Tag: music, albums

[music, albums] February 2, 2003 at 3:58:00 PM CET

Autechre - Confield

This is an album I got almost a year ago and never listened to up till today. It even inspired me to start a thread at I Love Music: CDs you bought but never listened to. Quoting myself:

I bought Autechre's Confield about a year ago and never listened to it. There must be more CDs but this one kind of haunts me. Somehow I am afraid to listen to it and somehow I am intrigued. I never felt like wanting to listen to it. Too abrasive, not enough melody was what I thought. I don't go to the dentist on my free will neither...

I guess you can call Autechre's music difficult. I am not sure if you can call their output music though. Probably the "tech" in the band name refers to techno or technological or something like that. The noises Autechre produce are electronic and therefore purely artificial. That is one big difference to the early Einstürzende Neubauten who made "real" sounds using drilling machinery and stuff. The other difference is that on Confield Autechre don't create noise but noises. The sounds on the album are not really offensive to the ear. They don't grab the listener's attention neither though. That is a big advantage actually. Listening to Confield is like wandering around without a destination or clear itinerary and discovering things on the left and right of the road by chance.

Autechre are nothing for people with short attention spans. It is hard to get into them. Their "music" is challenging. As I am a curious person concerning music I could not resist listening to the CD finally. At the end of the CD I felt like having experienced a hangover without having been drunk the night before. The most rewarding was that the hangover didn't last long. It was over after exactly 62 minutes and five seconds. The kind of hangover I have always been dreaming of.

I like the idea of this stuff. In theory I am a fan. In practice I am not there yet. The music itself is naked. No melody, few harmonies, hardly a constant beat, no voices. The listener has to clothe the music himself. He has to make it up in his head. It is his work. It is not shoved in his ears. But there are endless possibilities. The music gives the listener almost total freedom. But he has to be imaginative. He needs to have his own ideas, otherwise it won't mean anything to him. Everyone will hear different things in this record. The music is like an empty house. You have to furnish it yourself. First you paint the ceiling, then you paste the wallpaper on to the walls, then you lay the floor coverings, finally you put up the furniture. I haven't made Confield my home yet. I hear lots of different noises but altogether it doesn't make sense yet. I am still connecting the sounds to create pictures and stories. Some impressions of the first four tracks:

spinning tops falling down and gyrating again. a rising sustained tone. ambientish keyboards.
beats like shots deep into the stomach. first fast then slow. decelerating, accelerating. "wabernde" (not found in my dictionaries) keyboards. electronic water drops. metal stroking sounds.
video war game sounds. shots. MG fire. synthie-sound.
starts like a cheap computer game. someone walking quickly on ice. maybe more like the amplified sound of a frog or toad walking on a slippery road. a lion growling. a creaking door opening. a motorcycle which is started. plodding along. a sound track in the original sense, a track of sounds which hardly qualifies as music in the conventional sense.

In a way Confield is to conventional music what the internet is to television. The user is not only a consumer anymore. He is participating. It is not enough to just open the ears and eyes. There is an interaction which goes beyond passive perception.

Someone who has made the record his own. Mochi Manifesto via Google cache:

1. Zen Buddhist monks are engaged in a spiritual performance. Together, they turn the impossibly tight-sealed lids of various jars and metal containers. The monks slowly begin taking heavy breaths, the slightest low-pitched hum of their voices can be heard. Songful spirits of trees and rivers are drawn to them and begin surrounding them. The spirits gradually trail into the priests and are released upon the exhalings. The breaths grow deeper, the inhalations become extended, yet everything remains utterly calm.

In another galaxy, this would be a traditional rural farm song. Percussionists keep the swaying rhythm alive to boost morale for the humble workers. Under a purple-yellow haze and the heat of 2 suns, baskets are filled with some sort of glowing alien coal. Everybody mines, gleans, and gathers in the same back-and-forth motions set by the drums. Later, you can hear the shearing of crops and dust evaporating in the humid atmosphere.
A relentless meteor shower upon a cactus-infested plain where scorpion-like things surface every now and then to warble about. Everything is dangerously spiny, acute and in abrasive conflict its surroundings. The sky is shrouded in clouds and brutal sandstorms flurry upon the twilight ranges. Eventually, a few distant stars are able to shimmer through the havoc quite brilliantly. However, this vague sign of consolation is ultimately lost in the pelting assault.
A 2-legged machine rhythmically pounds the floor in a cave of bats. It sends out horrifying growling frequencies to instigate hysteria throughout them. Wings flap and the bats all begin grinding their teeth in tension. The machine strikes the ground more forcefully, shaking the more distant creatures off of their stalactite bound areas of slumber. The rumbling mechanical howl grows more intense, the collective grinding of teeth forms a claustrophobic chatter, the pounding grows more and more erratic. The bats begin to drop to the ground, a couple can be faintly heard screeching in pain. As the last fall, the machine sends out one final moan before shutting off.
A large beetle chomping and snorting away at a pool of tinier insects. Every bite it takes is performed with a systematic double-slurp followed by a sharp snapping of the jaw. A mysterious shaman plays a strange and foreign metallic instrument to keep the beetle hypnotized through this ritualistic devouring practice. The beetle's consumption becomes more frantic, more violent. The hooded apprentices of the shaman silently pray beside the beetle's arena. The beetle's eyes redden as a dark omen begins to take shape.
You awaken to find yourself upon the tongue of a gargantuan beast. The beast roars as you are forcefully tossed around in bubbling gurgling saliva. Skeletons of past meals and other barely alive unidentifiable animals are trapped with you. Undigested bones crumble and crunch rapidly as the beast writhes around in attempts to swallow you. Suddenly, the mouth closes and it all fades out in an instant.
Uh oh, somebody left the drum machine on and today the kids are going to be at the shop for a music-education field trip. As they arrive, the steady beat compels the rambunctious rascals to slam around on a bunch of keyboards all set to "Harpsichord 2". A couple children try to sing a nonsense little melody around the cacophony (let's say the kids have all gotten their hands on broken vocoder-filter-masks as well). One even discovers how to switch her keyboard to "Acid Pad". But enough is enough... the chaos of the noise causes one young boy to cry and soon enough... everybody is crying.. the drum machine obliviously runs on. Where'd the teacher go?
3 frogs. Like the Budweiser frogs, they alternate noises... the first 2 emit little croaks while the third puffs out with a deep boom. The moon shines peacefully, a cluster of fireflies encircles the pond. However, this tranquility is all about to change. Little did the first 2 frogs know, they were seated upon powerful fountain streams. The water-cannons begin their spray, sending the 2 frogs high in the sky. The frogs are startled and let off distressed cries, at times with water in their mouths so that a gargle is all that can be heard. They consistently land with a splash precisely where they once sat, only to be thrown up in the air over and over again. The whole time the 3rd frog persists indifferently with its burping bass.
An argument between a metronome and a dysfunctional ill-tempered computer. The animosity steadily increases and the mood swings so that mild tension boils into rage. As a result, the agitation culminates into a full-blown melee. The metronome really loses its cool and aggressively lunges at the computer, sending both of them down a long, rocky, arduous incline. Down, down, down they tumble, no longer engaged in battle, but lost and confused in the tangle of thorns and steep terrain. Major injuries to both.

This is what always ends up happening when I listen to Autechre's Confield. It's just how I react. Is this enjoyable? Good music?

link (one comment) ... comment

[music, albums] February 2, 2003 at 3:35:00 PM CET

"What pulls you toward Poe's work?"

"The theme: Why am I so attracted to that which I know is bad for me?"

Lou Reed in a longish interview with LA Weekly's John Payne on his new album The Raven.

The new album features some interesting guest musicians like Ornette Coleman, David Bowie, Willem Dafoe as narrator and Lou's wife Laurie Anderson of course.

In the interview Lou complains already about all the people who are going to listen to the album on mp3 and will miss the subtleties of the sound. Personally I suspect that there are only very few people capable of distinguishing a compressed mp3 from a normal CD. I am very interested in the new Massive Attack CD as I find the mp3s of a pretty high quality and would like to test if I can hear the difference.

An interesting bit on a track called Fire Music:

JP: I was excited to hear you doing several electronic pieces on this new album; "Fire Music" is especially thrilling.

LR: That was done after September 11, so that's very much a reflection of that. I had been working on that piece, and in the interim the thing went down, and then one day I went and did it.

It's complicated how that was done. There's no guitar. I wanted to get a certain Metal Machine Music guitar sound, and I waited a long time for the technology to get to the point where you could do that. I've been talking with computer guys for a long time, talking about a certain thing I wanted to have happen, and they said to me, "Listen, that's impossible, what you're talking about." And then I found a way of doing it. The minute I could hear it I could play it, 'cause I heard the tone — bingo, I was home free.

I could play it if I could hear it; if I can't hear it I can't play it. But put it this way: I couldn't do it again. That was of the moment, like a lot of things I do, which is a drag in some ways. "Fire Music," for example, two and a half minutes or whatever it was — that was it. I shot my load. I couldn't do it again, because I don't know how I did it.

P.S. Six tracks (90 seconds each I think) can be streamed here.

link (no comments) ... comment

[music, albums] January 29, 2003 at 1:07:00 PM CET

Bonnie Prince Billy - Master and Everyone

You can stream the whole new album here. Marcello writes on it here.

I have never been a real fan of Will Oldham. But I always liked his music. The 1st Palace Brothers was rough but it was worth it. Anyways Will Oldham's new album sounds like I would have liked the latest Beck album to sound. Apparently it has been produced by the same guy as the last Lambchop album. The kind of low-key production I absolutely adore.

link (4 comments) ... comment

[music, albums] January 23, 2003 at 11:16:00 PM CET

Sigur Ros - Agætis Bryn

Von hier:

2 von 7 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:

Schwülstig - schwülstiger - am schwülstigsten, 3. April 2001 Rezensentin/Rezensent: (alex6... (Mehr über mich) aus Eschborn, Deutschland

Die Siegerrose für das überschätzteste Album des Jahres 2000. Eine Kastratenstimme (noch unerträglicher als Thom Yorke von Radiohead und das will schon was heissen), die irgendwas in dieser den Ohren nicht gerade schmeichelnden isländischen Sprache haucht. Dazu ~~rein elektronische Musik (hier ist wirklich nichts echt, will sagen akustisch-handgemacht) und zwar~~ bombastisch arrangierter Kitsch, Yes waren dagegen schlichte Seelen. Die Melodien schleimen sich ins Ohr und kleben dort fest. Man kriegt sie nicht mehr raus. Finger weg von diesem Produkt, wenn man seine Hörlöffel nicht verschmutzen will!

link (no comments) ... comment

[music, albums] January 21, 2003 at 10:35:00 PM CET

Don't trust

any announcements I ever make in this weblog. No Amnesiac review tonight, sorry about that. I suddenly had a nicotine ~~infliction~~ temptation which I could only resist by waiting and not writing anything tonight.

Amnesiac is still the best record of the zero years though. It is monumental. It is a killer. It breaks my heart. It lets me float in space. It makes me lose my language. It gives me the chills. It is pure power. It is a trip. It can't be wrong. It is the end.

link (one comment) ... comment

[music, albums] January 19, 2003 at 7:16:00 PM CET

I have to check out

The Dudley Corporation: The Lonely World of the Dudley Corporation - PopMatters Music Review

So we have the Dudley Corporation, a Dublin power-trio that has balled up the melancholy sentiments and noisy dynamics of the Wedding Present (circa 1991) and tossed it off to us in the form of the excellent new LP The Lonely World of the Dudley Corporation. They call it "Mamrock" but you know you've heard it before. But remember that in 1991, the Wedding Present was regularly accused of recycling the larynx of Joy Division and the attitude of the Smiths to spin something utterly unoriginal. Yet, the Weddoes' Seamonsters is one of the finest albums I've ever heard, and this lonely world of the Dudley Corporation is a scintillating variation of exactly that sort of sound. Eternal recurrence, I love it.

link (one comment) ... comment

[music, albums] January 19, 2003 at 6:46:50 PM CET

Massive Attack - 100th Window

Massive Attack continue their trip into the heart of darkness. On board this time 3D, Horace Andy and Sinéad O’Connor as female guest singer. Daddy G’s bass is sadly missing. 3D’s voice has improved a lot in comparison to the previous records where he mostly spoke the words. Now he whispers and hums, his voice is much better integrated into the overall sound. Unfortunately Sinéad O’Connor who sings on three tracks cannot match Liz Fraser’s ethereal vocals from Mezzanine. To me O’Connor’s pure voice seems an alien element to Massive Attack’s almost ambient music. It only fits in the single Special Cases where I didn’t recognize her voice at first as she sings lower than usual.

Musically 100th Window is a long flow, a very homogenous rather reflective record without extremes. A dense album which is more about textures than melodies. In places the music is tense and menacing, in others quite light and fragile. The overall atmosphere is brooding. Like the calm beforer the storm. Besides new age Massive Attack quote oriental music and monumental film scores in their electronic(?) string arrangements. There is absolutely no hint to hip-hop or scratching on the record anymore. The beats are electronic and quite hypnotic. A low-key album which doesn’t show the extensive production which must have gone into it, there is a lot to discover in subsequent listens, it is a very rich, ripe fruit.

Everyone knows that Massive Attack are fierce opponents of the planned war against Iraq. I guess that the frequent use of Arabian string arrangements especially in the last very strong song Antistar is a way of saying why don’t we fuse Western and Eastern culture instead of making war one against the other. 3D’s last word is "bloodstains". The song finishes abruptly with the addictive dominating bass riff repeated over and over.

I have the impression Massive Attack get better and better with each album. I never got into Blue Lines, Protection was my initiation to the band and I liked it quite a bit at the time though I have played it to death long ago. Mezzanine was a great powerful coldwave record made 18 years after that genre peaked. I don’t listen to it very often anymore though. 100th Window currently is my favourite of theirs. It is already a strong contender for album of the year.

The official release date is February, 10th. Let's hope that the Iraq war will not have started then.

link (2 comments) ... comment

[music, albums] January 14, 2003 at 10:01:00 PM CET

VI: 2001 Radiohead - Amnesiac, part 1

I will do this in two parts as otherwise the post would get too long and you would have to wait another day for the complete review.

The band name

Baby your mind is a radio Got a receiver inside my head Baby I'm tuned to your wavelength Lemme tell you what it says:

Transmitter! Oh! Picking up something good Hey, radio head! The sound...Of a brand-new world. ... Now you and I have no secrets Now baby, lemme read your mind I hear ev'rything you're thinking You can't help the way you sound

Radio Head by The Talking Heads (bold by me)

The band how I saw it I have always hated hyped bands. One reason for this is that I don't like that the world shoves me the music I should listen to into my ears. I love to discover new music. Like an explorer loves to discover new countries. And I do not like packaged tours to places where everyone has been already and which have lost all their authenticity due to the millions of people who have tread those paths before.

Additionally very often hyped bands have been huge disappointments for me. Radiohead was no exception to this rule. Almost everything they did before Amnesiac didn't do anything for me. I felt it had all been done before better and without this irritating and embarrassing falsetto. Ok there was Creep their first single from 1992 I heard on Bernard Lenoir's radio program and later on MTV. A very catchy dramatic indie rock ballad with personal lyrics which seemed to be so fitting to their singer Thom Yorke that it hurt. Just take the first strophe:

When you were here before Couldn't look you in the eye You're just like an angel Your skin makes me cry You float like a feather In a beautiful world I wish I was special You're so fuckin' special But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here.

At the time there was no-one in the world to whom the term "creep" seemed more appropriate than Thom Yorke, a pale shy unremarkable guy from Oxford singing for an unknown indie band with the ridiculuous nonsense name Radiohead.

Later on in 1995 there was the sampler for the Bosnian kids who suffered from the civil war to which Radiohead contributed Lucky, a bitter-sweet ballad which was later to be the outstanding song on OK Computer, a totally over-hyped album which I have always found of hardly any interest at all. In places it sounded like a shitty Pink Floyd for the nineties. Mostly unbearable. My point of view is that progrock belongs into the seventies and should never resurface again.

The title A: What was the name of that album again? B: It must have slipped my mind. A: That's the one.

Thom Yorkes said that Amnesiac "is about the things you forget. And remembering..." At best this is half of the truth I suspect. The themes Yorke sings about on Amnesiac are too serious to forget about. Divorce, brutality and death are unforgettable once you have experienced them. And I still believe that Yorke has experienced them himself. Otherwise he would be an amazing actor, an incredible liar. But the way he sings suggests that he isn't. His voice simply is too intense, too pure.

My theory is different. I don't know where Thom Yorke has been to be able to write the lyrics to this album. But it definitely isn't a place I'd ever like to go to. And I guess he doesn't want to go there again neither. That's why they released Kid A first and tried to forget about the other tracks recorded at roughly the same time. I could imagine that if Kid A hadn't been so widely acclaimed they probably would never have released Amnesiac at all. In a way it is a record which would have been better left in the drawer than exposed to the world. The album is not about real amnesia which usually comes to you after an accident. It is about a wanted, a consciously strived for amnesia. To forget things which are too horrible, too devastating to think back to.

link (no comments) ... comment

[music, albums] January 8, 2003 at 5:48:54 PM CET

Disappointing

The new Yo La Tengo EP with four versions of an obscure Sun Ra song called Nuclear War is the weakest music I have ever heard of one of my favourite bands. The interpretation is mainly drum patterns plus spoken political lyrics which I wouldn't exactly call subtle. It was probably fun for the kids to repeat "it's a motherfucker" for a zillion times but I find this dull and annoying. Version #2 with the kids is the best one nevertheless. Why is it so difficult to make political statements in rock music without sacrificing the art? From the esthetic point of view this reminds me very much of socialist realism. Just plain boring. Monotonous. Though the political intentions seem to be good. Georgia, Ira and James, more music and less politics in the future, please.

Somewhere else:

link (4 comments) ... comment

[music, albums] January 4, 2003 at 7:13:52 PM CET

V: 1967 Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico

Velvet Underground - Velvet Underground & Nico

1. Someone should have kicked Andy Warhol in the balls for letting Nico sing for Velvet Underground. It is not only that she couldn't sing, Lou can't sing neither. But he is cool whereas she was just a bore. Her vocal delivery is so devoid of any expression that it makes me want to run up the walls. Nowadays even computer voices are more passionate.

There was a time when I was stunned how well Femme Fatale (much better when sung by Lou) described the women I fell in love with. The women I was interested in ~~were~~ seemed to be men-eating monsters. But later on I understood: a femme fatale is only fatal for herself as Nico's destiny proves.
A hint to the background choir on Femme Fatale: "femme" is pronounced like "hum" and not like "hem". It took me ages to find out what they were singing. I heard She's a perfect drag or She's a perfect girl or even She's a perfect hell instead of She's a femme fatale due to this pronunciation mistake.
The first Velvet Underground album is the beginning of a new age in rock music. Rock music becomes exciting. It suddenly is about the things that matter to young adults, the real stuff. Drugs, parties and sexual relationships. Before there was only Dylan and the Beatles. Tame stuff for pussies. Whereas Dylan made serious music for serious people the Beatles made light weight music for teenage girls. I am exaggerating here but in a way it is true.
Lou's voice has never been as soothing as on Sunday Morning, the album opener. A dreamy lullaby with a beautiful simple xylophone line. Also the perfect music to wake up to on a Sunday morning. Though it doesn't prepare the listener for things to come on this album it already has some allusions in the lyrics which make clear that there is something dark hiding behind the light pop tune.

Watch out, the world‘s behind you, there’s always someone watching you

is persectution mania described in nuce. The full lyrics of the album are here.

I'm Waiting for the Man and Heroin are the most realistic songs on drugs I know. I still don't like the "tune" of Heroin too much but John Cale's viola massacre at the end of the song is absolutely gorgeous.
Many bands I adore are unthinkable without the Velvets: the Feelies, Steve Wynn's Dream Syndicate, Yo La Tengo, Galaxie 500, Luna, Giant Sand, Eleventh Dream Day, REM, Gun Club, Sonic Youth, Cowboy Junkies, Jesus and Mary Chain, Modern Lovers, Patti Smith etc.
I love the garage sound of Lou Reed's and Sterling Morrison's guitars, John Cale's viola play which transforms the classical instrument into a deep-cutting knife, and Maureen Tucker whose drumming sounds as if she was hitting garbage cans.
The Velvet Underground & Nico is not my favourite VU album (without Nico it would be my fave though). But it is the most varied one. It comprises their relaxed melodic side which was going to be focussed on on The Velvet Underground and Loaded and their noisy abrasive side which would be explored further on White Light/White Heat.
For the first time my readers and I agree on the best album of a year. Almost 50% voted for VU's debut here.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part V was this post.

link (2 comments) ... comment