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Beggars Banquet
Film School wear their influences on their sleeves. I find it very hardto review this single without mentioning the bands they sound like. “Onand On” is a song heavily influenced by Sonic Youth. It’s a good song,not very original but plenty of passion and the guitars sound great. Idid think it went on a bit too long but then all of a sudden the songsteps up a gear and it finishes off in style. This is followed by “PlusOne” which sounds like Film School were listening to a lot of Pavementthe day they came up with it. It’s fairly dull and generic, soundinglike the default sensitive mode built into most late '90s American rockbands. “February” is more distinctive: it still doesn’t escape thestandard alternative rock mold but it works well. There is a goodproduction on it, the drums and synthesisers are particularly nice.
On and On would have been better without “Plus One” shoved in the middle of two much better songs. I hope the album sticks to the heavier side of Film School’s sound as their gentle side is too flaccid.
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Drag City
It’s a Game meanders slowly, awkward hand holding and sunny summerdays, floating above warm organs and Frost’s unadorned, warm voice.While the majority of the instrumentation on the album is spare andhushed, Frost side-steps the alt-country pigeonhole simply because sheavoids a great deal of the ostentation and melodrama that can be partand parcel of the genre. Rather, the gentle swing and warm bass fromolder Country &Western and Honky Tonk, along with a subtle popstreak, makes the majority of these songs a pleasure to listen to.
On“A Mirage,” Frost sketches a tale of lost love over a simple chord thatrises and falls with her spare guitar picking and voice. Even better is“My Lover Won’t Call,” a beautiful and melancholy torch song about thepain of waiting for something you know won’t come. Much like the musicfound here, Frost’s plain, yet personal lyrics are neither trite norponderous. Rather, they naively explore the every day highs and lows ofrelationships, reveling in each. It’s a Game is a charming record, andwhile it probably won’t win over any new fans, those already familiarwith her work will surely be delighted.
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Amorfon
What should be achieved by such a project is a record of improvisations of a greater creative purity than an adult. These children should be significantly less influenced by previous musicians as an older performer as they are newcomers to the realm of music, they don’t know Britney Spears from Stockhausen. The lack of fine motor skills should also lead to interesting outcomes as it adds to the randomness of the situation. That’s what should be but Kindermusik never gets off the ground (I guess you can say it’s got teething problems).
I was quite intrigued before I listened to the album as the sleeve was fantastic. A list of the performers was on the back, their names, photos of them and their instruments. In addition to the expected items such as voice and toys there some more outlandish devices like organ and zitar. After listening to the album I decided that the sleeve was the highlight of this release. The pieces are exactly like photos of babies, largely boring for everyone apart from those who know the baby in question or their parents. This is like some stranger coming up to you and opening up his wallet to show you a picture of his kid except replace “wallet” with “mp3 player” and “picture” with “piece of music.” It’s not that the recordings are awful, they’re better than a lot of improvised performances I’ve seen. There’s just nothing here to relate to or get into.
Kindermusik can be intellectualised until the cows come home (as the compiler Yoshio Machida has done by including a John Cage quote and words like “betweenness” in the liner notes). Is it really improvised music as do the children intend to make music? Or does that make it true improvised music? Or are they actually trying to play something and just can’t? At the end of the day it doesn’t matter because most of it is unremarkable. The only thing of any real note is Hinata Miyazaki’s piece which sees him play a teething ring hooked up to a sampler. The sound of his chewing and sucking is translated into xylophone notes. That’s very little to do with the baby’s performance and more the ingenuity of whoever designed the teething ring. The rest of the tracks are just children gurgling and mashing the buttons on electronic toys. Benjamin Deutsch and Goh Yokota’s efforts are both prime examples of this. It’s impossible to dress this up as anything more than self indulgence by the parents. Bill Hicks said it best: “Your children aren’t special.”
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- Moyona Sonobe - Steel Pan
- Goh Yokota - Toy
- Hinata Miyazaki - Teething ring sound instrument
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Load
A preliminary glance at Peace Trials will make anyone turntheir heads and take a second look. The cover is a photo of two nudewomen standing in a flowering garden. The tone is religious, conveyingan impressionistic sense of innocence and growth. The reverse sidefeatures what appears to be two soldiers and the text beneath itreads, "Kites Band for Self-Defense." Titles like "Flag Torn Apart" and"Something About America" convey a double topic: religion and war inAmerica. Once the music begins, however, a wrench in thrown into themachine before it even has a chance to get off the ground.
The lyrics on the album are confusing and misleading. I like songs that have symbolic images in them and I like mystery, too: some songs simply have lyrics that are worth the time it takes to decode them. Forgues, however, writes lyrics that are only concerned with the images words can convey. It would be interesting if all the images led up to a perceivable and satisfying message in the end, but Kites doesn't quite take it that far. There are plenty of violent pictures written out and plenty of accompanying religious images concerned with virgins, Christ (presumably), and dying monuments, but no sum exists. Forget summation in fact, I'm not convinced there's enough info present to even calculate a sum.
On the musical end of the spectrum, there's quite a bit to beexcited about. It sounds as though Forgues is attempting to merge thesemi-acoustic and noise worlds together on Peace Trials.The songs go back and forth between strange, guitar-centered pieces andfree-form noise experiments. Again, Forgues manages to stay awayfrom the pure noise approach and almost always offers up a theme thatguides that homemade electronic fuzziness through its death shrieks. Onthe other hand, merging the songs might have worked better: it would'vebeen much more exciting to hear the guitar work combined with homemade,electronic trickery. As a result, the album can be listened to as apurely sonic experiment for Kites. Perhaps Forgues is taking a stepforward compositionally, but he needs to get his shit together. If hewants to make a definitive statement, he shouldn't write a song called"Baby Fawn with Broken Legs" and then claim that the song was based onstudies concerning crucifixion without qualifying such a claim.
I just might be the loser, however, that isn't getting the joke or the concept or whatever Kites was trying to get at. With such a strong visual package, I was hoping for more from this record and didn't get it. The guitar pieces are pretty and the vocals fit in well with the music (especially on the closing "Peace Trials"), but the album fails to live up to the promise it made with its packaging. I don't think that's too harsh of a criticism, either. Don't show me a cookie and then snatch it away from me the second I hit play or open up the insert. I've been dying for more political noise and all this did was alert me to the fact that it'll probably take some time before we get a political noise album with any incendiary or informed commentary.
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Too Pure
Emotion Control is formulaic post punk boredom. Both tracks are dull and unremarkable. I can only assume that The Rogers Sisters have learned everything from an arcane textbook called How to Sound like a Dozen New Wave Bands at Once, the guitars have chorus and phaser effects on them at the expected places, the vocals are cool non-singing chants with a quirky accent and there’s even a fucking saxophone on “The Conversation,” and I say bollocks to all that. The Rogers Sisters are another nu wave band jumping on the bandwagon (and the axels are about to give on that baby). If I wanted something from the past to return in a distasteful manner I’ll stick with the inevitable indigestion from my forthcoming Christmas dinner.
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Community Library
I like it when musicians have a purpose and go headlong into a project in order to see it realized. It's ballsy and requires a good deal of effort. Glitchy electronic music could use some effort, too. Entire albums sound like they could've been assembled in a day, maybe less, and that does nothing but make the music, the entire package, seem cheap. So with effort and concept in hand, I was willing to give Sawako the benefit of the doubt. At just over nineteen minutes long there isn't much to complain about in the first place. The longer tracks (the longest reaching five minutes) have the most going for them. Several pieces end in two minutes and others in less than a minute. So when a song is given some time to flesh itself out, it's almost a relief. Jumping between meandering sound samples, though each of them are appealing to some extent, is about as much fun as listening to the television while flipping through it at light speed. There's not enough material to catch on to and so none of it ever really sounds all that interesting. It just exists in that brief space and then goes away. In absence of "Aykmin" or "Datam," the EP is almost entirely forgettable. And if it isn't forgettable, then it's damn irritating. "Practice" features some lovely guitar playing right before it drops of the face of the planet. I'd do anything to extend that track another twenty or so seconds just so I could hear where that melody was going.
On the upside, the aforementioned tracks are almost worth getting the EP for. Along with "End Roll" and "Lapon," there's enough music here to pique my interest in Sawako's other work. However, it'd be nice if Community Library just made these tracks available as part of another release from Sawako or maybe as part of a singles collection. All I know is that more than half of these tracks don't need to be on the EP. I would've been far more satisfied with a four-track, twelve-minute release. The concept behind the project would sound far more intriguing than it does now and would give me hope for further short, but excellent tunes.
As it stands I'm weary of hearing another release like this one. I've actually just ripped the songs that I like to my computer and made them part of another playlist so that I can enjoy those songs without the other, less enjoyable aspects of Omnibus. Sawako does make a neat offer, however: if anyone thinks that they can craft a fine remix of this album, she encourages you to do so and send her the results. Like I said, I appreciate the concept and I appreciate that she stuck to the random qualities that such a concept would demand, but in the end it did more damage than anything else. Random is good, but sometimes I need a red thread to get me through an album. Sawako cuts the thread in half before I can even find it.
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I'm probably one of the only people who actually own the originalCD-R release of this. I can say that safely because I think I was theonly person in the audience their first time through Boston who wasn'tin one of the bands on stage that night. My review of the night waseven posted here on Brainwashed, which featured Tigersaw, 27, Sonna,and Chris Brokaw up in the now closed Artspace in Gloucester, Mass.Like Kinski, (whose reissue is also reviewed today), this band blew meaway from the first second. However, like them, the young group made dowith the resources they had to create their first album.
Explosions haven't really changed their sound from album to album,however, so don't expect to find a completely different band containedon How Strange, Innoncence. The arrangement is still handled byone drummer and three guitar players (one who uses bass sometimes). Themeandering melodies have more bright than dark sides to them, as songtitles like "Look Into the Air," "Magic Hours," and "Snow and Lights"are undeniably optimistic sounding. The band isn't nearly as cynical ason their most recent full-length album, The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place(whose title, contrary to what some high profile critics haveerroneousely assumed, represents the writings of a person who iswriting the title over and over and over again to try and convincehimself it to be true).
Argue as much as you may about how much better a remastering job canmake an album sound, but if the songs are fairly average to begin with,it's not going to do all that much in the grand scheme of things. Fansof Explosions in the Sky who only have exposure to their two big albumsare pretty spoiled. We are used to getting a consise album of 5-6focused songs, all of which are well-crafted, original sounding, andover the top in terms of power, passion, and production. Here, I canonly say a couple of these tracks come close to that level. "Look Intothe Air" is perhaps my favorite yet it strays from what they're knownfor: it has a very memorable riff and keeps to a moderate pace whichdoesn't actually scream bloody murder somewhere in the middle. Whileit's a great song, it doesn't do much to distinguish Explosions fromother instrumental post-rock bands of the late 1990s. "Remember Me as aTime of Day" closes the album with a very acoustic sounding guitarinterplay whose beauty and charm hints at the better moments of whatwas to come from the band, but the band doesn't go too far with themelodies contained. I appreciate the arrangement on somethinglike the predominantly drum-free "Time Stops," with a bowed instrumentof some sort at the beginning and a picked up pace towards the middlewith some faster guitar finger-picking. Their playing was always greatand their ear for balance of the instruments hasn't ever been at fault,but the songwriting of the group hadn't quite blossomed yet, as themelodies simply aren't as powerful as they are now.
This is not a bad album, despite the band apologizing for it profusely in theliner notes printed on the CD iteself. They are correct in admitting that itshows a certain brightness that they probably won't pursue again. It does sound better than a lot ofthe instrumental bands who are trying their hand at the loud/softpretty/abrasive juxtapositioning, but it should be well understood thatthe quality control the Austin-based quartet has enforced over theirrecent work is simply not present. The important thing is now anybodycan get the full fidelity experience and decide for themselves ratherthan pay way too much or resort to filesharing compressed and glitchy,quality-compromised MP3s.
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By the time I had seen them at Terrastock, Kinski was already donewith their third album, their first for Sub Pop, scheduled to bereleased in the following year. Old releases available at the merchtable and I quickly snagged up anything I could get my hands on. What Iheard from SpaceLaunch for Frenchie was a band who knew wherethey were going: marrying the loud volumes with an affinity for moresubdued melodies and vocals, but they still had some way to go to maketheir music more remarkable.
The passion that drives their fantastic albums Airs Above Your Station and this year's top ten contender Alpine Staticare all present, however the writing isn't all that impressive. Theband is very much in tune with each other, with carefully orchestratedswells and decays, but the riffs aren't memorable, they don't resonateand remain long after the songs are done. It's not boring, but thesongs are simply less distinguishable from the thousands of othermediocre rock bands who are playing at the local rock club, opening forthe national acts. It's not bad by a long shot, and I enjoy the vocaltracks on songs like "Floundering & Fluctuating," as they're veryreminiscent of Jesus and Mary Chain and early Spiritualized (beforeJason Pearce got the notion he was in some stadium-rock band). It's nota bad thing to sound like in my book.
The reissue of SpaceLaunch on Strange Attractors is a dream fornewer fans who may have missed out on the availability of the originalhomemade release. The original release is here in its entirety alongwith four songs from Kinski's four-track demo and one outtake from thealbum recording session. I actually love the outtake, "She Always MadeUs Work Like Dogs" a lot more than some of the tracks on the originalalbum so I'm confused why it didn't make it. The demo tracks, however,show a band who's even slightly sloppier than the band on the finalrecordings. The recording of Chris Martin's vocals and David Weeks'drums could use a lot of work but hey, who's band is experienced enoughto get -good- mic sounds on their first demos? More importantly thanany criticism of mine is that the songs are fun to listen to and Kinskiare a fantastic band and I'm glad to finally have a CD of this whosebooklet isn't wearing and fading quickly.
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Tursa
Throughout the album images arise of time passing, empty and dustyrooms filled with the distorted tinkling of a music box, furniture leftbehind in an abandoned manor, and an atmosphere of grandeur faded andforgotten but not gone. Pianos, strings, and chimes are manipulated,layered, and paired with underlying low snarls. Almost-liturgicalchants mingle with muted brass. The music is harsh at times but alwaysstately, muted but never muddy, shrouded but not obscured.
"Arcade" begins as something like a carousel or circus tune,but distorted, dark, and muted as if echoing through thick fog, thendeteriorates into something more foreboding before sliding into softchimes. "Wind in the Willows" brings in footsteps, trickling andbubbling water, and wind sweeping past age-rippled windows. Thepenultimate track "Windows" has more of a Sol feel than the rest of thealbum with prominent acoustic guitar.
At a brief 46 minutes Cups in Cupboard still had the power todistort all my perceptions of time. The feeling that's left is ofagentle dread and a yearning for things lost.
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The album retains the playfulness and light heartedness of Harvey’s Intoxicated Man and Pink Elephants (the Gainsbourg albums). The opening track “First St. Blues” is the sound of a solitary wanderer ruminating on the world. This is a common theme to the album as Harvey obviously identifies with songwriters who procrastinate and philosophise while looking down on a whiskey in a dusty bar. Songs like “Louise” and “Man without a Home” continue the lonesome cowboy vibes. Listening to the album makes me imagine Harvey working in a studio with swing doors from a saloon and a horse tied up outside. His version of Guy Clark’s “Hank Williams Said It Best” (the lyrics of which give the album its title) is as good as the original and is worth getting the album for alone.
One thing about One Man’s Treasure, which could be either avirtue or a fault depending on your views, is that it sounds like theBad Seeds. “Demon Alcohol” being the most reminiscent, sounding like aless aggressive “Loverman.” Harvey does embellish the Bad Seed templateand makes it his own: his voice is far removed from Cave’s. Whencovering Cave’s “Come into My Sleep,” Harvey keeps the song distantfrom the original. The music sounds that bit lighter and fresher andHarvey’s voice has a gentler tone to it.
One Man’s Treasure is a good record, it’s not a groundbreaking album by any means. Mick does exactly what is expected of him: a dozen covers of alt-country’s gentry made with a lot of love and respect for the originals. He doesn’t reconstruct the songs in an attempt to gain credibility with the serious musical elite, he just sticks to being a singer of songs. Much like his other CDs, I can’t see myself playing this to death but I know I’ll be digging it out from time to time when those cowboy blues set in (most likely after watching the Sergio Leone collection).
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