Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica

Hymie
Running Up That Hill
Posts: 3330
Joined: Sat Jun 08, 2013 10:37 pm

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: It's a Beautiful Day - It's a Beautiful Day

Post by Hymie »

Yes, "White Bird" was mainly popular with white hippies.
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: It's a Beautiful Day - It's a Beautiful Day

Post by Rob »

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland (1968) – AM #31



These were the ten albums I could choose from:

31. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland
32. The Beatles – Rubber Soul
33. Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV
34. The Strokes – Is This It
35. Radiohead – Kid A
36. The Doors – The Doors
37. Talking Heads – Remain in Light
38. The Who – Who’s Next
39. The Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet
40. U2 – The Joshua Tree

Since Bob Dylan was perhaps the most important artist in my formative years in music, I am probably a little unique in seeing All Along the Watchtower as a Dylan song first and as a Jimi Hendrix song second. For most people, including Dylan himself, it has become the other way around, no matter that Dylan wrote it and recorded it first. So strong is the power of the Hendrix cover that Dylan claimed that he now feels he is paying tribute to Hendrix when playing it. Still, I only heard Hendrix version only two years or so after I first heard and fell in love with Dylan’s and initially I found it an odd cover. I related strongly to Dylan’s lyrics there and I always felt that Dylan himself related strongly to both the joker and the thief in the song. I couldn’t get the feeling that Hendrix cared about them. I thought he related to the wind that began to howl. That seemed a weakness to me then, but nowadays I know better.

I should also add to that story that this was my introduction to Hendrix and back in the day I wasn’t that much into guitar playing as an artform in itself. The lyrics were more important to me. The second song I heard by Hendrix was Hey Joe, which put me off because of how immoral it seemed. Isn’t it odd that it is about a man who admits to someone that he is on his way to shoot his wife and the other guy seems to be okay with that, more concerned about his friend’s getaway than the life of the wife?

We are many years along now and I have come to appreciate the art of instrument playing a lot and I now see Hendrix as a big master of the guitar – hardly a noteworthy insight. I do still think that when Hendrix plays All Along the Watchtower he is relating most to the wind, but that is not a weakness. By doing this he also relates to the sense of a threat that emanates from the last verse of the song. The whole song feels like a storm, ominous and destructive. My feelings for the Dylan original still run deeper, but by now I feel like this is one of those songs that has spawned two masterpieces. Hendrix more atmospheric take is too epic to not get swept away with. And perhaps his appreciation of lyrics does run a little deeper. Hendrix himself did declare that he frequently felt that Dylan expressed his own life. There is no denying that one line early in the song must have made come connection to Hendrix: “Businessmen, they drink my wine”.

The businessmen knew the gold they had in Hendrix. Although certainly successful he wasn’t among the top tier best-selling acts, but he was highly marketable. Not just because he was very quickly recognized as a guitar god, but also because he had something mythical about him that made him iconic. When Jimi Hendrix sings that he is a Voodoo Child, chopping down mountains with the edge of his hand, it barely feels like bragging. The authority in his voice and the sound of his guitar made it believable. No man could live up to a myth as big as the one that surrounded him immediately and it is safe to argue that it killed him so soon. But the businessmen they knew; they marketed his image and were shameless enough to portray him as a Hindu guru on the cover of Axis: Bold As Love. Hendrix protested, but was ignored. The businessmen also decided upon portraying Electric Ladyland as a place where naked women gathered, probably to worship Hendrix. He protested again, was ignored and the businessman went on to drink the wine. Hendrix himself became used and restless, more and more alcoholic and prone to excessive drug use and after a while could not finish an album anymore.

That leaves him with three studio albums released during his life, all together recorded in about a year and half. In that time there was also the Monterey Pop festival were he burned his guitar in a sort of ritual ceremony – how is that for iconography? Later he would go on to reinvent the American national anthem, The Star Spangled-Banner, in Woodstock. Another iconic moment. So we have Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland, Monterey Pop and Woodstock; it took about two years, but it is a legacy as big and as larger than life as anyone has ever had.

But let’s zoom in on Electric Ladyland, his last finished studio album. It already sounds like an artist buckling under the weight of his by then firmly established myth. Are You Experienced? is a debut that to me sounds assured and – pardon my French – cool as f*ck. That album deserves it’s classic status and is a 10/10 for me. Electric Ladyland is frequently as impressive as the debut, but doesn’t strike me as something that is as assuredly a masterpiece. I think Electric Ladyland, far more than Axis, is a conscious try by Hendrix to go beyond what he did before, to create something even bigger and more innovative than before.

Frequently he succeeds. All Along the Watchtower, although deservedly considered the highlight, is not the best example. That one could almost have been on the debut, even if its rage would perhaps have been out of place. The other signature song that arose here, Voodoo Child (Slight Return), is more revealing. That one actually came about thanks to the much longer track Voodoo Chile, also on the album and recorded a day earlier. That 15 minute jam was recorded semi-spontaneously; Hendrix knew what he wanted from it, but the people he recorded it with were unexpected. As per usual he just brought along a crew of musicians he jammer in a bar with the day before, a crew that happened to contain Steve Winwood as well as Jefferson Airplane bass player Jack Cassady. Experience bass player Noel Redding, who had lost his patience with the unorthodox and unpredictable way Hendrix behaved at sessions, walked out in frustration, though drummer Mitch Mitchell remained. Over a couple of takes Hendrix directed this group in a classic blues inspired jam session that is so full of guitar effects and other bells and whistles, that the blues felt reinvented.

The much shorter Voodoo Child (Slight Return) was only recorded (without guests, but with Redding) the next day because a camera crew was filming the proceedings. This far more psychedelic yet focused take came to close the album. Two version of the Voodoo Child, but two wildly different views of the inside of Hendrix head and his own image. He was really experimenting with how he could change up his sound.

Sometimes he went all-in with special effects, most notably on the very drugged-out feeling Burning of the Midnight Lamp or that other massive song, 1983… (A Mermaid I Should Turn Out to Be) which contains a long middle stretch that sounds like every instrument the group could lay their hand on would get a short solo. On Come On (Let the Good Times Roll) Hendrix plays a straight blues cover, suggesting he would have been able to pull off a great classic blues album as well. On Gypsy Eyes he even gets funky, but in a way that doesn’t sound like any other funk music I know. Although Hendrix was a perfectionist by this time and spend long on each song, it does have the feeling like he was just trying something new with almost each track, trying out guitar effects, other instruments, all the while rethinking complete song structures.

This all comes at a prize though, because although the album is frequently brilliant, it is not very cohesive, which in turn might explain why it feels exhaustive. I’m really glad that All Along the Watchtower and Voodoo Child (Slight Return) are at the end waiting for me, because by the time 1983 is done I always feel a fatigue coming on and there are still five songs to go. There are longer albums I can get through with ease, but I do prefer albums that have a feeling of cohesion to them, especially if they decide to go on that long. On Electric Ladyland I don’t even have a reason to believe any thought went into ordering the tracks. I think there is a big masterpiece in here as most of the songs are awesome, but the randomness of it all as well as some lesser tracks put me off a little. It made me wonder if Hendrix or his management thought that Hendrix needed to have a double album like many of the big stars of the moment or that they all believed that everything included here should be there.

Hendrix himself has given me the impression that the former is the answer. He claimed that the only reason he covered Earl King’s Come On was because they needed to fill up the album. So yeah, there is some filler here and it shows if you ask me. Curiously, I would actually keep Come On, as I think it is a lot of fun and very appealing. What I would scratch are most definitely Rainy Day, Dream Away and its sequel Still Raining, Still Dreaming, two songs nobody ever seems to mention. They really feel like too much of what we already got in better way elsewhere. Long Hot Summer Night almost develops into a great chorus, but eventually feels inconsequential. House Burning Down is not bad I guess, but again I could live without it. Finally we have to acknowledge the weird existence of Little Miss Strange, the only song here written by Noel Redding and sung by Mitch Mitchell… Was this a concession to Redding? It doesn’t sound like The Jimi Hendrix Experience at all, more like a Small Faces outtake. That one needs to go, certainly.

With four tracks less and perhaps a reordering of the tracklist I feel that I could stomach this better. I don’t want to overstate my criticism here, because most of the material here is strong and there are many highlights beyond the two iconic closers. I absolute adore how cool Gypsy Eyes sounds. Crosstown Traffic and Come On are a blast. Burning of the Midnight Lamp is an atmospheric dash of mysticism. Voodo Chile is a long jam that captivates for all its fifteen minutes. 1983’s middle part is perhaps a bit too much random noodling for me, but the central guitar riff of the opening part is one of the most beautiful things Hendrix has done and the explosive build of the final part is awesome.

Of course the guitar overall is strong and Mitchell and Redding deserve to be mentioned for their support (they got a middle finger from Spotify, which doesn’t credit any of Hendrix song’s or album as The Jimi Hendrix Experience), even if we acknowledge that Redding isn’t on about half of the tracks, because of his frustration with Hendrix. I also want to mention what a powerful vocalist Hendrix is. Sure, he is not a classically great singer and he was very insecure about his voice, but you can’t tell as he sounds so massive and forceful.

So, I wouldn’t quite put Electric Ladyland up there with Are You Experienced? myself. At the same time it does little to tarnish the myth of Hendrix. As a guitar album is great and he did develop some new sounds that perhaps no one else would have. So it is a flawed masterpiece perhaps, but we take those.
8/10

Next from AM: Planxty – The Well Below the Valley
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland

Post by Rob »

Since we're now two pages in I made a register in the first post with links to each album review.
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland

Post by Rob »

Slint – Spiderland (1991) – RYM #31



These were the albums I could choose from:

31. Slint - Spiderland
32. Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures
33. The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead
34. The Cure - Disintegration
35. Pink Floyd - Animals
36. Pixies - Doolittle
37. Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV
38. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
39. Miles Davis – In a Silent Way
40. Bob Dylan – Blonde On Blonde

1991 was one hell of a year for rock music. Popular favorites like of course Nevermind, Achtung Baby, Metallica’s Black Album, Out of Time, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Ten and two Guns ‘N Roses albums all together defined much of the mainstream rock sound of the nineties, before Radiohead came along. And that’s without looking at genre defining works in other styles like Blue Lines, Screamadelica or The Low End Theory. Equally important are two albums that did never became broadly popular, but influenced alternative rock sounds for decades to come, even past Radiohead. One of them is of course Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, about which I wrote before. Perhaps as important is today’s subject, Spiderland by Slint.

I doubt that any album since The Velvet Underground & Nico has gone on to become so big even though it was completely ignored at release. Like the Velvet Underground record, Spiderland was send out without any notable promotion. Most of the important review outlets did not write about it (though the few that did were very positive). No radio station, no matter how alternative played any of the songs. There was even a setback that The Velvet Underground didn’t have: the band had already broken up when the record was released, so there were no promotional concerts. In fact, when the album hit the shelves, the members were already preoccupied with their own new projects.

If The Velvet Underground & Nico’s rise to fame is slightly miraculous, at least that album always had more of a real shot at glory, thanks to some famous connections. I mean, Andy Warhol did the cover! The cover photo of Spiderland was, in contrast, done by Will Oldham. You know, the guy from Palace Brothers and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. He did the photo before any of that. Will Oldham is great and all, but perhaps not the guy that is going to make you famous. Spiderland went out into the world with so little fanfare and sold so little at the start that I’m somewhat mystified by the fact that it became such a classic. How does something like that happen? The only explanation anyone has been able to give is the old “word-of-mouth”, albeit one that spread slowly, but must have had some real force behind it after all. The album’s fame must not be overstated. The chance that you’ll find some random person on the street who knows the least famous Velvet Underground & Nico song (There She Goes Again?) is still bigger than finding someone who knows the premier track of Spiderland (Good Morning, Captain). Yet try to find a rock reference or history guide without Spiderland. It is now ingrained in the history of rock.

The main reason is that it is an album that is not just brilliant in it’s music, but also doesn’t have any clear precedent. Even Loveless seemed to come from experiments with noise and feedback that had been going on in the years leading up to it. Spiderland basically set the blueprint for post-rock on it’s own, yet after so many imitations it still seems like an outsider of that genre. It also seems the start point of math rock, but I’ll admit I am still at a loss when it comes to understanding what sets math rock apart from post-rock (both genres are also in the running for prize for most stupid genre name, although there is much competition).

The slow rise in stature of Spiderland might actually have something to do with its popularity among music nerds. Frequently it feels that albums that get the most praise in a year have big marketing campaigns behind them. End-Of-Year lists may contain obscure albums, but once you compile all of them together you might be hard pressed in finding true unknown quantities rising to the top (SAULT this year being an incredible exception). This makes discovering something like Spiderland all the more sweet. It feels like discovering a hidden secret you share with other music nerds only. Especially since none of the contents (the odd time signatures, the dark vibe, the disturbing lyrics, the lack of choruses or a charismatic singer) have any chance of ever connecting with the mainstream. I laugh somewhat about such a segregated appreciation of music, but I understand the appeal. This is the Little Album That Could. Everybody loves the underdog.

After saying all that it is no surprise to learn that this is a difficult album, as it is completely derived of any hooks to set your teeth in or help you find your footing. I admit that this was always an album I avoided as I thought it wouldn’t be for me, even if I can’t quite explain why. Turns out I was very wrong, but I’m glad I waited some years before committing to it. By now I am far more familiar with alternative sounds and have also build an appreciation for post-rock. If I had put this on only ten years ago, when my major interest was classic rock, I might not have understood it. Now it didn’t take me any time to connect. From the moment those dark sound guitar parts and the even darker bass set in I knew I was going to love it. The drums that seemed to have their own rhythm sealed the deal.

There is just so much mood in this. I think Spiderland is best appreciated for the atmosphere it creates. Most of it feels like a terrifyingly slow crawl through an alley you should never have gone into. It’s suggest an air that smells bad, images that can’t help but be in grainy black and white and a taste that ruins your appetite. Then there are those moments that the songs burst, from the high pitches in Breadcrumb Trail, the almost heavy metal attack in Nosferatu Man or the wailing of “I miss you!” in Good Morning, Captain. These are the moments that the dread explodes and the feeling of terror is given voice (though rarely literally, the vocals remain calm for most of the songs).

This way of creating tension and releasing it have become a staple of post-rock and is what I love about it, but it has perhaps never been as effective as here. There is something particularly unnerving about Spiderland that even the best of other post-rock records haven’t quite captured. Part of it is simply the almost non-existent production. Producer Brian Paulson made the right decision of staying hands-off. He felt that the dry studio recordings where so powerful that he suggested to the band of changing little about it and the band agreed. This has the effect that although the playing is highly skillful, it still feels rough, even somewhat distant. The vocals were recorded separately from the instrumentals, but have been put backwards into the mix, making them hard to hear. There is little singing in there, most of it is spoken word (and some screams). Still, for spoken word it sounds sinister. It makes me want to lean closer to catch what the guy is saying, if only in the hope that things may not be as bleak as they seem.

They are bleak though, for the most part. The lyrics are varied, with themes of supernatural horror, to more everyday angst, but everything fits together smoothly. Good Morning, Captain is said to be based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic ghost poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but I haven’t found any evidence of the band confirming this. It’s definitely a completely different tale, with only a vague connection in its seafaring theme. It is haunting, though. Nosferatu Man may or may not be about vampire masochism, but it sure feels like it. Don, Aman is one of the most powerful examinations of social anxiety I have ever seen, with some surprising sense of humor (the main character can’t piss outside because a plane is flying over) and an ending I don’t understand, but sends chills down my spine (“He knew what he had to do/ He was responsible/ In the Mirror he saw his friend”). Washer is more conventional melancholy based on lost love, but is still very well worded.

Breadcrumb Trail is different though. Despite a few dark lines and some tension that derives literally from taking a rollercoaster ride, the song is basically a meet cute between the singer and a fortune telling girl. The final lines of the song are the only thing that make me smile on the album: “We were tired, but we managed to smile/ At the gate I said goodnight to the fortune teller/ The carnival sign threw colored shadows on her face/ But I could tell she was blushing”. Awww.

I really, really like the lyrics on this album, despite needing a lyric sheet to making them out. I think they have a great sense of poetry and it all goes so greatly with the music, despite apparently being written mostly separately from it. Usually I’m not too fond of really looking for explanations for lyrics from the artists, let alone using that in my reviews, especially when the writing is so ambiguous as here. Explaining lyrics that are powerful in their mystery usually leads to making them banal. In this case, though, I couldn’t help but wondering what brought this on, especially since the band members were still very young (late teens during writing, early twenties during recording). I wondered what kind of hell they experienced to be able to write this, as this felt like poetry written by someone older.

I found no explanations. Today I watched the documentary Breadcrumb Trail about Slint. It is 93 minutes long and does a good job in telling how the band came together, about Louisville were they grew up, about the music scene surrounding them and on the specifics of recording. What it does not reveal is the inspiration behind either the lyrics or the music. Despite extensive interviews with three of the four band members (guitarist David Pajo is absent), they reveal nothing personal. They stick to the facts and show no sign of introspection or reflection. They actually highlight the pranks they played on people and near the end Britt Walford, drummer and apparent ringleader, clearly states that they were just some kids goofing off.

Like a lot of famous records there is a lot of mythmaking going on. Look for any writing on Spiderland and rumors of a difficult recording process rise up. I’m becoming increasingly weary of such things as I have noticed that a lot of the more outré stuff written about classic albums, including some I have written for in this series, are based on nothing. About Spiderland it is said that one or maybe more members had to check into a mental hospital, because of how taxing making this music was. Not a single person of the band nor anyone close to them seems to have suggested this happened as far as I can tell, but somehow this rumor has spread so widely that it seems to be taken as a fact by even some professional reviewers. Guitar player and vocalist Brian McMahan says in the documentary that the one thing he does not understand about the continuing popularity of Spiderland is all the mythology that surrounds it. He does not elaborate on this, but it does give a sense that the dark tales about the making of this album are (mostly) untrue.

I do get the reason for all these rumors here though. Like I said, I feel strongly that the darkness of this album and its lyrics have to come from somewhere, especially considering their age. The band members don’t tell. Perhaps that’s for the best. It makes the album more open to interpretation, so that it can spin dark webs in our minds forever.
9/10

Next from RYM: Aimee Mann – Lost in Space
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Slint - Spiderland

Post by Rob »

Planxty – The Well Below the Valley (1973) – AM #2956



These were the albums I could choose from:

2951. Malcom McLaren – Duck Rock
2952. Kid Creole and the Coconuts – Wise Guy/ Tropical Gangsters
2953. Lonnie Johnson with Elmer Snowden – Blues and Ballads
2954. Steve Roach – Dreamtime Returns
2955. Neu! – Neu! 2
2956. Planxty – The Well Below the Valley
2957. Erykah Badu – New Amerykah, Pt 2 (Return of the Ankh)
2958. Otis Rush – Right Place, Wrong Time
2959. Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers – Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers
2960. Childish Gambino – Awaken, My Love

As I roved out one morning in the Summer of 2019 I found myself on holiday in Ireland. And as per usual when I go abroad I thought it might be a good time to acquaint myself with the local music. So that particular vacation I listened to rock acts like U2, Thin Lizzy and Rory Gallagher, as well the not very rock Enya. What ended up taking most of my listening time though was the Irish folk as played by traditional leaning acts like The Chieftains, Dubliners and above all Planxty, whose self-titled first album became my favorite piece of Irish music.

Planxty’s debut is a very traditional sounding affair or at least what I as a foreigner think Irish music sounds like. I was mostly right. The songs, except one, where all old tunes performed faithfully. The only difference is that among usual instruments like the uilleann pipes, tin whistle and bodhrán there was also a guitar and the bouzouki, two instruments that are not part of the old Irish line-up. This upset some purists, but mostly Planxty’s music was immediately praised for breathing new life into material that might as well be called ancient.

All of that was unknown to me at the time, I was just grabbed by how alive this music sounded. The risk of playing traditional material is that it can be done with a bit too much respect, like your performing them as delicate museum pieces. Traditional folk works best when you believe that the musicians still connect with the music on a deep level, as if these songs have lost none of their urgency. I’ve listened to a lot of traditional folk by now, much of which is great, but I have a hard time thinking of any traditional folk album as vital, captivating and even catchy as Planxty.

There were more albums by this group, but I never got around them, but when this project presented a perfect excuse to listen to the sophomore album, The Well Below the Valley, I didn’t need to think twice. This would be the next selection for sure!

It sounded familiar immediately. The second album would be more of the same. In music criticism this can sometimes be seen as a bad thing: repeating yourself is not a sign of artistic growth. In cases like this I feel that would be missing the point. These guys were already not busy reinventing the wheel, as they chose to work with very old material. The key is finding another set of songs worth sharing and above all passing on. The importance of traditional folk is partly in remembering music that is worth saving for future generations.

Still, initially this album felt a bit formulaic, as the first few cuts seem to be doubles of the first album. Both albums open with a funny, up-tempo song (Raggle Taggle Gypsy on the debut, Cúnla on the new one), followed by an anti-enlisting song (Arthur McBride for the first and Patt Reilly for the second), an instrumental, so-called jig as the third song and on the fourth a sweet ballad (Sweet Thames Flow Softly and As I Roved Out). What this opening quartet achieves on both albums is showing that the members of Planxty can do the full spectrum of the Irish song: the humorous sing-along, the rebellious song, the party favorite and the heartbreaker. After this opening salvo, the paths diverge somewhat, but you can find them tapping into the same wells. Both albums contain a composition from the beloved, medieval Irish composer Turlough O'Carolan (Planxty Irwin and Hewlett), a song in the old language (Si Bheag, Si Mhor and Bean Pháidin) and one original composition written by Planxty member Andy Irvine (Follow Me Up to Carlow and Time Will Cure Me). These Irvine tracks are in both cases the only songs not over a hundred years old.

It matters very little to me that the two albums are alike. In fact, it is almost inevitable since I’ve learned that Irish traditional music itself has been known to work around the same themes, both musically and lyrically. It’s probably more varied than I as a newcomer can quite get, but there are definitely themes that seem to be going around in circles. That there are many anti-English songs is inevitable considering the painful history Ireland has with the Island across the sea, but it is interesting that this has been turned more than a few time into a song about an Irish citizen unwilling to enlist. Similarly, there seem to be dozens of songs that start with “As I roved out one morning” and practically all are about a guy abandoning his lover. The Well Below the Valley actually contains two songs called As I Roved Out and they are not the same song (one is slow and sung by Andy Irvine, the other is quick and sung by Christy Moore).

The songs on the Planxty albums were chosen democratically. All members had a deep knowledge of Irish traditional numbers and none of the quartet was specifically the front-man. Each of them could vote against doing a song and if so all of them would accept to drop it. Irish folk at the time wasn’t big business, so no one could afford a big ego. There was hardly any money to be made by it, so you played it as long as you liked it and groups like Planxty were usually formed spontaneously and weren’t expected to last long.

Still, Planxty became a little bit bigger than your average traditional band, enough to make it onto Acclaimed Music, which overall has little interest in traditional music not played by established acts like Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen. Why did Planxty achieve this succes? Mere chance perhaps. The groups members on the first two albums were Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Dónal Lunny and Liam O’Flynn. All of them had been around for some years, playing the traditional circuit, which basically means you played in rather small halls and music rooms. They all had worked in different short-lived groups before and had known each other for some time before Planxty was formed.

Recording traditional music did happen, but it reached only a niche audience. Still, some of the members did record stuff before and it so happened that Christy Moore was recording a solo album called Prosperous in 1971 (released in 1972) and his studio band consisted out of Irvine, Lunny and O’Flynn. Basically the album can be seen as the debut of Planxty except by name. The recording process was so pleasant the guys decided to form a group. After recording only one single the band was asked to open a show for none other than Donovan in Galway, which would give them an unusually large audience for Irish traditional music. Andy Irvine recalls how he couldn’t actually see the audience because of the spotlights, but heard a lot of noise coming from there. He thought the audience hated it, but later learned that the reaction was actually ecstatic and the concert led to a renewed interest in old Irish music and in Planxty. It was what gave Planxty’s debut more notice than it normally would have had and helped settle the band’s reputation.

Perhaps without that Donovan concert I would never have known about the band and wouldn’t have been writing about The Well Below the Valley today. Like I said not much sets this second set apart from the first one, but that is not necessarily a bad. I do feel, however, that this set contains less of the humor and rebellious spirit of the first one. It feels more calm and professional, which is fine, but the self-titled has a ragged beauty that I kind of miss. Planxty is a perfect 10 for me, this one isn’t, even if there is no weak material or playing here.

The song that stands out the most is the title track, the only one with no equivalent on the original. It is a ballad about a mysterious pilgrim who confronts a woman who has born six children from incestuous relations, which she has killed, buried and denied ever having (for those who thought Down by the River by PJ Harvey was disturbing, welcome to Ireland). The pilgrim consequently curses her. This song is usually shunned by other Irish traditional bands, for obvious reasons, but it’s power can’t be denied.

Other highlights are the tongue-twisting Cúnla, the catchy Christy Moore version of As I Roved Out and the wonderful language of Bean Pháidin. There are songs marked with terms like ‘jigs’, ‘reels’ and ‘hornpipes’. These are dance styles and all these songs are purely instrumental. They still have the power to make you want to get up and dance, or perhaps enroll in a Irish dance school for appropriate lessons.

What in the end makes this another worthwhile album is the musicianship. Moore, Irvine and Lunny alternate lead vocals and all three of them have soulful voices. Even more so, you can hear the joy in their instruments. It is interesting to note that the two instruments most linked to Irish music, the fiddle and the harp, are completely absent. We do get an Irish drum known as the bodhrán, the uilleann pipes – bagpipes that you don’t actually blow - and the iconic thin whistle. I already mentioned that the group also used instruments that are not usual for Irish playing. The members had interest in music from abroad as well and they liked to try out instruments that fit the Irish sound, like indeed the guitar, the mandolin and the bouzouki. The latter is a Greek snare instrument that was already used in Irish bands in the sixties, but Lunny replaced some octave strings with unison strings, thus creating what is now called the Irish bouzouki, an instrument that would become common in Ireland after debuting in Planxty’s first album.

All this is to say that there is clearly a great love for music and for playing which you can easily hear while listening this album. In music we are too willing to look forward, sometimes already wondering what new music will replace the current. Sometimes it is just great to hear what we already have and it is important that there will always be bands like Planxty, that know how to make the old seem current. There isn’t a song on this album that despite clearly old arrangements and subject matters that doesn’t feel alive.
8/10

I will skip for one time a new Acclaimed Music pick and will listen to Madvillain’s Madvillainy instead, in honor of MF Doom. After the that I will get back with an AM selection.
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Planxty - The Well Below the Valley

Post by Rob »

Aimee Mann – Lost in Space (2002) – RYM #7454



These were the albums I could choose from:

7451. David Axelrod – Songs of Experience
7452. Cave In – Until Your Heart Stops
7453. Fred Frith - Gravity
7454. Aimee Mann – Lost in Space
7455. Dust – Hard Attack
7456. Spectral Lore - III
7457. Mr. Lif – I Phantom
7458. The Roches – The Roches
7459. The Remains - The Remains
7460. Ten Wanted Man – Wanted: Dead or Alive

My love for Aimee Mann goes way back. Like many people I discovered her through the soundtrack of the 1999 movie Magnolia, a film actually build around her song Deathly and for which Mann subsequently wrote more songs. I think I saw that movie for the first time in 2005 or 2006 and Aimee Mann’s music has stayed with me since. However, for whatever reason this has always been contained to her nineties albums up until 2000’s Bachelor No. 2, or the Last Remains of the Dodo. That was until Mental Illness was released in 2017, which I also heard frequently. The albums in between have been mostly overlooked, not just by me but by critics and other musical types as well I think. Time to fix that with at least one album: Lost in Space.

Back when I discovered Aimee Mann she was not a mainstream artist in the slightest, but people who are so-called in the know, call them hipsters or music nerds, were mostly familiar with her. I have a feeling that this has faded somewhat, that she is no longer a real household name in alternative circuits, in the way her contemporary Fiona Apple is (contemporary must be taken loosely, they have a clear age difference, but Apple was an early bloomer and Mann was first in a new wave band named ‘Til Tuesday). As such I can’t assume people reading this immediately know what an everyday Aimee Mann song sounds like, so I’ll try my best to evoke it.

That’s trickier said than done. On the one hand she belongs obviously to the singer-songwriter tradition. On the other, there is no one in the genre I find her easy to compare to. She left ‘Til Tuesday because she felt the new wave stuff didn’t come naturally to her (despite writing a top 10 single, Voices Carry) and that she felt more at ease with the acoustic guitar. That sounds pretty traditional you might say, but in the end she sounds different to what that might imply. Many female singer-songwriters have lamented that they are automatically compared to Joni Mitchell. I don’t know if this ever happened to Mann, but I find it hard to fathom. There is nothing folky about Mann’s playing for example. There is no back-to-the-roots deal. I feel that Mann’s music belong very much to the city.

What you do get are usually tales that deal with at the same time alienation and clinging to something. Addiction is a strong element, whether it be to drugs or a romantic partner and in most songs it isn’t clear which is which; or whether it makes a difference for that matter. A feeling of staying in the moment and not moving on is very present and this helps her sketch a portrait of people who might be very fearful, irresponsible or, again, addicts. She sings all this in a slightly nasally voice that isn’t quite warm nor cold, not distant nor inviting, but finds a subtly sympathetic in between that is an uncommon register for any singer-songwriter. Subtlety might be the key word for Mann’s music. Her lyrics are not over-emphasized or directly clear, but aren’t cryptic or difficult either, enjoying minor word-play over linguistic daring-do. Her melodies don’t seem earworms at first listen, but slowly reveal great hooks that linger in the mind after a couple of spins. During the nineties she slowly developed a style that seems to owe something to jazz, but once again not in a truly genre-embracing way.

That was her career up to 2000, but what changed afterwards? Well, any vague hint of jazz was dropped and she seemed to shift back into a comfortable style. “Seemed” I say, because as is typical the actual change in sound is again subtle on Lost in Space. That album title is a lot more telling than Bachelor No. 2, or the Last Remains of the Dodo. It fits a lot of the music and lyrics by Mann. The beautiful album cover by a cartoonist named Seth captures the feeling of the contained music even better. The starry sky, with the transmission towers on the otherwise empty hills easily evoke an empty world, a big place you can feel lost in. At the same time, the drawing style and particularly the thick colors find a strange balance between cold and warmth, that I personally find inviting. The music inside sounds just like that, but then again doesn’t that describe a lot of Aimee Mann?

Yes, but there is actually a warmth here that I haven’t experienced before and it is in the music itself. I did actually listen to Lost in Space some years ago, but didn’t connect to it immediately. That on itself is not a big surprise as Aimee Mann’s music takes some time to reveal itself, but that might go doubly so on Lost in Space, which makes me happy I took this deep dive. Even more than before the restraint hides layers of beauty. Close listening reveals a surprisingly huge array of instruments, mostly played by Aimee Mann and her producer Michael Lockwood. She plays 13 different instruments, he 26 (if you count ‘objects’ as an instrument). Considering there are only 11 songs on the album you can quickly deduce there have to be quite a few instruments involved per song and that’s without even considering drummer John Sands on 7 of these tracks, as well as a couple of guest session players sprinkled here and there.

The more I listen to these songs, the more I’m struck by the beauty of their layers and, yes, by the subtlety of their use. The best way to describe this further is by imagining a song or album with a very opulent, big, beautiful sound. Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising from 2019 springs immediately to mind, but any baroque or art pop album will do. Now imagine that all that striking beauty is subdued to such an extent that it may still be there, but no longer overwhelms you or tries to be the main ingredient. Basically, imagine baroque music that paradoxically believes that restraint is a virtue. I don’t make the comparison lightly, I think Lost in Space is a baroque pop album in disguise.

Take for example the song This Is How It Goes, a song that even for this album doesn’t seem like the attention grabber. For the most part it seems a normal acoustic guitar piece with an electric chorus, but you do notice some soft fuzzy electric guitar during the verses as well. At the end of each verse a simple piano melody starts, which basically help segue the song into the chorus, which has a more outspoken electric guitar part. Listen more closely though and you’ll notice that the piano leads into a lot more, a cacophony of instruments which I can’t even begin to recall. None take away from the catharsis of the electric guitar, yet all add a small detail that makes it sounds more full and inviting.

What Aimee Mann and Michael Lockwood achieve with this approach is a sound that still has the simple appeal of your average acoustic record, but allows them to create a palette that more deeply explores sonic alienation and warmth that struggle together to give that special feel of bonding and dejection that is so very present in Mann’s lyrics. This might all sound very avant-garde when you describe it like this, but it is refreshing how unassuming and accessible it sounds. There are many bells and whistles and Marxophones and theremins here, but for once they are not used to draw attention. For those who want a little more of an immediate hook, there are the sing-a-long like The Moth and the awesome rocker Pavlov’s Bell, but otherwise this is for the patient and the introspective listener willing to do close listening.

The lyrics are variations of her old themes, with hints of addiction, relational strife and metaphors for longing and disconnect. On this front there is little artistic change, but in a way I’m happy about that. Although I have never suffered from an addiction myself, I do relate to the sense of alienation and dejection that Mann describes. The type of alienation that does not stem from something as big as you find in the social and mechanical paranoia of Radiohead songs, but in a more everyday, interpersonal kind of way. She hasn’t lost her way with metaphors, using Humpty Dumpty’s fragility for how hard it is to get over a serious setback and Invisible Ink for the want to be a little obscure as writer. If the songs from Magnolia at times came close to revealing an open wound, by this time the wounds have mostly healed and a period of reflection on how they were achieved has arrived.

I’m really happy with this album. It may not have the knock-out power of especially the Magnolia soundtrack or it’s partner album Bachelor No. 2, but it is another completely worthwhile set of songs to sink into. Besides, it is always nice to reconnect with an artist you were fond of at an earlier stage in life and notice that they have still something to offer you. Lost in Space deserves to be better known for sure.
8/10

Next from RateYourMusic: Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Aimee Mann - Lost in Space

Post by Rob »

Madvillain – Madvillainy (1994) – Special pick (AM #404; RYM #16)



Not counting the joke entry of Lift It Down this series has followed a strict formula in how the albums are chosen. Rules are made to be broken though and who better to do that than a villain (Jeremiah Sand was a villain too of course)? Enter MF DOOM, named not just after the rapper’s real name Daniel Dumille, but on Fantastic Four nemesis Dr. Doom whose mask also was the inspiration of MF DOOM’s. It was that mask that always drew my attention to Madvillainy ever since I first saw the album cover in some music reference guide. It’s a simple cover by design, but it speaks of mystery, as well as of a silly sense of humor. DOOM himself was not comfortable with the picture, as he didn’t want to appear on the sleeve in person, but luckily they went ahead anyway and it became an iconic image.

Despite this great image I had not heard this album before recently. Part of the reason is that I’m not all that much into hip-hop and part is because I always thought this album would be much like Dr. Octagonecologist, an album I couldn’t get into and also drew me in with it’s comic book villain aesthetics. Nonetheless, with the death of Daniele Dumille, A.K.A. MF DOOM, I felt that my series formula could be set aside for once and it was time to dive into the world of Madvillainy.

Luckily, this album turned out to be a lot more accessible than the one by Dr. Octagon, with which it shares only a vague kinship. To my surprise I liked Madvillainy immediately. I know it’s an underground rap album by nature and that it’s supposed categorization as abstract hip hop signifies that is would be unusually difficult, but I relate more to this cartoon-jazzy collage with its wild wordplay than I do to the more austere and linear approach of Illmatic, about which I wrote earlier (not that the two albums make great comparison partners).

Like a lot of classic albums in this series there already has been written a lot about Madvillainy, but what I miss everywhere is how surprisingly friendly it sounds. I mean, the duo work under the name of Madvillain and one of them calls himself MF DOOM, that’s two names of foreboding. On the opening track – The Illest Villains – we even get an introduction to the world of evil. Saturday matinee evil, but still. Yet in a genre that trades frequently in tales of the underside of society’s belly and likewise has more than it’s share of egotistical boasting, this all sounds a lot more approachable, at least to me.

Part of that is that the lyrics perhaps are rather abstract, so that even when they deal with real-world problems they swiftly shift into something else, something less grim. It also helps that MF DOOM is one of the less assertive rappers I have heard. His skill with words is perhaps up with the best, but he sounds rather relaxed in his delivery, maybe a tad lazy in a good way. There is a sense of being comfortable among friends here. Or perhaps it is just that the nerdy interests, the broad love for music that comes from the samples and the advanced linguistics for it’s own sake are all elements I just feel more comfortable with. The image that quickly formed here for me is that of one of those old cartoon villains that you just sympathized with. The ones that barely seemed evil and are mostly loveable.

One thing I in particular connected to is the music itself. I came for MF Doom initially, but above all it turned into an initiation to wonderful sample world of Madlib. At first I didn’t know quite what I was hearing, but it was immediately fascinating. Madvillainy is like a rich tapestry of music from every corner of the world, stretching beyond common boundaries of genre. There is more here than I could possible have digested in such short notice, but this playlist here collects all the music samples used and it runs for over four hours:



Not counting the album’s songs itself that makes 41 sampled songs, although Madlib makes it sound like much more. There is more of course, as he also samples from movies, television and other media that make sounds. The movie quotes are mostly from old b-movies or sequels to those old b-movies, like 1942’s Ghost of Frankenstein. On the music side we get some expected stuff, like soul and funk from George Clinton, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Temptations and the inevitable James Brown. Madlib is an avid jazz connoisseur so we also get some particularly abstract Sun Ra, as well as Freddie Hubbard and Bill Evans to name a few. Then things get more foreign, literally with a hefty dose of Indian and Brazilian music (a lot of the production was done during a stay in Brazil). Things get more unexpected when you factor in among other stuff like progressive rock (Gentle Giant of all acts), Italian opera (by Rossini), minimalist Steve Reich and even fellow hip hop giant Boogie Down Productions. Most telling is perhaps the use of Frank Zappa, whose geeky outsider experimentalism is perhaps the rock equivalent of Madvillain.

Like I said, Madlib is a jazz fanatic (his album Shades of Blue: Madlib Invades Blue Note is highly recommended) and he mainly takes his production cues from that genre. There is a similar improvisational feel here, even if the art of sampling by its very nature is not very improv. All the fragments here seem to react to one another, play off at each other, creating a strange but beautiful cacophony. It’s rough at times, as Madlib frequently interrupts samples halfway and loves to end a song very suddenly, but that is all part of that loose feeling as if you are rummaging quickly through a very extensive and very random record collection. Turns out that Madlib is someone who likes to scourge cheap record shops in search of oddities and unusual sounds. That giddy sense of finding that perfect short piece of music is palpable in this album. As someone who likes to creates odd playlists, this is basically the far advanced version.

Of course it helps to have someone like MF DOOM around to give a consistency to the collage. Why this album works so wonderfully well is not just Madlib’s deep sense of music, but the way MF DOOM is so wonderfully attuned to it. His use of words is the same as Madlib’s use of music. The lines also have a randomness to them. It’s hard to say what many songs end up being about (and in fact I need an urban dictionary all too frequently). A serious line can be followed by a weird non-sequitur. What keeps it together is the flow and the complex yet appealing rhyme schemes. The lines open up a world of possibilities with words alone that is as vast as the world of music. There are a fair share of quotable lines here of course, but for ones the quotes don’t seem to be the idea. It’s more the totality of all the lines that matters.

To add to all the inspired madness I also think it is fitting that Madlib and DOOM have multiple personas on the album. Those rappers Quasimoto and Viktor Vaughn that are mentioned as featured artists? Those are Madlib and DOOM respectively. Another DOOM alter ego, King Geedorah, is mentioned as a special guest on Bistro, but does not make an actual appearance on one of these songs. This type of play again feels like part of this album’s feel for the unreal and expansive. Although it should be said that ‘Quasimoto’s’ superb performance on Shadows of Tomorrow is the album’s most clearly serious moment (regardless of whether Madlib partially raps under the effect of helium). By the way, MED, Wild Child and Stacy Epps at least are real individuals that appear as performers here - at least as far as I can tell!

If there is a criticism - and it is not a big deal really – is that this whole collage feel also makes sure that no song connects all too deeply. There are certainly standout tracks. My favorites here are All Caps, Accordion, Eye, Strange Ways, Rainbows, Supervillain Theme and the aforementioned Shadows of Tomorrow. Nothing though that like my top albums I can see myself referring and returning to till the end of days. But I guess it is more the album as a whole that needs to do that job. We’ll see how that develops.
8/10

Next from Acclaimed Music: James Brown - 'Live' at the Apollo
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Madvillain - Madvillainy

Post by Rob »

Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (1970) – RYM #48



These were the albums I could chose from:

41. Bob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde
42. Television – Marquee Moon
43. The Beach Boys – The Smile Sessions
44. Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966 - The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert
45. Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks
46. Neil Young – Live At Massey Hall 1971
47. The Doors – The Doors
48. Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
49. Portishead – Dummy
50. DJ Shadow – Entroducing…..

There is a lot to be said about Bitches Brew, but let’s get straight to the most important point I have to make today: Miles Runs the Voodoo Down is the coolest song title in the history of music. I’m not really sure what it means, but it sounds so damn awesome I don’t care. Yes, I have thought deeply about it and took other spectacular titles under consideration. It all doesn’t matter, because Miles Runs the Voodoo Down.

Then there is the album cover designed by Mati Karwein. It’s an astonishing eye-catcher that might have made the record a best-seller even if the music wasn’t good. It feels like a piece of Afro-futurism, even though when you look closely any hint of the future is absent and it becomes more of a swirling mix of psychedelic, heightened African rituals that probably run the voodoo down. It is justly famous.

The album also contains music. 94 minutes of it, spread out over only seven songs. Before this one Miles Davis was known as a master of the cool, but this time he went all-out with a huge cast of mostly young talent; 15 performers all in all. This was a group that contained three electric pianists and two or three drummers at the same time. Together they created what can only be called a, well, brew (Miles Davis was good with titles). You never know what’s cooking.

Just take this description of the recording process, by drummer Lenny White: “Bitches Brew was like a big pot and Miles was the sorcerer. He was hanging over it, saying, ‘I’m going to add a dash of Jack DeJohnette, and a little bit of John McLaughlin, and then I’m going to add a pinch of Lenny White. And here’s a teaspoonful of Bennie Maupin playing the bass clarinet.’” See, it is a brew.

The recording process and especially the post-production were so innovative, influential and frankly legendary that I feel enough has already been written about it, so I don’t feel the need to go over all of it again. Nonetheless, I can’t avoid it. I try to be as concise as possible. You see, Davis was influenced by both rock and funk at this point in his career. His big contemporary heroes were supposedly James Brown and Jimi Hendrix. He basically tried to work that influence into a jazz idiom, not in the least because he didn’t like to be confined by the rules of jazz.

His large group of players were given a few notes to work with and as was usual could improvise around it. What was more unusual is that Miles Davis kept stopping the players because he kept on getting new ideas. Sometimes he would just give short instructions during playing (you can hear some of it back in the mix, every now and then), but there was a lot of stopping and pausing going on. Producer Teo Macero later reckoned that there wasn’t a complete take of any of the songs, because of this stop—start process and the constant reinvention. As such it is almost a miracle this was all recording in three days.

That does not mean the record itself was done. Far from it. Macero was instructed by Miles to make something of all the pieces. What he did turned out to be as important to the final sound of the album as any of the decisions made by Miles himself. The album is famous for it’s editing. Parts were moved around, cut, replaced and reconfigured. The opening as played by the musicians could be placed in the middle. Little respect for melody or motifs was left (if there ever was such a thing). There are many loops, echoes, reverberations and other neat tricks applied.

The Bitches Brew sessions were even mysterious for the session players themselves, who could not figure out whether they had recorded something that could be released in any form. Then one day pianist Joe Zawinul walks into the studio and hears some strange music play through the speakers. He asked someone what was playing and it turned out it was he himself on Bitches Brew! Zawinul was floored by how great the record sounded (although he was also critical on the extreme length of the two opening tracks).

So even though many of the session players did not quite get the vision initially the final results did influence them. One thing that is as famous about Bitches Brew as the music and the cover is that pretty much everyone who played on it would release major works in this new jazz fusion style. No, Bitches Brew is not the first jazz fusion album. It isn’t even the first released by Miles Davis. But it has become the central work of that style and popularized a new approach to jazz that would basically define the genre for the next decade. It was also massively popular, becoming the all-time best selling jazz album at the time and it revived jazz, a genre that had slowly lost public interest. Of course, it upset purists with it’s nods to rock and funk as well as it’s dependency on heavy editing, but for most people it remains an entrancing record.

One thing that should definitely be said about this crazy post-production work is that the end result sounds seamless. Even the many special effects cannot detract from the feeling that all sounds fluent and as part of a whole, almost as if it still is just a band playing off each other. It is impossible to say where we hear the artists improvising on each other’s work or where Macero just makes it sounds like they do and that is a big compliment. Bitches Brew ends up sounding surprisingly organic, with each song also having a unique sound.

The first two tracks are the longest, with Pharaoh’s Dance at 20 minutes taking up complete side A on vinyl and Bitches Brew being a whopping 26 minutes and obviously filling side B on its own. This pair is also the most experimental you’ll find here. Both are a mix of what feels like a horde of musicians working both in company and competition with each other and achieving a frenzied ecstasy. I don’t know what the old Pharaohs in Egypt danced to, but if this is even a close approximation it must have required some out-there movements. Bitches Brew goes further and seems to delve into some spiritual evil. It sounds dark and nasty at times and is all the better for it. If this makes these two songs sound like pieces of inaccessible avant-garde than, well yes, that’s what it is, but I also want to stress how extremely atmospheric they are. The album cover is done justice here. It’s far out-there music, but in a way I found immediately captivating. Yes, I agree with Zawinul (who actually wrote the initial music for Pharao’s Dance) that the tracks are too long and by their very nature they don’t exactly stick in the mind as tunes, but they are an experience worth having.

In comparison the four songs that make up disc two are almost pop, if your idea of pop is steeped in improvisational shamanism. Spanish Key, my favorite, is the cool one, not in the least because Davis’ trumpet at the beginning sounds as if he is writing a new theme song for James Bond. The song is still 17 minutes long, but it goes down easier than the two that proceed it. It is followed by John McLaughlin, named after the album’s sole electric guitar player. This is for a reason as he is clearly the main player for this song and as a result it is the most rock of the whole track-list. To be fair though, what makes it stick out the most is that is only four and a half minutes long, on an album where everything else lasts at least ten minutes. It is also the only song on which Miles himself does not play.

After these pair we can switch to Side D for the last two songs, including – there it is – Miles Runs the Voodoo Down. When you think of it, that sounds a bit like a chase and that is also what the music sounds like. It is the most funky song too and I suspect that it ranks highest on Acclaimed Music because it is the most immediate. The final track, written by sax player Wayne Shorter, stands out the most from it’s predecessors, as it far more calm and tranquil. It is called Sanctuary and after all the crazy dances and rituals it does feel like a return to a spiritual rest. It has it’s burst of chaos, but in the end it allows us to breathe again. That makes it a good closer.

Bitches Brew deserves to be called a beast of an album. It really overwhelms and contains more than even the seven listens I gave it can hope to reveal. It’s exhausting, but in a good way. An experience that really puts you in another world of strange and dangerous rituals, but also ends up bringing you to a peaceful place. It may be challenging and there may be too much of it, yet at the same time it is no surprise that it has captivated so many, as it is a thing of monstrous beauty.
9/10

Next from RYM: Outlaws - Outlaws
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Miles Davis - Bitches Brew

Post by Rob »

James Brown – ‘Live’ at the Apollo (1963) – AM #44



These were the albums I could chose from:

41. Ramones – Ramones
42. The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed
43. Massive Attack – Blue Lines
44. James Brown – ‘Live’ at the Apollo
45. Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life
46. R.E.M. – Automatic for the People
47. Prince and the Revolution – Purple Rain
48. Stevie Wonder – Innervisions
49. Joni Mitchell – Blue
50. Beck - Odelay

Near the end of this famous concert James Brown and the Furious Flames start something that according to the album titles is a medley. Eight songs are performed in a seamless way, creating one song of about six and a half minute. The selection: Please, Please, Please, You've Got the Power, I Found Someone, Why Do You Do Me, I Want You So Bad, I Love You, Yes I Do, Strange Things Happen, Bewildered and finally to take things full circle once again Please, Please, Please. Impressive yes, but really almost this whole show feels like one medley.

It’s usual for a concert recording to be seen as something of an differently performed greatest hits collection and ‘Live’ at the Apollo is certainly that, but for the most part the song are shortened and performed so quickly in succession to one another that they do sound like a long song. There is room for applause after each track, but before we hear much of it the band quickly plays an Instrumental Bridge, keeping the feeling of a continuous performance almost intact, while also keeping things moving along quickly.

There might be a very practical reason for this. Famously, James Brown paid for the recording of this album himself. The label he was signed on, King Records, did not believe in the viability of live records (outside of jazz, they were a rarity), but Brown was not dissuaded. By keeping the music performance tight and to the point and by making sure that music was being performed almost every second, Brown could make sure that each inch of recording tape was put to full use and not an unnecessary dime was wasted.

This is one of those great examples of necessity breeding inspiration. Compare this record to it’s successor ‘Live’ at the Apollo II. That one captures a great performance too, no doubt about it, but it isn’t quite as relentless as the original. By that time Brown had the leisure and the money to make a 73 minute record. Part 2 meanders here and there. Part 1 is only 31 minutes long and every second counts.

Especially during the first stretch of songs the listener feels as if being whipped by fast groovy music. Even the introduction by Fats Gonder feels like it’s on fire. Than Brown himself comes up, supported by literally much fanfare. He shouts “You know I feel all right!” and immediately his audience does too. There’s no stopping this anymore. He runs through I’ll Go Crazy, Try Me, Think and I Don’t Mind as if there is no tomorrow. It’s not that he rushes these, it’s more that he creates a livewire energy that makes sure the party never stops. It also gets his audience all worked up and that is the most important part. For no live album I have heard the audience is as important as this one, except perhaps Pete Seeger’s The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert (for very different reasons).

You’ll notice this when the concert suddenly slows down. We arrive at the almost 11 minute performance of Lost Someone, apparently James Brown’s biggest hit at the time. As it takes up a good third of the whole album it might have ruined the whole momentum, but the opposite is true. By now Brown has the audience in the palm of his hands and he knows it. He draws this song out specifically so that he can feed of their reaction. This is the one song that allows moments of silence, but only so he can hear the screams, pleas and declarations of love that especially his female listeners are more than happy to provide him with. “When I sing that little part that makes you sting in the heart, now”, he pleads, “I wanna hear you scream. I wanna hear you say OWW!” And he hears a loud “ow” and he demands more, concluding, “I believe my work will be done”. You’d think so, but when some minutes later he very suddenly starts with the Medley with a very loud “Please, please, please!” you know his bag of tricks is not empty yet.

In the past I have been a little tough on James Brown. The thing is that for the most part I believed he underachieved on his studio recordings. I only knew the biggest singles, but they never sounded as on fire as they could have been. It’s as if he was holding back. On many of these songs he also relied too much on long instrumental solo’s by his band, but since they were mostly playing a repetitive groove I lost interest quickly. I kind of wondered for some time now whether Brown in a live setting would work better (not in the least because ‘Live’ at the Apollo is his most iconic record) and yes it does. The way he feeds on audience feedback like a funked-up vampire is priceless. This is the highest ranked live album on Acclaimed Music and regardless if I agree on that particular assessment, there is no denying the greatness on display here. Mr. Showbusiness indeed.

Of course, James Brown’s financial gamble paid off and the record became a surprise seller. It most definitely was important to make the live album a viable format. Still, something odd has happened. Despite the remaining stature and influence of James Brown – not in the least in hip hop circles – this album has very, very little plays on Spotify and not just for its time. Is it forgotten by audiences at large? Are the studio singles really his more lasting legacy for the ordinary listener. It would be sad. This very forum adds insult to injury: during last years All-Time Album Poll, this was the album from the official top 100 that ended up lowest. Please don’t go sleeping on this one. There is no sleeping allowed when the music sounds this hot!
9/10

Next from AM: 10,000 Maniacs – In My Tribe
User avatar
mileswide
Full of Fire
Posts: 2526
Joined: Wed May 01, 2019 5:08 pm
Location: Nottingham, England

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: James Brown - 'Live' at the Apollo

Post by mileswide »

You've nailed it with the indispensability of the audience- I think JB & the Flames are just as impressive on Vol. II but the crowd are more subdued, it takes the improvised I Feel All Right to get them going and even then, Brown has to prod them no small amount to generate some heat. Your funked-up vampire quip is hilarious too, keep it up!
All I got inside is vacancy!
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: James Brown - 'Live' at the Apollo

Post by Rob »

Outlaws – Outlaws (1975) – Rate Your Music #7449



These were the albums I could chose from:

7441. Kollektiv - Kollektiv
7442. Yezda Urfa – Sacred Baboon
7443. The Jimmy Castor Bunch – It’s Just Begun
7444. The Beau Brummels – Bradley’s Barn
7445. Greg Sage – Straight Ahead
7446. Fortreresse - Métal noir québécois
7447. The Delgados – The Great Eastern
7448. James Ferraro - iAsia
7449. Outlaws - Outlaws
7450. Brendan Benson - Lapalco

Every genre has its lesser-known heroes and every popular act gets similar acts that will always stand in its shadow. The group Outlaws had been around for a lot of years when they opened up for Lynyrd Skynyrd on a tour in 1974. Their performances were immediately popular as they knew exactly how to play into the sound of the main act. No wonder that Lynyrd Skynyrd front man Ronnie van Zandt persuaded his label boss to sign the Outlaws. I doubt it was a hard sell: if you have the chance to duplicate the success of one of your biggest bands you will always go for it.

Of course the Outlaws never scaled the same heights of Lynyrd Skynyrd, but for a couple of years they did quite all right and among fans of southern rock they seem to be remembered fondly. Their self-titled debut album came a bit at the tail-end of the genres biggest years, after Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers Band and Little Feat had released their now-classic albums and hit singles. Despite seeming to be late-comers they had been around in some form for a while. The band was founded in 1967, but in the eight years it took them to get around to recording their debut album the group went through a seemingly endless rotation of players, with only Hughie Thomasson as a consistent member. Perhaps this instability is the reason it took so long to really take off.

The debut had two hits. First, There Goes Another Love Song, a rather sweet rocker on which the close harmony on the chorus is as notable as the guitar solos. This one captures the feel of most of the album. It is warm and light, to off-set the slight melancholy of the lyrics. The triple guitars, a staple of southern rock, create a gentle sweeping sound like a breeze. The guitar trio of the moment – Hughie Thomasson, Billy Jones and Henry Paul – were at the time nicknamed as the “Florida Guitar Army”, but that makes them seem far more aggressive than they sound on record. The trio also take turns lead singing, but the choruses are always in close harmony and they really sound like Crosby, Stills & Nash.

The other song that was a hit is far less a template for the album’s sound, yet is perhaps more what you expect from southern rock: the nine minute Green Grass & High Tides is rather shamelessly their Free Bird. In fact, I have a hard time finding anyone mentioning this song and not the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic. These days, if Outlaws have any claim to fame left, it is this closing track (it is also the only thing they did that appears on Acclaimed Music). For me it might fly a little too close to Free Bird. I love that song no matter how unfashionable it has become. My love for big guitar solos is still unashamed. So when somebody says there is another Free Bird out there, which a few over-enthusiastic fans claim is even better than the original, I’m all here for it. The actual song is good, don’t get me wrong, but seems to have little character of its own. The guitar skill is undeniable, but I feel there is little feeling underneath it and it misses Free Bird’s cathartic sense of release. Every great guitar solo in rock history has something that sets it apart. This one doesn’t for me.

In fact, Green Grass & High Tides did not end up becoming my favorite song on here. Neither did There Goes Another Love Song. No, the overlooked Cry No More, with it’s angular guitar hook is the one for me. It’s the only one that really has some punch in its sound, something severely lacking on the album overall. If you balk at the idea of listening to southern rock, because you associate the music (rather undeservedly) with redneck culture, you have nothing to fear here. This is mellow, good-natured stuff. Some lost love and loneliness, but no tough guy acting or hard-living, hard-drinking business. Only Keep Prayin’ has some of that in its lyrics and I guess the instrumental Waterhole and the love song Knoxville Girl have country roots in their sound. Otherwise the ‘southern’ aspect of the songs is down-played.

If I don’t seem to have that much enthusiasm for this album I should add that this is a very proficiently put together debut. The guitar trio are very skillful (the other players are just kind of there, not drawing attention to themselves). The tunes sound effortless and are pleasing to the ear. Only one song, It Follows from the Heart, drags a little. I can see why this album would be beloved by southern rock fans, but I feel this is one of those genre records that is really for the type of fans that want more once they exhausted the main acts. You know, the type of artists who play safe within a genre’s confines without defining or excelling at them. If you like southern rock a lot you can do far worse than Outlaws. As for me, I enjoy the record for what it is, but I doubt I’ll feel the need to return to it ever again. It’s the least essential album in this series yet.

The cover art is great though.
6/10

Next from RYM: Black Sabbath – Master of Reality
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Outlaws - Outlaws

Post by Rob »

10,000 Maniacs – In My Tribe (1987) - #2941



These were the albums I could choose from:

2941. 10,000 Maniacs – In My Tribe
2942. Van Halen – Van Halen II
2943. Migos - Culture
2944. Dave Edmunds – Get It
2945. The Kills – Midnight Boom
2946. Machine Head – Burn My Eyes
2947. Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Stitt – For Musicians Only
2948. The Mars Volta – Frances the Mute
2949. Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fright
2950. Coleman Hawkins & Ben Webster - Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster/Blue Saxophones

The first single released from In My Tribe was it’s only cover: Cat Stevens’ Peace Train. It didn’t chart. Two years later, Cat Stevens, by now a Muslim under the name Yusuf Islam, seemingly supported the fatwah on Salman Rushdie. For that reason the members of 10,000 Maniacs decided that further pressings in the USA of In My Tribe would no longer contain Peace Train. This did no go for the rest of the world, but nonetheless the album is only available on Spotify without it, although you can still hear the song on the streaming service as part of a career compilation.

I have heard their take on Peace Train, but I have now only listened to the album without it and I think it is all the better for it. Not because of anything Yusuf Islam may have said or because it is a bad cover, but because it is something the remainder of the album isn’t. Peace Train is based on the fairly naïve assumption that we are all riding on a train towards peace. Like a lot of the old Cat Stevens songs it has an appealing melody, faithfully recreated by the Maniacs. However, the other songs are way too socially aware to even believe that anyone is on a peace train and the band does not trade in appealing melodies. The sound of In My Tribe may be as gentle as a Cat Stevens record, but scratch even a little under the surface and there is more to it.

Let’s start with the lyrics, as they are important here. They are written by vocalist Natalie Merchant and most of them have socially aware themes. Opening track What’s the Matter Here for example is about domestic child abuse (coincidentally the song was released really close to the similar themed Suzanna Vega hit Luka). Gun Shy is about warfare, Don’t Talk about alcoholism, Campfire Song about greed and City of Angels about poverty. There is even a song about illiteracy, Cherry Tree, a topic I don’t recall appearing in any other song I know.

Despite all these heavy subjects the songs never feel overtly political, heavy-handed or simplistic. The reason for this is simple: Merchant always adds a personal angle to them. So when she notices her neighbor kid has been abused she reflects on her role as an outsider and onlooker, critical but incapable of doing anything about it: “And I want to say, I want to say "What's the matter here?"/ But I don't dare say "What's the matter here?"

Similarly when she talks about war in Gun Shy she frames it as a character sketch of her brother who has enlisted. She describes him in a close-to-the-bone way that lets her both scrutinize and understand her brother, making the attack on the military not just indirect, but personal in a way that is surprisingly warm and therefore poignant. My Sister Rose is even more subtle. It tells the tale of a wedding, probably in a Roma community and describes the celebration in a lively and festive way. But some words might suggest a feminist undertone, as if the singer’s sister is selling her identity: “Sister Rose take your mother's place/ Trade your home and your maiden name/ For a list of vows and a veil of lace made a wife of you today/ But you're my sister Rose the same.”

Reading these lines is not enough. You have to hear them being sung to notice the subtle way Merchant gives them meaning. My Sister Rose is a jubilant song, very distinct from the other tracks in that it has a mandolin as the main instrument. Merchant sings the whole song in a such a welcoming fashion that she might be the master of ceremonies at the wedding. She never loses her sense of fun, never seems to be the one to sour the party, so her possible misgivings on the effects of marriage on a woman are deliver in a way that could almost be a form of well-wishing, but they are there for more attentive wedding guests to hear.

Natalie Merchant is a terrific singer, basically of the type I love the most. It’s not just that she has a distinctive voice that I could listen to for hours and which I would recognize anywhere, but above all she seems to live her lyrics, like a true storyteller. She knows that specific delivery is essential to enhance the feel a line leaves behind on the listener. The two songs to her ostensible brother and sister are great examples. Even better is Hey, Jack Kerouac, the only song of the album ranking at Acclaimed Music (which is curious as it wasn’t one of its singles, nor is it really its centerpiece or is it ever particularly singled out in one of the albums reviews; but I don’t complain as it is a masterpiece) and a rare track without a social message.

As the title suggests it is a tribute to author Jack Kerouac, writer of the influential novel On the Road, as well as an ode to his contemporaries of the Beat scene. Despite being dead for 18 years when the song was released Merchant sings as if she is really addressing Kerouac in person; as if he were a close friend. When she gets to the line “Hey Jack, now for the tricky part” there is an ironic tease in her delivery, as if she is gently eases Kerouac in a tricky revelation. Based on her warm intonation you may not readily be compelled to compare Merchant the singer with Bob Dylan or Jacques Brel, but in her own gentle way she shares their talent for detailed delivery.

Merchant’s vocals are also important in another and more unexpected way. It took me a while to even consciously notice this, but her singing provides pretty much all the melody in almost all of the songs. We are used to a band and a singer performing in tandem to at least some degree. That barely happens here. The jangly guitar by Robert Buck is basically doing it’s own thing, mostly repeating the same riff in a song over and over, no matter what Merchant is doing. Steve Gustafson does the same, though he is hardly noticeable on the album. Only the drums by Jerome Augustyniak punctuate the lines by Merchant, but feel like they were added as a reaction to her melody, instead of providing it’s anchor. All the hooks and the general flow of a song come from the voice. It should be readily apparent to anyone listening that this is a vocalist-centric album, but the extent to which she controls the whole sound is rather stunning.

This is no coincidence as Merchant said in an interview that it was producer Peter Asher’s idea to foreground her voice more than in previous album. This was initially not well received by other band members, but in the end lead to a process were band and vocalist where encouraged to try different routes, so to speak. The band provides something of an appealing bedrock for what are otherwise dark tales. It fits together in an odd way. The music helps make the songs seem less self-serious, which could have been a danger with so many issue-focused lyrics. At the same time, the music has a warmth shared with Merchant’s voice. There is a friendliness and approachability to both that eases you in. Some criticasters of the band have accused them of being too coffee house friendly, but that’s only true if you are not ready to look beneath the surface.

There is one song at the end that breaks many of the rules. Another rare song without politics, Verdi Cries tells of a holiday where Merchant has a hotel neighbor who plays Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida constantly, becoming her soundtrack of the vacation. It’s a more poetic tale of memory and fleeting feelings and the music adjusts. Several string instruments and a piano are added and for once everyone seems to be creating music together again. The end result is gorgeous.

As you might be able to tell I like this album a lot. I can see why it would be too unassuming and unimportant in the grand scheme of music for it to rank higher than #2941 on Acclaimed Music, but nonetheless I find it easy to recommend. For me, it felt like connecting to a close friend I never knew I had. A rare friend who can ramble on about social issues without seeming self-important or obnoxious for a minute. A friend who keeps it real and is always welcoming. If that is coffee house material, well, I have never felt unwelcome in a coffee house to be honest.

Unimportant side-note 1: This album was released within a week of my birth; six days earlier to be exact. I don’t draw any particular meaning from this, nor was I aware of it when I chose this album, but I like the coincidence anyway.

Unimportant side-note 2: Michael Stipe of R.E.M. has cameo, singing in the bridge of A Campfire Song. I couldn’t work this bit of trivia organically in my review but for some reason I thought you might want to know this, so there you go.
9/10

Next from Acclaimed Music: Joy Division - Closer
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: 10,000 Maniacs - In My Tribe

Post by Rob »

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality (1971) - RYM #55



These were the albums I could choose from:

51. King Crimson – The Great Deceiver: Live 1973-1974
52. Godspeed You Black Emperor! - F♯A♯∞
53. Fishmans – Long Season
54. Kate Bush – Hounds of Love
55. Black Sabbath – Master of Reality
56. Joy Division – Closer
57. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced?
58. Yes – Close to the Edge
59. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
60. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland

Considering I use RateYourMusic as one of my sources for this series and that its community is obsessed with all things metal it is almost a surprise it took me so long to actually write about an actual metal album. How better to kick off than with the band that may not have invented metal, but have sealed its identity for time eternal: Black Sabbath?

It is a safe pick in a way. Metal is extremely hit or miss with me, but I knew I liked Black Sabbath. A few years back I went on a binge of the first four of their albums in one sitting and absolutely loved it, although I only returned to Paranoid and Vol. 4 ever since, the two that stood out the most at the time. Master of Reality was frankly the one I always forgot existed. That won’t do of course, as this is the album that is said to have laid the foundation for stoner rock, sludge metal and doom metal all at once. I barely ever listen to these genres, but I mean to change that, so let’s go.

That title though, Master of Reality. It sounds like a nickname a space wizard in a science-fiction film might give himself, but such grandiose connotations were not the point. According to drummer Bill Ward it was meant to signify that the band has remained grounded in the real world. The previous two albums had a lot of occult and fantastical themes, but this one was supposed to get back to at least some sense of normalcy, even if it is still a macabre one. This might give me the first hint of why I don’t get into this album as much as their others of the time. I like this band most when they confront the strangeness of the world with their own bizarreness. That’s more or less absent here.

Make no mistake though, this is still a band that opens the album with a tribute to marijuana and uses gothic imagery to name real world problems. Vietnam soldiers are Children of the Grave, existential themes call for a Lord of This World and there is inevitably something called Into the Void. Still, it is never as creative or downright wacky as it was before. It feels both too serious for this type of music and not serious enough to really mean anything to me.

Oddly enough, After Forever has the most appeal in this regard, despite it being an unlikely declaration of faith. It literally states that the band has seen the light and believes in a God. Interviews with the band have given conflicting statements on how such a thing is meant to be interpreted from a band actually named Black Sabbath. It has been called an unironic statement of faith, an ironic way to counter the idea that the band are Satanists or even that the song is meant as a reflection of the then still violent conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern-Ireland (this last interpretation seems very far-fetched to me, but if Geezer says so…).

This is Black Sabbath we are talking about though and the lyrics are not the main selling point. In fact, the mixing is such that I sometimes have a hard time understanding Ozzy Osbourne (who, by the way, wrote pretty much none of the lyrics on this album). By the time this band was formed hard rock was still primarily informed by the blues, as blues rock along with psychedelic rock ruled the second half of the 1960’s. Although the debut and Paranoid are hardly the most bluesy albums out there, you can still hear the roots vaguely somewhere. The influence of the blues may remain forever (as the focus on the ‘main guitar riff’ very much originated there), but Master of Reality might have been the first hard rock album that entirely didn’t sound like it anymore. From that perspective it isn’t hard to see why this album is still so beloved by metal fans of all ages.

By playing slower and down-tuning the guitar Tony Iommi created a sound that felt more sluggish yet also more heavy. The riffs seemed more enormous than ever before, creating new dark depths that must have been startling at the time. If the lyrics are more tame this time around, the music isn’t. Sadly, this also means that the music isn’t as varied as before. Even after many listens the songs can feel a little too much the same to me. The riffs are still cool, but I can’t help but feel something got lost in the process. This goes especially for the interplay among the band. Because the slower tempo of the riffs it feels like some of the freedom of the bass and drumming has been removed, as if the other members didn’t quite know to adapt yet. Master of Reality may sound heaver than previous albums, but it has none of the thunder and none of the assault. It’s darker in sound, but not more dangerous. On their subsequent album, Vol. 4, I feel that Black Sabbath took this very sound and made it more dynamic and playful again.

It doesn’t help that the two times the band does shake up the sound they go a little too far. First there is Orchid, a very short, folky instrumental that sounds like Nick Drake might show up to sing any moment. Now I love Nick Drake, but him and heavy metal are a contradiction in terms. As an interlude it is okay though. Not okay is Solitude, a medieval-type folk song that slows the flow of the album to a complete halt in such a way that Into the Void really has to take a while to pull me back in. These type of songs were very prominent in the period, of course. When done correctly, as with Led Zeppelin, I love them very much, but Solitude might be Black Sabbath’s first bad song. On Vol. 4 they proved with Changes that they actually could pull of an earnest ballad too, but not yet here.

If I focus perhaps too much on the negative, that is mostly because I try to explain to myself why I don’t like this album as much as I thought I would. For the most part I do like it though, even if it is not up there with the best of the Sabbath. The first half is pretty strong. Sweet Leaf deserves to be part of the band’s signature tracks as here the album’s general sound is at its most effective. Children of the Grave is neatly propulsive. And despite the unlikelihood of Black Sabbath doing Christian rock After Forever might actually be my favorite song here, as it really does sound high and mighty. Too bad that is all in the first half. In the second half only Into the Void gets me. Lord of the World is good too, but a little too much of the same.

This week I actually did another binge of the first four albums by Black Sabbath (and no, I never got around any of the later ones, though I know there are some classics there too). My high appreciation of the other three remains untouched. Too bad I can’t rank Master of Reality quite among them, even though I’m aware that I’m alone in that.

By the way, that other genre that is so massive at Rate Your Music, progressive rock, hasn’t shown up here either. When will it?
7/10

Next time from Rate Your Music: Lycia – The Burning Circle and Then Dust
Jackson
Into the Groove
Posts: 2075
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 6:05 am
Location: Los Angeles

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Post by Jackson »

It's too bad you didn't like Master of Reality - to me it's the ultimate realization of their sound. Their first four albums are all strong and each have a unique feel so it's easy to picture any of the four being someone's favorite Black Sabbath album. Their next two albums, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage, are also worth listening to. Those albums are less consistent than their earlier work but contain some of the band's best songs, like Symptom of the Universe.
User avatar
Holden
Never Going Back Again
Posts: 3781
Joined: Wed Nov 20, 2019 11:06 pm

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Post by Holden »

All four of Black Sabbath’s first are amazing (haven’t listened beyond them) and I’d place Master of Reality above Vol. 4, but that’s just me.
"The better a singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying."
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Post by Rob »

Jackson wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 2:37 am It's too bad you didn't like Master of Reality
I still give it a 7 so I did like it. Only Solitude stood out badly. It's just that I expected to love it and didn't which I guess is the reason I focussed more on the things that didn't work for me.

My ranking of the first four albums, by the way, would be: Paranoid > Vol. 4 > Black Sabbath > Master of Reality. I certainly will one day try some of the other albums.
Nassim
Full of Fire
Posts: 2793
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2012 2:35 pm
Location: Lille (France)

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Post by Nassim »

Their 3 first albums are frontloaded, Black Sabbath has the eponym track, NIB and The Wizard, Paranoid has the title track, War Pigs and Iron Man. I like Master of Reality's side 2 more than Paranoid's though.
Vol.4 second side starts with Snowblind, breaking the curse with one of their best songs !

I'd also say Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, while not as great, is worse a listen.
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Post by Rob »

Nassim wrote: Thu Feb 18, 2021 4:21 pm Their 3 first albums are frontloaded, Black Sabbath has the eponym track, NIB and The Wizard, Paranoid has the title track, War Pigs and Iron Man.
Though the first sides of both albums are arguable better than the seconds I don't think it is much of a drop in quality. I mean, Paranoid closes with the amazing Fairies Wear Boots, metal's first and still most accomplished statement on fairy fashion!
Brad
Higher Ground
Posts: 4719
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2012 10:38 pm

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Post by Brad »

Tony Iommi quote from article I was just reading on Consequenceofsound.net:
https://consequenceofsound.net/2021/02/ ... rFz8fkY3lk

On 2021 being the 50th anniversary of Master of Reality, and what that album meant to Sabbath’s career
I think all the albums meant a lot of Sabbath’s career. Master of Reality, we went into a different stage – we tuned down for that album for some of the tracks. It was a good album – I liked the album. I liked the songs on it. I don’t know what it meant for our career, because at that point – after Paranoid – we were out touring a lot and working a lot. A few of those tracks became classics for different people. “Into the Void” was one of Eddie Van Halen’s favorites – he always referred to that. He loved that song.

On the new Vol. 4 reissue, and whether he tuned down even lower for that album
No, it wasn’t tuned down any lower than anything [previous], really. That album was great fun to make – that’s probably one of the most fun times we’ve had. We had rented a house in Bel Air – off John du Pont, the paint product man. And it was fabulous – it had a ballroom in there and everything. And we had such a fantastic time – we set the gear up there, in one of the rooms, and we just wrote that album. It was really magical.
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Post by Rob »

Joy Division – Closer (1980) – Acclaimed Music #55



These were the albums I could chose from:

51. Pixies – Doolittle
52. John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
53. The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
54. My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
55. Joy Division – Closer
56. Love – Forever Changes
57. The Band – The Band
58. Jeff Buckley – Grace
59. Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
60. Neil Young – After the Gold Rush

Aside from hearing Love Will Tear Us Apart on the radio every now and then, my real introduction to Joy Division was through the 2007 film Control by Anton Corbijn. A lot of people really loved that one, but as someone not familiar with Ian Curtis or his band it left me underwhelmed. I should probably try it again sometime, but back then I was confused that Curtis killed himself over his failing marriage (this is not a real spoiler, is it?). The movie’s big flaw to me was that I never for a minute got the feeling that there was any real love between Curtis and his wife, nor that the marriage was a big deal for him. Of course, there was more eating away at the Curtis’ brain, but although the suicide and its most direct reason are based in fact the film failed to make it convincing. Perhaps you’ll look differently at it if you know it is coming.

Fast forward to 2021 and by now I know a lot more about Joy Division and Ian Curtis, a legendary band with a mythical front-man. Curtis was not a technically proficient singer, but his voice had a rather hollow, almost ghoulish quality that helps create a nightmare landscape all of its own, a bit like a despondent Jim Morrison. As compelling as it is, I frequently have a hard time understanding what he is saying, with the exception of a few songs. It perhaps fits the withdrawn nature of Curtis. This time around I decided to read along the lyrics. These lyrics turned out to hold the key that Control was missing for me.

Most of the songs here basically describe a fading marriage as some sort of hell. That Control is a depressing album is well-known, but it is still worth mentioning that as a sort of break-up album this makes Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks or Adele’s 21 sound like romantic feelgood albums. Then again, Bob Dylan and Adele survived the break-up, whereas Curtis made sure he was never going to have to go through it.

The album already starts with a pounding, martial rhythm that could have been the introduction to real dance music if it didn’t sound so unfriendly (some critics actually described this as a dance album at the time, but outside of Isolation I don’t hear it). “This is the way/ Step inside”, Curtis urges, while the verses talk about asylums, mass murder and other horrors. No mention of marriage yet, but it sets the tone: you are entering a world of despair.

It should be said that the lyrics tend to be more than a bit ambiguous, though many of them seem to revolve around a theme directly relatable to the domestic life. Colony for example, uses the idea of a distance of a colony to describe the isolation Curtis feels from his family, a theme that is also present in – well – Isolation. On Passover Curtis seems to want to take drastic measures to get away from the responsibilities he feels he can’t live up to. A Means to an End remembers happier times of love that now feel far removed. Heart and Soul is about the impossibility of reconciliation. On Twenty Four Hours Curtis seems to realize that the marriage is no longer salvageable in any way.

I say all this without quoting the lyrics. The reason is that I try to avoid lyric quotes in my reviews as much as I can, because it is a pet peeve of mine that so many professional reviews waste a lot of space on just the quotes. Still, I recommend anyone who hasn’t to take their time and read the lyrics to the songs on Closer. Even if the meaning I draw from them might not work for you, there is no denying that Curtis had a good ear for poetry. His words have suffocating beauty filled with garish yet vivid imagery. As a poet of despair he ranks among the best.

The last two songs, by the way, do not seem to be about marriage as far as I can judge, but that doesn’t exactly make them any more happy. The Eternal is apparently from the vantage point of an intellectually disabled child that Curtis once knew and who never left the house. Decades is about a group of young men who seemed to be doomed to be drafted into some evil, war probably, destined to come back a worse person. There are a lot of positive ways to describe Closer, but not the word ‘positive’ itself.

All of this would not work as well if the music wasn’t as strong. The genre is post-punk and frankly that is a type of music I tend to think of as rather emotionless. Don’t get me wrong, I like the genre, but something about the focus on the bass sound over other instruments tends to take the edge off. The bass sounds dark by nature, but also more indirect than pretty much any other instrument. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone but me. Fact is, post-punk tends to work most for me for dancing or as mood music, not as something for a long dark night of the soul. As such I did wonder if Closer would score even better with me if it had music as raw and nervy as say, Spiderland, but as is it still works to set a dark tone.

Actually, at least bass player Peter Hook and guitarist Bernard Sumner wanted a different sound (what Curtis wanted we’ll never know unfortunately). In their live performances – something that the movie Control did capture well, by the way – the band was far more wild and raw. Producer Martin Hannett removed this element by building a more atmospheric soundscape, leaving more room for sounds to grow. This was the reason the band dropped Hannett as soon as they reformed as New Order.

It is tantalizing to think about a more real punky Joy Division album, but it also needs to be said that the sound as is works very well. Everything sounds like it is in some sort of dark hall, spacious and overwhelming. Especially the songs where Stephen Morris uses a martial drumming sound – Atrocity Exhibition and Colony – feel suitably menacing. Equally effective is the hazy feel of Heart and Soul, with an unusual wispy delivery by Curtis. Nothing is as haunting however as the piano (or are it synths?) on The Eternal. It sounds like funeral dirge and is extremely moving. To me it is the highlight of the album, even if I think Atrocity Exhibition comes very close.

The album was released two months after the suicide by Curtis and it is almost a brave act to do this. If you consider how bleak the content is and how much it gives insight into the mind-set of someone who seems to want to put an end to his life it almost seems too disturbing to release. The closest I can think of a similar case is Purple Mountains’ self-titled album, but David Berman died after it’s release and that album has some humor (gallows humor, but still). Closer is entirely humorless and offers not the faintest chance of hope or redemption.

I think that is exactly why it resonates with so many people. Not that everybody who likes this is suicidal, but it speaks to us in our darkest moments in such an honest way that perhaps we might not feel so alone after all. Some people don’t get why you would listen to depressing music. I feel that it is because we want our own despair to be recognized, so that we don’t feel as alone in it. In a way it strengthens us. Closer is about the loneliest album that you can imagine, but at the right time it makes for good companionship. Too bad that Curtis had no such album in his lifetime.
8/10

Next from Acclaimed Music: Mahalia Jackson – Newport 1958
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Joy Division - Closer

Post by Rob »

Lycia – The Burning Circle and Then Dust (1995) – RYM #7435



These were the albums I could chose from:

7431. Ryan Bingham - Mescalito
7432. Guns n’ Roses – Live Era ’87-‘93
7433. Cul de Sac – Crashes to Light, Minutes to Its Fall
7434. Kraan - Kraan
7435. Lycia – The Burning Circle and Then Dust
7436. Flamin Groovies - Flamingo
7437. Jimi Hendrix – South Saturn Delta
7438. Family - Fearless
7439. Kollektiv – Kollektiv
7440. The Jimmy Castor Bunch – It’s Just Begun

First: the title is an outright lie. The Burning Circle is the second to last song and it is only followed by something called The New Day. The three part song The Dust Has Settled appears way before that. Nothing in the lyrics suggests that there will be dust after The Burning Circle either. It’s striking how many album titles and song titles are clearly misinformation and nobody does anything about it. This just wont stand!

What isn’t a lie is the cover art. That blurry night photo with the red phasing face is exactly what this sounds like. The album is very nocturnal, hard to grasp and tends to abstraction. It is most definitely an album about a mood and not interested in entertainment. The length is equally notable: 116 minutes stretched out over 26 songs. That doesn’t make it the longest album I ever heard by any stretch (it’s not even the longest album to appear in this series; Fishmans are unimpressed), but the way the length is used is remarkable, as little changes over its long running time.

The Burning Circle (as I will refer to this album from now on, not giving the Dust any further time of day) is not an easy album to get into. It more or less asks you to settle into it and find your way through. It’s not that it is particularly experimental, but it has an approach that doesn’t highlight its most immediately appealing features. Here’s a part of an interview that band leader Mike van Portfleet did with Eugene Thacker that might shed some light on how this came to be:

“I think what it comes down to is that Lycia has followed the influence of the obscure, the intangible and the overlooked elements of all of the music I’ve just talked about. We’ve taken song breaks, bridges, intros, the below-the-surface, underlying feeling, and made that our influence, tapped that for our feeling and sound, which goes against what almost every other band does, which is to follow the lead of the catchy and more upfront parts of a band’s sound and style. We’ve just followed the lead of the subtle and hidden parts instead.”

That sounds like a fitting description, though it should be said that the so-called “catchy parts” are still there, but they are not upfront. You can discern melodies and even hooks if you listen closely; they are just not treated as the main course.

Most songs here highlight the drums and the bass. No drummer is actually credited on the album, so I take it drum machines are used, which makes sense as they sound very mechanical. The bass and drums are not played rapidly, leaving room for a lot of space in between. Further in the mix, sounding rather distant we hear the guitar and the voice (though vocals are used in only half of the tracks). The voice is hard to understand and that Van Portfleet mostly sings about desolate themes is fitting. The guitar is the main instrument though, despite not taking front stage. Van Portfleet lets his guitar wail and echo through the soundscape, vividly painting the spaces left by the drum and bass and deciding the main feel of the song. The guitar gets support from hard to define electronic sounds that fill in what remains and add eerie textures.

The weird thing is that when you get down to it this is actually a real Wall of Sound in the Phil Spector mold, even if no one would ever expect a girl group to show up here. It really surrounds the listener. It feels like a landscape and that is no coincidence. Van Portfleet has spoken at length in interviews about how influenced he is by his natural surroundings. This album’s main inspiration was the Arizona desert, where Van Portfleet resided at the time. After that he moved to Ohio where the chilly plains led to an album simply named Cold (big steps in titling were made!).

Besides sounding wide open, the album paradoxically is also suffocating. It’s like the vast landscapes offer no escape but take over your being. As if you have been walking through this desert for too long, with no end in sight. Weariness has already taken over when the first song starts. Even though I personally feel that the album should have been shorter, there is no denying that the extreme length adds to the intended effect. It really takes you to another world for almost two hours and it definitely doesn’t want you to escape. Similarly, I really would have wished some air to get into this, but I guess the point is that no air is to be found.

That doesn’t mean that there is no change. In the second half, right at the start of the second disc on its original CD release, we hear a keyboard. On several songs this keyboard takes over from the guitar and adds some welcome clear sounds, even if the overall grasp isn’t loosened. Whereas the music up till then felt like a particularly oppressive form of post-punk the sound in the second half becomes more ambient. The song August Part 1, which opens this second half, even has rain sound effects.

Two tracks later, on Nimble, the main vocals are suddenly sung by a woman, Tara VanFlower (what’s up with these bandmembers having extremely faux-Dutch last names?; I disapprove). In contrast to Van Portfleet, her voice is brought to the front of the mix, although her long drawn-out words are even harder to understand than his. Her voice sound ethereal, not unlike something you might hear on a Cocteau Twins album. VanFlower sings on only two songs (she would slowly become the lead singer of the band though, as well as the wife of Van Portfleet), but they come almost as a shock thanks to their clearness. Although the second half of The Burning Circle is largely more of the same, there are these changes that have an effect, like some hope of a spiritual awakening is possible even in these forbidding places.

The album as a whole is a real challenge and it took me a while to be even able to write about it. The first few songs have never really grabbed me, as if I needed to get back into it each time. The nuances are the strong point but don’t reveal themselves easily. The genre is called darkwave, but every review notes that this is hard to really categorize, as it is a mix between indeed darkwave, ambient, post-punk, post-rock and dream pop. I would throw gothic rock in the mix, but the band has stated not liking the label ‘gothic’. The 26 songs form such a tight unity that you might almost think that they all flow into each other, despite all clearly having a start and an end, although musical themes do reappear here and there. Only one track, Better Things to Come, feels like it can somewhat stand alone.

It’s hard to say how much I like it. I respect it a lot, but I feel I haven’t quite grasped it yet. I feel that I need more time with it, but at the same time I can’t really see myself going back to it either. It’s just a little too long and exhausting for that. Credits though for making such an uncompromising album. It’s great in its way, even if it is a lot.
7/10
Note: Here is the interview with Eugene Thacker I quoted. It’s a good read if you want to know more about Lycia.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/780135142821656/

Next from Rate Your Music: The Microphones – The Glow Pt. 2
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Lycia - The Burning Circle and Then Dust

Post by Rob »

Mahalia Jackson – Newport 1958 – Acclaimed Music #2939



These were the albums I could chose from:

2931. The Cure – Faith
2932. Rocket from the Crypt – Scream, Dracula, Scream!
2933. Grateful Dead – Europe ‘72
2934. Marilyn Manson – Mechanical Animals
2935. Wall of Voodoo – Call of the West
2936. Paul Simon – The Rhythm of the Saints
2937. M. Ward – The Transfiguration of Vincent
2938. Thelonious Monk – Thelonious Himself
2939. Mahalia Jackson – Newport 1958
2940. Scorpions - Blackout

Let’s get another one of those lies out of the way first. In the introduction, which was admittedly not part of the first pressings of the album, an announcer states “Ladies and gentlemen, it is Sunday and it is time for the worlds greatest gospel singer: miss Mahalia Jackson.” The thing is Mahalia Jackson performed twice at Newport in 1958, but not on a Sunday. Yes, I know it sounds nice to say you are listening to gospel on the day of the Lord, but in reality Jackson was on stage on Thursday and Saturday.

Apparently on Saturday it rained through all of her performance. She remarks on this before Joshua Fits the Battle of Jericho. “I don’t know if you wanna hear me and wanna stay in the rain, I’m just getting warmed up!” This is rather late in the concert, but the crowd cheers loudly in approval. Jackson says these lines laughing and they are preceded by her stating that the people present make her feel like a star. It is a rare moment of good natured stage banter, but it is representative of the whole feel of this live record. These people and the entertainer are in good spirits.

Gospel is not really a thing in the culture I grew up in. I bet there are churches or people who do gospel in The Netherlands, but I’ve never been aware of them. When I attended catholic church as a child it was always stately choral stuff. When I saw American gospel-driven services in films and on tv for the first few times I didn’t know what to make of it, because it seemed almost antithetical to church as I knew it. The ecstatic and spontaneous opposed to the rigid and formal. I’m not sure what I prefer and since I haven’t attended church since my early teens it is not really important to me, but growing up in a culture closely tied to the Americas, the gospel church was perhaps the most alien element from the USA for me (case in point: I only learned a few years ago that Elvis’ gospel records were huge in the States, but are pretty unknown quantities around here, despite Elvis’ otherwise big popularity).

As such, I still have listened to only a little gospel. The only complete gospel album I know is Aretha Franklin’s classic Amazing Grace and I also saw the film with the same title. That was still rather formal. There was room for ecstasy, but it is a rather serious record and movie, more in tune with the idea of religious experience as something unusual. Franklin’s almost inhumanly perfect voice and her stern delivery of the songs are impressive but as distant as God in his Heaven.

Listening to Mahalia Jackson is something else. The genre is very clearly the same and Jackson’s vocals match Franklin in depth and range, but I get a complete different feel out of it. Jackson sounds very approachable, the atmosphere is joyous and God might be swinging right beside you. It is religion as a communal experience, with Jackson as your personable guide. There is a friendliness and warmth in her voice that is as powerful as her immense range. You just want to go to rapture with her.

Apparently Jackson was like that in real life. Stories about her tell of a woman who was down-to-earth, humble and approachable. A friendly neighbor who even at the time of her biggest fame kept the door open for everyone and enjoyed cooking gumbo for every guest. She was unschooled, learned herself how to sing based on instinct; she could not read music and seemed unversed in musical lingo. This kept her personality homely, friendly and honest. The things she did take very seriously was her religion, which she used to guide her life. Although she did sing some secular tunes, she strictly held true to the idea that there was a spiritual uplift in all her material.

Still, she was initially a strange creature in gospel. Gospel was mostly something performed by a group and she did so for many years, but her wild dancing – which she couldn’t and definitely didn’t want to control – were deemed inappropriate by many. Her voice had a rawness to it that was unusual for religious ceremonies, mostly because Jackson was influenced by blues singers, especially Bessie Smith. Yet when she broke through in the late 1940’s she became influential. From now on solo gospel performances with ecstatic performances became the norm. That is how I saw it performed in media all these years ago.

Despite her strict religious views Mahalia Jackson has also got a reputation for being popular among atheists. I can personally confirm this. I’m rarely one for Christian music, although that also has to do with the heavy-handedness and the God-fearing, indoctrinating nature of much of the material. This is not what Jackson goes for and her broad appeal outside of the expected circles reveals a wider range. Her music is just very empowering. Earlier in her recording career she was asked to sing the blues, as it was more popular at the time. She is said to have explained her choice to stick to gospel as follows:

"Blues are the songs of despair. Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have a feeling there's a cure for what's wrong. When you're through with the blues you've got nothing to rest on."

Listening to Jackson at Newport it is hard not to feel that sense of hope. Part of that is of course the material she chose, which never alludes to a fear of God and doesn’t give in to the desperation of earthly life. It is always about the possibility of better times, of standing your ground and holding on. That it never becomes trite is thanks to Jackson’s delivery. Her solemn reading of An Evening Prayer feels like you’re on a small boat on an ocean that becomes calmer with each syllable. When she sings about Joshua and the Battle of Jericho she makes it sounds like a great event you wanted to have seen live. I’m Going to Live the Life I sing About in My Song is all the self-help material you’ll ever need. The way Jackson is both a massive and very human presence helps sell this. You don’t need to believe in God as long as you believe in the power of life itself. Even the few secular songs confirm this view.

One thing that needs to be said is that she isn’t alone. Tom Bryant and Milton Hilton are on bass and Lilton Mitchell plays an almost ragtime organ. They give solid support, but the real ace is pianist Mildred Falls. She accompanied Jackson for almost the length of her career and was more than a support player. Jackson and Falls looked for and tried out new songs together. Once you are done being floored by the immensity of Jackson’s voice it is worth it to pay attention to the way Falls reacts to the spontaneity of Jackson, sometimes as an anchor, other times as a friendly sparring partner. It adds a great element to the performance.

Later in her career Jackson gave all this a new dimension, when she increasingly sung at civil rights rallies (she sung after Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech). In 1958 we weren’t there yet. Or were we? The Newport festival might have been unpolitical, but don’t we always need a reason to believe? Jackson provides it, even for an atheist like me.
8/10

Next from Acclaimed Music: Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Mahalia Jackson - Newport 1958

Post by Rob »

The Microphones – The Glow Pt. 2 (2001) – Rate Your Music #63



These were the albums I could choose from:

61. Slowdive – Souvlaki
62. Leonard Cohen – Songs of Leonard Cohen
63. The Microphones – The Glow Pt. 2
64. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
65. Talking Heads – The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads
66. Swans – Swans Are Dead
67. The Beach Boys – The Pet Sounds Sessions
68. Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life
69. Björk – Vespertine
70. Swans – Soundtracks for the Blind

On March 5th, 2021, less than a month before writing this, Microphones man Phil Elverum released Foghorn Tape on limited vinyl. It is already unavailable by now. Foghorn Tape is exactly what claims to be: a tape of foghorn sounds. Not any foghorn sounds, but the ones used in the classic album The Glow Pt. 2. Now you can finally listen to those foghorns blowing without the other sounds that accompany it on the main album! If you think that is weird you should know that an album exists with music made out of the squeaking of blown-up balloons or based around the sound of plankton. These are just two examples of many. In contrast, the foghorn at least sounds like an instrument.

I should say I was not one of the lucky few to get Foghorn Tapes and since it doesn’t as of yet exist digitally I have not heard it. I did hear the foghorns in The Glow, Pt. 2, though. They are a real feature of the album, appearing frequently at the beginning or the end of a song. The weird thing about them is that they make for a very satisfying element, like some sort of beacon. I always end up visualizing a lighthouse and that’s fitting as both a lighthouse and a foghorn are basically meant to be signals in the fog. And The Glow Pt. 2 is a very foggy album. That doesn’t sound like a superlative, but it’s definitely a strength here.

I mentioned before somewhere around here that Rate Your Music at it’s top seems to prefer albums with huge amounts of studio production or else high musicianship. The Glow Pt. 2 in all its fogginess doesn’t feel like that at all. When you first hear it you might well think these are home demos, perhaps erroneously released as the real thing. Listening to it more and more it becomes clear that the opposite is true. This is a richly textured album, very well structured and designed. A lot of studio production is clearly done on it. Phil Elverum just hides it well by using the studio to create the ultimate at-home feeling.

By the time of the creation of The Glow Pt. 2 The Microphones had been around for five years and had released in limited capacity several albums, until 2000’s It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water, which wasn’t a big event by any stretch, but certainly a step up and it drew attention here and there. It opened up the possibility for Phil Elverum to use a local recording studio whenever he wanted to and he spent a lot of time just trying things out there, with the equipment and instruments available in the place. When later faced with some criticism that the use of broken sounding instruments was a pretentious way of pretending to sound rough, Elverum countered that the instruments in the studio just happened to be in this sorry state.

That makes quite the contrast with the story of Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine buying every bass string in London to create the right ‘zing’ for Loveless, a ‘zing’ you never really end up hearing. I know which album I prefer, but it is interesting how much Loveless and The Glow Pt. 2 differ and seem the same. Both have a unique forlorn feeling, are essentially studio creations and where made by a single guy under the guise of a band. Although it should be said that My Bloody Valentine began as a real band and slowly dissipated into a one-man outfit where previous members could play supporting roles. Whereas The Microphones was always a Phil Elverum project, with some regulars that just showed up every now and then. On The Glow Pt. 2 a recurring female voice is the most recognizable contribution from someone else (except perhaps whoever blows the foghorns). This woman is not clearly credited, but it is likely to be Khaela Maricich, if for no other reason than that she is the only woman mentioned as album personnel.

Khaela Maricich was also the ex with whom Elverum broke up just before the making of The Glow Pt. 2 began. It is no surprise than that this is a real break-up album. The very poetical lyrics basically evoke a continuing feel of loss, unwanted detachment, unfulfilled longing and isolation. There seems to be a vague narrative of sorts, although not one that is overstated. The opening song starts with the break-up and the many following songs basically capture every state and feeling Elverum goes through, until he seems almost healthy again near the end at I Felt Your Shape. However, our hero, invigored by self-discovery seems to want to prove to the world how strong he has become by battling a polar bear with a samurai sword, which ends with him mortally wounded in the snow and probably dying…

I mean, that’s an interpretation. No human being could pretend to actually understand what Phil Elverum is singing on Samurai Sword, so I better hope that the contributors at Genius Lyrics used an actual source. However you look at it though, there is most definitely a strong sense of loss permeating the album. It doesn’t capture a depression so much as a more foggy feeling that comes right after a momentous upheaval, like a break-up can be. The emotions will become jumbled and unclear during this period of time and it is that state that this album catches like not quite any album I know. It doesn’t deal in the emotional catharsis that more traditional break-up albums like Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks or Adele’s 21 come up with. The Glow Pt. 2 is more about those moments in between, where you are alone and moreover you are aware of that loneliness and the fact that someone should be there, someone who is not coming back. It’s wholly introspective and confrontational. It’s a natural response to big change that in one way or another, most people deal with, but isn’t all that much used in music. Then again, most people do not solve such a funk by attacking polar bears.

On his later masterpiece A Crow Looked at Me under the moniker Mount Eerie, Phil Elverum captured grief in very clear words and stark musical tones. Although The Glow Pt. 2 sounds similarly low-key, the words and sounds are very abstract. On here Elverum can not just go on ill-advised hunting trips in the snow, but compares himself with the headless horseman from old legends, uses mansions as just one of many metaphors for happiness and sees himself shrinking literally and figuratively. Nature is a recurring theme on the album, to say nothing of the elements. Just look at these titles to get the impression: I Want Wind to Blow, The Moon, The Glow Pt. 2, The Gleam Pt. 2 (both these songs are sequels of sorts to songs from the previous album), My Roots Are Strong and Deep, You’ll Be in the Air, I Want to Be Cold.

It all makes for evocative imagery and it should be stressed that Elverum is a strong lyricist. What’s more is that most of even these titles and certainly the words in the songs themselves possess tactile sensibilities; it’s easy to imagine physically feeling them. What makes this album such a masterwork is that the music works the same way: it feels tactile. The broken sounding instruments are exactly right because everything about the record feels broken. You get the feeling that these instruments are frequently home-made, or perhaps made right there in the woods. Elverum didn’t use what he learned by experimenting in the studio to create a slick, perfect sound, but by creating new imperfections. There is a roughness here that is not of the typical Dylanesque singer-songwriter nature, but runs deeper into the production.

It’s a pleasure to listen to closely and every subsequent listen feels more evocative. Just notice the way Elverum’s voice itself is sometimes extremely clear, other times almost completely drowned out by the instruments and frequently in between these extremes. Again, it feels exactly as part of the whole feel the album goes for: going in and out of emotional states. A few times, especially on the songs The Glow Pt. 2 and Samurai Sword there is a sudden, loud outburst of noise, drums and guitars that are really startling in the otherwise lo-fi context of the album. Map, perhaps my favorite track, actually builds up to a middle part full of literal bells among other clear instruments to create a strange kind of catchy atmosphere for just a few minutes, a moment of clarity in the mist. Much of the album also gets by on subtle and beautiful guitar melodies and Elverum’s warm voice, rare anchors in a cold world.

Over much of the whole record you also hear a fuzzy static sound, which is especially clear when other instruments stop. This static really feels like a fog and it makes the foghorn seem all the more fitting. Really the horn sounds like the world calling to our completely lost protagonist. The album ends with the 9 and a half minute song My Warm Blood, but the guitar and the voice are only present in the first few minutes. After that it is just the static, with the horn as an occasional hypnotic drone. Every now and then bits and pieces of opening track I Want Wind to Blow appear and fade away again. A heart beats briefly at the end and then stops. This last song would probably be awful and pretentious for anyone who doesn’t hear it in context, but at the end of The Glow Pt. 2 it is one of the most perfect closers in music history.
A beautiful album.
10/10

Next from Rate Your Music: Dälek – Abandoned Language
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: The Microphones - The Glow Pt. 2

Post by Rob »

In my intro to this series I noted that I started this partly out of frustration of barely making my own listening choices anymore and being guided too much by the polls on this site. Now it took me three weeks to finish The Glow Pt. 2. The reason, I'm afraid, is largely the combination of Moderately Acclaimed, Biggest Fan Albums and Tournament of Champions. Pretty much all my listening time goes to these polls. I'm afraid it isn't all working out as planned, but I do want to proceed in this series in a faster pace than the last few weeks. I'm not sure how to tackle it.
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: The Microphones - The Glow Pt. 2

Post by Rob »

Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation (1988) – AM #64



These were the albums I could choose from:

61. Sly and the Family Stone – There’s a Riot Goin’ On
62. Portishead – Dummy
63. Guns N’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction
64. Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
65. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
66. Frank Ocean – Channel Orange
67. The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses
68. The Clash – The Clash
69. Carole King – Tapestry
70. R.E.M. - Murmur

Sonic Youth stand at the center of alternative rock. I know, that genre is badly defined. RateYourMusic describes it as “a style of Rock music that generally consists of typically Pop Rock-based song structures performed with a less commercial, more underground sensibility.” That could still mean a lot of things. I’d argue that alternative rock is perhaps more about an attitude. A conscious or unconsciousness unwillingness to be part of the mainstream. Alternative rock has therefore, by its very nature, been somewhat exclusive, only well-known by those people who want to look further in music, perhaps fed up by what the regular radio (or nowadays playlists) offer. It offers a voice that otherwise would not be heard, not so much because it is willfully silenced (as for example black voices have been), but that just does not appeal to a big group of people. Yet because we are all different it manages to still speak to another group of people, who really need this alternative.

There are some side effects to this. It has made alternative rock seem very cool, as knowing those alternative bands makes you in the know. That this is a coolness that the mainstream couldn’t care less about does not matter, it might even make it better. It is were the uncool could be cool. Additionally, alternative rock always felt more free, because if nobody in particular needs to be pleased, all the bets are off.. Experimentation and exploration were easier to pull off, as the chance of appearing on a regular radio station were mostly a pipe dream. As such, alternative rock could pioneer sounds that would slowly trickle into the mainstream, usually in a more consumer-friendly form.

This reflection on alternative music has been a bit on my mind as of late, in large part thanks to Sonic Youth and Daydream Nation. There is a reason for this. I have come to really, really like this album. What appeals most to me, probably obviously, is that guitar sound. The guitar duels between Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo that are perhaps technically impressive, but also in their way rough and primal. That’s how I like rock the most: not all that clean. It is were the band earns its name: these are youthful sounds, with youth represented in both its passion and inevitable imperfection. It’s strange I never listened to this album before, as it is as representative in my taste in guitar music as anything I can think of. I only heard bits and pieces of Sonic Youth here and there over the years, always liking them, but never taking the deep dive.

Sonic Youth have been scratching on mainstream success throughout their career, without seriously entering the public conscious. They certainly didn’t break out big like Nirvana, a band they influenced, but they are certainly more well-known than, say, Big Black or Fugazi. Among the alternative audience they are among the big stars, the headliners. For the rest of the world they belong on the smaller stage. Here's the rub though, the thing on my mind: is there still a place for not just alternative music and alternative rock. And if rock's stature fades, as many say it will, won't such innovative bands like Sonic Youth not be the first one to be forgotten in favor of better-known, more slick bands they influenced? Will Daydream Nation still be as big a classic, ranking in our top 100 without question, or will it be an easy sacrifice for albums of newer genres?

When Daydream Nation came out we were in the late eighties and the punk ‘revolution’ had lost to new wave and the polished sounds of sophisti-pop. Rock in the mainstream seemed to be mostly hair metal, but pop was dominant. All the real grainy rock, which was initially its main modus operandi, belonged to the alternative. To Sonic Youth and their peers, ignored by anything but college radio and some music magazines.

And we are at this point again in the early 2020’s. Pop and hip-hop are dominant. Nothing sounds down-and-dirty. Maybe some rap lyrics do, but the sound is never rough or organic in the way much (alternative) rock is. I do not mind rock being replaced by something new per se, but I feel none of the new (sub)genres of the last ten years really tapped into that primal, imperfect, uncouth energy for a new generation. There are plenty of rock bands still building on this sound and they are alternative in popularity, but is there a way forward here without genres established in the nineties at the latest? Will something new fill the gap? I don’t see it yet. It feels that the old rock acts that now have remained the strongest in the public consciousness and are still somewhat popular with young people are the most clean and upbeat sounding ones. Think The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac and Queen. If rock loses its cool and the guitar hero is no longer a thing, will there be still an audience that turns to Sonic Youth and Daydream Nation? I can’t figure that there will not be a segment of the population who will always need something like this, but I feel like I know less and less people in daily life who do.

All this musical philosophy aside, lets savor the accomplishments of this album. The guitars of course, of which many types were used; bigger guitar freaks than me can probably spot them all. What for me is important is that special feeling they gave, like being awash in their sound. The jam format, which is frequently used here, is an acquired taste but to me speaks volumes. I already used the word 'primal', but that is the state those guitars evoke. As does Kim Gordon's yell by the way, she is easily the most aggressive of the band's three singers. There are also shameless references to outsider art, books and avant-garde movies, much of which goes beyond me. The lyrics I also rarely understand, but are evocative in their imagery. And finally, a special shout-out to 'Cross the Breeze. I know the competition is stiff with wonderful classics like Teen Age Riot and Silver Rocket among others, but 'Cross the Breeze is for me rock perfection, especially since it has no interest in being perfect.

Daydreaming may not be useful in practical sense for most of the time, but I have always lived happily in my daydream nation. It is of great comfort knowing I’m not the only one.
10/10

Next from Acclaimed Music: Rustie – Glass Swords
User avatar
spiritualized
Full of Fire
Posts: 2848
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2012 4:45 pm
Location: Near Montpellier, France

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

Post by spiritualized »

No worries Rob, the pace is fine as long as you don't feel any pressure.
Still enjoy reading your steps through this journey.

And kudos for your 10 on Sonic Youth. I wholeheartedly agree
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

Post by Rob »

spiritualized wrote: Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:31 pm And kudos for your 10 on Sonic Youth. I wholeheartedly agree
It's probably my favorite album in this series up til now!
User avatar
spiritualized
Full of Fire
Posts: 2848
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2012 4:45 pm
Location: Near Montpellier, France

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

Post by spiritualized »

Rob wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 7:58 am
spiritualized wrote: Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:31 pm And kudos for your 10 on Sonic Youth. I wholeheartedly agree
It's probably my favorite album in this series up til now!
I remember buying the record in my local store and being absolutely blown away by the sheer creativity on how they tuned their guitars. I remember reading that once their gear was stolen during a tour and they couldn't continue with it because of the way they customised their tuning...
Article on the Guardian relating the incident, it's fascinating
Back in the late 90s, Sonic Youth suffered a mysterious disappearance. A truck containing all of their gear went missing. It reappeared days later, but empty. Over time, their unique and heavily modified gear began to resurface, thanks to the diligence of followers. A Belgian fan spotted one guitar on eBay; another item popped up in a pawn shop. However, the best story is how a series of guitars were recovered 13 years after they were initially taken, as the band's Lee Ranaldo explained to Pitchfork: “These two scruffy teenage boys came up. They told us they knew about our stolen guitars. One claimed his uncle was involved with stealing the van. We were like, 'Yeah, sure, kid.' But he sent us these anonymous pictures of our gear in basements … We said, 'We'll give you a few hundred dollars each for them.' It did happen.” The moral of the story? Always trust scruffy teenage boys, but never trust their uncles.
It's epic and sprawling but rocks the hell out of the listener.
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

Post by Rob »

That is an awesome tale I wasn't aware of. I did read how specific their guitar choices are per song and that they took a lot of them with them on their tour. As someone who is not really knowledgeable about guitar differences I can't really comment on it further, but this album has definitely some of the best guitar sounds I have ever heard.

I also love the cover art by the way.
Harold
Into the Groove
Posts: 2331
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:56 pm

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

Post by Harold »

Rob wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:27 pm That is an awesome tale I wasn't aware of. I did read how specific their guitar choices are per song and that they took a lot of them with them on their tour. As someone who is not really knowledgeable about guitar differences I can't really comment on it further, but this album has definitely some of the best guitar sounds I have ever heard.
To this day, I have never heard anything quite like the breakdown in the middle of "Silver Rocket." That brief collapse into sheer, mind-melting noise takes an already-exciting track and catapults it into the stratosphere. And the rest of the album is at the same level. One of the best examples ever of a band that had been working steadily toward something this great achieving it and then some.
User avatar
FrankLotion
Movin' On Up
Posts: 840
Joined: Sat May 05, 2018 9:15 pm
Location: Portland, OR

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

Post by FrankLotion »

Harold wrote: Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:44 am
Rob wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:27 pm That is an awesome tale I wasn't aware of. I did read how specific their guitar choices are per song and that they took a lot of them with them on their tour. As someone who is not really knowledgeable about guitar differences I can't really comment on it further, but this album has definitely some of the best guitar sounds I have ever heard.
To this day, I have never heard anything quite like the breakdown in the middle of "Silver Rocket." That brief collapse into sheer, mind-melting noise takes an already-exciting track and catapults it into the stratosphere. And the rest of the album is at the same level. One of the best examples ever of a band that had been working steadily toward something this great achieving it and then some.
:text-goodpost:
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

Post by Rob »

Dälek – Abandoned Language (2007) – RYM #7425



These were the albums I could choose from:

7421. Mineral – EndSerenading
7422. Motörhead – Orgasmatron
7423. Third Ear Band – Third Ear Band
7424. Iced Earth – The Dark Saga
7425. Dälek – Abandoned Language
7426. Paul McCartney – Flaming Pie
7427. Coroner – R.I.P.
7428. Throwing Muses – The Real Ramona
7429. Hildur Guðnadóttir – Chernobyl
7430. Melvins – The Maggot

A hip-hop album titled Abandoned Language? Sure, instrumental hip-hop is a thing, but to this day hip-hop is known probably primarily for the verbal stylings of the rapper. This means that words are expected. Are Dälek really prepared to abandon language?

Yes and no. There certainly is rap here, by MC Dälek (note though, that the artist name Dälek is really a group name that just happens to have been named after the MC – this is by no means a solo project). His rhymes tend to favor wordplay and flow over narrative. What’s more, many of the songs are specifically about language. Just look at some of the song titles: Abandoned Language, Paragraphs Relentless, (Subversive Script). These and many others talk about the power of words, the way they can both suppress the weak, but also give a voice to the suppressed. Like a lot of genre peers, MC Dälek is not afraid to call out racial and class inequality and add a call for resistance, but his ideal battle-stage is the world of words. The friction between the word of the oppressor (“Turn that page muthafucka cause our story's all scripted/ 600 years, ain't a fuckin' thing different”, from Abandoned Language) and the oppressed (“Son you'll never find iller verses than mine/ Gave inner sight to the blind through speech/ Without having skin of god's bleached”, from Corrupt (Knuckle Up)) are a main theme.

To add to this, he frequently calls out other, presumable younger rappers who have forgotten about the importance of lyrics. As such, MC Dälek – who had been on the scene for ten years by then - likes to play educator to the up and comers, not too sure if they well listen. “We speak that deadverse, subversive script!”, he mentions on the last track, as if he were the last of the rappers who knows how to use language against the people in power. His frustration with his peers is palpable too: “Never write my songs for consumers/ Ironic cause I write for heads with fat laces on their Pumas”, from Corrupt (Knuckle Up). This is isn’t your average dissing of other rappers that you find in much of the genre. Dälek rarely works in such clichés. It speaks to a deeper feeling that the downtrodden don’t use the means presented to them to fight back.

That is a lot of words about words, so why “Abandoned Language”? Actually, the first line on the whole album addresses the question: “Abandoned language only when I thought my masses couldn't manage”. When words fail, others methods need to be sought. And what better method than music itself, the language we all understand according to Stevie Wonder. If you checked already you may have noticed that Dälek is classified under experimental or abstract hip-hop, as well as industrial hip-hop. This might have tipped you off that unusual soundscapes are incoming and you would be right. For all the oratory interests of it’s MC, this group is more known for its sound. It’s perhaps what they speak loudest with.

It’s of interest to take a step back here and look at the influences on Dälek. The two prime and founding members are MC Dälek and Oktopus (though at this time Joshua Brooks was also an important part of the line-up). MC Dälek was the only one who rapped, but all three of them produced, with Oktopus being generally seen as the sound master. MC Dälek’s prime inspirations were classic 80’s hip-hop like Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions and Eric B. & Rakim, along with salsa and jazz. Jazz was also part of Oktopus’ musical interests, but his background was more in punk and metal. Both bonded however over a supreme love for My Bloody Valentine and especially Loveless. That is probably not the most-mentioned album on hip-hop artists’ all-time favorite lists, but its influence is all over Abandoned Language.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, as there are more influences that need to put in the mix. MC Dälek’s interviews I came across are interesting in that they seem to mostly devolve into gushing over his favorite musical discoveries. He’s one of those real music nerds. So as this group went through the years they picked up more music they liked and incorporated in their own sound (for reference, they formed in 1997 and Abandoned Language was their fifth album). Hip-hop inspired by Krautrock or The Velvet Underground? Why not? The group even played with Faust, of all bands. And that’s not all, the line-up of people they performed with is almost eccentric in it’s eclecticism: KRS-One, Tool, Mastodon, Grandmaster Flash, The Melvins, Jesu, De La Soul and so on. It’s not quite your daily Jay-Z feature. Later on, after Abandoned Language, MC Dälek got into The Cure and Joy Division, so perhaps some post-punk has shown up by now?

Sadly, I didn’t have the time to check out the previous four albums by Dälek, but going by descriptions they were far more extreme in their metal, industrial and experimental influences. Their music is a little too involved for quick, casual listen, but I hope to check it out more in-depth later on. On Abandoned Language I hear some industrial stylings, but above all it seems to be made by a group obsessed with Loveless. Not so much the dreamlike aspect of that album, as well as its use of layers of sound. There is a lot to digest when listening and this is a good example of a record that really requires close attention. It’s not very immediate, nor does it make for effective background music. It is all about the intricacies of the layers of synths, strings and samples. It is rarely easy to distinguish any sounds outside of the beats and MC Dälek’s voice. It just creates a thick atmosphere that demands you to pay attention.

Sometimes the layers get so thick that even the vocals are drowned out. This is by design. On Content to Play Villain, MC Dälek’s voice becomes so muffled that you really need a lyric sheet to have an idea what he is saying. This tactic is used in parts of other songs too. The track ominously named Lynch doesn’t have any vocals at all. At five minutes it also not one of those short instrumental interludes either, but a significant part of the album, as Oktopus creates some upsetting music that might have come from watching Inland Empire too many times. Another odd flourish is that the six minute Isolated Stare starts with four minutes of instrumentals. The song even seems to end there, until MC Dälek kickstarts it again for just two minutes of lyrics. Perhaps the most memorable moment is the wordless outro of (Subversise Script), also the outro to the whole record: a psychedelic type freak-out.

It makes for an album with a mixed message concerning language. The lyrics stresses its importance, while the music tries to drown it out, sometimes literally. The group is more known for their unique production than for their lyrics and if you listen to just this album it is not hard to understand why. This is not necessarily a flaw as the oppressive nature of the music fits the paranoia and defeatism of much of the lyrics. It does make it hard to reach general hip-hop audiences though, as this is more hip-hop for music nerds. Not that there is anything wrong with that; I probably even prefer it that way.

It should be said though that this has some of the problems I have with Loveless. No, it doesn’t have any of that album’s insufferable tracks, although it never reaches it highs neither. It’s more that like Loveless and a lot of shoegaze, Abandoned Language it is perhaps a little too airless for my tastes. Especially for 62 minutes. I do admire what it sets out to do though and some songs, especially Bricks Crumble and (Subversive Script), are strong. At the same time, reading up on Dälek gave me the feeling that perhaps the albums they made before are the ones I would relate stronger to. I certainly will give them a shot in the future.
7/10

Next from RYM: Talk Talk – Laughing Stock
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Rustie - Glass Swords

Post by Rob »

Rustie – Glass Swords (2011) – Acclaimed Music #2930



These were the albums I could choose from:

2921. Squarepusher – Feed Me Weird Things
2922. Bill Callahan – Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest
2923. Mary J. Blige – Mary
2924. Jimmy Guiffre – Free Fall
2925. Frank Sinatra – Songs for Young Lovers
2926. Everything But the Girl – Eden
2927. Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression
2928. Danny Brown - uknowhatimsayin?
2929. Foals – What Went Down
2930. Rustie – Glass Swords

Although I want to prevent this series to become a reflection on music genre I still can’t help it here. You see, when I saw the two genres for Glass Swords mentioned on AM I had to do a double take. This effect was increased when I got to its RateYourMusic page and noticed the five genres mentioned there: purple sound, wonky, future bass, skweee and trap (but not the hip-hop trap; yes there are two genres with the same name!). Is this a joke? I knew electronic music had a tendency towards unusual genre-naming, but now I became conscious that somewhere along the way any. It says a lot if the most clear descriptor of all for your album turns out to be ‘wonky’.

No, I’m not going to explain these genres here. These genre names only suggest a need in some people to label music a little too much. For someone who actually scrolls through the Acclaimed Music top 3000 Albums they won’t help much, unless you are deeply into the ins and outs of dance music. It is way better to start over and just try to describe what Glass Swords does sound like.

This is first and foremost an electronic dance album. The trick to its appeal is that it functions both as a usual and an unusual one. There are enough thick beats and hooks to make most of these songs function on the dancefloor. The party appeal is strengthened by the very happy atmosphere that seems to be the cohesive factor that ties all these tracks together. In an interview with Spin this lead to the question whether Rustie considers himself a happy person. The answer:
“I’m not, but I try to channel good energy, just love and peace and happiness and joy. That’s what I want from my music, and that’s what I want other people to feel. I don’t think there’s any point in putting more darkness in the world, because the world’s a really fucked up place. So I think the more joy or happiness you can put in, the better.”
He succeeded very much. I sometimes find popular dance music sterile and joyless, no matter how many people are partying to it. As such, I’m not one for club music. Yet Glass Swords has a warmth and a giddy nature that I find appealing. It may be light and accessible, but it has character, the prime element I look for in music.

There is more, because as I said there are unusual elements in here. Besides the beats and spaced ambient sounds you expect from electronic dance there are also some odd influences or inspirations. Video games are very clearly part of the package. Especially from the 8-bit or 16-bit era, when their music was defined by chiptune bleeps and bloops. There is a track actually called Death Mountain, after an iconic recurring location in the Legend of Zelda series. That isn’t even the song that reminds me of video games the most. Flash Back evokes the soundtrack of a colorful and eccentric platformer of the early nineties. City Star should be added to a MegaMan game. Ice Tunnels already sounds like a level description and I imagine Kirby sliding through it.

Imagination is one of the key aspects for me here. This album kept bringing up images in my mind, which is not unusual in itself, but the type of images were eccentric and colorful. Hover Traps for example has some tropic sound effects which makes it evoke a particularly tacky Hawaiian bar (probably not actually in Hawaii) that fancies itself cool and hip, despite being hilariously out of date. That is until the Hawaiian bar gets hit with a sonic tidal wave from the future. How many albums evoke such a scene without words? It may not work as a genre description, but it is a lot of fun to describe.

Rustie likes contrasting elements that add to the playfulness. Death Mountain has a heavy, almost droning sound in the lead, creating an almost stomping rhythm, but it is constantly contrasted with fresh, high-pitched voices. You could call it pub rock for tiny, squeaking robots. On Globes he does something similar, by creating a lush soundscape full of space, but again it gets filled with cute, sprightly sounds. As if someone wanted to submerge us in the vast, ungraspable enormity of the cosmos, but couldn’t resist the urge to give all the stars smiling faces and having them dance around as in a cartoon for kids aged three. 2001: A Space Wonky?

The album is filled with little flourishes here and there that reward close listening. City Star begins as if we are suddenly starting a very seventies prog rock album, complete with synths that effectively emulate the sound of, out of all instruments, a pan flute. The reason for such an odd intro to a dance track is that Rustie thought the songs that he had prepared would not fit together well, so he gave them all a new intro that make them gel better. The weird thing is that the intros have only one thing in common and that is that they are misleading. For the first 10 to 30 seconds you are prepared for something you are not getting. Instead of being frustrating, this adds a charm to the record.

I was also surprised how nostalgic some of these songs sounded to me. First I thought it was the video game connection, but that was not quite it. Some reviews (but not Rustie himself, as far as I know) have mentioned an indebtedness to happy hardcore and that might be it. Happy hardcore is a genre description I haven’t heard in ages, but it was very big when I was a kid in the nineties and I remember it being played everywhere. The song Cry Flames in particular evokes the feeling of that time and place by its sound.

A recurring element that I think is also very nineties (though dance experts may correct me on this) are the vocals. Yes, there is singing on this, even if the lyrics are generally short and meaningless words that get repeated over the songs duration. Their sound is memorable though, because Rustie speeds his and his girlfriend Nightwave’s voices up and increases their pitch which frequently makes them sound like five-your old girls on a sugar rush. This seems another throwback to a previous time, though oddly it also reminds me on some later artists, like Grimes and SOPHIE, who were perhaps inspired by Glass Swords.

The many little details and the playful nature that set this album apart are so much fun that it is frankly disappointing that every now and then Rustie still goes back to convention. Although accessibility is certainly part of the entire make-up (the album is eccentric, yet not too eccentric for the mainstream), but every now and then I feel there is a song that is perhaps too ready for the dancefloor for my tastes. After Light (which got a new version a year later, in collaboration with AlunaGeorge), Surph and All Nite bring the album down a little. They are not completely devoid of odd touches, but they rely foremost on the beat and as usual I personally think the beat is the least interesting part of dance music (which indeed confirms me as not being a dance guy).

Overall though, I can easily see why this struck a chord with the dance scene, especially considering that is not an album-focused branch of music. There is something to this one. Perhaps it is telling that Rustie is from Glasgow and that among the many strange places I envisioned during listening to Glass Swords Glasgow was certainly not one of them. This album has it’s head way too up in the clouds for that.
7/10

Next from Acclaimed Music: Captain Beefheart & His Magical Band – Trout Mask Replica
User avatar
Holden
Never Going Back Again
Posts: 3781
Joined: Wed Nov 20, 2019 11:06 pm

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Rustie - Glass Swords

Post by Holden »

Rob wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 5:18 pm

Next from Acclaimed Music: Captain Beefheart & His Magical Band – Trout Mask Replica
Can't wait!
"The better a singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying."
Jackson
Into the Groove
Posts: 2075
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 6:05 am
Location: Los Angeles

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Rustie - Glass Swords

Post by Jackson »

I'm glad you reviewed Glass Swords - when you're in the right mood for it, it's one of the most entertaining electronic albums in recent memory. I'm surprised your review didn't mention Ultra Thizz, my favorite song from the album and what I thought was the consensus pick.
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Rustie - Glass Swords

Post by Rob »

Holden wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 7:32 pm
Rob wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 5:18 pm

Next from Acclaimed Music: Captain Beefheart & His Magical Band – Trout Mask Replica
Can't wait!
Neither can I! I think this the only album in the top 100 I never heard a single song from. I do know some other Captain Beefheart projects and I always enjoyed his lunacy. We'll see how that fares in what is apparently his most challenging work.
Jackson wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:22 pm I'm surprised your review didn't mention Ultra Thizz, my favorite song from the album and what I thought was the consensus pick.
There is no particular reason for this other than that it never logically appeared in the flow of writing. It's not my favorite, but I can see why it is the most acclaimed song, as it is the one that perhaps captures all the album's quirks the best.
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Rustie - Glass Swords

Post by Rob »

Talk Talk – Laughing Stock (1991) – RateYourMusic #76



These were the albums I could choose from:

71. Swans – Soundtracks for the Blind
72. Genius/GZA – Liquid Swords
73. Björk - Homogenic
74. Danny Brown – Atrocity Exhibition
75. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground
76. Talk Talk – Laughing Stock
77. Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
78. The Beatles – Rubber Soul
79. Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home
80. The Velvet Underground – The Matrix Tapes

Man, 1991 was quite the year for music, wasn’t it? I know popular thought will immediately turn towards grunge, what with the releases of Nevermind and Ten among others. But really, Laughing Stock is already the third album I write about in this series from 1991 and all of them have basically seemed to have reexamined the meaning of rock music itself, in a way that makes grunge look rather straightforward (which is no knock on grunge, whose artistic merits are somewhere else). Besides Laughing Stock I am talking of course about My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and Slint’s Spiderland. I like these albums in varying degrees, but they are all still very unique.

Like Spiderland, Laughing Stock has been retroactively classified under post-rock, a term that didn’t exist yet in 1991. Still, this is not what I think most people will think about when they look for post-rock. Sigur Rós comes closest here, but mostly thanks to a shared sense of tranquility and wonder, rather than in approach to musical recording. And the recording history of Laughing Stock is unusual.

You already have to keep in mind that this Talk Talk we are talking about. I remember hearing songs like It’s My Life, Such a Shame and Life’s What You Make It as nostalgic radio staples growing up in the nineties and 2000’s. As probably anyone I was surprised that this group with an unmistakable eighties pop sound would later turn towards a far more inventive sound. This didn’t go without a hitch. Their previous record, Spirit of Eden, sadly still unheard by me, confused their more pop-oriented label EMI and saw bass player and founding member Paul Webb drop out.

After moving on from EMI to Verve, a jazz label, the band now only consisted out of leader Mark Hollis and drummer Lee Harris, although producer and keyboardist Tim Friese-Green was basically a third member at the time. For the recording many outside musicians were brought in, apparently a grand total of 50, of which only 18 appear on record. There was no real plan and Mark Hollis encouraged each musician to improvise, while at the same time demanding a certain level of perfection that drove many nuts. The recordings took place in a very dark room that was to set the mood, with all time indicators removed, which also took a psychological toll on many. Engineer Phill Brown, who was present during the whole process that took about a year (though not every month was utilized), later said he was proud of his work there, but would never work in such a dark setting or those conditions again.

The process didn’t only feature far more musicians than would be used, but also many discarded songs and a lot of recorded music that would never be heard again. About 80% of the recording process ended up not being discarded. The six songs we have now are basically a collage of various moments of different recording sessions being mixed and matched together, creating new material out of bits and pieces. All the decisive choices were made by Mark Hollis alone and with such a large number of people involved it is no surprise that it left a lot of them angry or disillusioned with the whole process, especially taking into account the amount of time and pressure Hollis put on them. Not much is said about the following dissolution of Talk Talk right after the release of Laughing Stock, but it seemed inevitable. Regardless of whether you like the album or not, it doesn’t seem as if making it was a rewarding or thankful process, unless perhaps you were Mark Hollis.

Of course, for a lot of people this method is part of the brilliance. Many music nerds love these stories about lone geniuses who know no boundaries in creating their art. In many ways the creation of Laughing Stock is close to Loveless, with the significant exception that Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine spent two years to replicate the sounds in his head, while Hollis used the process to find a sound he had not thought of yet. This record’s position in the top 100 of RateYourMusic also confirms once again that the general voter on that site loves involved studio productions and perfectionism. That Loveless and Laughing Stock are both impossible to replicate live is saying a lot.

My admiration for this type of music production doesn’t run as deep. I guess I’m put off by the arrogance of requiring so many people and resources of which most goes unused. I do like the process of the search for a sound through improvisation that Hollis started here, but I also feel that a better band leader wouldn’t need to squander such an amount of talents and recourses to achieve such a thing. Sometimes you hear about a unique way a piece of music (or in my case a movie) is made and you desperately wanted to have been part of this process. Well, Laughing Stock is definitely not one of those for me. Which is odd, as I like the final album a lot. And luckily, that is all that matters to me as listener in the end.

This is such an unusual sounding record, even after it has had thirty years of influence. It is very hard to actually describe. Most of all it is a mood. It is very tranquil, like an ambient album, but at the same time this sounds far too lush and involved for ambient. A sense of peace hangs over many of the tracks, but at the same time they have darkness. I do get a feeling of spiritual uplift at the end of many songs, although it is the type of uplift that comes after a sense of unrest or even strife. The exception is Ascension Day, which has an increased use of noise rock guitar and becomes more uneasy as it goes on, as if it is announcing not Ascension Day so much as Judgment Day.

It should be said that this is clearly a Christian album. The lyrics are hard to understand. Even in his pop days Mark Hollis’ voice has never been much about clear articulation, but by the time of Laughing Stock I would challenge anyone to understand what he is saying (there are a lot of lines in the first three songs starting with the word ‘step’, though, for some reason). That is a pity, as when you actually get out a lyric sheet the writing turns out to be quite powerful. There might even be a story being told over the whole album about a sinner who contemplates suicide, but tries to reform and finally gets back in the grace of God, perhaps just in time for Judgment Day. Or maybe it’s just meant to be a collection of unrelated songs with similar themes of Earthly disillusionment and Heavenly longing.

Although I do frequently listen to an album with a lyric sheet once in preparation of these writings, I tend not to favor this approach. Laughing Stock was an exception, I felt most connected when reading along with the lyrics. This is no fault of the music, which is strong enough on its own, but just a way to praise the writing as it does add another layer here. Back in the day when I only knew Talk Talk as a synth pop band I tended to be put off by Hollis’ singing. Now I can appreciate the sonic qualities of his voice, but I can’t deny I wish he had learned diction somewhere. Of course, there is another reason he can be hard to understand as his voice comes in and out of focus, sometimes being overwhelmed by the instruments.

That approach is extended to the instruments themselves, which also tend to come and go. What you get is frequently a certain instrument, or maybe two, that takes center stage in a part of a song. These can be surprisingly simple. Take Myrrhman for example, which during its midway point contains a repeated series of just one note being played on guitar, a note we get to hear until it has faded out. Near the end of that song we also get strings in a similar broad-strokes measure. A lot of the music is surprisingly simple if you take it on it’s own, but the weird and unexpected combinations give a new quality that ends up feeling deep.

It can be a hard album to get into. One other distinction from ambient it has is that this is decidedly no background music. I can’t really explain why, but it just doesn’t work. The songs only come to life for me only when I fully commit to them and nothing else. Another thing I can’t quite explain is why the trio of the longest tracks, who follow directly after another – After the Flood, Taphead and New Grass – have a much bigger impact than the other three. This trio fulfills a sort of spiritual promise built up by Myrrhman, yet consciously distorted by Ascension Day. I guess that the first two songs, while not deep favorites of mine, set up the main course very well. I can’t say something similar of Runeii, which always kind of loses me and closes the album on perhaps too much of whimper. The sounds might get a little too sparse there for me.

Too bad, as every time I get to my favorite trio of songs I genuinely feel the album is a masterpiece. It gets close as is though and it is not hard to see why so many love it. The recording process may be a bit silly for me, but I can’t deny the end result it got: a unique and even mysterious sounding record like not quite any other.
8/10

If you like this album I recommend this very indepth article on it by Wyndham Wallace on The Quietus: https://thequietus.com/articles/06963-t ... ing-stock

Next from RateYourMusic: Secret Chiefs 2 – Book of Horizons
User avatar
Rob
Die Mensch Maschine
Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Talk Talk - Laughing Stock

Post by Rob »

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Trout Mask Replica – Acclaimed Music #76



These were the albums I could choose from:

71. Paul Simon - Graceland
72. David Bowie - ★ [Blackstar]
73. De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising
74. Otis Redding – Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul
75. David Bowie – Hunky Dory
76. Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Trout Mask Replica
77. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
78. Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures
79. DJ Shadow – Endtroducing…
80. Miles Davis – Bitches Brew


This album is plain fun.

There, I said it. A lot of words have been written and spoken about Trout Mask Replica. It has been called a masterpiece and the worst of music. It is loved and despised. It has been dissected and all it’s innards have been laid out. The process of it’s creation is the stuff of myths. Above all else it is seen as a true test of sorts. You are allowed to hate Trout Mask Replica, but listening to it once from start to finish has to be some sort of rite of passage in certain music corners. For no matter if it is good or bad, it is important.

Nobody though, has called it a piece of entertainment. That ends here and now. I love this album and I actually think it is a joy to listen to. Common knowledge says this is an album that you can’t like on first listen. Even its biggest defenders usually confess that they started with hating it. Not me. From the minute opening song Frownland started I was taken in by the Captain’s strange world.

Yes, I know. Trying to sell Trout Mask Replica as some form of entertainment comes off as a joke Beefheart’s friend and producer Frank Zappa might have made. In a way it is a joke made in the album itself, on the track The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica). On that one guitar player Antennae Jimmy Semens (real name: Jeff Cotton) desperately screams in a weird, high-pitched voice about how 'The Blimp' is what is going to make Captain Beefheart & the Magical Band big. These screams – which are heard from the receiving end of a telephone - are also the only vocals over what is otherwise a discordant mess of instruments. These people obviously new that this was never going to be a hit and neither would the album be one.

But hear me out. I for one would have loved to trade places with Cotton to do those vocals on The Blimp (theoretically that is; the actual process of making the album is something I am glad I didn’t endure). Excitedly screaming “It’s the blimp! The blimp!” over and over actually sounds like a lot of fun. There is the key for me here. This album taps into a sort of insanity that I don’t find uncomfortable or off-putting, but actually appealing. Partly this is simply because it tickles a sort of funny bone in me. Not all the tracks are meant to be humorous, but many are. There is also a playfulness to the way this album approaches music. Likewise, the Captain’s love for wordplay is infectious.

There is more to it though. The completely unreasonable nature of this music comes as a sense of relief to me. Rock has always taken pride in being rebellious, in confronting the conforming nature of much of our existence. It claims to be a release of the shackles of society. Much of my favorite rock music has that appeal to me. Trout Mask Replica goes even further. It seems the work of people that have finally been driven insane by their surrounding world, which has only made them rebel harder and in more unexpected ways. They also recognize that they themselves are part of the problem and this makes rebel against themselves too. They emerge victorious, but at what cost? The cost is Trout Mask Replica and it is a prize I’m willing to pay.

The recording history of the album – or better said the year-long preparation towards the otherwise quick recording – has been much discussed. Therefore, I don’t feel the need to cover much of it here. Still, going over it a little bit does reveal the madness and its appeal. Famously, Captain Beefheart wrote the songs on an instrument he didn’t play, the piano, without much theoretical musical knowledge. Drummer Drumbo (also known as John French) took these impossible compositions and cut and pasted them into something… still unmanageable, but at least humanly playable – though many would disagree on that last statement. The band than vigorously started to learn these very difficult pieces with feedback giving by Beefheart – sometimes literally violently – who shaped the music into something else again.

Eventually the band had played all these songs so many times that they could play them with ease and flawlessly. That’s why the actual recording went fast; almost all of it was taped in one day. Later, on stage, audiences were amazed that the band actually replicated this sound perfectly, including all its imperfections. The reason is that all those imperfections were carefully planned. The album sounds ramshackle. It sounds improvised. Yet it wasn’t. Trout Mask Replica was as composed and refined as any Bach piece. It just happened to be the brain child of a man who wanted it to sound the opposite of Bach. The knowledge that the insanity you hear is actually completely controlled oddly makes it seem more mad and even more appealing. To add to that, despite the feeling sometimes that these are just little kids wrecking havoc on the instruments, the music actually consists mostly of complex time signatures that are very, very hard to play. The ridiculousness knows no boundaries.

The only thing that wasn’t planned as much were the vocals by the Captain himself. He recorded them separately from the band and for some reason decided not to listen to the recorded instrumentals on headphones while singing, instead hearing them come in from another room. If you sometimes have the feeling that his vocals don’t match the music, well then you are right. Then again, many of these instrumentals don’t lend themselves to be matched.

All of this would be merely empty eccentricity if it didn’t find a purpose. For all its pretense of seeming like a long-collapsed building, the album makes a striking whole. The bizarre way of composing, playing and singing these songs gets reflected in its intent. Take something like Dachau Blues, which is about the Holocaust. The song seems at times to be almost an insult to the Jewish suffering. “Dachau blues, Dachau blues those poor Jews/ Still cryin' 'bout the burnin' back in World War Two's” is barely discernable from mockery, but the song gets desparate as it goes on: “War One was balls 'n powder 'n blood 'n snow/ War Two rained death 'n showers 'n skeletons/ Dancin' 'n screamin' 'n dyin' in the ovens/ Cough 'n smoke 'n dyin' by the dozens”. Barely any musician could get away with these words, but the performance turns it into something of a reflection of someone slowly coming to terms and eventually being overwhelmed with the horror of what happened there.

To be fair, Dachau Blues has a more weighty subject than the average song here. Also to be fair, it is hard to say what most of these are actually about. I think, for example, that Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish is exactly about what the title says and about nothing else. Some songs are clearly meant to be funny, like Ella Guru or Moonlight on Vermont – perhaps the two most accessible tracks here, for whatever that is worth. The album is at it’s best when the wackiness meets a peculiar kind of pathos. The inevitable breaking of a piggy bank on China Pig has the curious appeal of a sad childhood story of a kid and his pet. It’s hard to say if Beefheart fat shames the title character in When Big Joan Sets Up, but the ridiculous portrait of an overweight woman becomes oddly touching. And let us not forget perfect opener Frownland which not only begins with a ruckus of instruments meant to scare away kittens and everyone not attuned to weird music, but also becomes an almost sincere invitation to a joyful life, away from a land of frowns.

The highlight for me is a song that doesn’t seem to get much talk: the a-Capella Well. On this, the ugly-beautiful voice of Beefheart matches most closely the ones of the blues singers he is most comparable to (the album itself can sometimes seem more Delta blues than rock). He sounds forlorn and resigned as he rambles in beautiful, complex rhymes that don’t make much logical sense, but evoke a real sense of saddened confusion every time he loops back to the words “well, well”.

I’m not sure I could convince anyone to like Trout Mask Replica. I am fascinated by the amount vitriol this album draws to this day. I listened to it on YouTube and the comment section is a mix of frequently funny jokes at the expanse of the album, but there is also much confusion and anger towards it. Appreciation you’ll find a whole lot less. My recommendation list on YouTube was mostly videos decrying its legacy. There are also plenty of more positive takes on there, but interestingly YouTube’s algorithm prefers the negative ones, at least for me.

This dislike can be found in many places and was what made me hesitant to try it at first. Of course, the album isn’t at #76 for no reason and many have found their way into it, from prominent critics like Lester Bangs and Piero Scaruffi (who thinks it is the greatest album of all time), as well as many musicians. I think part of the reason I got into it with such ease is actually it’s influence. I have heard many strange takes on rock and blues before. Tom Waits alone has prepared me for Trout Mask Replica. And you know, I think it is great that some classics retain their inaccessibility and capacity to put people off. We need these ugly beasts even if we do not like it. Perhaps the greatest compliment comes from the people who dislike it, because for all of the hate they throw at it nobody as far as I am aware of has ever called Trout Mask Replica stale or boring.
10/10

Next from Acclaimed Music: Brian Eno – Ambient 4: On Land
Miranabed
Debut
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2022 5:09 pm

Re: Rob Climbs the Mountains of Music: Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica

Post by Miranabed »

Wow, it is a complex and interesting project; I could say one of the best I've seen so far. I do think this project has a big potential. On top, with the right music pr company, you'll be astonished by the success and results you'll obtain. The right music pr company will support you with the more complicated details to promote your project. For example, finding the right niche, targeting the audience, etc. I do recommend you start the project. I can't wait to see the result as soon as possible.
Post Reply

Return to “Music, Music, Music...”