Embarrassing garbage. Just a lot of bragging about being at Oxford. He obviously didn't learn much there. EA was not "taught" by the Oxford philosophy department (I did a doctorate there). That department is enormous and ethics seminars fielded a wide variety of views. EA was only incubated by a pretty fringe research institute with private funding called the "Uehiro Centre". The "professors" appointed there, Savulescu and Bostrom were widely regarded as cranks.
Agreed. I bought Washing Machine on the day it was released, during my secondary school lunch break. I remember the NME review claiming The Diamond Sea as the best thing SY had ever done. I agreed with that when I got it home, and still do. It was the pinnacle of their work really, which went rapidly downhill afterwards. Pitchfork's 0.0 rating of NYC Ghosts & Flowers was sadly wholly appropriate. But the records Evol-->Washing Machine altered my life completely, and turned me on to the idea of weird/experimental/avant-garde music, and art.
They had most of their (unique) equipment stolen a year before NYC Ghosts & Flowers was released[0], so they used whatever they had in their studio and put out an experimental album. Not my favourite record (Washing Machine and Daydream Nation for me), but I don't think it's that bad. Their later releases were also pretty good and the "really experimental" SYR stuff is quite interesting as well IMO.
> It was the pinnacle of their work really, which went rapidly downhill afterwards. Pitchfork's 0.0 rating of NYC Ghosts & Flowers was sadly wholly appropriate.
I think that was pretty much the only dud (together with Jet Set), Murray Street and the albums after that are quite ok.
