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Blonde Redhead / The Pre-4AD Years

2009-01-14T05:21:00.001-08:00

Blonde Redhead

Per a request for Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, I thought an overview of Blonde Redhead's early work was in order. If you're more familiar with the later "4AD" years, you'll see the seeds of their future planted here... These earlier recordings are also where they were penned as the second coming of Sonic Youth (they shook that comparison off by 2000).

Blonde Redhead / Blonde Redhead
Released 1995

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Recalling the no wave movement of the late '70s, the self-titled debut of New York City's Blonde Redhead is a glorious piece of dense, art-damaged noise, with songs that move from drifting melodicism to raging aural assaults in the course of a few measures. Taking their cues most directly from Sonic Youth (Steve Shelley produced the album), Blonde Redhead revel in noise and create vast sonic landscapes out of which songs naturally emerge. The focus here tends to be on atmospherics, and yet there is never the feeling of utter chaos; instead, the album functions like a work of controlled mayhem, referencing a wide range of musical approaches. The opening track, "I Don't Want U," starts off like jazz-rock, building momentum until it erupts in a blast of indie rock noise, anchored throughout by a steadily rolling bassline. "Snippet"'s quite-loud-quiet dynamics are offset by the driving rock of "Mama Cita," and the album's closer, "Girl Boy," comes across like delirious dream pop. The entire album is drenched in dense, multilayered feedback, with a rhythm section that works to keep the guitars in control, underpinning the attack. Blonde Redhead have created a great record, especially for fans of experimental rock: difficult, noisy, and exhilarating. - Brandon Gentry, All Music Guide

Blonde Redhead / La Mia Vita Violenta
Released 1995

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With their second release, La Mia Vita Violenta, Blonde Redhead maintain their organically low-fi aesthetic and continue to prove themselves as one of indie rock's real triumphs. Even after the departure of guitarist Maki Takahashi, they still make more noise with three people than most bands could make with ten. Guitars tear into the songs -- pointed, direct, and tough -- while the vocals of Kazu Makino and Amedeo Pace weave tightly into drummer Simone Pace's impeccably precise backing. Timing is everything, and Blonde Redhead certainly have it. They're dirty when they need to be and crystal-clear when the situation calls for it. Never angry, the trio plays hard and fast to the point where the instruments seem to play themselves with the deftest of precision. The production is so skillful that even with the most Spartan of recording gear, guitars end up sounding synthetic, in that painting-looks-like-a-photograph kind of way. And the volatile changes -- from sweet acoustic strums to drilling power chords -- make this album a whirl of unexpected surprises. La Mia Vita Violenta is math rock without the nerdiness and art rock without the pretentiousness. - Ken Taylor, All Music Guide

Blonde Redhead / Fake Can be Just As Good
Released 1997

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It seems like New York trio Blonde Redhead have been dogged with Sonic Youth comparisons since the day they formed years ago, taking their name from an old song by No New York faves DNA. Such yakking only grew louder when the group, then a quartet, signed with Steve Shelley's Smells Like label in 1994 for a pair of LPs, and then let the Sonic Youth drummer produce them. Three years down the road, it's a resemblance still firmly in place on Fake Can Be Just as Good, despite the group employing producer John Goodmanson and switching labels to Chicago's venerable, powerful Touch & Go. But if this stubborn outfit of two handsome Italian-Americans and a pretty Japanese-American doesn't care about being branded copycats, and it seems they don't, then neither should anyone else. Improving with each release, the solid, crashing duo of guitarists (and alternating singers) Kazu Makino and Amedeo Pace may borrow an ethic, an anti-pop stance, and atonal tension that's super-familiar, but the clean sound, direct attack, and straightforward, tense delivery are all their own. Moreover, there's plenty of room for further exploration in these dark, forbidding, tempest-ridden post-punk seas. In fact, when Makino and Pace get cold, claustrophobic, weird, wired, and chilling (with help from borrowed Unwound bassist Vern Rumsey) is when they also nearly explode in deep undercurrents: see the best things here, the quietly terrified "Symphony of Treble" and "Bipolar." And unlike 95 percent of all bands based on the New York noise tradition, Blonde Redhead never just grind like nails to chalkboards -- their well-produced sound is never annoying or unpleasant -- nor forget that music is supposed to have hooks, no matter how much it eschews obvious pop melodic conventions. Far from mere protégés of any band or scene, Blonde Redhead are a unique sub-branch all their own on a fertile tree. - Jack Rabid, All Music Guide

Blonde Redhead / In An Expression of the Inexpressible
Released 1998

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The oft-used comparison to Sonic Youth doesn't really hold a lot of water, as Blonde Redhead's music has always been a bit less swirling, more spontaneous, and rougher around the edges. Further differentiating them from Sonic Youth is their bass-less approach. In an Expression of the Inexpressible, their fourth release, is as uncompromising as Fake Can Be Just as Good and La Mia Vita Violenta, but this time Blonde Redhead wanted to be produced by someone outside the band. The sound is fuller and more polished, and in the capable hands of producers John Goodmanson and Guy Picciotto (of Fugazi fame), they've never sounded quite as good. Still, Kazu Makino's high-pitched, Björk-ish vocals can get irritating at times, and the two guitars never quite reach a compelling level of interplay. Blonde Redhead, who sometimes are too clever for their own good, could, in fact, learn a great deal from Sonic Youth, since most of the tracks never come across with much urgency. - Matthew Hillburn, All Music Guide

Blonde Redhead / Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons
Released 2000

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For a record produced by Guy Picciotto (Fugazi, Rites of Spring), Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons is a surprisingly quiet affair. Rarely do the cuts on Blonde Redhead's 2000 release get much louder than an electric guitar. With their fifth record, Blonde Redhead finally emerges from the shadows of Sonic Youth's post-punk legacy by avoiding the expected detunings, distortions, and shrillness of the genre. The three-piece manages to create a record that is subtle, tuneful, and sublime. On "Loved Despite of Great Faults," instrumentation mainly consists of acoustic guitar, piano, and percussion rather than an assault of power chords, yet the mood of the song is just as effective. While the record may be quieter, it still manages to move in several different directions. "This Is Not" tips its hat to Ric Ocasek with a new wave-inspired piece while the opening cut, "Equally Damaged," and "Ballad of Lemons" suggest an influence from Danny Elfman. Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons may not accurately reflect the full body of Blonde Redhead's work, yet it presents an easy place to start. - Yancey Stricker, All Music Guide

Blonde Redhead / Melodie Citronique
Released 2000

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Blonde Redhead's Melodie Citronique reworks three songs from its excellent album Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and adds two songs that highlight the group's multicultural, multilingual approach. "En Particulier" is a straightforward French translation of Lemons' dreamy "In Particular"; "Odiata Per le Sue Virtu" is "Hated Because of Great Qualities" with an Italian makeover. "Four Damaged Lemons," a remix of "For the Damaged," makes the song even more fragile and delicately lovely by adding a looped piano, brittle acoustic guitar, backwards sound effects, and chiming keyboards. The bouncy, sing-song "Chi É E Non É" sounds a bit like one of the Pixies' poppier moments sung in Italian, while the version of Serge Gainsbourg's "Slogan" suggests that his slinky, sensual style has become almost as big an influence on Blonde Redhead's sound as Sonic Youth was previously. Though it isn't quite as big a step forward for the group as Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, Melodie Citronique is an enjoyable companion piece to that album, as well as a further exploration of the group's softer side. - Heather Phares, All Music Guide

Blonde Redhead / Live at the Bottom of the Hill
Recorded in 2000

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A great recording on one of their best tours!

01 - Melody of Certain Three
02 - Hated Because of Great Qualities
03 - Futurism vs. Passeism Part 2
04 - Bipolar
04 - I Am There While You Choke on Me
05 - Loved Despite Of Great Faults
06 - Missile++
07 - Distilled
08 - In Particular
09 - Kazuality
11 - U.F.O.
12 - This Is Not
13 - Water
14 - For The Damaged
15 - Suimasen
16 - I Still Get Rocks Off

Blonde Redhead / Live on KCRW
Recorded 2004

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Another great recording...

01 - Anticipation
02 - Falling Man
03 - Misery is a Butterfly
04 - Melody
05 - Messenger
06 - Magic Mountain

Josephine Foster / A Collection

2009-01-13T20:24:00.000-08:00

Josephine Foster

One of the most unique voices in the "singer-songwriter" category (hate that term), Josephine Foster shares a little bit of opera, a little bit of blues, a little bit of country and a little bit of Tin Pan Alley. Essentially, an incredibly haunting and unique sound.

Enjoy these releases by the indescribable Josephine Foster.

Josephine Foster / There Are Eyes Above
Released 2000

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Four track recordings of Josephine, a ukelele and her voice. This was released as a CD-R back in 2000. While not necessarily her best album, it certainly set the stage for the music she would release throughout the first decade of the millenium.

Josephine Foster / All The Leaves Are Gone
Released 2004

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Placing All the Leaves Are Gone in the CD player is a little like a time warp. Is the album a reissue of an obscure '60s group from San Francisco? Or is it, perhaps, a contemporary recording (2004) that evokes yesteryear? In the case of Josephine Foster & the Supposed, it's the latter. The easiest comparison would be toJefferson Airplane, circa 1967, with out of kilter melodies in minor keys and the guitars barely in tune. Foster plays the part of Grace Slick here, but she sounds more like Maddy Prior on acid. Her hippie, drug-induced vocal delivery is supported by the Supposed, who are guitarist/bassist Brian Goodman and drummer Rusty Peterson. While instrumental parts seem to have been dubbed here and there on All the Leaves Are Gone, the arrangements are mostly spare, which works well for creating a spacious sound, even when things get kind of loud. How listeners react to the material will probably depend on how familiar they are with groups likeJefferson Airplane, early Grateful Dead, and even the Velvet Underground . The opening song, "Well-Heeled Man," certainly captures one's attention, and Foster's fragile vocal is evocative. While the effect here and elsewhere is often winning, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the experimental mood of the material. The music ranges from gentle to dissonant, from a hush to a crash, alternately pulling the listener in and pushing the listener away. The listener may be intrigued or overwhelmed by All the Leaves Are Gone, but he or she will never be bored. - Ronnie D. Lankford, All Music Guide

Josephine Foster / Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You
Released 2005

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On Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You, Josephine Foster trades the rangy psych-folk of her 2004 album with the Supposed for the lonesome chill of an empty studio. She handles everything on Hazel Eyes, from layering her vibrating saw blade of a voice to accompanying it with kazoo, dulcimer, harp, homemade percussion, and, at the center, her dry and spindly acoustic guitar. Foster's singing often consists of a wordless, moody sigh. But she also fills the corners of her lilting, swaying songs with talk of bones, treasure, and hominy grits. Her antiquated enunciation can be little trying -- she's from Chicago, not Kisimul Castle. But the style works if you let yourself believe that Hazel Eyes is a crazy old 78 you found in an attic. (Its runic, earth mother cover art helps.) Alongside the album's more esoteric material -- including "Pruner's Pair" and the raga-like "Celebrant's Song" -- are pieces with an at least an element of easygoing fun, like the casual, old-timey flair of "Good News," or "Golden Wooden Tone," which with its kazoos, harmonies, and tumbling jacks percussion is downright gleeful. Gleeful like the final song of Puritan girls condemned for witchery, but gleeful nevertheless. For fans ofEspers, Joanna Newsom, and Foster's own work in the comparatively less strange Born Heller. - Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide

Josephine Foster / A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing
Released 2006

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For her third solo album, Josephine Foster went for something simple, but extremely strange. Basically, A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing consists of renditions of 19th century art songs, with Brian Goodman's acid electric guitar providing the X factor. Foster has selected pages by Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms, which she sings in German, in typical lieder fashion (acute vibrato included), accompanying herself soberly at the acoustic guitar. Upon hearing the first few seconds of "An die Musik," the first track, you cannot help but wonder if you have put the right disc in the CD player -- is this a reissue of some old wax recordings miraculously restored? -- at which point the electric licks kick in and things take an unmistakable contemporary feel. Goodman seems to operate on his own level, weaving acid lines in and out of the songs, often with little relation to them. The contrast is downright shocking at first and remains disquieting for the first four songs. By the fifth track, "Wehmut," Foster changes her approach: an old piano replaces the acoustic guitar, while amateur harmonica and other miscellaneous instruments create something much closer to the free folk aesthetics some listeners are probably expecting from this album. The longest piece by far, "Auf Einer Burg" goes further in that direction, retaining only the ghost of Schumann's original melody, obscured by reverb and drenched in multi-tracked psychedelic guitar improvisations. The dislocation felt in the earlier tracks is dispelled in this case, which, paradoxically, makes this piece the "saner" one of the bunch and also the least effective. "Nähe Des Geliebten" comes back to the arrangements of the first few songs, closing the album on a more positive note. Some fans of Foster will argue that her two previous solo albums hinted at something like this -- Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You had a certain antiquated quality to it -- but nothing can really prepare you for A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. People who make up lists of "weird albums" will most likely take a shine to this one, but don't look at it as a novelty record; it has unique charm and can unexpectedly grow on you. - All Music Guide, Francois Couture

Josephine Foster / Was It That Ever Was
Released 2006

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What a far out release from Josephine Foster, we can barely describe the unusal mixing and melting on her newest self released effort. From the fire noise guitar blasting prelude to all manner of elegant folk musings and musical enchantments performed with piano, percussion, guitar, and Josephine's amazing and unique voice. Including many original compositions, improvised songs, Japanese folk songs, and a couple jam-backed spoken word performances, a very ambitious and captivating release!

Wim Mertens / Solo Recordings

2009-01-04T05:37:00.001-08:00

Wim Mertens

Happy New Year! I'm back after a little bit of a holiday and wanted to kick the new year off with something a little different for the blog. If you're not familiar with Wim Mertens, he is a composer from Belgium that's been creating a combination of minimalism with New Music, since the early 80's. His music is engaging, relatively easy compared to some of the other modern composers and has a delicacy that's undescribable.

Today, I'm concentrating on his music for solo piano and voice.

Wim Mertens / A Man of No Fortune, And With a Name To Come
Released 1986

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"For many of the fans of Wim Mertens, one of the first things we did upon discovering the Internet was to search for him. I spent years unsuccessfully looking for his CDs in stores and catalogs before going online in 96, and was most gratified to find that I could now acquire them. And I have. His fans in the US are few but fierce, and releases like A Man Of No Fortune, And With A Name To Come, explain that ferocity.

This is an absolutely beautiful CD. Wim is like no one else, so if you've never heard him or of him, be prepared for the unusual. If you have heard a lick here or there and wonder where to begin, this is a great place for his solo output. His music is an intoxicating whirlwind of just enough repetition to be hypnotic, just enough movement to keep the mind engaged, and tunes that are almost surreal in their sublime beauty. Add his otherworldy voice soaring above those piano lines, and you have something truly extraordinary.

This is an older release, but still one of my favorites. The first track, Casting No Shadow, is among the most beautiful compositions of our time. I am amazed at how he makes so much out of so little. And You See is another that cannot be ignored, a pounding piano line that sucks the listener in and a sad and dervish-like voice that, while uttering syllables meaningless to me, sounds as if it knows all there is to know of time and history. That sounds melodramatic, but this is powerful music, expertly constructed and deeply intense. The other tracks are equally enticing.

That being said, not everyone likes Wim's weird soprano-like voice and minimalist style. But if you're open to the new and the offbeat, give it a try. It is just a stunner." - Amazon.com review

Wim Mertens / After Virtue
Released 1987

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Wim Mertens second major release for solo piano picks up where A Man of No Fortune leaves off. Somewhat uneven, there are some beautiful tracks contained in the album.

Wim Mertens / Strategie de la Rupture
Released 1991

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A few years ago I saw the documentary 'Here we are, waiting for you' by a brazilian filmmaker. During the film I had more and more problems paying attention to the visual content, because of the music. I had never heard anything like that before, and it was magnificent! The credits at the end told me the music was from Wim Merten's album 'Strategie De La Rupture'.

To be short: I have never heard music which 'hypnotizes' me more then this piece of masterwork. I have a classical music education, play the piano myself and have listen to a lot of piano music in various genres, but this album by far impresses me most. It's hard to tell what exactly attracts me in the music of Wim Mertens, but I think it's the simplicity and space in his music which gives you time for your own interpretation of the music. The simplicity doesn't make the music 'easy', but rather hypnotizing. No speedy fingerwork, no complex (jazz-)chords, no mind boggling chord progressions (which all have their charms), but pure true music. Sting once said that the power of music is in the silence between the notes; the emptiness lifts you higher, the notes being the helpful environment... I think Sting meant something like this album of Wim Mertens. Hear it yourself! - Amazon.com Review

Wim Mertens / Epic That Never Was
Released 1993

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Oh, the Mertens confusion. CDs all over, with duplicate tracks, different arrangments, obscure titles, and those prices! Solo? Ensemble? Which to choose?

Well, this is a stunner. I have had it for over 7 years, and enjoy it more now than I did when it first arrived. This is in many ways my favorite of the solo CDs. I cannot grow tired of it. Wim is an astonishingly talented musician who creates the most lovely and moving tunes out of the smallest pieces, tiny tunes, endlessly varied, repeated, twisted and turned upside down, played with a superbly confident pianism and that otherworldy voice that startles, then challenges, then finally comforts. And as the other reviewer says, the tracks available only here are absolutely grand.

There are many pretenders to the throne of "The Best" in this field, which I guess would be minimalist/ethereal/ambient music, but there is nothing ambient about this CD. This will engage and grip and not let go, just as it did when performed to that lucky audience in Lisbon in 1993. - Amazon.com Review

Wim Mertens / Jeremiades
Released 1995

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This is Wim Merten's fourth studio album with solo piano and his unique vocal style. He stretches to the limit with the first track, a 23-minute repetition of a 4-bar piano theme that builds to an impossibly beautiful conclusion. Unlike most minimal or repetitive music, this piece shows that repetition can be a powerful device without alienating the listener. The first time I heard it, I didn't realize that there was such a short theme being repeated because the variations in melody and in the vocal work kept developing in a subtle way. Mertens sings in a unique "medieval falsetto" voice that some find irritating, but which is deeply emotional. He has developed a highly personal style in his piano/voice work that likely cannot be duplicated by others. While this is not the most accessible of his piano albums (try "After Virtue" for a starter) this is a strong, sometimes exhilarating album. - Amazon.com Review

Wim Mertens/ Lisa
Released 1996

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No voice on this album, just his great piano playing, and some additional whisteling. The album is hauntingly beautifull, but terribly short - it only lasts about 20 minutes. It's a kind of Brad Mehldau meets minimalism album; it might sound very simplistic, it still is beautifull enough to blow you away. If it would be a bit longer, it would be a five star album for sure. - Amazon.com Review

Wim Mertens / Der Heisse Brei
Released 2000

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It is hard to describe what Wim Mertens' vocal music sounds like to people who haven't heard him. The music is piano and voice; the piano is a kind of Philip Glass minimalistic music, though more melody minded, and quite a lot better. It has more direction, evolves and vibrates more. Wim Mertens makes you feel like you're not listening to 'his' piano music, but to the instrument in general. The tricky part is: he sings. I don't know anyone who 'likes' it. Either you hate, or you love it. Needless to say, I do love it. I have heard people call him the 'singing teletubbie', as he doesn't use words, but 'sounds' (comperable to Meredith Monk or Lisa Gerrard), and it's very direct, instictive, playfull yet haunting music. On this album, he seems to push to melodic powers of his voice further then on the previous ones; it album is less repetitive, though it still makes you think you've known these melodies forerver. If you don't know his music, you should check it out (especially his 'piano and voice' albums). If you do, I'm sure you've already bought it, and all of these words are in vain... - Amazon.com Review

Wim Mertens / Sin Embargo
Released 1997

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And we thought him an ordinary man! The Man, his Voice and his Piano now become The Man, his Whistle and his Guitar. WM plucks and strums decently. He ably transplants beautiful ordinary chords from the piano to the guitar and extended, painfully questioning melodic lines from winds to the single guitar strings. It's the sound that comes as a suprise, not the musical matter, which is of course carefully recycled WM vocabulary. And yes, this time he whistles where he would normally sing - just one piece, as on "After Virtue". WM's self-irony reaches its peak in this brilliant travesty. - Amazon.com Review

Wim Mertens / Un Respiro
Released 2004

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Un respiro, Mertens' new solo album offers 10 new compositions, often very rythmical tracks composed for two pianos and two voices all performed by the composer himself. It shows Mertens' passion for the voice, not using it as an instrument but presenting the voice as a guide for the piano, always looking for pure expression only. Un respiro is Mertens' 6th solo studio album as a solo performer pianist/singer. - Amazon.com

Richard Buckner / A Collection

2008-12-24T05:15:00.000-08:00

Richard Buckner

Don't know why this feels so appropriate around X-Mas. Is it the "Holiday Blues"? Whatever it may be, Richard Buckner is probably one of the best "singer-songwriters" veering towards the alt-country vein. There is an incredible amount of passion, heartache and beauty in every note he sings. If you pick one, I highly recommend Devotion + Doubt, one of the finest albums of the 1990's.

Richard Buckner / Bloomed
Released 1994

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Buckner's debut is an accomplished but subdued affair with hardly a trace of rock in sight. The emphasis is on his rich-but-weary vocals and sober tales of romance and restlessness, with dignified Texas prairie backup by such esteemed regionals as Lloyd Maines (who produced) and Ponty Bon. Very much in the vein of Butch Hancock, but much more ordinary at this point, without the eccentricity and boisterousness that characterizes much of Hancock and fellow Lubbockite Terry Allen's work. - All Music Guide

Richard Buckner / Devotion + Doubt
Released 03.11.1997

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Richard Buckner's second album of cross-country folk is an exploration of love's paranoia and its resulting desperation and hopelessness. Stemming from the singer/songwriter's divorce, the 13 songs on Devotion + Doubt reflect and, to a lesser degree, celebrate both his newfound independence and loneliness. His road-weary voice (often calmed to a whisper here) coupled with the sparing strums of his acoustic guitar, strike a point of intimacy within the songs, giving the best of them ("Pull," "4am") the feeling that they were reluctantly cribbed from personal diary entries. But Buckner never sounds defeated on Devotion + Doubt, only a bit haunted, as if he's convinced himself -- based on past attempts at love and their eventual failures -- that he's destined to make the same mistakes again and again, no matter how hard he tries to make a relationship work. - All Music Guide

Richard Buckner / Since
Released 08.11.1998

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Richard Buckner's follow-up to his 1997 divorce odyssey Devotion + Doubt is a more upbeat affair, with questions of faith and being tossed into the electric mix. Moving from contemplative singer-songwriter treks ("Once") to blurry guitar rave-ups ("Believer"), Since is the picking-up-and-getting-on antidote to Devotion + Doubt's downer trip. Buckner still seems troubled by life's little hang-ups, but instead of falling into an acoustic-drenched funk, he rages against his blues with his guitar. That doesn't mean Since isn't without its distressing moments; there are plenty of hushed and fragile songs here that recall the breaking tone of his previous two albums. Yet, for all of the creeping positivity going on within the grooves, Buckner sounds more weary than ever, his already delicate voice cracking under the pressure as he trudges his way through his own brand of electric folk music. - All Music Guide

Richard Buckner / The Hill
Released 10.30.2000

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(Note: The CD is one track... approximately 35 minutes)

Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, a series of poems originally published in serial form in 1914-1915, provided the subject matter for nomadic troubadour Richard Buckner's 2000 release The Hill. In the poems, the dead in an Illinois graveyard relay details from their lives in matter-of-factly haunting tones. When originally published, Masters' believable characters tore away at the strict moral facade of small-town life through their tales of adultery, casual murder, and morphine addiction. Who better than Buckner to interpret these lost souls' voices in his growling, plaintive murmur, accompanied most often by sparse acoustic guitar and stark accompaniment. Through this earthy channeler, the names from ragged gravestones almost float in front of the listener while hollowed eyes reveal the details of their own deaths.

Unfortunately, while the subject matter and the musician are an ideal match, the album as a whole falls short of Buckner's famous heartfelt intimacy and inventive songwriting. Fans who have come to appreciate his snapshot imagery and dark wordplay may be disappointed at this interpretation of someone else's work, as appropriate as it may be. The 18 individual poems are recorded as one continuous 34-minute track, making it difficult to tell when one woman's childbirth death travels into another man's drunken despair, and the warm acoustic guitar, mandolin, and violin are on occasion jarringly interrupted by misplaced electronic sweeps and buzzes. Still, the haunting charm of "Oscar Hummel" and "Emily Sparks" show the familiar passion and honesty the singer is known for. Buckner continues to distance himself from the limiting country-folk label with increasingly ambitious projects, all of which are interesting but some of which fail to fully utilize his talents. - All Music Guide

Richard Buckner / Richard Buckner
Released 2000

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Richard Buckner first pressed up this low-frills, self-titled item for sale at his concerts following the 2000 release of The Hill; the self-titled disc consists of Buckner performing 11 songs armed only with his acoustic guitar in a San Francisco studio in 1996. All these songs were later re-recorded on the albums Devotion + Doubt and Since, and while listening one gets the feeling that these were really just demos cleaned up for release. That said, that's not to say these performances don't offer some surprises for fans; this version of "Boys, the Night Will Bury You" has a very different arrangement and melodic sense than the one which would appear on Since, while the more straightforward take of "Pull" gives the song a very different spin than it had on Devotion + Doubt. And anyone who has ever seen one of Buckner's solo acoustic shows knows he's a compelling and charismatic performer, and this disc manages to capture a bit of that presence on a piece of aluminum and plastic. However, none of the performances on Richard Buckner can honestly be said to be better than the studio recordings which followed. In 2003, Buckner reissued this disc in a widely available edition, which seems fitting -- while this is music worth hearing, it's too slight to merit the three-figure prices it was fetching among collectors. - All Music Guide

Richard Buckner / Impasse
Released 10.08.2002

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Grizzled folkie Richard Buckner evokes more dark snapshots of life and the intricacies of relationships on his fifth release, Impasse. Similar in feel and texture to his previous releases, Impasse winds around the same moody corners, experimenting with the intimacy of the best singer/songwriters and the quirky fuzz and crunch of indie rock. The spirits of frequent collaborators Joey Burns and John Convertino linger large over this project, and after an initial listen it is surprising to find out that Buckner played all of the instruments this time around (with the exception of the drums, performed expertly by his wife, artist Penny Jo Buckner). Mellotron hums and vibraphone chimes back the singer's familiar growl and warm, nylon-stringed guitar, with textures floating past like faded slides bought from a garage sale. Landing somewhere between Since's driving experimentation and the melancholy drones of Devotion + Doubt, the album fits squarely into Buckner's catalog, but may not push too far in either direction. While Since emphasized Buckner's grit with rocked-out guitar passages and wild sonic abandon and Devotion + Doubt pushed him nearly over the edge in its soul-crushing depression and beautifully haunting themes of loss and heartbreak, Impasse finds the author seemingly more comfortable with the cards in his hand. The tension between musicians on Since and the tensions between Buckner and himself on Devotion + Doubt are subtly missing on Impasse, but this wiser and gentler Richard Buckner seems to be embracing a more even keel. With no soul-baring a cappella tracks and no glitchy rave-ups, the album seems to be painted with the same brush from start to finish, which certainly makes for a more even listen, but there is something about the contrast in his previous works that is missing here. Listening to just the first few seconds of each track, there is a discomforting similarity in the way each song starts, almost as if Buckner has worked himself into a familiar pattern and is happy working within it time and time again. Still, every song on the album is fantastic -- starkly beautiful and unusually comforting. While this collection of songs is not Buckner's best, it still is head and shoulders above 99 percent of the angst-fueled singer\songwriters out there. - All Music Guide

Richard Buckner / Impasse-ette
Released 09.10.2002

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This six-song E.P. works as a combination sampler and companion piece to Richard Buckner's full-length release, Impasse. Like the full-length release, Impasse-ette contains the same churning mix of acoustic and electric sounds, sometimes breathtakingly intimate, sometimes fuzzed beyond recognition. The sampler contains acoustic versions of two songs from the album, and three previously unavailable songs. The charming and sweet "Stumble-Ette," along with "Remainder," work well as introductions -- or brief sketches -- and stand in sharp contrast to the chilling prayer "It's Still '56." None of these tracks are necessarily essential, but rabid Buckner fans will snatch it up just the same. - All Music Guide

Richard Buckner / Dents and Shells
Released 10.12.2004

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The darkness that surrounds Richard Buckner's writing always seems to be the focus of scrutiny for every judging ear, be it a professional critic's or an armchair critic's, and for good reason considering the elliptical, image-laden construction of Buckner's banter, but the constant reference to this blanket has almost unjustly glorified the artist into an impossible mystery. What isn't often mentioned is Buckner's ability to fill his music and lyrics with such a brutal and heavy heart that critics are quick to point to his lifestyle on the road, which implies a loner mentality, and his first divorce, which fueled his second album, Devotion + Doubt. When Impasse was released in late 2002, it was widely noted in the press that Buckner and his second wife, Penny Jo Buckner, were the only two musicians on the album and that, between the recording and the release of Impasse, the pair had split. The question on everyone's lips seemed to be what the follow-up would sound like and if essentially it would be Devotion + Doubt, Pt. 2. In some ways Dents and Shells treads similar ground in that it reflects some serious life change, but the impression Buckner leaves implies more a mutual understanding of why the two split rather than the paranoia that filled Devotion + Doubt. Much can be read into the lyrics of "Invitation" and "Her" -- and even, depending on how lucid one allows himself to become, the imagery of the artwork depicting two birds, one hovering above a circle and the other a square, flying in opposite directions away from a tree -- but what remains is another release that sounds how Richard Buckner has always sounded: grizzly, conceptual, fragmented, brooding, and plaintive. Dents and Shells also represents a change in Buckner's business, having moved over to Merge for this release, and back to a larger band (misery loves company?), recalling the approach to his third album, Since. The band Buckner assembled for Dents and Shells fits his standard of choosing notable musicians, the most prominent being Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffey and Meat Puppets alum and former bassist for Bob Mould, Andrew DuPlantis. The re-emergence of pedal steel in Buckner's sonic nomenclature, played expertly by Mike Hardwick and Gary Newcomb, further solidifies the connection with Since while the liberal use of piano and organs hint at the atmosphere of The Hill with a bit more ebb and flow in style than what was exhibited on Impasse. Naturally the chosen musicians' approach to arrangements are different than previous sidemen, but Dents and Shells might best be looked at as Buckner's catalog refined into a clear and cohesive effort with which fans should be very pleased. - All Music Guide

Richard Buckner and John Langford / Sir Dark Invader vs. The Fanglord
Released 2005

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"Jon Langford met Richard Buckner in the security booth at Buck Owen's Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, CA where they had been chained together for their own protection. Mouths taped shut with duct tape, they communicated via primitive Morse code messages tapped out on each other's foreheads with fish bones. The ordeal was brief but formative, and after countless power breakfasts and costume parties from Edmonton to Austin, from Brooklyn to the Bay Area, they fell exhausted into a photobooth and saw how fantastic they looked together in neat black and white rectangles and smelling faintly of eggs. They decided to spend a year in Sally Timms' apartment making this album for release on Buried Treasure Records."

-- Captain J. Langford of the H.M.S. Mekon

Richard Buckner / Meadow
Released 09.12.2006

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"Pretty destroyed/comin' through/sees your spin/around the room...are you sitting down?" These are some of the lyrics from "Town," the opening track on Richard Buckner's Meadow, sung to an urgent progression of distorted electric and acoustic guitars and drums. As unsettling as this is, the song is chock-full of Buckner's inherent melodic sense, and it's easier to bear, somehow, this darkness and melancholy. Produced by J.D. Foster at his home studio, and at Buckner's, with some additional work done at Brooklyn Recording, this is an album of absences, of ghosts so far down the highway only their traces remain. Buckner's sense of rock & roll is infused with images from country, folk, the desert, the blues, early American popular music; virtually everywhere he's been. In some ways one can say that these ten songs are his own companion to his recording of some of the Spoon River Anthology on Hill. Each track here has a one word title except for the final one, "The Tether and the Tie." But Buckner's revisiting the cautious grief and optimism on Bloomed, too. Everything here is written in a state of absence, of the previous, the past, and how it can be reconciled. The gorgeous shimmering piano, drums and guitars intro on "Lucky" ease into the startling words: "Forgetting where the roads align, bowing out and back again/Something made it over/A chance to cross the shards you see...." These lyrics are held together by bridges and refrains that further underscore their poetry. Its strength is in the missing middle, the hole in the middle, the thing that needs to be revisited but can't quite be because it's already gone and only gray shadows remain.- All Music Guide

Scott Walker / 'Til The Band Comes In

2008-12-23T05:10:00.001-08:00

Scott Walker Per request, here's 'Til The Band Comes In by Scott Walker.

Scott Walker / 'Til The Band Comes In
Released 1970

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The 1990s' rediscovery of Scott Walker, hitherto the Pop Star That Time Forgot, was one of the most gratifying events of the mid 1990s. No man blessed with a voice like that, taste like that, talent like that, should ever have been consigned to the creaky oblivion of oldies radio. But one needs to tread carefully when plunging into the cult. Even at his best, and particularly at his most recent, Walker can be an excruciatingly difficult taste to acquire. Move into the early 1970s mid-point of his output, and oftentimes, it's simply excruciating.

Never regarded among Scott Walker's finest efforts, and a resounding flop when it first appeared in 1971, Til The Band Comes In is, retrospectively, the most shocking of all the singer's early albums. His first four, after all, are dramatic slabs of MOR-noir, crucial experiences for anybody anxious to discover Brel, Bergman and a taste for truly surreal pop tones; by their standards alone, surely album #5 should have traveled even further astray?

It doesn't. Two tracks culled for the It's Raining Today compilation, "Thanks For Chicago Mr James" and "Joe," are this album's sole concessions to such matters as reputation. A year earlier, the BBC gave Walker his own TV series, with the assurance that he would concentrate his tonsils on ballads and standards. He fulfilled the brief admirably, and released a soundtrack album to prove it. Unfortunately, Til The Band Comes In suggests he never got the sacharine out of his system. He even brings TV guest Esther Ofarim back into the action, but morbid curiosity and an incomprehensible fondness for "Cinderella Rockefeller" are surely the only reasons anyone could want to check out her solo contribution to the set.

There is a reasonable rendering of Roy Orbison's "It's Over," aptly closing the album on a merciful note, but while Walker's first four albums remain essential listening, and the TV LP at least has its moments, 'Til The Band Comes In is best left waiting at the stage door. Some "lost classics" were lost with good reason. - All Music Guide

Scott Walker / A Collection Day 2

2008-12-21T14:40:00.001-08:00

Scott Walker

Day Two of Scott Walker takes us into the territory that I adore... the 1980's to now. Throghout this period, he would release album after album of incredible material.

I promised no 70's period Walker, but I think it's important to include one comeback album with The Walker Brothers.

The Walker Brothers / Nite Flights
Released 1978

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Every once in a while, an album comes along that doesn't simply surprise you, it takes you down an alleyway, rips off all your clothes, then hares away with your socks on its head, singing selections from South Pacific. And just before it disappears from view, you notice that David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Brian Eno are cavorting alongside it, sharing the spoils and plotting further misdeeds. The fact that the original miscreant then shrugs them aside and tears off on its own is neither here nor there. What matters is, when Scott Walker set to work (somewhat reluctantly, one feels) on the third post-comeback Walker Brothers album, that was the impression which he had in mind. Of course it wouldn't quite work out like that. Whatever else they may have been, as their rebirth accelerated towards its gory end, the Walkers remained a democracy, splitting vocals and songs between the three non-siblings, and only occasionally allowing any one the upper hand. But whereas John was still locked into the art country balladeering which had always been his forte, and Gary was having trouble completing his allotment, Scott had finally realized that he had more to offer than another Kris Kristofferson outtake. As a writer, he had been all but silent since the late 1960s, when his peculiarly twisted post-pop visions sent solo album after solo album hurtling into a commercial void. Now, however, he was reaching back into that abyss, and emerged with four songs -- "Niteflights," "The Electrician," "Shut Out," and "Fat Mama Kick" -- which not only realigned his entire future career, they also twisted the on-going landscape of rock music itself. Electro-pumping soundscapes of grandiose synth, all four were clearly inspired by Bowie's recent work with Iggy and Eno. But they took that role model so much further that within the year, they themselves were delineating much of what Bowie himself would accomplish on his own next two albums (Lodger and Scary Monsters). Elsewhere, Midge Ure later confessed that "The Electrician" inspired him to write Ultravox's "Vienna," and, from there, one can project the entire new romantic/synth-pop movement from Walker's presumably unwitting role models. In a perfect world, Scott would have completed the entire album himself, or at least been given an EP to himself. But of course that was not to be, and so Nite Flights appeared with the rest of the boys, the rest of the baggage, and, though both John and Gary at least tried to keep up with their bandmate, their failure was as painful as it was inevitable. Gary's "Death of Romance" and John's "Disciples of Death" are at least vindicated by their titles, but the songs are as thin as their composers voices and could be outtakes from another album entirely. They're certainly from another planet. - All Music Guide

Scott Walker / Climate of Hunter
Released 1984

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Walker's only album of the 1980s was both a blow for artistic credibility, and a blow against most of his old fans. The voice of the balladeer was still intact, and still even crooned sometimes. But the arrangements backed brow-furrowing, obtuse lyrics with '80s-oriented rock that incorporated some quasi-classical structures. Walker was seemingly more interested in painting abstracts in which the textures counted more than the content. This made for an album which may have been a hell of a lot more interesting than '80s efforts by other '60s pop stars, but at the same time it was rather impenetrable, and one's attention tended to drift off over the course of the set. Yet it was not half as radical as the avant-garde direction he would stake out with his next album ten years later, Tilt. - All Music Guide

Scott Walker / Tilt
Released 1995

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Tilt was Scott Walker's first album following over a decade of silence, and whatever else he may have done during his exile, brightening his musical horizon was not on the agenda. Indescribably barren and unutterably bleak, Tilt is the wind that buffets the gothic cathedrals of everyone's favorite nightmares. The opening "Farmer in the City" sets the pace, a cinematic sweep that somehow maintains a melody beneath the unrelenting melodrama of Walker's most grotesque vocal ever. Seemingly undecided whether he's recording an opera or simply haunting one, Walker doesn't so much perform as project his lyrics, hurling them into the alternating maelstroms and moods that careen behind him. The effect is unsettling, to put it mildly. At the time of its release, reviews were undecided whether to praise or pillory Walker for making an album so utterly divorced from even the outer limits of rock reality, an indecision only compounded by its occasional (and bloody-mindedly deceptive) lurches towards modern sensibilities. "The Cockfighter" is underpinned by an intensity that is almost industrial in its range and raucousness, while "Bouncer See Bouncer" would have quite a catchy chorus if anybody else had gotten their hands on it. Here, however, it is highlighted by an Eno-esque esotericism and the chatter of tiny locusts. The crowning irony, however, is "The Patriot (A Single)," seven minutes of unrelenting funeral dirge over which Walker infuses even the most innocuous lyric ("I brought nylons from New York") with indescribable pain and suffering. Tilt is not an easy album to love; it's not even that easy to listen to. First impressions place it on a plateau somewhere between Nico's Marble Index and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music -- before long, familiarity and the elitist chattering of so many well-heeled admirers rendered both albums mere forerunners to some future shift in mainstream taste. And maybe that is the fate awaiting Tilt, although one does wonder precisely what monsters could rise from soil so belligerently barren. Even Metal Machine Music could be whistled, after all. - All Music Guide

Scott Walker / It's Raining Today: The Scott Walker Story (1967-70)
Released 1996

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As the first Scott Walker album to be released in the U.S., It's Raining Today: The Scott Walker Story is an adequate 17-song overview of his solo career, containing many of the highlights from his first five albums ("Jackie," "Montague Terrace (In Blue)," "The Seventh Seal," "The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)," "Big Louise," "Lights of Cincinnati," "Joanna"), while overlooking some minor gems, including "Matilda" and the B-side "The Plague." Neverthless, it remains a terrific introduction to Walker's music. - All Music Guide

Scott Walker / The Drift
Released 2006

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There were intermittent soundtrack and score contributions of varying magnitudes, as well as a couple other low-key projects, but The Drift is Scott Walker's proper follow-up to 1995's Tilt, an album that also happened to trail its predecessor by 11 years. If 1984's Climate of Hunter put the MOR in morose, Tilt avoided the road completely and went straight toward the fractured, fraught images inside Walker's nightmares. It was entirely removed from anything that could've been classified as contemporary. The Drift isn't an equally severe leap from Tilt, but it is darker, less arranged, alternately more and less dense, and ultimately more frightening. Maybe it'll make your body temperature drop a few degrees. Working with what Walker has referred to as "blocks of sound," only a few of the album's 68 minutes have any connection to rock music, and many of those minutes are part of a harrowing 9/11 song that also obliquely references "Jailhouse Rock" as Elvis Presley cries out ("I'm the only one left alive!") to his stillborn twin brother. The songs swing from hovering drones to crushing jolts. The blocks that make them, then, differ tremendously in weight, from one that could be pushed by an index finger to one that could only be hauled by a forklift. Whenever a vast shaft of space opens up, it is eventually stuffed with drastic, horrific dissonance. While a song might contain a constant element or two, they're all in a constant state of unease and flux. Walker's voice matches the activity levels of the sounds, providing a kind of paranoid croon one minute and then, during another, casting almost demonic projections that are nearly as rattling as the accompaniment. From the outset, the album seems impossibly insular and impenetrable, especially if you've been led to believe that Scott Walker's name is synonymous with recluse, but it has everything to do with real lives (or, more accurately, real deaths). Walker is acutely aware of what's going on with the world outside his supposed candle-lit bunker; he's only finding very unique (OK, bloody minded) ways to bring them up. Any mystique behind the recordings is laid to waste by one scene from a documentary, titled 30 Century Man, which shows Walker — a baseball hat-wearing sixty-something man from Ohio — instructing another man on how to thump a slab of meat. It looks and sounds absurd, of course (the participants seem to be aware of this), but then again, the results are used in a song inspired by the public executions of Benito Mussolini and his mistress. Broken spells aside, how much more bleak could this album be? None more bleak. - All Music Guide

Scott Walker / A Collection Day 1

2008-12-20T05:42:00.000-08:00

Scott Walker

What can be said about Scott Walker... from his early "Righteous Brothers" sounding recordings to the height of his career where he looked to artists such as Jacques Brel to his recent recordings on Drag City, he continued to push drama through music. Numerous artists claim Scott Walker as a major influence, from Momus to Nick Cave, from Belle and Sebastian to Antony and the Johnsons. With his songs of despair, loneliness to his love of the outsiders, Scott Walker had a major involvement in my own life. I hope you enjoy this collection of Mr. Scott Walkers recordings.

P.S. I skipped the 70's (not his finest hour).

Scott Walker / Scott
Released 09.16.1967

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Scott Walker's success as a teen idol singer of Spectorish ballads with the Walker Brothers in no way prepared listeners for the mordant, despairing lyrics of his solo debut. To compound the surprise, he does his best to imitate the vocal girth of Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra on this mix of original tunes and covers, which also features sweeping, bloated orchestral arrangements. It was hardly rock, and pop of a most oddball sort, but it found a surprisingly large audience -- in Britain, anyway, where it reached the Top Three in 1967. Poke behind the velvet curtain of the languid MOR arrangements, and one finds a surprisingly literate existentialist at the helm of these proceedings. His lyrical nuances were probably lost on his audience of predominately teenage girls, though they've earned him a small cult audience that endures to this day. Besides presenting three of his own compositions, Walker covers tunes by Weill/Mann, Tim Hardin, and Andre & Dory Previn on this album, as well as three songs by his favorite writer, Jacques Brel. Highlights include his exquisitely anguished rendition of Brel's classic "Amsterdam" and his dramatic cover of the early-'60s Toni Fisher pop ballad "The Big Hurt." - Scott Walker

The Walker Brothers / Images
Released 1967

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The Walker Brothers' third and final album of the 1960s was as wildly uneven as their other pair. Affecting pop/rock ballads and operatic crooner vehicles were interspersed with absolutely inappropriate up-tempo blue-eyed soul (always a weak point for the group) and rock covers; the lugubrious reading of "Blueberry Hill" could be the worst track cut by the trio in the '60s. However, Scott Walker's songwriting and singing exhibited a growth that foreshadowed some of the more ambitious aspects of his early solo albums. The almost classical-sounding "Orpheus" was a standout in this arena, and his "Genevieve" was a fine ballad reflecting the encroaching influence of Jacques Brel. "Experience" was a real oddity, with a German oom-pah-like arrangement backing Scott's exhortation "here's to the people who live in a shell"; he also digs into Michel Legrand's "Once Upon a Summertime" and "I Will Wait for You." The gentle John Walker-written and -sung "I Can't Let It Happen to You" is one of the Walker Brothers' best songs, and undoubtedly the best thing John Walker contributed to their records. The CD reissue adds the four tracks from their 1967 singles, including their covers of "Stay With Me Baby" and "Walking in the Rain," and a good overlooked Scott Walker-penned B-side, "Turn Out the Moon." - All Music Guide

Scott Walker / Scott 2
Released 1968

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Although Walker's second album was his biggest commercial success, actually reaching number one in Britain, it was not his greatest artistic triumph. His taste remains eclectic, encompassing Bacharach/David, Tim Hardin, and of course his main man Jacques Brel (who is covered three times on this album). And his own songwriting efforts hold their own in this esteemed company. "The Girls From the Streets" and "Plastic Palace People" show an uncommonly ambitious lyricist cloaked behind the over-the-top, schmaltzy orchestral arrangements, one more interested in examining the seamy underside of glamour and romance than celebrating its glitter. The Brel tune "Next" must have lifted a few teenage mums' eyebrows with its not-so-hidden hints of homosexuality and abuse. Another Brel tune, "The Girl and the Dogs," is less controversial, but hardly less nasty in its jaded view of romance. Some of the material is not nearly as memorable, however, and the over-the-top show ballad production can get overbearing. The album included his first Top 20 U.K. hit, "Jackie." - All Music Guide

Scott Walker / Scott 3
Released 1969

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Scott Walker's final British Top Ten album was the first to be dominated by his own songwriting. Ten of the 13 tunes on this 1969 LP are originals; the remaining three, naturally, were written by one of his chief inspirations, Jacques Brel. There are some interesting moments here. "Big Louise" talks about a hefty prostitute with shocking explicitness for a pop star album of the era. "Copenhagen" (like much of Walker's '60s work) foreshadows David Bowie. "Funeral Tango" is a particularly vicious Brel song. "30 Century Man" is an uncommonly folkish and focused tune for Walker. "We Came Through" is an oddball cavalry charge featuring one of his occasional forays into Ennio Morricone spaghetti Western-like production. The tension between Walker's dense, foreboding lyrics and orchestral production is unusual, to say the least. But too often, it's too difficult to penetrate Walker's insights through Wally Scott's string-drenched production. It shrouds the lyrics in a fog that's often too syrupy to justify the effort needed to fight through it. - All Music Guide

Scott Walker / Scott 4
Released 1969

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Walker dropped out of the British Top Ten with his fourth album, but the result was probably his finest '60s LP. While the tension between the bloated production and his introspective, ambitious lyrics remains, much of the over-the-top bombast of the orchestral arrangements has been reined in, leaving a relatively stripped-down approach that complements his songs rather than smothering them. This is the first Walker album to feature entirely original material, and his songwriting is more lucid and cutting. Several of the tracks stand among his finest. "The Seventh Seal," based upon the classic film by Ingmar Bergman, features remarkably ambitious (and relatively successful) lyrics set against a haunting Ennio Morricone-style arrangement. "The Old Man's Back Again" also echoes Morricone, and tackles no less ambitious a lyrical palette; "dedicated to the neo-Stalinist regime," the "old man" of this song was supposedly Josef Stalin. "Hero of the War" is also one of Walker's better vignettes, serenading his war hero with a cryptic mix of tribute and irony. Other songs show engaging folk, country, and soul influences that were largely buried on his previous solo albums. - All Music Guide

Scott Walker / Looking Back With Scott Walker
Released 1968

FOR THE COMPLETIST!

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When he was still in high school, Scott Walker made his first ventures into the record business as a teen idol-type singer (under the name Scott Engel) for several small labels. All of them sank without a trace at the time, although some were reissued (along with tracks that hadn't previously seen the light of day) in the latter half of the '60s, after Walker had reached stardom with the Walker Brothers. Looking Back with Scott Walker has 27 cuts from the late '50s and early '60s, and the music betrays not a shred of the one-of-a-kind talent that would generate his avid cult following. It's putrid stuff that would hold no interest whatsoever for latter-day listeners if Walker had not developed into something else entirely. He does sing well for a teenager (in a much higher voice than he would employ in the '60s), but the material (none of it penned by Walker himself) is of strictly hold-your-nose stuff. Much of it, in fact, isn't really rock at all, but son-of-Eddie Fisher-type pap, arranged with an oh-so-slight eye for the teen rock audience; some of it makes Paul Anka sound gritty by comparison. If you're a completist, it should be said, it's a well-assembled package, gathering most of his excruciatingly rare (and just plain excruciating) early sides in one place. Just beware that the relationship between this Scott Walker and the one that sang morose, complex ballads years later is nil. - All Music Guide

Godspeed You Black Emperor! / A Collection

2008-12-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

Godspeed You Black Emperor

Ahhh... Post-Rock. The short-lived movement hoping to revolutionize rock into a new genre. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be. A lot of post-rock bands are indistinguishable from each other, but there are the few that stand out. Tortoise, The Album Leaf and of course, the mother of them all, Godspeed You Black Emperor! Enjoy this collection of their recordings...

Godspeed You Black Emperor! / F# A#
Released 1998

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"We are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death." Few albums begin with such promise and foreboding, but this first full-length from Canadian genius collective Godspeed You Black Emperor! succeeds in the first few moments. F# A# (Infinity) contains three compositions that run the gamut from grotesque to sublime. The term "composition" seems an appropriate one to use as this band does not write songs. Each piece is at least 14 minutes in length, consisting of three to four sections. The band, a nine-member unit consisting of guitar, drums, bass, strings, keyboard, marimbas, and woodwinds, intersperses voice-over narrative with sprawling instrumental melodies. The arrangements move slowly, building from hushed silence to cathartic crescendo and back again. The narratives that accompany the music meditate on the corruption of the American government and the seeming emptiness of the postmodern era. At times, it seems that the music might offer hope, but alternatively, the haunting melodies can serve to emphasize the confusion encountered in these stories. As "Dead Flag Blues," the album's first track, unfolds, the speaker's voice is undercut by a poignant string melody and the piece builds to a beautiful peak. "Dead Flag Blues" is a four-part arrangement in an apparently symphonic pattern. A theme is stated, followed by a quiet interlude out of which the tension builds to disaster/epiphany and finally a quiet reprise of the initial melody is given. The albums second piece, "East Hastings," follows a similar pattern, producing brilliant results. "Providence" is the album's final piece, a bit longer than the others, but lacking the consistency and unity of its counterparts. The music on this album is unique and powerful. One would be hard-pressed to find any imitators of this revolutionary musical form created by GYBE! Its origins are as much avant-classical as they are rock & roll, and the band has achieved a true synthesis of the two forms, expanding them to new boundaries. This music is inherently inexplicable, and this is its beauty. - Marc Gillman, All Music Guide

Godspeed You Black Emperor! / Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada
Released 1999

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Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada may last only half an hour, but in that time it imparts an internal experience akin to that of watching a cast-of-thousands Hollywood epic. Godspeed You Black Emperor! are a Montreal-based nine-piece ensemble that uses massed strings, ringing electric guitars, and martial drums to evoke endless vistas and stir strong emotions. "Moya" opens with a solemn drone overlaid with resonant violin overtones, then builds to a crashing, unapologetically melodramatic climax. The CD's second (and final) selection, "Blaise Bailey Finegan III," is more ambitious. Like a director who grabs his audience's tear ducts with both fists, the group inserts field recordings of a ranting paranoiac between sweeping spaghetti-Western passages that rise to exhilarating multiple crescendos, then fall away to ghostly, echoed violins. --Bill Meye, Amazon.com

Godspeed You Black Emperor! / Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Released 2000

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Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, the much-anticipated follow-up to Godspeed You Black Emperor's Slow Riot, is a double-disc achievement of four works (each with multiple parts): "Storm," "Static," "Sleep," and "Antennas to Heaven." It is a windfall for any fan of ambient pop, orchestral rock, space rock, or simply lush string arrangements who understands how powerful love, melancholy, and frustration can be. The main complaint voiced by critics of Godspeed's music is that their works just repeat the same pattern: start out sparse and slow, build-build-build, crescendo. While there are certainly crescendos, there is no such predictable pattern repeated among the works on Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven -- it's loaded with dynamics, unexpected sections, strong emotions and beauty.

The album opener, "Storm," is a leap for GYBE! that, alone, makes this release worth getting. It's a rapturous work that rises with a potent melancholy, driven by heartrending emotions. "Storm" vents a powerful frustration (each listener can insert their own reasons why) with majestic screams of strings, guitars, and layers, resulting in a climactic and passionate soaring. It eventually winds down into an exhausted aftermath of piano, underlying drones, and frustrated rants. The second piece, "Static," is a wandering, isolationist piece of bleak expanses shaded with darker emotions, but the remaining two works raise the album back up to the impressive standard set by the opening cut, though with less furor and even more loveliness. "Sleep" opens with an elderly gentleman reminiscing about Coney Island, and his frank and amusing narration briefly recalls the recordings of David Greenberger and scenes from the documentary Vernon, FL. This narration is followed by a slow and melodic piece featuring a pseudo-theremin effect amidst all of the other instrumentation. "Antennas to Heaven" opens with someone playing acoustic guitar, singing "What'll We Do with the Baby-O," soon washed over with sound, which then gives way to a brief chorus of glockenspiels, and on.

During most of Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, musical and emotional opposites alternate as regularly, and naturally, as breathing: delicate string work and rock-out guitar and drums, spoken word and walls of sound, gracious and possessed, tip-toes and cliff-diving, dark hallways and blinding sunshine. - Joslyn Lane, All Music Guide

Gospeed You Black Emperor! / Yanqui U.X.O.
Released 2002

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Montreal politico-art/music terrorist unit Godspeed You Black Emperor! has been working on the material for Yanqui U.X.O. (unexploded ordnance-landmines) for the past four years. Some of the material predates Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven and even Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada. Recorded with Steve Albini, the nonet that is Godspeed has issued its most mysterious recording yet. The sound over these three long cuts, like all of the band's recordings, develops slowly over time and creates layers of dynamic tension that expresses itself in waves and off-kilter, shimmering flows. Usually these elements resolve themselves in earth- and ear-shattering, dissonant intensity that leaves the listener emotionally drained — especially live. But here, a more minimal and — dare I say — quiet approach is used. For over 75 minutes, no "found" voices are wafting through the mix like displaced ghosts at a musical inquiry into the nature of mass control and fascism. The ghosts here are not disembodied or free to roam; they are contained within the vibrational structures and harmonic encounters along the dynamic field itself. There is more melody, not less; there are more sections in each piece, complex parts of compositions that articulate themselves more slowly and pronouncedly. Above all, there is beauty, aching, anguished beauty created by dissonance between electric guitars, keyboards, and a string section propelled by a drum kit that is barely contained within the frame of the music. Tonal extensions of simple melodic structures create new melodic fragments that are incorporated into an already growing mass of tension that is alleviated not by force, but by engaging silence as a compositional and improvisational tool. This is evident in all three tunes, but particularly in the second section of "9-15-00," which begins by stepping out of a void into a fullness of color and texture that eventually raises the tension bar over 22 minutes without resolution. For the second section, spare fragments and chords are placed carefully next to the altar of silence and engage it in dialogue, in contradiction, and in echoing its own concerns at how it is possible in our world, very possible, that at the whim of some fool, all of this — the music; it's haunted, hunted melody; the veritable grain of its voice; along with all life — could enter into the silence forever. A close inspection of the record cover with its photograph of bombs in free-fall and its indicting chart shows concretely how the major record labels are all involved with the creators and purveyors of weapons of mass destruction. This may be melancholy music, but this is a dark time. At least it isn't music of mourning — yet. And for the record, though the stupid critical backlash against Godspeed You Black Emperor! has already begun, the band is making the finest music in the history of its collective. This is music for a different kind of engagement — that of becoming aware of tyranny and disappearance. - Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

Godspeed You Black Emperor! / Tiny Silver Hammers EP
Released 2004

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These 2 tracks eventually became Redeemer=Motherfuckers on the Yanqui U.X.O. LP, but I think there are some slight variations here....

Godspeed You Black Emperor! / Live at The Iceland Opera House
Recorded 03.13.2002

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A great recording of Godspeed live. While their records are mesmerizing, nothing compares to seeing them perform live. Transcedental.

Tracks:

1. Storm/Dead Methany/Tazer Floyd
2. Tiny Silver Hammers/World Police
3. Moya

Godspeed You Black Emperor! / Live at the Scala, London
Recorded 11.20.2000

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Another great recording of their performances live.

Tracks:

1. 12-28-99
2. Gathering Storm
3. John Hughes
4. World Police
5. Tazer Floyd
6. Blaise Bailey Finnegan III
7. 3rd Part
8. Dead Flag Blues (Outro)

Nina Nastasia / A Collection

2008-12-03T04:23:00.000-08:00

Nina Nastasia

The beautiful, haunting sounds of Nina Nastasia seems like an appropriate post on this cold gloomy day (where I am). With the growing number of "singer-songwriters" arriving into a crowded a genre, it's a joy to hear the ones that truly standout. With fans like John Peel and Steve Albini, you know there's something special in her sound. Enjoy this collection of Nina's recordings and please support the artist!

Nina Nastasia / Dogs
Released 2000

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Nina Nastasia's first outing is a captivating, melancholic affair of precision and emotional clamor and stands as a fantastic sibling to her essential sophomore album, The Blackened Air. Dogs has a calming atmosphere, occasionally flirting with dissonance, and stands as a remarkable work of minimal building by repetition to support Nastasia's pitch-perfect voice. It is a rare group who can pull off such a fluid shift from composed sophistication to raw, dangerous, and sinister energy and not only continue to be engaging, but make ascending demands so confidently as to require full attention for the span of 40 minutes without interruption. Hypnotic, luscious, and timeless, Dogs is an album whose freshness and immediacy will never falter. - Gregory McIntosh, All Music Guide

Nina Nastasia / The Blackened Air
Released 2002

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Just how beautiful is The Blackened Air? Remarkably beautiful, though it's far from a smooth train ride through the rustic southern town where it seemingly takes place. Chunks of falling ice nearly take the lives of pigeons, peeping Toms leer outside windows, communication between two lovers breaks down, and the days pass by slowly, only to repeat themselves over and over and over again. The clouds look more like coal than cotton, and one of the protagonists is capable of drowning the town's people in her tears. Backed by a skilled cast of musicians who take on the standard rock band instrumentation plus bowed saw, accordion, violin, cello, and mandolin, singer/songwriter/guitarist Nina Nastasia spins her lazy, elegantly adorned tales of rural life with a voice that effortlessly slips into your ears. She rarely belts it out, because her lithe voice is perfectly capable of gaining attention when it's just above a whisper. In fact, when her voice is just a little louder than audible, she's at her most powerful. Lines like "I want you...I want you...I want to strike you" fall from her mouth as if she doesn't want to wake the slumbering partner lying next to her, conflicted between lust and dread. This record flows so easily that it sounds as if it made itself. However, engineer Steve Albini should be commended for making this record sound as if it was birthed in a spacious, creaky farmhouse. Intimate, delicate, and laced with greatness, Nastasia's second release is one of those records that only takes one listen to be justly evaluated as special and timeless. The pain is sweet. - Andy Kellman, All Music Guide

Nina Nastasia / Run to Ruin
Released 06.03.2003

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For those who came to know each syllable and every note of The Blackened Air, Nina Nastasia's third album will take a little getting used to. Released less than a year after its predecessor, Run to Ruin is a much more skeletal and considerably starker album in comparison -- it's also nearly a quarter of an hour shorter in length. Even though the majority of it was recorded in France during the month of June, its lulling tempo, sparse sound, and tangible atmosphere all leave the effect that it was actually made during an extremely hot and humid August afternoon, somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Again, Nastasia and her guitar are backed by an assortment of drums, basses, pianos, accordions, violins, cellos, and banjos. Many of the musicians here also played on The Blackened Air; the Dirty Three's Jim White provides the drums instead of Jay Bellerose. While the head count of those involved is great in number, the notes they play are few and crucial. The first four minutes of the "The Body," a quiet but lyrically jarring song, consist only of a nearly silent Nastasia and her delicate guitar. Just after she completes her final line, a violent stirring of strings enters that comes closer to matching the nature of the opening verse's lyrics: "My blood for you, my lover's bruise/My clothes are scattered, my skull is fractured." The empty spaces and brief running time might make the album seem as if it doesn't contain enough substance to absorb. That's not the case. None of these eight songs sound unfinished in the least, and whatever spaces the arrangements leave enable the imagination to play as much of a role as the instrumentation. As for the running time, well, you'll just be more likely to play it from start to finish. - Andy Kellman, All Music Guide

Nina Nastasia / On Leaving
Released 10.03.2006

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It's been three years since Nina Nastasia released Run to Ruin on Touch & Go. The indie label also re-released her 1999 debut Dogs, making On Leaving her first new recording in three years and her debut on Fat Cat. While Nastasia is well-known for her minimal arrangements and Southern Gothic approach to purging hurt, rage, and disappointment, it was always held in beautifully by her elegantly simple but arresting voice. On Leaving is different. The charts have been stripped back to the very bone here. A piano, a small string section instead of a bass, the acoustic guitar, and Jim White's (Dirty Three) drumming, make for a small, spiny recording that is wrapped in notions of restlessness, passage, travel, change. Memory takes its place at the head of a labyrinthine road beginning with the album's opening track, "In Jim's Room." A single fingerpicked guitar playing an abbreviated chord sequence ushers us in as White's tom toms underscore Nastasia's vocal lines. The viola and cello (arranged by Dylan Willemsa) play shimmering sounds, rather like melodic accents slipping through the lyric: "For a month I wasn't me/A thief would wait for me outside/There were nights I wouldn't let him in..." It's remembering as a cinematic act, slides flashing through, juxtaposing themselves against an undefined present. In "Counting Up Your Bones," her lone guitar picked hesitantly creates a space for Steven Beck's piano, and Nastasia's voice, full of heat, ushers in a love song that reveals the present tense, but it's so far under the derma, it fills the space between derma and blood. "...Your bones glide in/a silent tear, that mingles marrow when you disappear/A dance we weave beneath our skin/I keep you in me where the breath had been..." the guitar gets strummed, the piano becomes a percussion instrument, White's snare pops and the strings support her revelation of a love so utterly close, so completely smashface enmeshed, it sounds like she'll stop at any moment. On Leaving is brief, a mere 33 minutes, but in its sparse presentation where the singer's voice is the chief instrument, it would be almost unbearable to hear any more. Let it be said that this is not mere confessional songwriting. It doesn't fit there; but it does create a new place in the listener, one where lines, a piano chord,a skitter of a brushed snare or a swooping line by a cello or viola, puts you in the singer's world, in her very frame of execution, and it becomes breathless. On Leaving is a deeply poetic record that doesn't need to wrap itself in anger any longer, because genuine sadness has taken its place. But it's not only the songs that set On Leaving apart -- not only from her peers, but from her own catalog as well -- engineered and co-produced by Steve Albini (Nastasia and her partner Kennan Gudjonsson were the other producers) creates a simple clarity and sonic presence so that these elements also become part of the songs themselves. While it's true, those who have followed her brief career have been utterly taken with the searing honesty in her songs, virtually none were prepared for something so utterly and skeletally and hauntingly comely. - Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

Nina Nastasia / Acoustic BCB Radio Sessions
Recorded 10.20.2006

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A great live radio session recorded at the Bradford Community Broadcasting center. Featuring songs from On Leaving and Dogs, it's a chance to hear an even more intimate Nina Nastasia.

Nina Nastasia and Jim White / You Follow Me
Released 05.28.2007

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What do you get when you add Dirty Three/Tren Brothers drummer Jim White to a Nina Nastasia record? It all depends on what you are expecting to hear, of course. White was part of the spiny little band that accompanied Nastasia on her initial Fat Cat offering On Leaving in 2006. While that record was skeletal, this one is positively minimal, yet in some ways it is also bigger. With only White's syncopated, iconoclastic beatmaking as a foil, Nastasia is challenged to get her songs across with her guitar playing carrying more of the weight. White is not an accompanist here, he is a collaborator, even though he didn't write the songs. In just 31 minutes the pair look into the strange shapes and images that are at the root of her mostly hummable songs and stretch them to the breaking point. Steve Albini recorded the set at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, and his trademark is on White's drum sound, full of bassy tom toms and wispy brushwork, even as his bass drum and his rim shots color the end of each line Nastasia sings, and creates breaks in the heart of lyrics to underscore a line or two, offering a portal to the meaning of her sometimes elliptical lyrics, or providing a tunnel into the emotion in a song. Topically, You Follow Me has reflections on family, broken commitments, memory -- bitter and bittersweet -- and death. These are bright and shiny subjects to be sure, but Nastasia's voice emits tenderness no matter what she is singing, creating a sense of equanimity in all of it. Her notions of regret, reverence, anger and fear are all offered matter of factly, yet there is no doubt of her devotion to the truth a song dictates. White gets that vocal instrument, and he does his best to point toward it in every song. - Thom Jurek, All Music GuideNina Nastasia / What She Doesn't Know Single
Released 02.25.2008

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Following 2007's stunning 'You Follow Me' album collaboration with Australian drummer Jim White, Nina Nastasia returns with a brand new 7" single, 'What She Doesn't Know'. Maintaining the pared-back airs of that album, the record features two previously unreleased songs, each showcasing the stunning vocal talents and high quality songwriting that are Nina's hallmark.

Both tracks here were recorded with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago, during the time Nina recorded 2006's 'On Leaving' album (her first release for FatCat). As Nina explains, "We recorded a bunch of songs we'd been playing at the time. Some were meant for future records. ['What She Doesn't Know' and 'Your Red Nose'] came from that pile and seemed to be a good complement to 'You Follow Me'." Both tracks featuring on this great AA-side single feature the same stripped-down instrumentation (drums, guitar, vocal) as 'You Follow Me', whilst each was recorded with a different drummer.

Nina Nastasia / Live at the Roundhouse
Recorded 08.13.2008

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This came from the excellent blog: Love Live! Botolegs From Buckleberry. Check it out here!

A great recent recording from Nina that highlights some of her best songs as well as a couple new/unreleased pieces.

Belle and Sebastian / Live!

2008-12-02T05:13:00.000-08:00

Belle and Sebastian

Well... I'm back from a short holiday with some great recordings of Belle and Sebastian over the past decade. Great recordings by a great band.

Belle and Sebastian / Bowlie Weekender
Recorded 04.25.1999

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The Bowlie Weekender was a one-off music festival curated by Belle & Sebastian at the Pontin's Holiday camp in Camber Sands, Sussex between Friday 23rd and Sunday 25th of April 1999. This recording was broadcast on Radio One. A great soundboard recording of their 'early' years.

1. Slow Graffiti
2. Seeing Other People
3. Dog on Wheels
4. The Wrong Girl
5. Winter Wooskie
6. If You're Feeling Sinister
7. I Don't Love Anymore
8. Paper Boat
9. The Boy With An Arab Strap
10. Photo Jenny
11. Lazy Painter Jane

Belle and Sebastian / Random Live Audience Recording
Recorded 09.10.2001 (?)

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Don't know much about this recording, but the sound quality is fair... the show is great... and the selection of songs has some of my faves.

Belle and Sebastian / Live on KCRW
Recorded 08.26.2003

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A great radio performance by Belle and Sebastian on the eve of Dear Catastrophe Waitress release.

1. Intro
2. Lord Anthony
3. Women's Realm
4. Step Into My Office, Baby
5. Interview
6. Scooby Driver
7. A Travellin' Light
8. Judy and the Dream of Horses
9. The State I Am In

Belle and Sebastian / Live at the Hollywood Bowl
Recorded 07.06.2006

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A decent recording of their amazing performance with the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. Holds a special place for me, as I was at the show. Wish there was a soundboard recording from this one... but this will do.

1. Nic Harcourt Intro
2. Fuck This Shit
3. I Fought In A War
4. La Pastie De La Bourgeoisie
5. The Model
6. Sukie in the Graveyard
7. Don't Leave The Light On Baby
8. I'm Waking Up To Us
9. Jonathan David
10. If She Wants Me
11. Lord Anthony
12. Dear Catastrophe Waitress
13. If You're Feeling Sinister
14. You're Cover's Blown
15. Dirty Dream #2
16. I'm A Cuckoo
17. the Wrong Girl
18. If You Find Yourself Caught In Love
19. Sleep The Clock Around
20. Encore Break
21. The State I Am In
22. The Boy With The Arab Strap

Belle and Sebastian / Tom Robinson Session
Recorded January 2006

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Wow! I love this recording. Essentially a stripped down acoustic recording of four of their songs... it has a lo-fi feeling that shows what their songs would have been without the production of their later recordings... and you know what. I love it! These are some of my least favorite songs in their original recordings (except the excellent Get Me Away From Here), but here... I wish there was more.

1. Sukie in the Graveyard
2. The Blues are Still Blue
3. Funny Little Frog
4. Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying

The Fall / The Brix Years 1983 - 1989

2008-11-23T05:23:00.000-08:00

The Fall

For being one of the most prolific bands in history (kind of like the indie equivalent of The Grateful Dead), the period when Mark E. Smith found love and got married was also their best. Brix E. Smith brought a new pop sensibility to The Fall from throughout the 1980's. These are definitely my favorite albums by The Fall. I hope you enjoy.

The Fall / Perverted by Language
Released 1983

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Punk may have been the initial spark for the Fall, but by 1983 they had made it clear that whatever trend was next was not for them. Brix Smith made her debut with the band on Perverted by Language, helping to introduce the slightly more pop-friendly era of the group with another fine album. She takes lead vocals at various points throughout, notably "Hotel Bloedel," while her husband plays violin and adds extra spoken word thoughts along the way. The hints of strange beauty that the Fall can sometimes let into its world appear here more than once -- whether it's Brix's influence or not isn't clear, and why not? "Garden" still hits hard while using a softer chime at its heart, while "Hexen Definitive" is almost a country (and western) stroll. Even for all the slightly more accessible touches for a wider audience, the Fall remain the Fall. "Smile" shows the band's abilities at tense audio drama excellently, a relentless, steady build with the Steve and Paul Hanley and Karl Burns rhythm section leading the way, winding up to a total explosion that never comes. Smith's increasingly frenetic vocals match the looming dread of the track to a T. "Neighbourhood of Infinity," notable for its appearance on Palace of Swords Reversed, crops up here in a studio take, again a sequel of sorts to "The Man Whose Head Expanded." Musically it hits its own stride, another of the many motorik-tinged tunes that helped give the Fall its own particular edge ("I Feel Voxish" also fills that bill, and quite well at that). "Eat Y'Self Fitter," touching on everything from meeting heroes (maybe) to returning late rental videos, makes for a great start to things, an endlessly cycling rockabilly chug with extra keyboard oddities and sudden music-less exchanges for the chorus. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

The Fall / Wonderful and Frightening World Of
Released 1984

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The Fall made the leap to a semi-major label -- Beggars Banquet -- with The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, hooking up with noted producer John Leckie to create another smart, varied album. Contemporaneous with the slightly friendlier "Oh! Brother" and "C.R.E.E.P." singles without actually including them, Wonderful and Frightening World makes few concessions to the larger market -- every potential hook seemed spiked with the band's usual rough take-it-or-leave-it stance. Mark E. Smith's audible, tape-distorting spit on the descending chord blast of "Elves" -- already spiked with enough vocal craziness as it is -- gives a sense of where the album as a whole aims. Brix Smith co-writes about half the tracks, creating a strong partnership with many highlights. It may start with a semi-low-key chant, but when "Lay of the Land" fully kicks in, it does just that, Craig Scanlon in particular pouring on the feedback at the end over the clattering din. Smith sounds as coruscating and side-splittingly hilarious as ever, depicting modern Britain with an eye for the absurdities and failures (and crucially, no empathy -- it's all about a gimlet eye projected at everyone and everything). Two further standouts appear on the second half -- "Slang King," a snarling portrayal of a cool-in-his-mind dude and his increasingly pathetic life, and the concluding "Disney's Dream Debased." Though unquestionably the most conventionally attractive tune on the album, ringing guitars and all, Smith's lyrics portray a Disneyland scenario in hell, however softly delivered. Elsewhere, Gavin Friday from the Virgin Prunes takes a bow with his own unmistakable, spindly vocals on the trebly Krautrock chug of "Copped It" and the slightly more brute rhythm of "Stephen Song." [The CD version, in an admirable move by Beggars Banquet, contains seven extra tracks to fill the disc out, including "Oh! Brother" and "C.R.E.E.P.," along with associated B-sides and the Call for Escape Route EP.] - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

The Fall / This Nation's Saving Grace
Released 1985

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"Feel the wrath of my Bombast!" exhorts Smith on this follow-up to their groundbreaking Wonderful and Frightening World of... the Fall, and this collection is ample proof of the pure confidence the group had at this time. Stompers like "Barmy," "What You Need," and the mighty "Gut of the Quantifier" are all led by Brix Smith's twanging lead hooks, filled by distorted guitars and bludgeoning drums, on top of which Smith rants with conviction. But it's the departures from this sound that mark the real interest here: The synth-driven "L.A." looks ahead to the Fall's experiments with electronica; "Paint Work" is an impressionist piece interrupted by Smith accidentally erasing over some of the track at home; and "I Am Damo Suzuki," a tribute to Can's lead singer, which borrows its arrangement from several of that group's songs. The Fall sound mysterious, down-to-earth, and hilarious all at the same time. The CD reissue adds the singles "Cruiser's Creek" and "Couldn't Get Ahead" as well as their B-sides making this an essential purchase. - Ted Mills, All Music Guide

The Fall / Bend Sinister
Released 1986

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Again working with John Leckie on production, the Fall's third Beggars album, Bend Sinister, was a distinctly down affair -- not that the Fall were ever a shiny happy band, of course, but both music and lyrics seemed like a darker corner to dwell in. Happily there was no worry that the Fall would ever go goth; one suspects Mark E. Smith would rather have his tongue removed. Still, opening track "R.O.D." makes for a distinctly lower-key start in comparison to recent leadoffs like "Lay of the Land" and "Bombast," almost sounding a bit like fellow Mancunian legends Joy Division, Smith's lyric his own depressing vision of a beast slouching toward Bethlehem. Leckie's production emphasizes space in the recording, while the band as a whole sounds generally more deliberate and understated, even Craig Scanlon's guitar not leaping quite as much to trebly life as is normally the case. Songs like "Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers" favor Steve Hanley's bass work as much as anything, while the almost industrial/hip-hop beat of "US 80's-90's" sets the tone for a glowering vision of the States from, as Smith puts it, "the big-shot original rapper." Elsewhere, there's Smith's vision of the eternal outsider comes to life once again -- "Shoulder Pads 1," a hardly disguised sneer against being surrounded by people who "can't tell Lou Reed from Doug Yule," for all that there's a slightly quirky arrangement thanks to Simon Rogers' keyboards. Still, there are certainly moments of sheer fun -- in keeping with the band's regular ear for good cover versions, this time around psych-era obscurities the Other Half get the nod with a brisk rip through the obvious drug references of "Mr. Pharmacist." Brix again shares vocal leads with Smith at various points, notably "Dktr. Faustus," a distinctly reworked version of that particular legend that turns into a frantic, audibly unhappy dance groove. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

The Fall / The Frenz Experiment
Released 1988

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After the dark morass of Bend Sinister, the sound of 1988's Frenz Experiment comes as a bit of a shock. The arrangements are spare and broken down to the essentials, with the distorted guitars brought down low and Wolstencroft's drums high in the mix. Marcia Schofield had also joined the band to add keyboards. With most of the songs credited only to Smith himself, this could be seen as a solo album of sorts, or an indication of some rift within the group -- it certainly doesn't translate into the music. For the first time too, his vocals are loud and clear, though certainly not comprehensible; "Bremen Nacht" hints at some sort of run in with a ghost in Germany, "Athlete Cured," with its Spinal Tap-borrowed riff, tells of a "German athletic star" made ill from unusual circumstances -- the narrative turns strange, then funny until wandering off, a classic Smith tactic. Their cover of the Kinks' "Victoria" marked the Fall's first entry into the British charts, but also fit in with Smith's continuing explorations of Britain's history and how it translates into issues of class identity. The CD contains their other two singles from this time -- "Hit the North" and a cover of R. Dean Taylor's "There's a Ghost in My House," which the group makes their own -- plus several B-sides. - Ted Mills, All Music Guide

The Fall / I Am Kurious Oranj
Released 1988

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The last thing most Fall fans expected the group to do in 1988 was provide music for a ballet, but in fact this is what they did. Of course, it helped that the Michael Clark company of dancers were some of the most avant-garde at the time in Britain and were inspired originally by the Fall's "Hey! Luciani" single. The concept, very loosely, centers around William and Mary of Orange, and finds Smith arranging William Blake's "Jerusalem" for the band, adding his own lyrics ("It was the fault of the government," providing ironic contrast to the self-sufficiency espoused in Blake). As a cohesive Fall album it fails: The strongest tracks are those that have little to do with the ballet (and are available elsewhere). "New Big Prinz" updates their own "Hip Priest" into one of their heaviest tracks, full of threat and wonder. "Cab It Up!" features all forward momentum and jingling keyboards. For the first time tracks felt like filler, and indeed they were. The CD booklet contains photographs from the performance full of giant pop-art hamburgers and cans of baked beans, suggesting I Am Kurios Oranj would have been more interesting to see than hear. - Ted Mills

The Fall / Seminal Live
Recorded 1988 - 1989

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The Fall's contractual obligation album. With Brix leaving (or left, depending on your history) the group, this is a hastily assembled selection of what sound like Frenz Experiment outtakes and nine live tracks, their last for Beggars Banquet. These opening five tracks would have made a nice EP supporting the single "Deadbeat Descendant," the first song featured on the album. They're not among their best, but "H.O.W. (History of the World)" has a certain grim stateliness to it, with a grungy bassline by Hanley leading the group. "Pinball Machine" continues in Smith's long line of rockabilly covers. The remaining live tracks are competent and follow their studio counterparts well enough, but nothing more. - Ted Mills, All Music Guide

The Fall / I Am As Pure As Oranj
Recorded 1988

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This is a bootleg-level release (supposedly given the OK by the Fall's former guitarist, Steve Hanley) of an August 1988 Fall concert in Edinburgh, Scotland, during which the Fall were accompanied by the Royal Dutch Ballet. Perhaps the visual component added some interest to the show, but on its own, I Am as Pure as Oranj is merely a warts-and-all document of an OK but not particularly brilliant late-'80s concert by a group that was capable of both much better and much worse. The ballet dancers were probably used to good effect on the extended versions of "Hip Priest," "Kurious Oranj," and "Jerusalem" (all of them well over six minutes, the first nearly seven and a half), but on their own, they sound like plodding, uninspired jams without even Mark E. Smith's usual acid-tongued ranting to sustain interest. The sound quality is OK, but only the most die-hard purists will be interested. - Stewart Mason, All Music Guide

The Fall / Oswald Defense Lawyer
Releaed 1996

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(editor's note - while definitely not one of their best releases, it does have some interesting artifcats from the "Brix" era)

The third of the Receiver compilations consisting of live tracks and outtakes, this disc has a little more cohesion than the others, keeping in with one era of the Fall -- the Frenz Experiment tour, it seems -- and leaving all the tracks live (or at least live in the studio). Possibly one outcome of listening to these uninspiring run-throughs is an appreciation of the sound any producer has brought to the Fall. "Bremen Nacht" and "Big New Prinz," so devastating on record, sound tinny and shambolic here. Like on the other Receiver comps, the authenticity of the "live" tracks are debatable and the whole enterprise feels like some barely legal bootleg. - All Music Guide

Swans / The Early (Very Dark) Years

2008-11-20T05:27:00.000-08:00

Swans

I don't think there are words that can accurately describe the Swans' music. N0-Wave. Yep... but not noisy in the same way as Sonic Youth. Industrial. Yep... but not quite as mechanical as Throbbing Gristle. Goth. Sort-of... but not glam or melodic like Bauhaus.

Their unique sound transformed over the years from the haunting existentialism of their early records to the beauty of their 'Saved' years and back to darkness through the latter years. Here's a collection of their early recordings leading up to their first spiritual album, Children of God. I'd say... "Enjoy!", but I'm not sure if this music was made to be truly enjoyed.

Swans / Filth + EP#1
Recorded 1982 - 1983

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Swans' first release was anything but the slow-motion death march which would rapidly become the band's early raison d'être. Gira's lyrics certainly aren't pretty; the urban angst and alienation level ratchets up high with images of dogs' hearts pumping blood on sidewalks and anonymous, violent sex, though all delivered in a slightly aggrieved and quietly mixed rather than soul-destroyed tone. However, the music also often has a quick, sharp energy to it, rather unlike the 2/2 tempos in the offing. An unavoidable influence in the crisp, echoed production and general feel is Joy Division, a debt not repaid fully until Swans' dual covers of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" in 1988. Hints of other post-punk and no wave peers creep in as well, a feeling especially created by Daniel Galli-Duani's saxophone, which generally avoids random skronk for careful shading and atmosphere. Bob Pezzola's guitar work is the standout here, though; his Bernard Sumner-ish art-metal chiming is quite good, but utterly unlike the blasts of sound Norman Westberg would soon be unleashing in his place. On balance, this is a fair release covering a sound that Swans would never again revisit.

With only Gira and Kane carrying over from the first EP's lineup, the truly bizarre thing about Swans' first full release is that, in its own angry beyond all anger way, you can actually dance to it at very brief points. Admittedly, spasmodic jerking-around might be the more expected response (and given that Gira physically attacked an audience member at a show around the time of this album's release for "getting into it too much," maybe the safer one). But the point remains that the overwhelming angst-and-death on songs like "Big Strong Boss," with lyrics like "Cut my throat, kill me snake, do what I say, you're the boss, " sometimes gets married close enough to a groove that it's almost surprising. For the most part, though, the drums (courtesy in part of future Young Gods producer Roli Mosimann) pound away almost like a ritual, doomy bass and grinding guitars sound like prime Black Sabbath at even danker levels of destruction, and Gira sounds like he's ripping his soul from his throat every time another lyric is half-barked, half-wailed, sometimes with a little electronic distortion help. As might be guessed, the only light in the lyrical tunnels comes from an oncoming train, as song titles like "Power for Power" and "Weakling" would indicate; even "Thank You" has lines such as "This smells sour, burn my face." Norman Westberg's guitar work has a definite power to it, and occasional studio manipulations like the chopped up/sped up "Freak" keep things interesting, but by the end it all gets a bit much. In small doses, though, it's great, and early Swans really is like little else on the planet before or since. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Swans / Cop
Recorded 1984

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Consisting of a four-piece lineup -- Mosimann on drums, Westberg on guitar, Harry Crosby on bass, and naturally Gira on vocals -- on their second full album Swans add even more vicious crunch to their basic approach, resulting in quite possibly one of the darkest recordings ever done. Gira's words come across a little more forcefully and cleanly than before, and the existential horror shows that he details, almost always phrased in confessional/accusatory "I - you" terms, make up in sheer power what they lack in any kind of subtlety. For example, typical lyrics, from the snarling "Your Property" state: "I give you money -- you're superior. I don't exist. You control me." Matching his at-times unearthly moans and cries perfectly, the pounding music mostly consists of one slow, descending chord progression or a repetitive series of one or two notes after another, extending the power of loud feedback and amped drums to indescribably forceful effect. The opening grind alone on "Why Hide," as Westberg stretches out his strings behind Mosimann and Crosby's pummeling, is crushing enough before Gira delivers a harrowing vocal. The most legendary track from the album is the title cut; as a vicious anti-boys-in-blue rant finds its equal only in N.W.A.'s "Fuck Da Police." With such thoroughly bilious Gira lines as "Nobody rapes you like a cop in jail" providing the mental pictures, a slow, steady punch of music gets slowly but surely more aggressive and destructive as the song unfolds to its raging conclusion. Jim Thirlwell, aka Foetus, helps contribute to the apocalyptic noise on the release, but you somehow figure that Swans would have reached this state quite well on their own regardless. Ugly, compelling, and overpowering, Cop remains the pinnacle of Swans' brutal early days. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Swans / Greed
Released 1986

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Featuring two bassists -- Crosby and newcomer Algis Kizys -- and no less than three drummers -- Gonzalez, Ted Parsons, and Ivan Nahem -- Greed marks the initial turning point of Swans towards more varied and ultimately even more astonishing musical heights than the early records, which were aggressive beyond all words, ever indicated. The opening track "Fool" demonstrates as much, being almost wholly piano-based, though the portentous echo of the notes along with grinding guitar noises underlying Gira's ever-more commanding, raspy singing (as opposed to shouting) mean that it's all still very much Swans. An increasing spaciousness and sense of more stripped-down arrangements also show up, along with some slightly more active tempos. "Anything for You" has Gira's strangled wail of earlier days, but the music is a little calmer, a little more restrained; "Stupid Child" uses a delicate playing of cymbals as effectively as the expected slow percussion rumbles. Lyrically, unsurprisingly, things are little different from before, with images of utter self-loathing, power, domination, and economic corrosion of the soul dominating Gira's words, though at times interesting new elements creep in as well. On "Heaven," for instance, Gira resignedly sings of a "heaven" which could be that of dying victims or of exhausted lovers, a fascinating double image. Jarboe makes her presence known on a number of songs, most effectively on the title track, where her wordless background vocals constantly loop in and out of the mix (notably, despite the title, Gira here sings of emotional isolation rather than the monetary greed expected given such other songs on the album as "Money Is Flesh," a slightly calmer semi-cousin to "Time Is Money (Bastard)"). - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Swans / Holy Money
Released 1986

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Also recorded at the sessions for Greed and A Screw (the album actually contains the "Holy Money" mix of said single), Holy Money is logically similar in general tone and feel to those releases, mixing the established Swans blueprint of lyrical and musical extremity with an ever-broader range and, at times, a broader delicacy than before. "A Hanging" helps to showcase Jarboe's increasing role with the band. Her striking, semi-gospel wails mix with the storm-cloud-laden music, which builds into a massive tribal drum pattern, while Gira sings of self-sacrifice to what sounds like a very unforgiving deity. This immediately leads into the brief "You Need Me," where Jarboe's haunting voice sings a lyric of apology solely over echoed piano. Such unexpected twists crop up throughout Holy Money, as the band engages in a fruitful search for new musical directions. Greed's "Fool" is revisited as "Fool #2," transformed into an equally ominous track, but this time accompanied by almost majestic electric guitar and drums along with the original piano and keyboards. Gira's vocals are notably clearer in this piece, though the lyrics are hardly any less gentle. Another Greed track, "Money Is Flesh," gets its own drastic remake on the album as well. "Another You," meanwhile, has distinctly strange and beautiful -- in an alien way -- guitar scrapes and shades which provide texture to the lengthy track, with one of Gira's most obsessive interpersonal lyrics (and one of his best vocals up to that time) further gracing it. Ending with "Coward" -- contrasting almost intimate if still haunted upfront Gira's spoken vocals set against a buried series of his screams and shouts in the background of the mix over a repetitive crunch of guitar, bass, and drums -- Holy Money well documents the continuing transformation of Swans into a more complex, intriguing beast. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Swans / Children of God
Released 1987

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Kicking off with "New Mind" -- which, while having the same general pace of most earlier Swans songs, also sounds distinctly different with its clearer, inventive arrangement, call-and-response vocals, and Gira's declamatory but not screamed lead vocal -- Children of God finds the band making their own particular great leap forward. The simmering changes that were apparent in the albums just before this one's release fully come to the fore, as Swans take the courage to explore both their huge-sounding, bombastic side and gentle, if often still disturbing, delicacy (due credit especially to Westberg, Kizys, and Parsons, possibly the best musical lineup Swans ever had until the final years). The results are fascinating, ranging from the spare piano melting into ambient feedback of "In My Garden" and the twisted gospel blues of "Our Love Lies" to the acoustic guitar and organ on "You're Not Real, Girl" and the raging pounder "Beautiful Child." Equally importantly, if not more so, Jarboe now assumes a full role with Gira as co-leader of the band; while all lyrics are still Gira's, the two share lead vocal duties (though aside from the title track, no duets) throughout the album. The weary, evocative croon which Gira developed into his major vocal trademark here emerges to full effect (though he can still roar with the best of them at points) while Jarboe's cool, rich tones are simply astounding, as evidenced on an even more compelling version of "Blackmail," originally from the A Screw EP. Though Children is dedicated without any apparent irony to Jesus Christ, Gira's words remain as irreverent, challenging, and obsessed with overarching issues of religion, power, sex, love, and control as before, but with an ever-increasing depth and beauty to match the lusher musical textures. With flute, oboe, and strings adding further texturing to the often quite lovely songs created by the band, Children remains perhaps the key album of Swans' career -- the clear signpost towards their ever-more ambitious albums in the future. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Swans / Feel Good Now
Recorded 1987

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At the time, being the first of the many semi-official bootlegs and live releases that Swans put out over the years, Feel documents the 1987 European tour for Children of God, recorded quite well on a professional walkman by the band's sound engineer. The track list exclusively focuses on Children material, so the album has much of the same general variety as its parent release, though all of the edges are a little rougher. "Blood and Honey," for example, maintains the synth-string arrangements from the album as well as Jarboe's low, haunting vocals, but the louder instrumental breaks have a stronger power here. In the meantime, already overpowering songs like "New Mind" and "Beautiful Child" rage all that much harder in a live arena, with Gira holding little back, if at all. At the same time, a tune like "Trust Me" maintains the newer Gira's commanding-yet-controlled croon amidst the more textured, elegant arrangement, though he definitely starts to let himself go more towards the end. Naming every highlight would take nearly forever, but special mention has to be made of "Children of God," featuring a fantastic call-and-response vocal tradeoff between Jarboe and Gira while the band brilliantly backs them up, and versions of "Sex God Sex" and especially "Blind Love," which make the album versions seem like gentle walks in the park by comparison. Another definite bonus on Feel is the demonstration of Swans' hitherto hard-to-find sense of humor: "Willy in Ravensburg" is a recording of a PA tape of Willie Nelson with drunken audience response, while a number of tracks near the end document a variety of performance goofs and improvisations, including some muffled but amusing audience banter at points. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

The Chameleons / Live!

2008-11-18T10:46:00.002-08:00

The Chameleons (UK)

Best post-punk band? Maybe... it's definitely up for argument. The Chameleons were one of those rare bands that were able to make an enormous impact on music on only three albums. The number of posthumous releases of The Chameleons is unheard of... somewhere in the region of fifteen different live, peel sessions, rarities, etc. And it's all good (well... mostly). Here are a few live and rare recordings to whet your appetite to discover (or rediscover) this amazing band.

The Chameleons / Tripping Dogs
Released 1990 / Recorded 1985

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"Tripping Dogs" is a rehearsal from 1985.

Singing Rule Britannia (While The Walls Close In)
A Person Isn't Safe Anywhere These Days
Here Today
Pleasure And Pain
Bobby Moore's Wine
Less Than Human
Thursday's Child
In Answer
Return Of The Roughnecks
Second Skin
One Flesh
Home Is Where The Heart Is

The Chameleons / Peel Sessions
Recorded 1981-1984 / Released 1992

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he Fan & The Bellows
Here Today
Looking Inwardly
Things I wish I'd Said
Don't Fall
Nostalgia
Second Skin
Dust To Dust
Return Of The Roughnecks
One Flesh
Intrigue In Tangiers
P.S. GoodbyeThe Chameleons / Aufführung In Berlin
Recorded 1983 / Released 1993

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"Splitting In Two" is an Alternative TV cover which with they traditionally ended shows. "Live In Toronto" was recorded in 1987 during their last tour, while "Live In Berlin" is from 1983, shortly before "Script of the Bridge" came out. As such, they are good bookends to their early career, and present different pictures of the band. "One Flesh" on "Live In Berlin" has completely different lyrics. "Singing Rule Brittania" is incorrectly listed on the label as "Singing BLUE Britannia

Less Than Human
Paper Tigers
Monkeyland
Thursday's Child
Second Skin
Pleasure And Pain
Singing Rule Britannia (While The Walls Close In)
Perfume Garden
One Flesh
In Shreds
Splitting In Two

The Chameleons / Dali's Picture
Released 1993

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Dali's Picture is the original demo album the band cut and sent out to various labels. "Dreams In Celluloid" is an early version of "Second Skin". Most of the material is lyrically different than later versions.

The Chameleons / Live Shreds
Released 1996

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It's recorded at the notorious downtown-Manchester dance club (and later "Acid House" palace) The Hacienda. Co-owned by Factory Records boss Tony Wilson and his label's marketplace heavyweight champions New Order, then as now one of the biggest (and hippest) bands in Britain. The place had a big buzz for kick-starting careers. For example, another obscure, unsigned Manchester area band also yet to make their first LP had the sense to gig there in 1983, namely The Smiths!

In such an obviously apropos atmosphere, this short concert predates the recording of Script of the Bridge in 1983; one can tell because "A Person Isn't Safe Anywhere These Days" is introduced as "Men of Steel," from the repeated words of the chorus. Likewise "Thursday's Child" appears here as "Years Ago," with some small differences in the original verses' lyrics. But even if one is not a rabid, frothing Chameleons fanatic/historian, likely to be roused by such ephemera, there can be no question that the little bits of boisterous brilliance are already slotted into place, the cornerstone of the formula that was to inspire endless worship.

Paper Tigers
Pleasure And Pain
Men Of Steel
Years Ago
In Shreds
Don't Fall
Second Skin
Up The Down Escalator
Monkeyland
As High As You Can Go
The Chameleons / Live at The Gallery Club Manchester
Recorded 1982 / Released 1996

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An early and rare recording of THE CHAMELEONS playing a gig at The Gallery Club, in their home town of Manchester on 18th December 1982. Includes performances of previously unavailable material.

Paper Tigers
Nathan's Phase
Don't Fall
Pleasure And Pain
Here Today
In Shreds
Up The Down Escalator
Second Skin
Monkeyland
As High As You Can Go
Things I Wish I'd Said
View from A Hill

Miranda Sex Garden / A Collection

2008-11-15T04:27:00.000-08:00

Miranda Sex Garden

One of the more interesting bands to come out of the early 90's, Miranda Sex Garden reshaped the sounds of bands such as Dead Can Dance by placing their classical influences heavily in the forefront. After their first release (which would normally be found in the "Classical" section at a music store), Madra, Miranda Sex Garden moved towards a darker, "gothic" sound with each subsequent release.

Miranda Sex Garden / Madra
Released 1991

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The group's first album consists of madrigals and traditional songs, most of them from the 18th century or earlier. A dance remix of one of the songs, "Gush Forth My Tears," became a surprise club hit. Musically, Madra is nothing more than the voices of Miranda Sex Garden in all their pristine clarity -- the album is completely a cappella. The vocals and material are exceptionally beautiful; Madra is a unique and refreshing listen. - Heather Phares, All Music Guide

Miranda Sex Garden / Iris EP
Released 1992

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"Iris" (1992) is a transitional album of capital importance for the band as they managed to develop here their own trademark sound. The almost unprecedented combination of classically trained vocalists and their instruments coupled with the abilities of new added musicians (Ben Golomstock on guitar and Trevor Sharpe on drums) produced, against all odds, hugely impressive achievements.

This mini-album is a little known masterpiece. An exquisite sample of lyrical and musical talent. The beginning of the record is conventional enough, a cover version of the traditional song "Lovely Joan". At this very point nothing really makes you suspect that the band was going to dramatically change their style that much with respect to "Madra", but suddenly the tranquil voices become progressively more and more menacing until exploding into a powerful climax of shouted lyrics. From then on, nothing was gonna be the same for this group. Theirs was a break with the past on behalf of risk. The real nature of Miranda Sex Garden's art, their true iconoclastic essence, had finally come into being for our listening pleasure. - Amazon.com Review by Stranger

Miranda Sex Garden / Suspiria
Released 1993

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The group's second full-length album finds Miranda Sex Garden going in a rock direction. Loud guitars and pounding drums mix with droning cellos and sawing violins on songs such as "Open Eyes." Even the group's vocal style is more pungent and aggressive, with the heretofore dulcet tones of the group now transformed into wild, banshee-like shrieks and snarls. Despite the radical changes in direction, the group still manages to create a powerful and individual album in Suspiria. Along with Madra, it's one of the group's best efforts. - Heather Phares, All Music Guide

Miranda Sex Garden / Fairytale of Slavery
Released 1994

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By the time of Fairytales of Slavery, the seemingly winsome trio had left their medieval a cappella roots long behind them, as the transformation apparent in following records had reached a new level of intensity. It didn't hurt that Alexander Hacke from Einstürzende Neubaten was producing; bandmate F.M. Einheit contributed some typically atypical percussion here and there to lend even more of an extreme stamp on the results. Swirling with a rampaging intensity right from the start thanks to "Cut" and in particular Trevor Sharpe's absolutely massive drumming work in partnership with Donna McKevitt's strings, Fairytales of Slavery is a lost delight of an album. Out of place in 1994's music scene and even more of a strange jewel when viewed at a distance, the only contemporaries for the group might well have been Cranes, but even that misses the essential differences between the two excellent bands. McKevitt and Katharine Blake aren't Alison Shaw, for one thing, their singing more straightforward and direct even when swathed in layers of music and stretched out syllable by syllable. Meanwhile, there's less fragile darkness in the band's collective work and more gripping, brisk assault, as "Cover My Face" and the ever-more-fired-up "Wheel" readily demonstrate (though "A Fairytale of Slavery" does come close to a very Cranes-like death-march-with-piano crawl). Elsewhere, songs like "Fly" and "Serial Angels" balance quiet parts with sudden, dramatic explosions. The twinkling delicacy of "The Wooden Boat" in particular catches the imagination, with Trevor Sharpe's percussion work again lending a hefty undertow, but without overpowering the song until the increasingly frenetic conclusion. Perhaps the best comparison in the end is to labelmates Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds -- gifted, intriguing lead singers with music able to work in both low-key and amped-up fashion. Points as well for the spectacular cover of the Brecht/Weill classic "Havana Lied," in the original German. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Miranda Sex Garden / Carnival of Souls
Released 2000

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It's not as raw or unproduced-sounding as their last cd, the heavily Einstürzende Neubauten-influenced FAIRYTALES OF SLAVERY. No 9-minute instrumentals like on SUSPIRIA, either. But overall there's more great songs here than on both those albums combined. Much better production too. Singer Katherine Blake's voice is as seductive as usual. No more Donna McKevitt, though. So the madrigal-style harmonizing that was ever-present on previous releases is mostly absent. But you won't even notice Donna's gone, since Katherine sings so hypnotically. As you might expect in a Miranda Sex Garden cd, there's plenty of atmosphere, dramatically complex song structures, exotic percussion, and loads of spacey guitars and violins. And there's even a french horn on some of the songs. This one seems to have more "shoegazer"-style long blasts of sheer noise than previous albums, too. To me, the single 'Tonight' reminds me a little of a Portishead song. The wonderful 'Caravan' too. But most of the other songs are as loud and scary as anything they've ever recorded. (Well, there's nothing on here as scary as 'Play' from SUSPIRIA, but that'd be impossible to top). 'Broken Glass' is so gorgeous you'll want to put it on repeat-play forever. And 'Close to the Sky' is even greater, if that's possible. This is a near-perfect cd by a perfect band. I'm thrilled they've finally made an album that lives up to their well-deserved reputation as being one of the greatest live acts of our time. - Matthew Hall, Amazon.com review

Sigur Ros / Rarities, Live and EP's

2008-11-12T18:28:00.000-08:00

Sigur Ros

Day two of Sigur Ros' music finds some of their interesting recordings outside of the magnificent albums they've released. Enjoy these fine Sigur Ros songs.

Sigur Ros / Von Recycling Bin
Released 1998

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von brigði is a remix album and was released in iceland 1998. it contains remixes of songs from 'von' by various icelandic electronic acts, including one track by sigur rós themselves. the track, called "leif af lífi", was originally supposed to be on 1997's von but mixing could not be finished in time.

Sigur Ros / Ny Batteri EP
Released 2000

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this single was the second uk release for sigur rós and was released in may 2000 in the uk only. the single opens with an extended brass intro of ný batterí, called rafmagnið búið. tracks 3 and 4 are the same tracks as appeared on the englar alheimsins soundtrack. in early 2006 ný batterí was re-stocked and re-issed.

Sigur Ros / Untitled #1 (Vaka) EP
Released 2003

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this single and dvd was released in may 2003, following the october 2002 release of ( ). the single was released in 3 formats: 1) 3" mini-cd; 2) 5" cd with dvd; 3) 10" limited vinyl gatefold sleeve with an artwork stencil. the 3" and 5" cd's contain vaka (track 1 from '( )') and 3 short b-sides. the band had closed their set with tracks 2 and 3 from this single during their spring 2003 tour, calling the two songs "smáskífa" (single) on their setlist. track 2 was originally meant to be a remix of vaka but it turned out into a different song altogether, although you can still hear some remnants of vaka in the track. track 3 features a solo on piano by drummer orri. the dvd accompanying the 5" cd contains the three music videos the band has made thus far: svefn-g-englar, viðrar vel til loftárása and vaka. the menu screen has a video which the band shot of some birds on a wire, with track 4 from the single playing.

Sigur Ros / Ba ba ti ki di do
Recorded 2004

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this ambient 20 minute song is split into three individual tracks and derives its puzzling title from the only spoken sounds uttered in the piece. it is composed of four primary instruments: piano, music box, miked-up ballet shoes and electronic playback. the song was written for merce cunningham's dance piece 'split sides' which was premiered october 14th 2003 in the brooklyn academy of music. the music and choreography of split sides were composed independently of each other and were first introduced to one another on the premiere night, leaving the musicians a window of opporunity for improvisation. sigur rós left room for interaction with the choreography when composing the song and watched the dancers' movements closely as they turned their music boxes and tapped their ballet shoes.

the song's final chapter, di do, features cut-up samples of choreographer merce cunningham's voice, which foreground the rhythm of the song's crescendo. at this point in the premiere performance of split sides, a stunning coincidental synchronisation occurred between the dancers' movements and the music. Sigur Ros / Hoppípolla
Recorded 2005

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this single, released in the united kingdom in november 2005, includes two tracks from takk plus the studio recording of the live favorite, hafsól (often spelled "hafssól"). hafsól is often referred to as the song where the bassist uses a drumstick and was frequently been played as a set closer during concerts in 2000-2005. hafsól first appeared on von in 1997 but its live version has changed so much since then that fans wanted to hear a studio recording of it. the band acquiesced and produced this 10 minute b-side.
Sigur Ros / Sæglópur
Recorded 2006

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the sæglópur ep, released worldwide in the summer of 2006, contains two discs: a cd containing four tracks and a dvd containing the band’s videos to glósóli, hoppípolla and sæglópur. the cd contains a 14 minute b-side split into three parts, whose titles are taken from fragments of sæglópur lyrics.
Sigur Ros / Hlemmur Soundtrack
Recorded 2002

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recorded in 2002 as the score to the icelandic documentary "hlemmur", this soundtrack was first sold to the public in spring 2003 european and american tours. it is expected to be released at some point through the band's own record label, krúnk. this instrumental electronic soundtrack is composed of 19 tracks, some of which are variations of the same theme.

Sigur Ros / Live Montreux Jazz Festival
Recorded 2001

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a great soundboard recording from their 2001 tour.

Sigur Ros / Live on NPR
Recorded 2005

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an amazing set recorded live on NPR radio in 2005.

Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and Sigur Ros / Soundtracks and Performances

2008-11-10T18:59:00.000-08:00

Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and Sigur Ros

Sigur Ros have created some of the most beautiful work in the last decade. They've simultaneously captured melancholy, hope and beauty at the same time. Below are some of their recordings with Icelandic musician, composer and art director, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson.

Englar Alheimsins (Angels of the Universe), with Sigur Rós.
Soundtrack to the film by F. Þ. Friðriksson.
Released 2000

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in january 2000, sigur rós headed to the studio to record two cover songs to be featured on their ný batterí release. when they finished them, they were contacted by the producers of an icelandic film called englar alheimsins and asked to contribute two songs to the film. having just completed two songs, this seemed like more than a coincidence ("it was as if it was controlled from above" kjartan has said) so they immediately handed these two songs to the producers. as mentioned before, these two songs, bíum bíum bambaló and dánarfregnir og jarðarfarir (death announcements and funerals) are covers of songs that have lived deep in the consciousness of icelanders for many generations.

bíum bíum bambaló is an old icelandic lullaby that has travelled for generations through word of mouth. this is the first time that it is recorded. dánarfregnir og jarðarfarir is sigur rós' rockish version of an organ theme that has been played for decades on the icelandic radio station when deaths and funeral arrangements are announced. this song has been labelled post-rock by brits, but jónsi calls it theme music, as everyone in iceland recognises this theme.

dánarfregnir og jarðarfarir jumped straight to #1 on icelandic charts. the film englar alheimsins (angels of the universe) was also massively successful and has been hailed almost unanimously by critics as the best icelandic film ever made. it's directed by the academy award nominated director friðrik þór friðriksson and is about a man who is losing his mind. dánarfregnir og jarðarfarir is played near the end of the film in a scene in which this man is frustrated. bíum bíum bambaló plays during the end credits. the film is scored by hilmar örn hilmarsson.

Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson / Children of Nature Soundtrack
Rekeased 1996

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The music is composed and performed by Hilmar Orn Hilmarson (HOH) from Island and some of the songs are also avalible with fine lyrics on the Current 93 album "Island". The songs are as beautiful as anything ever gets. Just try the samples and you will get a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about. Pure love. Pure instrumental beauty.- (review on Amazon.com)

Steindór Andersen / Rímur ep
Released 2001

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in early 2001, sigur rós set out to record some songs in their newly-completed álafoss swimming pool studio with their friend steindór andersen. steindór andersen is a fisherman and chairman of the icelandic poetry society, called iðunn. steindór is a chanter/singer of the traditional icelandic epic poetry form called rímur. rímur are narrative poems which generally tell stories of icelandic heroes and epic battles which have been passed down generations in iceland through word-of-mouth since the 14th century. rímur were regarded as a performance art; a good rímur chanter would engage his listeners with his clever rhyming schemes and catchy melodies. rímur were performed on winter nights when inhabitants sat occupied by their work (making clothing from wool, wreathing horsehairs into ropes, cutting tools from wood, etc.) for seven centuries, this was icelanders' only branch of entertainment and it's only recently that this tradition has dissolved.

the steindór andersen ep contains six songs, three of which sigur rós accompany him on. two songs feature steindór alone and the last song on the cd is steindór and his friend sigurður sigurðarson singing the poem lžkurinn (the stream), recorded under the bridge of the stream by sigur rós's studio.Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and Sigur Ros / Odin's Raven Magic
Recorded 2002

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odin's raven magic by sigur rós and felix award winner hilmar ùrn hilmarsson was previewed at the barbican center in 2002 and premiered at reykjavík arts festival may 24th 2002, as one of its highlights. it will be performed at grande halle de la villette in paris on september 28th and 29th. the occasion is an icelandic cultural event in paris named 'islande, de glace & de feu' which will be held september 27th - october 10th.

odin's raven magic, which was produced by the reykjavík arts festival, was awarded the prize of best music piece in iceland 2002 and was nominated for the nordic council music prize 2003. the same year the piece was performed to full houses in norway at the trondheim arts festival. the performances of odin's raven magic have received rave reviews.

Morrissey / An EP Mega Collection

2008-11-08T05:49:00.000-08:00

Morrissey

I honestly can't say I'm a huge fan of Morrissey. While I have an undying love for The Smiths (which is partially due to the fact that I was in high school at the height of their popularity), Morrissey has always been hit and miss.

However, I can say that he's had some terrific singles and B-Sides. Below is a huge compilation of many of his EP's and Singles since the breakup of The Smiths.

try it (the entire collection is about 435 MB...)

Morrissey / Suedehead
Released February 1988

Suedehead
I Know Very Well How I Got My Name
Hairdresser On Fire
Oh Well, I'll Never Learn
Morrissey / Everyday is Like Sunday
Released June 1988

Everyday Is Like Sunday
Sister I'm A Poet
Disappointed
Will Never MarryMorrissey / The Last of the Famous International Playboys
Released February 1989

The Last Of The Famous International Playboys
Lucky Lisp
Michael's BonesMorrissey / Interesting Drug
Released April 1989

Interesting Drug
Such A Little Thing Makes A Big Difference
Sweet And Tender Hooligan (live Wolverhampton 1988) Morrissey / Ouija Board Ouija Board
Released November 1989

Ouija Board, Ouija Board
Yes, I'm Blind
East WestMorrissey / November Spawned a Monster
Released April 1990

November Spawned A Monster
He Knows I'd Love To See Him
Girl Least Likely ToMorrissey / Piccadilly Palare
Released October 1990

Piccadilly Palare
At Amber
Get Off The Stage
Morrissey / Our Frank
Released February 1991

Our Frank
Journalists Who Lie
Tony the PonyMorrissey / Sing Your Life
Released April 1991

Sing Your Life
That's Entertainment
The LoopMorrissey / Pregnant for the Last Time
Released July 1991

Pregnant For The Last Time
Skin Storm
Cosmic Dancer (live Utrecht, Holland 1/5/91)
Disappointed (live Utrecht, Holland 1/5/91)Morrissey / My Love Life
Released September 1991

My Love Life (UK version)
I've Changed My Plea To Guilty (UK version)
There's A Place In Hell For Me and My Friends(KROQ) Morrissey / Morrissey Live at KROQ
Released September 1991

There's A Place In Hell For Me and My Friends
My Love Life
Sing Your Life Morrissey / We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful
Released April 1992

We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful
Suedehead (live London 4/10/91)
I've Changed My Plea To Guilty (live London 4/10/91)
Alsatian Cousin (live London 4/10/91) Morrissey / You're the One For Me, Fatty
Released July 1992

You're The One For Me, Fatty
Pashernate Love
There Speaks A True FriendMorrissey / Tomorrow
Released September 1992

Tomorrow (remixed by Steve Peck)
Let The Right One Slip In Morrissey / Certain People I Know
Released December 1992

Certain People I Know
You've Had Her
Jack The Ripper Morrissey / The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get
Released February 1994

The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get
Used To Be A Sweet Boy
I'd Love To (UK version)Morrissey / Hold Onto Your Friends
Released May 1994

Hold On To Your Friends
Moonriver (extended version)Morrissey and Siouxsie / Interlude
Released August 1994

Interlude
Interlude (extended)
Interlude (instrumental)Morrissey / Boxers
Released January 1995

Boxers
Have-A-Go Merchant
Whatever Happens, I Love You Morrissey / Dagenham Dave
Released August 1995

Dagenham Dave
Nobody Loves Us
You Must Please Remember Morrissey / The Boy Racer
Released November 1995

CD1
The Boy Racer
London (live London 26/2/95)
Billy Budd (live London 26/2/95)

CD2 (Extra Tracks Only)
Spring-Heeled Jim (live London 26/2/95)
Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself (live London 26/2/95) Morrissey / Alma Matters
Released July 1997

Alma Matters
Heir Apparent
I Can Have Both Morrissey / Roy's Keen
Released October 1997

Roy's Keen
Lost
The Edges Are No Longer Parallel Morrissey / Satan Rejected My Soul
Released December 1997

Satan Rejected My Soul
Now I Am A Was
This Is Not Your Country Morrissey / Redondo Beach
Released March 2005

Redondo Beach (live)
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (live) (edit)
Noise Is The Best Revenge (Janice Long session 2004) Morrissey / The Youngest Was the Most Successful
Released June 2006

The Youngest Was The Most Loved
If You Don't Like Me, Don't Look At Me Morrissey / I Just Want to See the Boy Happy
Released December 2006

I Just Want To See The Boy Happy
Sweetie-Pie
I Want The One I Can't Have (live Royal Albert Hall 17 Sep 2002)
Speedway (live Royal Albert Hall 17 Sep 2002)
Late Night Maudlin Street (live Royal Albert Hall 17 Sep 2002)
I Want The One I Can't Have (live Paris 30 Sep 2002)

Palatine / The Factory Story

2008-11-06T04:38:00.000-08:00

Factory Records

Palatine / The Factory Story
Released 1991

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try it (disc two)
try it (disc three)
try it (disc four)

Review (from Q Magazine)

Whether a four-record compilation covering Factory's history is timely self-celebration or urgent self-preservation against the recession, the label's deserved reputation as innovator and provocateur prepares the way for unqualified hosannas. And yet, 49 tracks on, the inclination is to draw breath through clenched teeth rather than party.

The four albums are thematically arranged. The early years volume, Tears In Their Eyes, opens with Joy Division's Transmission and OMD's Electricity, recalling that, for Factory bands, the preoccupation with technology has been fundamental. This means receptiveness to the peculiar qualities of machine-made repetition is necessary to enjoy whole tracts of Palatine - named after Palatine Road, Factory's address. If not, A Certain Ratio's All Night Party and Flight, plus tracks by Section 25 and Stockholm Monsters are allure-free and create the wrong frame of emotion for the tragic power of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, the warmth of Durutti Column's Sketch For Summer and James' Folklore.

The dance album, Life's A Beach, is less enclosed. A Certain Ratio enter industrial funk and fun mode for Shack Up, while Kalima's Sparkle and Quando Quango's Genius are exhilarating attempts to salsa-fy British hips. However, they do go on, with New Order's The Beach, Cabaret Voltaire's Yashar and Happy Mondays' chic-ugly 24 Hour Party People outstaying their welcome.

The next phase is The Beat Groups and, apart from Durutti Column's delightful Les Paul-style workout on Otis, there's a flavouring of guitar on The Distractions' jangly Time Goes By So Slow, The Railway Children's twinkler Brighter and James' Hymn From A Village ("Be a songsmith crook / Study depth in style," they advise). But too often dark and heavy tones override, the colourlessness imposed by an upfront, dull bass figure - a feature so prevalent throughout the compilation it seems a label characteristic.

Finally, Selling Out covers Factory's recent chart-designed and less aurally strenuous material. If a pure pop licence was issued just the once, for Electronic's Getting Away With It, New Order's True Faith and Happy Mondays' Step On (the Oakenfold / Osbourne remix) feel like breakthroughs. Northside and Cath Carroll share the welcome lightness without coming on like legends in the making.

If this compilation does express the Factory story, then it's been about sounds rather than songs, a focus on style which rarely time-travels well. Factory's contribution is probably better enjoyed, quite simply, through their best artists' best albums - and the subsequent careers of the many who slipped away, from OMD through James to The Railway Children.

Track Listing:

Disc: 1
1. Transmission - Joy Division
2. Electricity - Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
3. All Night Party - A Certain Ratio
4. Sketch for Summer - The Durutti Column, The Durutti Column
5. English Black Boys
6. You're No Good - ESG
7. Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
8. Folklore - James
9. Flight - A Certain Ratio
10. New Horizon - Section 25
11. Ceremony - New Order
12. Happy Ever After - The Stockholm Monsters
13. Tingle - Quando Quango
Disc: 2
1. Shack Up - A Certain Ratio
2. Beach - New Order
3. Looking from a Hilltop - Section 25
4. Skip Scada - A Certain Ratio
5. Sparkle - Kalima
6. Reach for Love - Marcel King
7. Yashar - Cabaret Voltaire
8. Cool as Ice - 52nd Street
9. Confusion - New Order
10. N'Sel Fik - Fadela
11. Genius - Quando Quango
12. 24 Hour Party People - Happy Mondays
Disc: 3
1. Wilderness - Joy Division
2. Watching the Hydroplanes - Tunnelvision
3. Time Goes by So Slow - Distractions
4. Talk About the Past - The Wake
5. Party Line - The Stockholm Monsters
6. Kuff Dam - Happy Mondays
7. Age of Consent - New Order
8. Brighter - Railway Children
9. Otis - The Durutti Column
10. When It All Comes Down - Miaow
11. Seven Reasons - Revenge
12. Hymn from a Village - James
Disc: 4
1. True Faith - New Order
2. Think About the Future - Happy Mondays,
3. Together Mix - The Durutti Column
4. Shall We Take a Trip - Northside
5. World in Motion - New Order
6. World Is in Heaven [Classical Version] - Steve Martland
7. Getting Away With It - Electronic
8. Pulling My Fingers Off - Wendys
9. Moves Like You - Cath Carroll
10. My Rising Star - Northside
11. Step on Remix '91 - Happy Mondays
12. Atmosphere - Joy Division

Swans / The "Love" Albums... Skin

2008-11-05T05:23:00.000-08:00

Skin

World Of Skin was a project springing out of the American group Swans, and was a collaboration between the core Swans members Michael Gira and Jarboe. The project was initially called Skin, with the first two albums being released under that name in Europe. All US releases, however, were made under the name World of Skin.

Skin / The World of Skin
Released 1988

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This compilation collects the contents of the only two Skin albums on the market up to that point -- Blood, Women, Roses and Shame, Humility, Revenge -- offering them for release in the U.S., as neither had appeared in the States until then. The collection drops two songs from the Blood album and mixes the contents of the two records together indiscriminately, thus removing the effect of having the first album be totally Jarboe-sung and the second sung by Gira. As a joint release, though, perhaps World of Skin is all the better for it, allowing the tradeoff between the singers to be that more keenly felt; certainly there is no real difference in the evocative, haunting music, given that all of the tracks were recorded in the same three-month session. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

The World of Skin / Ten Songs For Another World
Released 1990

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World of Skin was a side project of Michael Gira's Swans, created as a vehicle for expressing the softer side of Gira & Jarboe's vision. This atmospheric 1990 album appeared between Swans' über-folk masterpiece Burning World of 1989 and the two 1991 albums Love of Life and White Light from the Mouth of Infinity. The image of Cerberus on the cover serves as warning to approach the other world with caution. These ten songs enchant, entrance and terrify in turn. You may enter now ... - (review on Amazon.com)

Cranes / Early Albums, Classics and Rare EP's

2008-11-04T04:52:00.000-08:00

Cranes

I was elated when I heard that the Cranes were releasing a new album this year and went back to listen to their recordings from the 1990's and early 2000's. As they moved their career, they redefined the term "dark beauty", falling somewhere between the sounds of early 4AD, shoegazer bands and modern classical. I'll admit, the first time that I heard Wings of Joy, I thought it was derivative, but after a few more listenings, I fell in love with the Cranes. If you haven't heard the new release, it's worth seeking out.

Below are some harder to find recordings and a few classics. Enjoy!

Cranes / Fuse
Released 1986

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The first album was never properly released on vinyl or CD. Instead, the cassette-only release showcased the sound that would become more refined over the years. Raw. Visceral. Dark. Mysterious.

Cranes / Self Non-Self
Recorded 1989

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After the extremely limited release of the Fuse cassette, Cranes, now expanded to a four-piece, put out Self Non Self in 1990. Originally only six tracks, including a dramatic, stronger re-recording of "Fuse" itself, Dedicated added a further two upon its re-release in 1992. The rough, spooky sonics from the band's earliest days were there in force, but evidence of the increased texturing and powerful arrangements started to surface as well. Certainly Jim Shaw's original fascination for groups like Foetus and Cabaret Voltaire wasn't hard to detect in the full-bodied drum slams and rough brass blasts on songs like opening instrumental "One From the Slum." The distorted electronics on other cuts like "Heaven or Bliss" also give it away, but the punchy, carefully arranged nature of the music is just as strong. There's a lot of space and echo throughout, and the band knows how to work with it for better effect, something that would become even more common with time. "Beach Mover" is especially effective, its echoing percussion and weird, droning guitar notes rising through the murk. Alison Shaw's singing is already fully in place as the lost, lonely voice later releases would make all the more familiar, though at times, as on "Focus Breathe," she has surprisingly deeper tones in comparison. The re-release bonus tracks include a live song called "Reach," a strong, surging piece, and "Nothing in the Middle, Nothing in the End," a murky little number with a rough snare drum rhythm and doomy bass. Self Non Self is definitely one for the fans most of all, but anyone interested in the shadowy early start of the band is recommended to hunt this down. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Cranes / Forever Remixes
Released September 27 1993

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A collection of great remixes from their 1993 release Forever.

The remixes of Clear are by J. G. Thirwell, of Cloudless by Ivo Watts-Russel and John Fryer, and of Jewel by Robert Smith and Bryan "Chuck" New.
Cranes / Ancienne Belgique December 8 1996
Recorded December 8 1996

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A very rare single from 1996 that was released as a promo and then handed out at their live show at Ancienne Belgique in December of 1996. The single is not a live recording, but instead a single from their Population 4 album. The first and third tracks appear on the record, but the second track only appeared on a compilation prior to this release.
Cranes / La Tragedie d'Oresete et Electre
Released October 29 1996

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Marketed and packaged entirely in French (and thus more often found under the title La Tragedie d'Oreste et Electre), Tragedy is the high water mark of Cranes' work in a specifically high-art realm. Originally worked on during the sessions for Population Four, this was completed and released separately earlier than that album. Combined with a limited edition run, it's even more of a curiosity, but a surprisingly rewarding one. The concept behind the work is something that in the hands of the wrong people would have been screamingly pretentious but Cranes carry out with surprising effectiveness. While the Greek myth that is the tragedy itself is thousands of years old, the work Cranes specifically adapt is French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre's adaptation of the story Les Mouches (or The Flies). An even more blood-chilling take on the story than the original, Les Mouches wrestles with individual responsibility and reaction to an intimate degree. The imaginary soundtrack created by the band partially recalls Cranes' earliest, dankest work, informed with industrial music touches, heavy echo, and clattering percussion loops, while elsewhere is mostly touched with haunting orchestrations familiar from songs like "Adoration" and "Watermark." Alison Shaw delivers lines from the play entirely in French; her vocal style is perhaps surprisingly suited for the spoken word work (and her accent sounds close to flawless as well). Her "little girl lost" sound so often focused on by favorable or unfriendly critics is perfectly appropriate here, given both the unnerving sonics and the story line itself (involving as it does a brother and sister revenging themselves upon a mother and stepfather). Highlights from the release include "Danse D'Electre," a gentle piece that turns into a haunting wash of ambient sound, and the understated chills of "Au Temple," one of Shaw's best vocal turns on the album. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Cranes / Live in Italy
Released June 17 2003

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Despite this album's title, it was actually recorded all across Europe and the United Kingdom, in Pordenone, Rome, Ancona, Amsterdam, Vienna and the Cranes' home base of Portsmouth during their 2002 tour. Live albums usually disappoint for one of two reasons: either the band sounds nothing like it does in the studio (rich production is replaced by thin live arrangements and dodgier singing) or the band sounds exactly like it does in the studio, making you wonder why you spent the fifteen bucks on an album that sounds just like all the other ones you've already spent fifteen bucks on. Fans of the Cranes, though, should be perfectly happy with Live in Italy, because it splits the difference nicely between those two tendencies and showcases the ethereal instrumental sound and almost creepily girlish voice of singer Alison Shaw to such fine effect. The Cranes sound is one that adapts very nicely to the limitations of live instrumentation -- Jim Shaw's guitars are soft and spare, as is Alison Shaw's voice, and the touring sidemen offer just enough wispy texture to keep things from floating away entirely. The result, especially nice on songs like "Cloudless" and the slightly more muscular "Adrift," is both moody and gently exalted, sort of like a cross between Brian Eno and the Cocteau Twins. Recommended. - All Music GuideCranes / EP Collection Volume 1 and 2
Released October 28 1997

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EP Collection, Vols. 1-2 is a double-disc set that features all of the Cranes' EP releases, which were among the group's best work. While the sheer size of the collection means that it will only be of interest to hardcore fans, for those listeners, there's a lot to savor here -- the Cranes rarely sounded as effective or as eerie as they did on these EPs. - All Music Guide

Slowdive / Rarities, Live and Demos

2008-11-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

Slowdive

One of my favorite of the original shoegaze bands, Slowdive had a gorgeous washed over distorted sound. For those fans of Slowdive, here are some unreleased tracks, demos and live recordings.

Slowdive / I Saw The Sun

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A compilation of recordings from the Souvlaki Demos.

1 Summer Day 3:26
2 Bleed 3:31
3 Sleep 4:17
4 Silver Screen [demo] 5:31
5 Dagger [electric] 3:37
6 Untitled No. 3 3:49
7 Untitled No. 2 4:22
8 Joy 4:35
9 Instrumental Take One 3:46
10 Silver Screen 4:03
11 AB 2:55
12 Hide Yer Eyes 3:22
13 I Believe 3:44
14 Money 1:18
15 Painting 1:23
16 Like Up 5:43
17 Ports Theme #1 2:54
18 Nightmare 3:21
19 Ports Theme #2 2:09
20 I Saw the Sun 3:20
21 Richard 5:15

Slowdive/ Live in Oslo
Recorded October 18 1993

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A decent sounding recording (though not great) from 93 with some great songs on it.

1. Machine Gun
2. Souvlaki Space Station
3. Slowdive
4. Avalyn
5. Catch The Breeze
6. Mellon Yellow
7. Morningrise
8. She Calls

Slowdive / Souvlaki Demos

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A lot of these recordings are included on the I Saw the Sun.

01 - hide yer eyes (demo)
02 - silver screen (demo)
03 - ab (with brian eno)
04 - bleed
05 - dagger (electric)
06 - drunken nonsense
07 - hide yer eyes
08 - i saw the sun
09 - instrumental (take 1)
10 - jazz odeon (song 1)
11 - joy
12 - shine (splendiferous locust mix)
13 - silver screen (version 2)
14 - sleep (vocal)
15 - summer day
16 - Untitled No. 2
17 - untitled #3
18 - colours in spin (live)
19 - curtains and carpets (live)
20 - it's not for you
21 - song number one
22 - stars that shine
23 - i thought i saw

Slowdive / Live at Reading Festival
Recorded February 26 1991

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Another decent recording of Slowdive. Some of my favorite songs... this one dates back to when they were releasing EP's (which in my opinion were better than any of the albums). This one sounds like a soundboard.

01. Shine
02. Catch the Breeze
03. Slowdive
04. Morningrise
05. Colours in Spin
06. She Calls
07. Avalyn
Slowdive / Pygmalion Demos

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The demos from their final recording, Pygmalion. Not my favorite album, but some of the demos sound pretty interesting.

1. Miranda
2. Watch Me
3. Yesterday
4. To Watch
5. Option One (Instrumental #2)
6. Cargo
7. Sinewaves
8. Ambient Guitar
9. Crazy For You (Alternative Version)
10. Prautrock
11. Changes
12. Red Five

Joy Division / Live and Rare Recordings

2008-10-31T04:48:00.000-07:00

I think I've exhausted the 4AD theme. Hope you enjoyed...

Moving on, I'll start posting links to some of the other bands that helped shape who I am. I'm sure most people interested in this blog have a collection of Joy Division records, so I'll avoid any commercial releases here. Below are some good (and not-so-good) bootlegs and rare recordings from one of (if not the) important bands of the 1970's.

Joy Division

Joy Division / Atmosphere
Tracks 1-4: "Transmission" sessions at Central studios, Manchester mid July 1979.
Tracks 5-9: Piccadilly Radio session at Pennine studios, Manchester 4 June 1979.

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A great quality bootleg from their 1979 recording sessions.

1. Transmission
2. Novelty
3. Dead Souls
4. Something Must Break
5. These Days
6. Candidate
7. The Only Mistake
8. Atmosphere
9. The Atrocity Exhibition

Joy Division / Remains
Tracks 01-05: Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham 18-07-1977 (Warsaw demos)
Track06: Live Manchester, Electric Circus 02-10-1977 (from Virigin 'Short Circuit' compilation)
Tracks 07-14: Arrow Studios, Manchester 03+04-05-1978 (RCA album sessions)
Track 15: "Granada Reports", Granada TV 20-09-1978
Track 16: Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham 04-06-1979 (Piccadilly Radio session)
Tracks 17-18: Central Sound Studios, Manchester July 1979 (First 'Transmission' session)
Tracks 19-20: "Something Else" BBC 2 TV 15-09-1979
Tracks 21-22: Live Amsterdam, Paradiso 11-01-1980
Track 23: Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham January 1980 (original single B-side version)

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A collection of live and rare recordings not found in the Heart and Soul Box. Great stuff inside.

1. Inside the Line
2. Gutz
3. At A Later Date
4. The Kill
5. You're No Good For Me
6. At A Later Date (live)
7. Leaders of Men
8. Walked In Line
9. Failures
10. Novelty
11. No Love Lost
12. Transmission
13. Ice Age
14. Warsaw
15. Shadowplay
16. Atrocity Exhibition
17. Something Must Break
18. Transmission
19. She's Lost Control
20. Transmission
21. Passover (live)
22. New Dawn Fades (live)
23. Love Will Tear Us Apart

Joy Division / An Evening With...
Paradiso, Amsterdam January 11 1980

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Solid sounding live recording (soundboard). Lots of energy here in their performance.

1. Passover
2. Wilderness
3. Digital
4. Day of the Lords
5. Insight
6. New Dawn Fades
7. Disorder
8. Transmission
9. Love Will Tear Us Apart
10. These Days
11. A Means to an End
12. 24 Hours
13. Shadowplay
14. She's Lost Control
15. Atrocity Exhibition

Joy Division / Lost Treasures
Tracks 1 to 11: Arrow Studios May 1978
Tracks 12 to 16: Pennine studios June 79
Tracks 17 to 20: Central Sound Studios July 79

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Another recording of their studio sessions in 78 and 79. Recording quality is excellent and a nice glimpse of early versions and/or unmixed versions of their music.

1. The Drawback
2. Leaders of Men
3. Walked the Line
4. Failures
5. Novelty
6. No Love Lost
7. Transmission
8. Ice Age
9. Interzone
10. Warsaw
11. Shadowplay
12. These Days
13. Candidate
14. The Only Mistake
15. Chance
16. Atrocity Exhibition
17. Transmission
18. Novelty
19. Dead Souls
20. Something Must Break

Joy Division / Let The Movie Begin

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A great collection of interviews, live recordings and rarities that was released prior (or maybe post) to the excellent film Control.

01. LWTUA - Pennine studio version January 8th 1980
02. Ian Curtis interview excerpt - Castle Pub '79
03. Leaders Of Men - RCA session May 1978
04. Ian Curtis / Steven Morris interview excerpt - Rock On, Radio 1 '79
05. Failures - RCA session May 1978
06. Ian Curtis interview excerpt - Castle Pub '79
07. No Love Lost - RCA session May 1978
08. Martin Hannett interview excerpt - Rock On, Radio 1 '79
09. At A Later Date - Warsaw demo July 18th 1977
10. Ian Curtis interview excerpt - Castle Pub '79
11. Ice Age - RCA session May 1978
12. Ian Curtis / Steven Morris interview excerpt - Rock On, Radio 1 '79
13. Shadowplay - RCA session May 1978
14. Ian Curtis interview excerpt - Radio Blackburn '80
15. Passover - live Amsterdam, Paradiso 11th January 1980
16. Martin Hannett interview excerpt, Rock On, Radio 1 '79
17. Transmission - RCA session May 1978
18. Ian Curtis / Steven Morris interview excerpt - Rock On, Radio 1 '79
19. New Dawn Fades - live Amsterdam, Paradiso 11th January 1980
20. Ian Curtis interview excerpt - Radio Blackburn '80
21. Digital - live Eindhoven, Effenaar 18th January 1980
22. Bernard Sumner comment about Martin Hannett
23. Colony - live Eindhoven, Effenaar 18th January 1980
24. Ian Curtis interview - Radio Blackburn '80
25. Auto-Suggestion - live Eindhoven, Effenaar 18th January 1980
"Well..." + pistol shot - Martin Hannett firing a gun as seen in the New Order "Play At Home" C4 TV documentary from 19'84.
26. Dead Souls - live Eindhoven, Effenaar 18th January 1980

Joy Division / Radio Sessions

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Great sound quality on these various radio sessions from 1979-1980.

1. As you said (Britannia Row, London - 7' flexi disc - Uncredited track 1980)(2:01)
2. Autosuggestion (Prince of Wales Conference Centre, YMCA, London)(4:05)
3. Candidate (Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham - Piccadilly Radio Station)(1:57)
4. Ceremony (Graveyard Studios, Prestwich - Previously unreleased)(4:21)
5. Chance (atmosphere) (Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham - Piccadilly Radio Station)(4:54)
6. Colony (BBC Studios, London - The Peel Sessions 1980)(4:05)
7. Dead souls (Central sound, Manchester - Previously unreleased)(4:56)
8. Exercise one (John Peel Session - Broadcast 1979).(2:32)
9 Glass (Eden Studios, London - Genetic Records Session).(3:29)
10 .Ice age (Eden Studios, London - Genetic Records Session)(2:36)
11. Insight (Eden Studios, London - Genetic Records Session)(4:05)
12. Interzone (Arrow studios, Manchester - RCA Demo 1979)(2:11)
13. Love will tear us apart (BBC Studios, London - John Peel Session - Broadcast 1979)(3:25)
14. Shadowplay (Arrow studios, Manchester - RCA Demo 1979)(4:10)
15. Something must break (Central sound, Manchester - Previously unreleased)(2:54)
16. The drawback (Arrow studios, Manchester - RCA Demo 1979)(1:46)
17. The only mistake (Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham - Piccadilly Radio Station)(3:43)
18. These days (Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham - Piccadilly Radio Station)(3:27)
19. Transmission (Eden Studios, London - Genetic Records Session)(3:51)
20. Walked in line (Strawberry studios, Stockport - Previously unreleased)(2:47)

Joy Division / Live at the Russell Club
Recorded June 13 1979

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Great quality bootleg from one of their Factory concerts in 1979.

Dead Souls
The Only Mistake
Insight
Candidate
Wilderness
She's Lost Control
Shadowplay
Disorder
Interzone
Atrocity Exhibition

Joy Division / Live at Les Bains Douches
Recorded December 18 1979

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An oft bootleged recording in years past which was finally officially released. A great recording and a great show.

1. Disorder
2. Love Will Tear Us Apart
3. Insight
4. Shadowplay
5. Transmission
6. Day of the Lords
7. 24 Hours
8. These Days
9. A Means to an End
10. Passover
11. New Dawn Fades
12. Atrocity Exhibition
13. Digital
14. Dead Souls
15. Autosuggestion
16. Atmosphere

Joy Division / Live at Preston
Recorded February 28 1980

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Another heavily 'released' album from the 80's that was officially released. A solid recording, though not as good as Les Bains Douches.

1. Incubation
2.Wilderness
3. 24 Hours
4. The Eternal
5. Heart and Soul
6. Shadowplay
7. Transmission
8. Disorder
9. Warsaw
10. Colony
11. Interzon
12. She's Lost Control

4AD Further Listening / Lisa Gerrard (Soundtracks and Scores)

2008-10-30T05:57:00.000-07:00

Lisa Gerrard

After the breakup of Dead Can Dance, Lisa Gerrard concentrated on a career of soundtracks and scores, working on such films as The Insider, Gladiator, Tears of the Sun and Ashes and Snow. While the films were not always successful, the soundtracks were always amazing. Here is a collection of Lisa's filmworks.
Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke / The Insider OST
Released October 26, 1999

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Michael Mann is an unconventional director, so it's entirely appropriate that the score for The Insider, his meditation on tobacco whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, doesn't play by the rules either. The bulk of the album is comprised of collaborations between Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke, with three tracks from Graeme Revell and equally atmospheric contributions from Gustavo Santaolalla, Jan Garbarek, and Massive Attack. The result is eerie and haunting, somewhere between ambient and new age, but always evocative and cinematic. This may be a strange choice for a seemingly dry journalism tale, but it works terrifically and gives a good sense of how unusual and unpredictable The Insider is. - All Music Guide

Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard / Gladiator OST
Released April 25, 2000

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The original soundtrack to Ridley Scott's Gladiator features an original score composed by Academy Award winner Hans Zimmer and Golden Globe nominee and former Dead Can Dance member Lisa Gerrard. The duo's dramatic music incorporates traditional orchestral elements, ancient and indigenous instruments, and Gerrard's haunting vocals to create a timeless and evocative backdrop for Scott's tale of an avenging gladiator in ancient Rome.- All Music Guide

Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke / Ali OST
Recorded April 01, 2002

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This is the second album in the ALI soundtrack series. A lot of people and music stores refer to this as being the 'score', but if you are looking for grand orchestral pieces and epic cinematic arias, then I'm afraid, you'll be disappointed. What we get with Original Soundtrack II is basically that. Another soundtrack in the same formula as part 1, but on a smaller scale, and with none of those annoying 'inspired by' tracks. Mainly here, is a representation of the film's underscore and instrumental material, from Martin Tillman, Dungeon East & Whild Peach, along with 5 cuts of original score composed by Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke. There is also a sneaky 4 extra songs, which for some reason were omitted from the original album. But that is what makes it worthwhile. (taken from reader review at amazon.com)

Hans Zimmer / Tears of the Sun (Lisa Gerrard credited on all tracks)
Released March 18, 2003

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Although Hans Zimmer receives nominal credit, Tears of the Sun is in fact a collaborative effort featuring contributions from the composer's Media Ventures colleagues including Lebo M., Steve Jablonsky, and Heitor Pereira -- the end result channels some unexpected ethnic influences into an otherwise by the book war film score reliant more on its emotional scope than its action themes. While African percussion and chants enliven several cues, Tears of the Sun is above all dominated by a palpable sense of melancholy -- little here echoes the heroic, larger than life scale of war scores past, and all vestiges of patriotism are superseded by post-9/11 angst. It's certainly unexpected, especially given Zimmer's affection for bombast, but it works.- All Music Guide

Lisa Gerrard and Jeff Rona / A Thousand Roads
Released August 23, 2005

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Commissioned by the Smithsonian Museum of Native Americans in Washington D.C, the hypnotic 43-minute film A Thousand Roads follows four contemporary Native Americans through a single crisis-filled day. Director Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals), after hearing composer Lisa Gerrard's atmospheric soundtrack to 2002's Whale Rider, asked the singer, along with Los Angeles-based composer Jeff Rona (Traffic, Black Hawk Down) to provide the short film's soundtrack. Fans of Gerrard will find much to love here, as the talented other half of Dead Can Dance adapts seamlessly to genre, layering her ethereal vocals over Rona's tasteful electronics, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and flutists R. Carlos Nakai and Douglas Spotted Eagle. - All Music Guide

Various / Ashes and Snow OST
Released 2005

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Gregory Colbert's photographic artworks capture extraordinary moments of contact between man and animal. Gregory Colbert has spent thirteen years filming and photographing elephants, whales, birds, and other animals in such places as India, Burma, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Namibia, Egypt, the island of Dominica, Tonga, and Antarctica. Ashes and Snow, Colbert's lifelong project, is a collaboration with animals in their natural habitat as they interact with human beings. His images attempt to remove the boundaries between humans and other species to re-awaken in us an understanding of our shared animal nature.

01. Devota - Lisa Gerrard and Patrick Cassidy
02. Pasadena - Michael Brook
03. Slow River - Michael Brook
04. Mater Mea - Djivan Gasparyan
05. Vespers - Lisa Gerrard and Patrick Cassidy
06. Womb - Lisa Gerrard and Patrick Cassidy
07. Slow Dawn - David Darling
08. Elephant Pond - Michael Brook and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
09. The Absence Of Time - Eastwestern String Ensemble
10. Wisdom - Lisa Gerrard and Patrick Cassidy
11. Tears Of Light - Temple of Sound & Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali
12. Badnamgar - Robert Een
13. Salomon Rossi Suite - Aether Strings

4AD Further Listening / Pixies

2008-10-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

Pixies

Here's a collection of great Pixies recordings from the Doolittle days through the end. Enjoy!

Pixies / Doolittle Demos

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The disc is ID'd as "Give Me Ecstasy" which was a bootleg that collected the original Doolittle demos with a live recording. Here are the demos from the legendary 1989 album.

Pixies / Live
Labeled "Boston 1986", which it is not... the collection of songs would place it a little later

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A solid sounding bootleg from the Doolittle period of Pixies.

Pixies / Live at Pinkpop
Recorded 05.15.1989

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A good selection of tunes, but a short set. Pretty good recording.

Pixies / Velouria Live
Recorded 09.25.1991

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Live at Cabaret Metro, Chicago (Pixies Live promo), and in Utrecht (September 25, 1991) Excellent, but short boot (41 min.)

Pixies / Subbacultcha Live
Recorded 07.11.1991

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Live at Leysin Rock Festival (July 11th 1991). Excellent boot.

Pixies / Live Coachella
Recorded 05.01.2004

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A decent sounding recording from the 1st leg of their reunion tour in 2004.

Pixies / Hey
Recorded Various Locations 2004-2005

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A great sounding boot of selected recordings from their 2004-2005 reunion tour. During the tour, Pixies sold that nights performance directly after the show. This collects some of the best recordings from those CD's.

4AD Further Listening / Red House Painters (Bootlegs)

2008-10-27T05:44:00.000-07:00

Red House Painters

There are dozens of "live" and "rare" recordings of the Red House Painters available, but unfortunately, most are sub-par where Mark Kozelek is barely audible over the audience noise. I've compiled some of my favorites of the sublime Red House Painters. If you had a chance to see them live in their heyday, you'll understand why these recordings are so precious.

Red House Painters / Early Demos

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A collection of the early demo recordings that were used by 4AD's Ivo Watts Russell to compile the first Red House Painters 4AD release, Down Colourfill Hill.

Ivo minimally retouched the recordings for the release. Some of these pieces were rerecorded for subsequent releases, such as Evil and Uncle Joe. A must for fans of RHP.

Red House Painters / McCabes Guitar Shop - Santa Monica, CA
Recorded 09.06.1996

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Red House Painters frequently played the famed acoustic venue, McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. I had the opportunity to see their marathon 3+ hour shows. It was beyond description. Here's a great recording from 1996. Listen for the great version of Sonic Youth's Teenage Riot.

Red House Painters/ Live
Unknown Date and Venue

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A great 6 song recording of RHP Live. Unfortunately, the date and venue is unknow. Tracks include:

1. Cruiser
2. Void
3. Uncle Joe
4. River
5. Michigan
6. All Mixed Up

With these selection of songs, I would place the recording on the Old Ramon tour.

Red House Painters / McCabes Guitar Shop - Santa Monica, CA
Recorded 05.24.1997

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Another one of their marathon shows at McCabes. I think I was at this one! This includes some good banter from Mark introing most of the songs.

Track List:

1. Cruiser
2. Void
3. River
4. Wop-A-Din-Din
5. Michigan
6. Fly Away
7. Another Song for a Blue Guitar
8. Whiskey in the Jar
9. Things Mean A Lot
10. Uncle Joe
11. Albuquerque
12. All Mixed Up
13. Take Me Out
14. I Saw the Light
15. Medicine Bottle
16. Mistress
17. Kavita - Summer Dress
18. San Geronimo
19. On Radio Shows
20. Sunday and Holidays
21. Three-Legged Cat

Red House Painters / Live at KFOG
Recorded 12.1995

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Solid Radio Recording from San Francisco's KFOG.

Track List:

1. Make Like Paper
2. River
3. Silly Love Songs
4. Sundays and Holidays

Mark Kozalek / Live at KEXP
Recorded 1998

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Great recording of Mark solo on KEXP.

Track List:

1. Bubble
2. Four Fingered Fisherman
3. Salvador Sanchez
4. Tiny Cities Made of Ashes

4AD Further Listening / His Name Is Alive (Rarities)

2008-10-26T04:16:00.000-07:00

His Name Is Alive

Here are some fantastic early recordings, outtakes, EP's etc. from Michigan's His Name Is Alive. Hope you enjoy!
His Name Is Alive / Early Music Vol 1 (1985-1989)

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1-8 originally appeared on the first HNIA tape called "Riotousness And Apostrophe" (1986). This tape also included "Darkest Dreams", which was identical to the version that would reappear on "Livonia" (4AD, 1990) so it is omitted here. 9-16 were on the second tape, Summer 1987. 17-25 are from October 1987 - January 1988 and were released on a tape called "I Had Sex With God". track 26 was from an unfinished 4th tape from 1988. Track 27 is a collage of recordings from 1990 during my first trip to London to meet with the 4AD folks. It was maybe going to be the bonus track for Rykodisc's release of the "Livonia" LP in the USA. Jymn played bowed bass on 7. Amy and Alicia played strings on 5. Angie sang on 10,21 and 24. Karin sang 17-25, except 19. Damian played drums on 20,22 and 25. Tracy played bassoon on 21. Tracy also briefly performed a drum solo with me during the itroduction to track 21. Tracks 5 and 11 were later sampled on the "Home Is In Your Head" LP (4AD, 1991) in the songs "Pointless" and "Reincarnation". Most songs were reissued briefly in 1990 by the band on a cassette called "1985-1989 Stuff, Early Works". It featured a very colorful stolen photo from a medical textbook on eyeball injuries. Tracks 13-15 and 27 are previously unreleased, they are from a weird mix tape I made my friend Danny who lived in Blissfield, Michigan. Thank you, Warn Defever, age 31, Livonia, MI.

His Name Is Alive / King of Sweet

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King of Sweet is a compilation album by His Name Is Alive, originally released in a limited run by the Perdition Plastics label in 1993. Most, if not all, of the songs had previously appeared on the band's many self-released cassettes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and some of them had appeared in different versions on the band's 4AD releases.

His Name Is Alive / Radio LP

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Name Is Alive's Radio LP is a fine mix of live radio appearances at home and across the world recorded between 1993 and 1998. Since the range is so large, it encompasses the many different musicians who have at one time or another found their way onto HNIA recordings. As with the usual HNIA fare, Warn Defever directs his band through numerous alterations to all the material and nothing sounds as it does on the original recording. It's great to hear the band's improv jamming that is almost always well-represented in the live forum. Here, Lovetta PippenAlex Chilton, Peter Green, and Detroit's Outrageous Cherry on this record, and it includes performances from BBC sessions, Detroit's WDET studios, and KCRW's renowned Morning Becomes Eclectic live series. Other added touches include Mexican radio ads (originally appearing on the band's live disc, Sound of Mexico) and snippets of Defever reading from one of his many children's stories. ~ Ken Taylor, All Music Guide

His Name Is Alive / Summer Bird EP

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Reliably mystifying indie auteur Warn Defever's band His Name Is Alive has the four tracks of the "Summer Bird" EP available for free download for a limited time on their Web site. The title track is, Defever writes, "a 1970s singer-songwriter flavored track written about lost love using Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's complete destruction of Cambodia as a metaphor." As usual with Defever, his bizarre production decisions lead to some wonderful sounds -- the Dirty Dozen Brass Band meets Yo La Tengo jam on "Last Summer," the series of Steve Reichian textures that ends "Get Your Curse" -- but make for music that's easy to be intrigued by but hard, at least for me, to love.

His Name Is Alive / Raindrops Rainbow EP

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The Raindrops Rainbow EP marked the first major release from the band since Last Night in 2002. Originally released exclusively through the iTunes music store, the EP also later appeared as a promotional CD on Defever's new Silver Mountain Media label. The EP served as a preview of 2006's Detrola, introducing new vocalist Andy FM. With two new songs, and re-recorded versions of two older HNIA songs, the EP found the band somewhat returning to their roots, and was well-received by many fans who had been disappointed with the soul and R&B sound of the band's final two 4AD releases.

4AD Further Listening / His Name Is Alive - Cloud Box (10 CD)

2008-10-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

His Name Is Alive

Hi Everyone - I was asked personally by the band to remove the links to this one which I fully respect. I urge everyone to go out there and support HNIA, as they are, and always will be one of the most innovative bands that continues to explore new styles and push musical boundaries. I'll post some HNIA rarities tomorrow.

His Names Is Alive - Cloud Box (10 CD Collection)
Released November 2004

Limited edition of 50 wood "cloud boxes" gathering ten CDs of new music from His Name Is Alive. Made available direct from Time Stereo via mail order. Despite sharing an identical title, the "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most" album is entirely different from the album of the same name released in 2001.

Collects the following albums:

(disc one - brown rice)
(disc two - USA vs gamelan)
(disc three - dreem up)
(disc four - the pinecone)
(disc five - mytery spot)
(disc six - spring can really hang you up the most)
(disc seven - wake up jin)
(disc eight - everglades national park)
(disc nine - free concert his name is alive)
(disc ten - detrola)

disc one: BROWN RICE

Recordings from a non-stop marathon weekend session celebrating Elliot's 21st birthday + tenor saxophone and harp duets + field recordings from Bhaktapur, Nepal on new years 1999-2000 + recordings made in Ann Arbor, Michigan with Jake's high school orchestra. Previously available at shows, BROWN RICE has now been re-edited and remastered.
disc two: USA vs. GAMELAN

Elliot called, "Warn, i got the keys to the Gamelan." Warn and Hitoko jumped in the car and they recorded several hours of Americanized His Name Is Alive music on a full set of instruments of the Indonesian Gamelan orchestra kept at the University Of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Bonang, saron, gong, slentem and suling played by Warn, Hitoko and Elliot.
disc three: DREEM UP

Recorded circa 1994-95 back when HNIA was starting a lot of projects and not finishing all of them (the Mexican 1/2 speed ambient masters was another "lost" album). It began as a covers album but since warn didn't get around to learning the songs, Karin had to sing them acappella, but an acappella covers album didn't seem like such a hot idea so the project got shelved. Later on Warn added some "music" and now here it is ten years later, a long lost old school His Name Is Alive album.

disc four: THE PINECONE

"Part of my therapy when things were going bad with the music industry was collecting pinecones and trying to turn them into musical instruments. i eventually found a number of them that had desirable tonalities and a certain consistency. i didn't want to make a gimmicky 'hey look at this funny man playing an electric pinecone' type of album, so Iwrote serious songs or improvised duets with 'real instruments' like African thumb piano, nylon string guitar, violin, upright bass, treated music box, electric bear, percussion, and harmonium." - Warn Defever. Highlights include one track where the violinist plays with a pinecone replacing the traditional violin bow, and another track where the keys of the pinecone, instead of being gently stroked by thumbs, are bowed like a violin.

disc five: MYSTERY SPOT

"I don't wanna talk about it, but once you listen you can figure it out, if you're smart." - Warn Defever
disc six: SPRING CAN REALLY HANG YOU UP THE MOST

Recorded for an installation in an art gallery in Detroit after a particularly harsh winter, this long piece was designed not for the traditional left and right stereo speaker orientation but top and bottom separation. the installation was in a stairwell with one large PA speaker placed at the top of the stairs on the third floor and the other in the basement. The music tries to recreate the experience of being trapped in a house for several months and then as the ice and snow gradually melt, the windows are eventually opened, the sound of birds are heard once again, and finally there's a party at the lake!

disc seven: WAKE UP JIN

"The band Slumber Party played an all night show in Detroit (Slumber Party- Slumber Party) and at nine in the morning we played a slow quiet set to gently awaken the still-drunk/hung-over guests." - Warn Defever

disc eight: EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK

Field recordings include warn throwing rocks at birds, and an alligator attacking and eating a bird. Several birds were probably hurt and at least one bird was eaten during this recording. Warn fails to engage an owl in a flute duet, but does get a good jam going with some fish and a bell. "I was tired of being inside a studio and wanted to record new sounds in special places. A year earlier, I recorded at a beautiful 500 year old temple in Japan, but now I wanted to find somewhere closer to home. Also in this series was a field trip to Death Valley!" - Warn Defever

disc nine: FREE CONCERT HIS NAME IS ALIVE

Played a special concert in Detroit on July 10, 2004. Lovetta sings, Warn plays guitar and piano, Elliot plays piano and saxophone, Jamie plays upright bass, and Nicole plays congas, a CD of birds plays quietly through one amplifier, and many bells were handed out to the audience members.

disc ten: DETROLA

"On Tuesday, June 15, 2004, I was trying to work in my studio (located in downtown Detroit on Woodward Ave), but I was interrupted in the evening by loud sounds from the street below. The Detroit Pistons had just won Game 5 of the NBA championships finals, beating the LA Lakers 100 to 87, and the people of the city had decided to celebrate with an unofficial late night drunken parade. The steady stream of car honking, screaming, and gun shots were too loud for me to work so I decided that maybe this would escalate into a cool riot and that maybe i should tape it. I set up some microphones out the window and waited for hours thinking it would soon pass. Eventually I decided to join in. I tried to accompany the orchestra of blaring car horns and the roaring choir of excited sports fans, on the piano. After several hours of not-quite-riot behavior, the police closed of the street, but the party continued in the distance...." - Warn Defever

4AD Further Listening / Cocteau Twins (Bootlegs)

2008-10-22T04:49:00.000-07:00

Cocteau Twins - Here are some decent to great live recordings (nothing too bad here) from different periods of the Cocteau Twins from 1983 - 1995. Enjoy!
Cocteau Twins - Live in Amsterdam
Recorded 01.29.1983

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A solid sounding recording of the early Cocteau's. Probably one of the best I've heard from this early in their career. Live broadcast on FM Radio.

Track Listing:

1. Alas Dies Laughing
2. Dear Heart
3. Feather Oar Blades
4. Hazel
5. Shallwow Then Halo
6. Blind Dumb Deaf
7. Wax and Wane
8. It's All But An Ark Lark

Cocteau Twins - Live Les Baines Douches / Paris, France
Recorded 11.09.1983

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Not the best recording, but it did air on French radio in 1983, so not horrible. Great to hear a live version of "When Mama Was Moth" and "Song to the Siren".

Track Listing:

1. When Mama Was Moth
2. Tinderbox
3. In Our Angelhood
4. From the Flagstones
5. My Love Paramour
6. Sugar Hiccup
7. Hitherto
8. Musette and Drums
9. Song to the Siren

Cocteau Twins - Live Rats Club / Oslo, Norway
Recorded 10.30.1984

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Another fantastic radio performance at the Rats Club in Oslo. Definitely a great concert from one of their best periods. Hearing "The Spangle Maker" is unbelievable.

Track Listing:

1. The Spangle Maker
2. Millimillenary
3. Rococo
4. Pandora
5. Musette and Drums
6. From the Flagstones
7. Pearly Dewdrops' Drops

Cocteau Twins - Live at Kilburn Ballroom / London, UK
Recorded 11.18.1986

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A decent recording from their 1986 Victorialand tour. Some great songs live.

Track Listing:

1. Lazy Calm
2. Hitherto
3. Sighs Smell of Farewells
4. My Love Paramour
5. Sea Swallow Me
6. Plain Tiger
7. Love's Easy Tears
8. Instrumental (unreleased)
9. Sugar Hiccup
10. Pearly Dewdrop Drops
11. Pink Orange
12. Aikea Guinea
13. Sugar Hiccup (Encore)

Cocteau Twins - Live at Ancienne Belgique / Brussels, Belgium
Recorded 10.06.1990

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The recording quality is a little flat, but the beauty of their 1990 Heaven or Las Vegas tour definitely shines. I was at the concert when it hit Los Angeles and it's definitely a memorable show.

Track Listing:

1. Blue Bell Knolls
2. From The Flagstones
3. Crushed
4. Cherry Coloured Funk
5. Wolf in the Breast
6. Orange Appled
7. Mizake the Mizan
8. Iceblink Luck
9. My Love Paramour
10. Cico Buff
11. Road River and Rail
12. Aikea Guinea
13. Pink Orange Red
14. A Kissed Out Red Floatboat
15. Heaven or Las Vegas
16. Pink Orange Red

Cocteau Twins - Live at Black Sessions / Paris, France
Recorded 02.04.1994

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A great FM broadcast of their 1994 tour. A nice collection of their entire discography (minus the Garlands period)

Track Listing:

1. Pur
2. Road River Rails
3. Bluebeard
4. Heaven or Las Vegas
5. Whales Tails
6. Carolyn's Fingers
7. Iceblink Luck
8. Summerhead
9. Ella Megalast Burls Forever
10. Blue Bell Knoll
11. Pink Orange Red
12. Aikea Guinea
13. Sugar Hiccup

Cocteau Twins - Live at Black Sessions / Paris France
Recorded 12.22.1995 (rebroadcast 2005)

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The last Black Sessions from the Cocteaus presented one of their finest shows (and recordings). Not generally my favorite period of their career... the 1995 Black Session captured the essence of the "live sound" of the Cocteaus.

Track Listing:

1. Half-Gifts (not sure why it shows up as 23 minutes on playback)
2. Golden Vein
3. Rilkean Heart
4. Pandora
5. Serpent Skirt
6. Seekers Who Are Lovers
7. Carolyn's Fingers
8. Song to the Siren
9. Cherry Coloured Funk
10. B. Lenoir