right up there. His position a Columbia meant he could record whatever, whenever he liked

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                        #12
                        Frank Zappa issued more than sixty albums in his lifetime, while his company has released over fifty more since his death.

                        In more recent years, I think Richard D James (Aphex Twin, etc) has recorded more than thirty under his various guises.

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                          #13
                          Daniel O'Donnell has released 47 albums in the last 37 years. He's also had a different album in the UK charts every year for the past 25 years up to 2020.

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                            #14
                            Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                            Frank Zappa issued more than sixty albums in his lifetime, while his company has released over fifty more since his death.
                            Any of them listenable?

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                              #15
                              Daniel Romano released 10 albums in 2020. The three I bought are very good but, as my Mum would say, "I'm not made of money". Just the one so far this year, "Kissing the Foe" out last week. Not sure how he maintains the quality but I'm still listening.

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                                #16
                                Since 1959, Wayne Shorter has released 39 studio albums, 6 live albums and 11 compilations under his own name or as co-leader of Weather Report, and appeared on over 100 albums by other artists.

                                Since 1961, Herbie Hancock has released 41 studio albums, 12 live albums, 5 soundtrack albums, 60 or so compilations and appeared on over 150 albums by other artists.

                                Since 1974, Pat Metheny has released 30 studio albums under his own name, 25 studio albums in named partnership with others, 4 live albums, 3 soundtrack albums, 4 compilations and appeared on over 70 albums by other artists.

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                                  #17
                                  Didn't The Fall squeeze out about fifty billion albums?

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                                    #18
                                    Thirty Fall studio albums, I think. Shedloads of compilations and bootlegs, of course.

                                    Originally posted by Gangster Octopus View Post
                                    Any of them listenable?
                                    Maybe a handful.

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                                      #19
                                      Nurse With Wound seem to produce new albums at a fair clip.

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                                        #20
                                        Modular artist Russell Haswell has been extremely prolific in the last year.

                                        https://twitter.com/RussellHaswell/status/1377927046123360257

                                        Re Zappa - most Mothers Of Invention albums have their moments, 'Freak Out' and 'We're Only In It For The Money' being particularly good.
                                        Last edited by delicatemoth; 06-04-2021, 23:47.

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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by elguapo4 View Post
                                          Daniel O'Donnell has released 47 albums in the last 37 years. He's also had a different album in the UK charts every year for the past 25 years up to 2020.
                                          Any of them listenable? (Rhetorical question)

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                                            #22
                                            It's a hard question to answer this in the Bandcamp era isn't it. Someone could quite easily release 40 minutes of music every day for a year. Jim O'Rourke has released some classic studio albums, but for the past decade, has released around 50 of his Steamroom albums on Bandcamp. It's hard to weight the artistic achievements of each against each other I think. I subscribe to the musician Kevin Drumm on Bandcamp, and he seems to release an album every month or so.

                                            Electronics obviously make things a lot easier also. The two which really stand out for me here are the late Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze, who in around 15 years recorded around 90 albums for over 30 labels. So that's six a year or so. But it's massively trumped by Japanese noise artist Merzbow, who's recorded well over 300 albums for about 100 or so labels. He never stops.

                                            Some good candidates for this who make proper studio albums are, I suppose, artists who needed to record on a regular basis for personal or financial reasons, and often did it across multiple labels. Gregory Isaacs never seemed to go a year without releasing a couple of albums, up until his death in 2010, and from a quick count he looks like he's done around 60-70 original studio albums or so.

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                                              #23
                                              Yes, I would extend that and argue that there's also the issue of whether the definition of album needs to change, to recognize that what we get in the next decade might not be directly comparable to the album form of the pre-digital era. This also reflects listener behaviour: if albums are no longer being listened to from beginning to end so much as being dipped into for selective listening which may be background to another activity or constantly interrupted by another activity, the album becomes more like a grab bag of tracks or an EP. We already have mixtapes and EPs on the albums chart.

                                              Means of production and means of consumption are feeding into one trend of blurring the meaning of the format. There have been precedents for this. Around 1950 you could get an album that was a package of shellac discs with one recording per side, or the new format of 33.33rpm LP. In the 80s the length of an album expanded to accommodate the capacity of a CD (and albums arguably became overlong).
                                              Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 10-04-2021, 19:55.

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