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- Genesis P-Orridge & Cotton Ferox "Word Ship"
- Genesis P-Orridge & Cotton Ferox "Word Ship (Cosmopolitan Dub)"
- Thee Majesty "Soul Searching"
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- Mike Tiernan
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It's not that Nocturama is badfrom start to finish, what really plagues it is its uneven quality.Cave fails in properly directing the Bad Seeds to create a mood to thealbum. While the opening tracks are very solid, they hold too close tothe path set by the last two albums and make little progress. Thestrikingly rocking (and horrible) "Dead Man in My Bed" provides anawkward pit stop in the middle of the album. This song sees Caveregress light years lyrically, and muscally it sounds as if he istrying to force himself to reclaim the explosive energy of earlyreleases. While it is a relief that he immediately retreats back to thecalm and collected sound he has clearly become more comfortable with,Cave's placement of this track right in the middle makes the album adifficult listen. This track would have worked better if placed towardsthe end of the album, as is done with the intense closer. "Babe I'm OnFire" is a great success and gives evidence that despite, "Dead Man,"Cave is still able to rant along perfectly when the Bad Seeds decide toplay their hardest. Every second of this 15-minute long tirade isabsolutely essential and both astonising and disappointing. For if Cavecould have found the proper bridge from "Wonderful Life" to "Babe I'mOn Fire," instead of a messy collection of occasionally uninspiredsongs, then this would have been a much better record.
Nick Cave has raised the bar so high that expectations demand a great album, not simply just a few great songs. Nocturamawas recorded in seven days and it shows. The Bad Seeds at their bestare not spontaneous but deliberate, lets hope the next one takes thatinto consideration.
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- Michael Patrick Brady
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For those of us who do not have our very own lavish, sunlight-flooded house with a private lake in the backyard, the trio of Charles Atlas has captured the all-encompassing scenery, beauty, and fragrant air, and packaged it for our livingrooms and headsets. Once a pet project of Charles Wyatt (former guitarist for Dart and the one who clearly put the "magic" in early Piano Magic recordings), Charles Atlas soon became a fulltime duo with the fulltime involvement of former Rosemarys keyboardist Matt Greenberg. On this, the fourth album, they have expanded to a truly mesmerising ensemble with the addition of Sascha Galvagna.
Each song has a timeless instrumental delicacy, patiently developing bit by bit with hypnotic, cyclic guitar riffs, piano or organ, and occasional pulses, chimes, and even a performance on the first track by vocalist and saw player Denise Bon Giovanni. It's minimalistic in the number of sources used, but the result is never droning or predictable. At no points in this album does their sound ever become dull, tired, or boring, even on the 12 minute opener which, like a number of the other 7+ minute songs, could easily go on forever. At times, like "The Deadest Bar," the piano treatments are highly remeniscent of the classic Harold Budd/Cocteau Twins collaboration, The Moon and the Melodies. The variety of instrumentation from the throb of "One Foot Under," to the guitar-piano counterpoint of "Factotum," to the drum machine-colored "Strategies for Success Boxes," to the piano-led "Port, Noise Complaint" is what separates the trio of Charles Atlas from other quiet instrumental groups whose sleepiness can easily assure them a spot in the record store on the shelf next to Yanni. The trio, who are now based in San Francisco, will be on the road with Jessica Bailiff shortly. I hope the lucky ones who can make it do their damndest to make sure the sound of chatter and cash registers are kept at a bare minimum.
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In 1981, The Clean's "Tally Ho!" single was the second release of the then nascent Flying Nun record label of New Zealand. This fact is largely responsible for establishing The Clean as the archetypes of the New Zealand/Flying Nun sound which sprung up mostly in the 1980's (and has persisted to the present). The sound was poppy, drony, distorted, melodic, tremulous, and brilliant. But as The Clean Anthology proves, the band did not just embrace this school of sound more fully than anyone else: they helped build it. Merge
Anthology compiles singles, albums, compilation tracks, and oddities from 1981-1996 onto two CDs. The only thing omitted is The Clean's most recent album, Getaway, from 2001 (a savvy omission as it is still easy to acquire, whereas much of the other music here is quite scarce). The first disc contains four EPs and four compilation/oddities tracks, while the second disc contains three full-length albums plus some outtakes. "Tally Ho!" begins Anthology rousingly, and I'll be damned if the first Modern Lovers album does not come to mind every time I hear this song. From there on out, each song will make you want to dance around your room, or stare lovingly, perhaps even leeringly, at the wall, or call a pal up and talk softly just so they can slightly hear the music in the background and unwittingly share your smile. Among the errata, the most memorable is the prudently cut "Ludwig," an outtake from the Modern Rock LP, which features subdued shouts and jamming as a bed for a faux-German accented rant about a man named Ludwig who has not only the good fortune of living in a castle but also the good grace of having Walt Disney visit and compliment his monolithic abode. The contrast between "Ludwig" and "Wipe Me, I'm Lucky," the next song and the first from the Unknown Country LP, is eyebrow-raising. At one moment, you have this entirely aberrational song with the German-American accentuation, and next you have a playfully plucked instrumental with New Agey vocal harmonizing that sounds like some lost Aboriginal tribe from New Zealand. I suppose "Ludwig" would have made a stark contrast anywhere, but here it seems particularly pronounced. The most telling aspect of the chronological ordering of these discs is that as time goes on, The Clean's sound gets cleaner. Drone and distortion is lost. Whether this is due to higher recording standards and better studios (Flying Nun claims that "Tally Ho!," The Clean's first single, was recorded for $60 on an 8-track home studio) or to the growth of the band's sound is something you are left to ponder. Answers could probably be culled from listening to the members' other musical projects which were born during The Clean's consistently intermittent existence. The Bats, Bailter Space, and The Great Unwashed are all good reference points as to how Robert Scott and David and Hamish Kilgour evolved outside of The Clean. What does abide in The Clean is their adherence to the spirit of the sound they created. Each song exhibits, to some degree, the angular sounds of England which The Clean imported and molded into their own particular brand of seminal post/art-punk, which in turn helped to nourish a healthy stock of New Zealand bands to follow. 
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Though only 47 minutes long, Feast of Wirehas a sound so expansive, it's difficult to believe they packed so muchrichness into such a short span of time. The liner notes document theexhaustive list of instruments (and guest musicians!) present on thealbum. Calexico could no doubt persuade even the most jaded music snobthat originality and fresh ideas are still to be found within theoverwrought annals of indie rock.
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