Tag: music, albums

[music, albums] March 18, 2004 at 11:26:00 PM CET

only pick one: cocteau twins

every time i put on the cocteau twins it is heaven or las vegas. i have got many other cds by them but this was my first one and there are some memories attached to it. it probably is the poppiest outing of the scottish dreampop pioneers and it is the first one where liz fraser sings in human language, at least partly. and still they create a new world. a sound of cotton (or which is the translation of watte?). soft and cuddly like a teddy bear. the paradise which could have been my childhood and was in retrospect. on the other hand this is the best chilling-out music imaginable. the music you listen to between 3 and 4 in the morning before going to bed after a night out. with or without company. it's much better with of course, taking off to the stars in pairs is so much more exciting.

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[music, albums] March 14, 2004 at 10:19:00 AM CET

Liars for free

The new Liars album They Were Wrong So We Drowned is fully downloadable on their site (link credit to kingblind)! That's about the first album of the new New York rock scene I have heard which deserves to be called post-punk. Abrasive and still captivating. Groovy art noise as we like it around here. Are the Liars the Sonic Youth of the new millenium? Other influences I can spot: Suicide, This Heat and PIL.

P.S. March, 19th update: The download is gone. "Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben" as we say in German.

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[music, albums] March 11, 2004 at 7:23:00 AM CET

I Love Music thread of the day: I really WANT to like Trout Mask Replica...

I bought it a while ago. Listened to a couple of songs once. And forgot about it again. To listen to the whole CD in one sitting seems to me like a heroic act of futile masochism. But deep in my heart I know that I should give it a chance again one day.

P.S.

I first heard Trout Mask Replica in early 1970, when I had just turned six.

is how Marcello Carlin's interesting review in The Naked Maja kicks off. He thinks that your reaction to this double album is the litmus test if your music writing will matter. Somehow that feels arrogant and narrow-minded to me but on the other hand who am I to judge as I have never listened to the whole thing from start to finish.

By the way can anybody tell me which tracks are on the four sides of the two records? Next time I'll have a go at this mythical beast I'd like to program the four sides successively on my CD player to take advantage of the three record flipping/changing pauses.

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[music, albums] February 12, 2004 at 7:57:00 PM CET

Perfect number

Yo La Tengo's Summer Sun is #69 at Pazz & Jop 2003.

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[music, albums] January 21, 2004 at 9:37:00 PM CET

1983

Inspired by this thread I am relistening to Roxy Music's Avalon. I still like some songs of it but overall it is a little on the shallow side. It's a nice chill-out album though. Outstanding tracks:

Avalon (#3) for the coolness and the cheering girls in the background
While My Heart Is Still Beating (#5) for Bryan's yodeling in the beginnning and the sad saxophone line
Take a Chance with Me (#7) for the late start and the bouncing guitar
Tara (#10) for the lyrical saxophone, the absence of Bryan's voice and the sweet shortness

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[music, albums] January 21, 2004 at 7:54:00 AM CET

New Stereolab album

Apparently there is a new Stereolab album out on February, 2nd. It is titled Margerine Eclipse. I suppose Margerine stands for Mary Hansen, one of the band members who was killed about a year ago in a car/bicycle accident. Strangely enough Stereolab's label Duophonic does not have anything on the new release on their website whereas the album has leaked to the p2p networks a while ago. That's the modern times. The consumer is more up-to-date than the distributor.

I found an mp3 of the song Margerine Rock at Kingblind. Somehow Stereolab had lost me quite early in their career around 1995 or even before when they started integrating film scores, Brazilian music and other stuff in their music. Their sound carpet which used to be low-fi and simple became too thick and colourful for my ears.

Now this new song is very much in the vein of their early records around Peng! when Mary Hansen wasn't yet in the band. It's joyful repetitive minimal pop with its roots going back to Neu!, Velvet Underground, Beach Boys etc. And Lætitia Sadier's voice is sexy as ever. I think this will be the first Stereolab album in ten years that I will get for myself.

P.S. Paul at The Rub also wrote on this album recently and there is a detailed track-by-track anaylsis here at Amazon UK (It's a disgrace. Amazon still doesn't respect customers enough to offer their reviews a permalink.)

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[music, albums] January 14, 2004 at 11:24:00 PM CET

Less is more, part 729

Sheets, the fifth song on Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks pretty solid album Pig Lib is a real stinker which should have an automatic skip programmed inside. It is disturbing the flow of the album and it just asks for getting smacked. So what is the point of this track? Besides annoying me. Can anybody tell me? Actually no. I don't want to know.

P.S. One Percent of One is one of the worst self-indulging prog rock tracks I have ever listened to in my life. And I grew up in the Seventies...

P.P.S. US, the closer is shit as well. I was thinking of withdrawing the honorable mention from here. And putting Rickie Lee Jones wonderful new album The Evening of My Best Day there instead. She is back on form like in the early Eighties. Girl at Her Volcano, what a fitting title for one of my favourite live albums of all-time. But on second thoughs the other eight tracks on Pig Lib are so relaxed and cool Californian indie rock that I will only add the Rickie Lee Jones to my best of 2003 list.

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[music, albums] January 4, 2004 at 8:25:00 PM CET

Will Elliott Smith's last album ever be released?

I have never been a fan of Elliott Smith's music during his life-time. Somehow it flew under my radar. It seemed too self-effacing, too much like music that didn't ask to be listened to, songs he was singing to himself in his sometimes irritatingly thin voice.

Maybe my non-reaction has also something to do with age. When I was 16/17 I discovered Nick Drake and he was a revelation for me. Up till then I hadn't known that somebody had existed out there with very similar feelings and thoughts than me. Elliott Smith who probably cannot measure up to Nick Drake in terms of musical genius didn't reach the thirtysomething I was when I listened to a song of his for the first time as Nick Drake had hit the late teen. I had been close to this dark hole before and it wasn't a place I wanted to return to.

A couple of years ago I saw Smith and Quasi in a concert at Frankfurt University. Cat Power also played. It was the Moon Pix tour and she and her band with Mick Turner on guitar and I think Jim White on drums (both from the Dirty Three) were absolutely mesmerizing and stole the shy Smith the show. Now that he is dead and the circumstances of his passing away become more and more dubious I started listening to his unreleased songs and they touched me so much that I couldn't keep from collecting them with links to the music and the words in this post. In hindsight those songs seem to announce his suicide up till the details ("it's the sharpest knife" in Stickman, "the dying man in a living room trying to get to the door" in A Fond Farewell etc.) though I am a little in doubt now if it couldn't have been prevented.

Some tracks which could have ended up on the record Smith had almost finished when he died, A Basement on the Hill (quotes for the first eight songs from the Under the Radar interview from March, 22nd, 2003; lyrics and live audio links from the fan site Sweet Adeline and the Elliott Smith Mini Repository):

Shooting Star (mp3, lyrics):

This one is kind of all over the map. The end part is a joke. It was supposed to have faded out but I decided to keep this whole big noisy section at the end.

A Passing Feeling (solo mp3, band mp3, lyrics):

I was really into staying up four or five days at a time while recording. Some of them didn’t take to long like this one. There was a co-producer early on but he didn’t really co-produce. He just walked angrily in and out of the room because I knew what I wanted to do. I’m playing every instrument on this one except one. There’s also a fill in this song that’s almost all kick drum and sounds really funny.

See You In Heaven:

This one took me several days. It’s one of my favorites. I kept setting parts for this song then fucking them up and doing them over again just to hear the sound of things.

I’m Already Somebody’s Baby (mp3, lyrics):

This is a rough mix and I think I’m going to keep it that way. I don’t want to double the vocal. It sounds good to me as it is. I guess it’s called ‘I’m Already Somebody’s Baby’. It’s kind of a boring title. I’m not necessarily somebody else’s baby though. There’s a sample in this song that’s layered Chamberlain and Melloton.

Coast to Coast (mp3):

This one was called ‘Circuit Rider’ but not any more. This song I don’t play everything on. This one actually has two drummers on it. One is Steve Drozd from the Flaming Lips and the other is the drummer for the Lillies. Steve and I are good friends and we’ve both had similar situations and we have both improved in the same way. I asked this friend of mine to make up something he could say as fast as he could in fifteen minutes about people healing themselves or being unable to heal themselves. While he’s saying this thing there is a main vocal that goes over that.

A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free (mp3 smooth version, mp3 electric band version, lyrics of another song version):

This one is my girlfriend’s favorite. There’s also a rough demo of this that sounds a lot different.

Let’s Get Lost (stream, lyrics):

I know it’s the name of a movie but what are you going to do. This one is not a perfect mix by any means but it’s got a certain something I don’t want to disturb. I just played this one twice and sang it at the same time.

Lyrics excerpt: i don't know where i'll go now and i don't really care who follows me there but ill burn every bridge that I cross to find some beautiful place to get lost

True Love (stream, lyrics):

True Love is a lyric driven song. This is the oldest one that we’ve heard so far. This is from that record I was going to throw away. I still might. Those weren’t very happy days. It was a long time ago at this point.

Lyrics excerpt: people that have lost their true love all seem to fit the same description i feel cold, useless and old wish i was no one take me home take me home today take me out of this place take me out, do it today

A Fond Farewell (mp3, lyrics)
Memory Lane (mp3, lyrics)
Stickman (mp3, lyrics)
King's Crossing (mp3, lyrics)

Lyrics excerpts: i can't prepare for death any more than i already have ... give me one good reason not to do it

Strung Out Again (mp3, lyrics)

P.S. Coroner's report on investigation concerning Elliott Smith's death

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[music, albums] December 16, 2003 at 1:30:00 AM CET

Stephen Duffy, gibts den auch noch?

Sehr schön beginnt Alexander Gorkows enthusiasmierende Rezension von Stephen Duffy's neuer Platte Keep Going in der Süddeutschen:

Dass die meisten Leute ihre Klappe halten mögen, ist ein frommer Wunsch, aber Gott, der große Programmplaner, richtet es so ein, dass die üblichen Nervensägen immer weiter schwingen, hingegen die bis dato sorgsam Worte wägenden Helden plötzlich verstummen oder sich nur noch knapp mitteilen, weil das ja auch reicht. Der große Programmplaner ist ein Ironiker, und dass die Ironie tot ist, ist nur die Ansicht von Armleuchtern.

Vor zehn Jahren hat Duffy schon einmal ein Kleinod des britischen Kammerpops abgeliefert, das opulente Music in Colors mit dem Geiger Nigel Kennedy, welches mir an frühereren Winterabenden das Herz so erwärmt hat. Ich bin daher geneigt, Gorkow auch das Epithet epochal abzunehmen, das er für die neue Scheibe verwendet. Im All Music Guide meint der Rezensent gar, dass sich ein mittelalter Nick Drake so anhören könnte, wenn er nicht vorher seinem Leben ein Ende bereitet hätte. Ich bin ziemlich neugierig.

P.S. Hier auf Stephen Duffy's Website finden sich übrigens vier mp3s vom neuen Album. Und die Lieder sind ziemlich gut.

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[music, albums] December 9, 2003 at 11:30:00 PM CET

Tangerine Dream - Zeit

This is my first Tangerine Dream album. Apparently not their most accessible one. It dates back to 1972. The year of the Munich olympics, the first (and last) olympic games I followed on tv from start to finish. I bought the cd two weeks ago. At first listen I wasn't too impressed. Some weird sounds but the music never seemed to start. I was reminded of an Indian raga player tuning his sitar for 75 minutes.

But then I listened to it full blast at night on the German Autobahn with the cruise control on 150 km/h. And suddenly some very low notes (probably from Florian Fricke's moog synthesizer on the second piece Nebulous Dawn) hit me. There are absolutely no drums or percussions on this album but I somehow felt a kind of earth beat. The sound of the earth turning around itself.

Zeit means time. And that's what the music is all about. 75 minutes without anything happening. Pure time. On the cover there is a total eclipse. All animals stop making sounds when the sun disappears behind the moon. Time is standing still.

There is also a cello quartet playing on this record. It gives a modern classical aspect to the music. Like Ligeti (not that I know Ligeti) or something. There is hardly a hint of a tune anywhere. It is pretty challenging stuff. More dark than bright.

The synthesizers and organs evoke helicopters, water bubbles, bird's twitter, fast dripping water and monks humming "OM".

I never tried LSD but I guess this is the ultimate acid record. It has to be played on very good loudspeakers otherwise the cosmic effect gets lost. On headphones it's less good somehow. Maybe because it is more universal than pure mind music. Or maybe it has to do with the reverb which is used a lot.

This album is so far-ahead of any time, it's unbelievable. It anticipates ambient, new age and post-rock. Of course there are no crescendoes. That would have been too generic. It is the music of the stars. The pulsars and quasars.

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