Album Review - Neil Young's Prairie Wind

Old age isn't making Neil Young any easier to second guess, but the personal traumas of the last couple of years (death of his father and a brain aneurysm) certainly seem to have focussed the wayward canuck again. Whereas 2003's Greendale gave us woolly polemic wrapped in dreary arrangements, Prairie Wind gives us sweet pedal steel-driven songs and the plush sheen of Nashville's finest (Spooner Oldham, Ben Keith etc.) effectively completing his acoustic Harvest trilogy.

It's an album about looking back, coming to terms with mortality (Falling Off The Face Of The Earth, When God Made Me) and reflecting on childhood roots (Prairie Wind). While the arrangements often seem cloying, especially in the vocal accompaniment, the songs at least return to the simple acoustic heartland that lies at the centre of some of Young's best work. They're not unlike the rolling prairies he sings of. Thankfully, after ten years it sounds like Neil's come home again.


A creative commons creation by Chris Jones @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/chp2/

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Jeff Lynne Achieves Pop Perfection - ELO's Out Of The Blue

Still rather wrong-headedly regarded as a ‘guilty pleasure’ Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra were quite simply a gigantic pop hit machine. Oft-derided as a mere Beatles copyist, Lynne’s genius was to take his earliest ambition of recreating the rush felt when first hearing I Am The Walrus and achieve it, again and again.

The formula was simple (and in this he was far from being alone in the early 70s) – to weld pure rock melody with classical stringed grandeur. When the idiosyncratic fellow ex-Move member Roy Wood jumped ship, Lynne began his rise to chart domination. Over the space of five years and six albums Jeff refined the sound in his head.

By 1976’s New World Record (their finest moment) he’d achieved world status and was now the master technician of the four-minute chamber pop format. By 1977 he had only one way to go – bigger and grander. But, as his sleevenotes recall, holed-up in the Swiss Alps he found inspiration slow in coming.

Finally the muse returned, in spades. So much in fact that Out Of The Blue became a double album. Increased budgets fitting the band’s status meant that the sound was now as big as it could get (for the time). Multi-layered EVERYTHING pours out of the speakers, almost drowning you in lushness. Considering how good it sounds buffed-up for digital consumption, it’s amazing that these tracks sounded so amazing on tinny old AM radio. The album yielded four enormous hits.

Of these, Sweet Talkin’ Woman remains Lynne’s most perfect hit. From its George Martin-homage string intro to the massed acoustic guitars, it’s a rollercoaster of sweetness. These days, of course, everyone hails Mr Blue Sky as his magnum opus, yet its wild construction shows the first sign that Jeff was trying a little too hard.

The rest of the album remains a solid, if somewhat bloated romp through concept-lite AOR. Dotted with bubbling ‘modernity’ in the shape of Richard Tandy’s synths (The Whale) and childhood reverie (Birmingham Blues, Wild West Hero), all wrapped in a suitably sci fi sleeve. ELO would never repeat its successes, and to this day Out Of The Blue remains an essential purchase for anyone wishing to bask in their pop perfection.

Creatively and commonly shared by Chris Jones from http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/5qbd/ (my scoring)

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The White Album

After the show came the reality. Fractured, dislocated and expansive, The Beatles otherwise commonly known as The White Album – housed in its legendary plain white, subtly embossed sleeve – came out in November 1968. It arrived at a time when both the group and the world had changed irrevocably: the former since their first forays into fame and fortune, the latter scarred by the ongoing war in Vietnam and the assassination of Martin Luther King, to touch upon the tip of the iceberg.

From the inside looking out, maybe everything wasn't going to be alright, despite John Lennon’s assurances on the rousing Revolution 1, just one of many highlights on what is perhaps The Beatles’ most ambitious studio album.

After writing dozens of songs while meditating in India in the spring, the group returned to Abbey Road – and Trident, in Soho – to record over 30 tracks of new material up until the summer. When you think of how unrest had started to simmer within the group's ranks – Yoko Ono arriving in the studio; Apple forming; Ringo leaving and then returning – and how broad the album's palette of sounds (blue beat, heavy metal, folk and doo-wop, to name a few), The Beatles still manages to hang together like few other works.

The Lennon and Paul McCartney stereotypes are at once reinforced, yet also dismissed – few would have thought Good Night was the product of Lennon’s pen, and likewise Helter Skelter didn’t immediately scream McCartney. Away from such showpieces, it's the doodles that delight – George Harrison's Savoy Truffle is a fine counterweight to While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey balances the gravitas of Revolution 1.

Given that it also contains Lennon, Ono and Harrison's nine-minute noise collage Revolution 9 and McCartney's genuinely pointless Wild Honey Pie, it’s little wonder that producer George Martin always opined that The Beatles could have made a splendid single album. That said, without such variety on offer, the compiling of one’s own version wouldn’t be the national pastime it is today.

Shared under Creative Commons via http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/4b8c/

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Guitar Slinger From Ballyshannon's 4th Studio Album From 1973

Until his untimely death in 1995 aged just 47, Rory Gallagher gave the world a unique brand of blues rock which could bounce from barnstorming to bewitching to just plain beautiful with but a flick of the great man’s wrist. Celebrating 40 years since the start of his solo career, Rory’s first six albums have been overhauled, lovingly re-mastered and completed with liner notes from, amongst others, brother and former tour manager Donal Gallagher.

The 1970s was a particularly prolific time in Rory’s long career and it’s testament to his skill and imagination that Rory Gallagher (1971), Deuce (1971), Live! In Europe (1972), Blueprint (1973), Tattoo (1973) and Irish Tour ’74 (1974) are of such outstanding quality. He toured constantly throughout this period and it’s miraculous just how he found time away from the stage to write so many great songs. Tattoo is perhaps the pick of the bunch: a near-perfect document of the powerful, passionate performances that placed Rory in a league of his own. You’ve only got to glance at the list of guitarists that cite him as an influence – The Edge, Slash and Johnny Marr, to name but three – to realise just how special this guy was.

Rory really did let his guitar do the talking, lighting up the fretboard with one blistering lick after another. Never, however, did he feel the need to resort to histrionics in his efforts to dazzle and delight. Rory could hold his own with any of the axe-wielding giants of the day – indeed, he was linked to Deep Purple after Ritchie Blackmore quit – but even at its weightiest, Tattoo is always disciplined and tasteful. Where others wring the life from their instruments, Rory teases his trusty 61 Strat until it sings.

From the laidback vibe of opener Tattoo'd Lady, the raunchy riffing of Cradle Rock and Admit It to quieter moments such as the acoustically driven 20:20 Vision, this is a scintillating showcase for Rory’s mastery of his craft. His backing band are none too shabby either, long-time bassist Gerry McAvoy lining up alongside keyboardist Lou Martin and drummer Rod de'Ath for the kind of locked-in session that still oozes excitement even after all these years. A bonus cover of Link Wray’s Tucson, Arizona rounds off what’s both the perfect introduction to a guitar legend and a feast for hardened fans.

A creative commons review by Greg Moffitt at http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/5wrj/

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Kosmische innovators’ influential debut - Cluster I / 71 reviewed

Monolithic particle generators emit insect chat to the skies, while adjacent cloud territories lie pregnant with oscillating womb throb. Welcome to the sound of Berlin 1971: transcendental proto-techno conjured by Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conny Plank (who’d only be on board for this album). Moebius and Roedelius had previously fussed up a discordant industrial clatter with Conrad Schnitzler in Kluster, but now they were seeking softer cosmic atmospheres, though clearly not at the expense of their indefatigable sense of the surreal. Indeed, several times during these three expansive electronic sprawls it’s as if the Mahars – a race of over-sized flying lizard telepaths from 1976 sci-fi film At the Earth’s Core – were encouraged to conduct their conversations at the heart of the swirling synthetic nimbus, employing a disconcerting range of high-pitched wails and yodelled yelp. But amid the madness were sown seeds of future creation.

At one stage towards the end of the second track (all are untitled) Wolfgang Voigt appears to have stumbled into the studio, underpinning the throng of pitch-shifted sine waves and attendant engine roar with an amplified and propulsive heart pulse. Only this beat was struck a quarter of a century before the first Gas long-player was released.

Of course, this stuff has also blown the minds of Brian Eno, John Foxx and members of Coil. But now a new global network of synth-powered cosmonauts has risen to prominence. From Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never to Mountains, Astral Social Club and the Ghost Box imprint, each owes a colossal debt to Cluster and this album in particular. Far from providing mere background ambience, Cluster 71’s (the original release dispensed with the numerals) rolling waves of hypnosis are continually exposed to perforation by disorienting surges of energy, imparting wake-up calls to comfort.

New age elevator music? No chance. There’s too much going on here. There’s too much experimentation, too much expression. That’s why, after more than 30 years, Cluster and this wondrous album continue to enchant and inspire.

Review by Spencer Grady courtesy BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/xfnv/

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Nick Cave Goes All Reflective

For their 10th album – and follow-up to the cheery Murder Ballads – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds explored more redemptive qualities. Originally released in 1997, gone were the menacing, troubled tunes of yore; instead, here was a selection of graceful, minimal, melancholic numbers that saw Cave reflect on spirituality, loves past and present, and almost atoning for past indiscretions. These are your actual songs of faith and devotion, and by Cave’s own admission his most personal album to date.

The opener is a modern-day classic. Into My Arms is a love song so perfect you wonder why any other composition of its kind bothers to go up against a ballad that all others should rightfully refer to as ‘Sir’. Cave opens his heart from the outset, the song beginning with the stunning line of "I don't believe in an interventionist God / But I know, darling, that you do". It’s the only Bad Seeds tune you’re likely to hear at a wedding.

His brief dalliance with Polly Harvey, whom he became infatuated with after their Henry Lee duet on Murder Ballads, is referenced on Green Eyes, Black Hair and the more direct West Country Girl. Comparisons with Dylan and – more on the money – Leonard Cohen are no bad things either. The religious motifs of Brompton Oratory, an album highlight, and There Is a Kingdom lend an air of a man coming to terms with his place in the world, with subtle churchy murmurs over drum machines. The Bad Seeds themselves play a blinder, with gentle and sympathetic elegance throughout.

It’s an audacious task trying to pin down the core essentials in The Bad Seeds’ catalogue, as there’s so much of it, but The Boatman’s Call would be labelled a classic in anyone’s canon. No band on their 10th album should have much more to say, but taking this turn for the reflective helped reignite The Bad Seeds and further secured their legacy. It is, in short, brilliant.

Shared under Creative Commons
Original review by Ian Wade at http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/6r3q/
Scoring by EB

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The Second Coming - Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Masterful Rising Force

One of the constant joys of writing this blog is discovering new music. Here guest reviewer Sangmin Han enlightens me with words on a Yngwie J. Malmsteen - a musician I had never actually heard of let alone anything by him, yet shockingly (for someone who loves rock music and electric guitar) I now discover that Time magazine named him as the 9th greatest guitarist of all time in their 2009 listing! I look forward to hearing the album, so thank you Sangmin for the heads up which I hope other readers will appreciate too. Enjoy the review and get the album!

Yngwie J. Malmsteen's groundbreaking solo debut album Rising Force released on the Polydor label in 1984 heralded an electric guitar revolution which had not been seen since the days of Jimi Hendrix.

The electric guitar has not been as outstanding and awe-inspiring on any record as on this revolutionary album.

The Swedish guitar aficionado's album became the cornerstone for the baroque speed metal genre - a genre that boomed as numerous next generation guitar students copied a phenomenal guitar shredding technique Malmsteen had honed through literally finger-bleeding hard training on his Fender Stratocaster.

Fellow countryman Jens Johansson's brilliant keyboard sound adds the baroque flavour to this flashing metal album. Historically, a combination of a guitarist and a keyboard player has been the focus of a hard rock band. For instance, Jeff Beck and Jan Hammer, Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord, and Gary Moore and Don Airey were outstanding performers as famous combinations of a guitarist and a keyboardist in rock history.

Here the Yngwie/Johansson duo create a sensational musical wonder as wild and fantastic as the aforementioned legendary partnerships. The cream of the crop on Rising Force is the strong instrumental Far Beyond the Sun, which shows off all of Malmsteen's guitar talents. But it is the ongoing alternating guitar and keyboard battle between Yngwie and Jens which provides the highlights of the album.

In addition, Jeff Scott Soto, who sings on the only two songs of the album is marvellous as a metal vocalist fitting Yngwie's colourful guitar work, and Jethro Tull's Barriemore Barlow lends drums.

All in all this album is a sensational and revolutionary guitar album as well as an excellent metal band album, and has left a legacy in heavy metal lore. Anyone on the planet who cares for an electric guitar feast should own a copy.

Huge thank yous to Sangmin Han for this review. Sangmin hangs out at the excellent Krautrock Facebook Group where you can find plenty more of his mini reviews on interesting and unusual albums.

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An Organic Ambitious Work Of Great Depth - Bonnie "Prince" Billy's Beware

Following hard on the heels of 2008's Lie Down In The Light, Beware is Will Oldham's alter-ego Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's eighth solo album. It is – unsurprisingly – an organic work of great depth and texture. The melody and sense of acute longing that has infused Oldham's work since his earliest days with Palace is very much present and correct. Beware is an intimate album, full of strong emotion and underlying hope.

Oldham has been reported recently as being obsessed by late-period Elvis Presley. The King's spirit seems to drift across Beware. It is found in the depth and hopelessness of songs such as I Won't Ask Again or the drama and flurry of Heart's Arms.

Occasionally, Oldham’s work can be somewhat remote; as he is playing a character, you feel sometimes as if you are there to admire his art rather than fully give yourself over to it. Well, Beware has added accessibility and warmth, given that is so frequently gloomy.

The swelling fiddles and female chorus of opener Beware Your Only Friend are complemented by its follow-up You Can't Hurt Me Now, which sounds as if it is an unearthed country standard, complete with gospel flourishes topped off with some Roxy-style sax. For contrast, You Don't Love Me is playful and tongue-in-cheek.

Beware is an ambitious record, with a list of special guests such as ex-Mekon Jon Langford and one time Wilco multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach supporting Oldham. It is also one of the first highlights of 2009. For those unsure of what genres such as alt.country or Americana entails, this is a marvellous place to start.

Guest Review by Daryl Easlea https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/6gcz/

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Queen's Last Great Album? - News Of The World

Queen's varied palette of styles was none more apparent than on their sixth studio album, News Of The World, recorded over summer 1977 at various locations in London. Released as punk was breaking across the UK music scene (prompting the delicious exchange when Freddie Mercury met Sid Vicious: "ah, Mr. Ferocious, how are you?"), the album showed the group, for many the ultimate in musicianship, both out-of-kilter, yet strangely in step with the times.

In step was the football-terrace proto-rap We Will Rock You, the anthemic Mercury special We Are The Champions and the full-on assault of the Roger Taylor/Mercury duet Sheer Heart Attack. Out of kilter with the times was the ornate, fussy balladry of John Deacon’s Spread Your Wings or Mercury’s bluesy My Melancholy Blues. Elsewhere, the heavily strutting Get Down Make Love acts as something of a bridge between the earlier Seven Seas Of Rhye and the Another Ones Bites The Dust funk-isms that lay ahead.

News Of The World was the last of the classic-period Queen albums, and heralded a spell in the relative doldrums before 1980's The Game. The album was a huge hit in America, something the group could never take for granted; and went four times platinum, largely as a result of their lengthy tour with Thin Lizzy earlier in the year. What News Of The World demonstrates perfectly is Queen’s unerringly ability to sound absolutely like no-other group – even when parodying other musical styles.

Shared via Creative Commons via http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/98dp/

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Tangerine Dream - The Virgin Years - Live

Along with Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream were probably the first purely electronic outfit to find commercial success with a rock audience. In an age of beanbags, beards, exotic tobacco consumption and lava lamps, albums like Phaedra, Rubycon and Stratosfear defined chillout while the Orb were still in short trousers.

The Tangs' roots were in the sprawling jams of psychedelia, and they maintained an improvisational approach even when they'd traded in their guitars and drums for banks of mellotrons and synths. While such instruments were amongst the tools of the trade for legions of ye olde prog rockers, TD weren't much interested in conventional virtuoso technique, instead opting for lengthy cosmic workouts that were often pure texture.

There's plenty of those to be had on this rather wonderful seven CD set that covers what many (me included) consider to be the band's golden period from 1974-76. Recorded in settings as exotic as Bilbao and Croydon (the same gig that produced the Ricochet album), they reveal TD as an improvising outfit, battling with the instability of their instruments and somehow constructing fragile, mysterious and often beautiful music in the process.

All the usual ingredients are there; breathy flute-like sounds, veils of mellotron-generated strings, choirs and the warm, arpeggiated throb of those unmistakable bass patterns. Edgar Froese sometimes whips out his Les Paul, which isn't always a good idea - he's no Steve Hillage, and his slightly stilted playing sometimes serves to drag the trio back to earth. It's hard to pick out highlights, but the almost two hours of the Bilbao gig ranks among some of the most gorgeous I've heard from this line-up, which is saying something. The sometimes muddy recording quality (these are boots, after all) sometimes adds to the other worldliness on display, though it's weird to hear the audience coughing and shuffling about - I thought in space no-one could hear you sneeze...


Review by Peter Marsh shared under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ with the original at https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/9nrg/

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The Real Birth Of Pink Floyd

Meddle represents the birth of Pink Floyd as we now know them today. After flailing somewhat after Syd Barrett's departure in 1968, they had a surprise hit in 1970 with Atom Heart Mother, an album comprised of a difficult side-long suite, backed with individual group pieces. In many respects, Meddle, released a little over a year later, is the same again, only with much, much, better tunes and less clutter.

Everything about Meddle is allowed to breathe and grow. Rocking opener One Of These Days rises out of nearly a minute of wind effects; Fearless delivers its slightly stoned punch over six minutes. Even the throwaway track, Seamus, with the howling of Steve Marriott's dog over David Gilmour's blues, has a lazy charm which undermines the intelligence and ambition of the remainder of the record.

Originally titled Return Of The Son Of Nothing, the side-long piece, Echoes dominates the entire work. It has a majestic grace, filling every one of its 23 minutes with the sophisticated mystery that came to define everything about Pink Floyd; slightly obscure; extremely special. Starting with a sonar pulse, the song – with one of Roger Waters' finest lyrics – leisurely unfolds before climaxing with a funk workout; after another four minutes it dissolves to atmospherics before finally returning to the main theme. This is everything right about progressive rock; engaging, intelligent and compelling.

By the time the group began to hone this innovation and vision into bite-sized chunks on their next two albums, they were to become very big indeed.

Shared under Creative Commons http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/wnbd/

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Physical Graffiti - Led Zeppelin's monumental double album serves as a primer of the band's entire oeuvre

By 1975 no one was bigger or heavier than Zeppelin. America was punch drunk after the quadruple whammy of their first four albums, each supported by tours that went from scene-stealing support slots to stadium-filling three-hour marathons, almost overnight. Even the slightly below average (ie. one or two sub-par tracks) Houses Of The Holy (1973) hadn’t dented their reputation one jot. The world, and its attendant pleasures, was theirs for the taking. At this point most modern bands would take 5 years off and forget each others' names. What did Robert, Jimmy, John Paul and Bonzo do? Produced a double album that some still hold to be their best of all time.

What really shines out is the sheer genre-defying eclecticism of it all.

Admittedly, a fair amount of Physical Graffiti was composed of offcuts and work-in-progress from their previous two albums though these were offcuts of startling quality. But what really shines out is the sheer genre-defying eclecticism of it all. Far more than just a crowd-pummelling hard rock act with the world’s beefiest rhythm section, these boys were able to do everything from folk (Bron Y Aur) and blues (In My Time Of Dying) to country rock (Down By The Seaside) and barrelhouse rock 'n' roll (Boogie With Stu). In fact Physical Graffiti serves pretty much as a primer of the band’s entire oeuvre.

And amongst these flights of dexterity we get some of the band’s best-loved numbers of all-time. Trampled Underfoot, driven by Jones’ stomping Fender Rhodes pulls off the remarkable trick of being both heavy and funky as hell. Custard Pie and The Rover are monster axe workouts, and of course Kashmir is still a juggernaut of incredible power: a blend of east and west inspired by Page and Plant’s mystical wanderings and underpinned by Bonham’s legendary rumble, famously captured in all its ambient glory in the huge hallway of Headley Grange Manor. And it all came wrapped in one of those fabulously intricate die-cut sleeves that make all people of a certain age long for a return to the glory days of vinyl.

A towering monument to the glory of Zeppelin in their high-flying heyday.

Nick Kent’s review in the NME casually mentioned that by this point Zep could seemingly turn this stuff out in their sleep. He was right. Six years of touring and recording had honed them into an unstoppable force, but tragedy lay in wait around the corner in the form of death, drug abuse and changing tastes. But Physical Graffiti remains a towering monument to the glory of Zeppelin in their high-flying heyday.




Review by Chris Jones shared from the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/2xrg/

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Machine Head Is Deep Purple's Finest Hour

Though not without its moments, 1971’s Fireball described something of a non-descript holding pattern for Deep Purple. Not a bad album as such it was, artistically at least, a curious underachiever compared to In Rock. What they needed was something with as much impact and which delivered them new standards to ensure their upwards path. With not a lot of spare change in the pocket as far as new material went, the recording session was a fraught affair. Yet out of such adversity, Purple dug deep into their reserves producing their strongest and most consistent set.

Released in 1972, Machine Head become the benchmark against which everything that followed would be judged. In the canon of heavy rock this is an album replete with classic tracks. Concise in nature, killer punches are only ever a minute away no matter which song you play. Vocalist Ian Gillan excels himself on Highway Star, and Never Before, the latter an excellent single, released ahead of the album covering both pop, rock and some righteously funky turn-arounds. Blackmore dominates the album turning in some of his most understated and reflective playing on When A Blind Man Cries (the b-side to the single and not included on the original album) and of course, Smoke On The Water.

Its devastating simplicity is the foundation stone of the whole record and one of rock’s most archetypal riffs. Not only heavy as hell, it was insanely catchy and the long-haired denim-wearing world grasped it to their bosom without a moment’s hesitation. Detailing the burning of the casino near Lake Geneva (which caused yer actual smoke on the water), the lyrical content perhaps presaged the internal fires that would consume the group.

Released in May it went straight to number one but by August Gillan had resigned. Though he would stay on to record the live Made In Japan and the lack-lustre, Who Do We Think We Are, the mark II line-up was all over bar the shouting – and there was going to be plenty of that. Machine Head however remains their finest hour.

Shared under CC from the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/3r3n/ (rating by E.B.)

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I'm Just Not Sure What I Think About This Music - And That's A Good Thing

Terry Riley is a keyboard player from a Californian town near San Francisco. That's a very brief summary. To expand a little for those of us not familiar with the music of Riley we can add the following touch points:

organ, delay, experimental, minimalist, glass, reich, rainbow in curved air, in c, raga, indian, jazz, kronos quartet, loops, drones, tapes, cage

...and here is the music-map:

Of most interest in this blog here would be Fennesz and Can. However from what I know of Riley and the others listed I would go as far as saying Riley's music is unique as it doesn't sound much like either of these two, or anyone else in the map (if I had to hang my hat somewhere it would be on the Philip Glass hook). Oddly another record I'm thinking about is Steve Hillage's Rainbow Dome Musick and I don't think that is just because of the "rainbow" name... 

...A Rainbow In Curved Air being the album Terry Riley is most famous for. Released in 1969 the record became influential to a series of solo artists like Mike Oldfield and Steve Reich plus bands like Soft Machine and even The Who who paid homage in their track Baba O'Riley.

The question is, does one need to hear anything else apart from A Rainbow... [and maybe In C too? Ed.] or does that album cover everything you need to know about Terry Riley? As Riley is still going (and touring at the moment, including a visit to my home town in a couple of weeks) it would be a shame to conclude that a career spanning over 30 studio albums could be summed up in just one or two releases? I must admit I'm not best placed to answer such a question having not studied Riley before and not even (yet) owning a copy of the Riley anchor point: A Rainbow...

Despite these personal shortcomings I will assess the current exhibit Shri Camel both on it's own merits and then with reference to a stream of A Rainbow...

On It's Own Merits?

First a warning. 

Riley's music is not easy listening. His use of quick repetitive atonal patterns on traditional organs can sound quite harsh and jarring. The edges aren't smoothed off with beautiful lush Enoesque string chords. There is also a lot of (apparent) improvisation so the music relies little upon hypnotic loops and rhythms. Consequently you have to delve quite deeply to hook into any sense of "groove".

Next the facts.

The album is divided into four tracks:

Anthem of the Trinity - 9:25

Celestial Valley - 11:32

Across the Lake of the Ancient World - 7:26

Desert of Ice - 15:13

The tracks were recorded, and various versions performed live, over a couple of years, with the actual album release appearing in 1978.

ps. It has a beautiful album cover - an illustration by Bernard & Barbara Xolotl.

Feelings?

Whereas Riley started out in the early '60s as one of the pioneering American minimalist composers (In C was scored for an indeterminate number of performers playing randomly sequenced loops for an indeterminate overall duration) Shri Camel is far from minimalism. 

It's more virtuoso keyboard playing, much of it apparently improvised and seemingly random... 

I'm not a person who sits down with paper and pencil to do my music.

... but give it time and let your mind make a connection and you'll start to pick up the patterns. 

For that reason I really think this album requires a multiple of listens. It took me about 5 plays before I started to gain a foothold. Then I began to recognise the loops and grooves. Like digging for treasure the sense of satisfaction is enhanced once you begin to scratch beneath the surface and actually hit the gold. How far do you want to dig? I'm sure another 5 or 10 plays would reveal further buried treasure deep in the grooves of this record. How long have you got?

Satisfaction is enhanced once you begin to scratch beneath the surface and actually hit the gold.

Each piece here follows a very similar pattern of melodies over a repetitive rising scale. To such an extent they are quite difficult to distinguish. It may be my imagination, or the effect of becoming more atuned as you progress, but I felt like each subsequent piece had the underlying organ bass groove higher in the mix lending a tangible physical and psychological momentum to the album overall.

Well, that's about it really. It's not an easy review this one and I don't really know what else I can say about this music. Ending on a positive characteristic, which I've attributed to some other music, but not often, I can say Riley's music is highly original and does strange things to your brain. It is hard to listen to such music without experiencing some sort of shift in consciousness, and Shri Camel exhibits this characteristic manfully. Thus, although the album does leave me somewhat confused, this is high praise indeed.

In Comparison To A Rainbow In Curved Air?

The facts.

Rainbow In Curved Air was Riley's third album, released in 1969.

It has two side long tracks:

A Rainbow in Curved Air – 18:39

Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band – 21:38

Feelings?

Well, the first thing to say is it is different to Shri Camel, so my implied hypotheses that Riley's music sounds the same falls at the first hurdle. Sure the instrumentation is similar but the actual compositions are significantly different.  Indeed both tracks within the album are different to each other. The title track has a hypnotic pulse / the second track is slower and more ambient based around a deep drone. 

The title track begins with a circular keyboard loop similar to the sequencer pulses of mid '70s Tangerine Dream albeit played on a vintage electric organ. This segues into a brief gentler middle section, followed by a rhythmic second half underpinned by tabla.

Second track Poppy Nogood... begins with a distorted looped drone that gradually builds in volume.  Much more traditionally minimalist the music is yet jazzy with brassy (clarinet/trumpet/sax) overtones which sound a bit like Miles Davis's fusion work; further Moorish pipe overlays lend the piece an ethnic Middle Eastern or Indian flavour. I like side two more than its famous counterpart. Interestingly for such long drawn out tracks they both end suddenly - jolting one out of one's cosmic reverie.

It is easy to hear and understand why A Rainbow In Curved Air became such a revered classic of the genre. Shri Camel coming 9 years later, albeit another excellent and different release, is less groundbreaking almost by definition. I would also say it is harder to get in to for the uninitiated.

Would you have both? It depends. Start with A Rainbow, give it half a dozen plays, and if the unique sounds are beginning to nestle nicely in your brain matter then definitely grab a copy of Shri Camel too (In C must wait for a future time).

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Hot Buttered Soul - Eddy Revisits Isaac Hayes' Groundbreaking Soul Album From 1969

Although Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul has a familiar looking cover I feel I've clocked in my subconscious over the years the actual album is yet another from my #WhyHaven'tIHeardThisBefore? series. In fact the only thing I knew Hayes for was his cameo appearances in South Park as "Chef"! (entirely irrelevant and off the subject but I read his leaving of that show was cloaked in some mystery surrounding Hayes' alleged involvement with Scientology).

Anyway, it's always a joy to discover new music and this album packs an extra bonus in being different to what I was expecting. I'm not a massive connoisseur of the 70s soul (and "lurve") artists like Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Barry White et al, but assumed Isaac Hayes was from the same pedigree. That being said, although there's plenty of "hot love" on this album it's actually more rock than I imagined.

The first track is Walk On By which in my ignorance I only know from the excellent Stranglers version (possibly their greatest ever track?). Of course I now know this is a classic Bacharach and David number made famous by Dionne Warwick in the early 60s. Hayes' version is almost unrecognisable being slowed right down (and dirty). A languid 2 minute introduction sets the pace before Hayes' super smooth voice comes in on an orgasmic chord change...

... a voice that hits like a velvet sledgehammer.

Nate Patrin in Pitchfork

This version (surely the greatest of many covers of this song) features horn fanfares, girl backing singers, Hayes' Hammond groove, and wonderful sweeping movie-epic strings which wash over you like a shower of syrup. It's Michael Toles' sleazy fuzz guitar that steals the show here though (a sound borrowed on my recently discovered Soft Hair album). The second half of the track builds to a crescendo of pumping bass and distorted lead guitar before ending with a hi-hat and drum break which I'm sure would have been sampled numerous times.

Even better is the second track, the curiously entitled Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic. This track literally rocks with the guitar locking into a wah-wah groove over a blues riff. Again the second half is an instrumental jam, this time with piano vamps over a repeating bass cycle.

Side two doesn't quite match the power of side one. One Woman is a much more traditional soul ballad cover clocking in at a relatively modest 5 minutes. Then the final track (yes, really, there are only 4 tracks on this "Soul" album) is an epic 18 minute version of Jimmy Webb's By The Time I Get To Phoenix, but half of this is a spoken word introduction which I feel breaks up the flow of the album as a whole somewhat. Once the music starts proper Hayes' soulful vocal chops are fully displayed against another string drenched backdrop and a honking horn finish. This track redefined the concept of a slow build!

The providence of the album is interesting. Originally a behind the scenes producer for the Stax record label Hayes was encouraged to follow up a 1968 debut album (which had bombed) when the record company lost the rights to their back catalogue to Atlantic Records. In order to rebuild a library of work Stax boss Al Bell ordered the label's artists (and behind the scenes creatives!) to immediately record solo albums. Hayes agreed to do so but only if he was able to maintain complete creative control. What followed was therefore an audacious record of excess and self indulgence consisting of extended jams, and very different to the standard Soul releases of the day dominated by the 3 minute single.

Despite such inauspicious beginnings the album proved to be a massive commercial and critical success chancing upon a luxurious rawness that soul artists would strive to match for years to come. Becoming one of the landmark Soul albums Hot Buttered Soul would forever bring Isaac Hayes out from behind the mixing desk (notwithstanding a stint in the South Park kitchens!).

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Trees On The Shore - Definitely At The Rock End Of The Folkrock Spectrum

Trees released two records in 1970, The Garden Of Jane Delawney and On The Shore and that was about it for them. The effort and exuberance needed to record two LPs (neither bad) in the same year can be felt all through On The Shore: Their record company CBS applied pressure but not much money and so, due to lack of rehearsal and studio time, some of the musicianship suffers, and the original material is patchy. But the overall sound of this album is what is really impressive.

Cilia Humphris (now the voice of the Northern Line, fact fans) sings in an earthy and raw way sailing right down the middle of every note. On songs like Murdoch and Sally Free And Easy she sends a shiver up this reviewer’s withered spine. Murdoch also sports a rather natty ‘wall of sound’ ending which is aided on the remix by a wailing organ.

The musicians behind Humphris are where the real strength is. The twin guitars of Barry Clarke (lead) and David Costa (acoustic) are a muscular equal to the sometimes luminary bass of Bias Boshell and solid drums of Unwin Brown. The sound is bold and more psychedelic than Fairport and you feel a band who are really into their style if not their stride. This is what you might enjoy more about this recording than others of the genre: The energy of the performances. There is a Led Zep feel in there and I'm sure I spotted a future Iron Maiden riff somewhere. Notably there is a timid pedal guitar part on Geordie, another highlight, which was sampled for St. Elsewhere on the Gnarls Barkley album of the same name.

It leaves you feeling rather uplifted.

Cyril Tawney’s Sally Free And Easy pops up here and is one of the album's high points. A beautiful piano intro played by Boswell leads into low and sultry vocals from Humphris. Trees are oft-derided for their overlong arrangements and Sally... is no exception, except just when you are about to tire of this one Clarke embarks on a surprising guitar wig-out that crashes into another good ending. The whole thing is quite a hit and miss affair: Fool is fantastically irritating and While The Iron Is Hot lurches from harps and strings to prog-rock guitar and back. However taken as a whole it is enjoyable and it leaves you feeling rather uplifted.

The second disk contains remixes of some album tracks, nothing amazing here, just cymbals fiddled with and guitars jiggered. There is a BBC recording called Forest Fire which is pleasant enough, but the joys are contained in the original album, now restored to its full glory. Well worth discovering this summer....


Creatively and commonly shared from a BBC review by Greg McLaren 2007 (with numerical rating by E.B.)

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Raphael On Can's Tago Mago

Guest blogger Raphael Gouin Loubert gives a track by track rundown of an album very close to my own heart, CAN's Tago Mago.

Want to know how I first discovered Krautrock?

Tago Mago by CAN. A monumental piece of Krautrock, with each musician at their peak, playing very tightly from beginning to end.

The successive CAN albums Tago Mago/Ege Bamyasi/Future Days are the holy trinity for me, but Tago stands out as the greatest. I know this album by heart, even the timeless Aumgn, and Halleluwah is probably the song I have listened to the most in my life.

Paperhouse

The album starts with sounds sampled from the beginning of Aumgn, then beautiful modulated guitar chords lead the song with nice subtle keyboard backing. Then the drums accelerate and the groove starts with an awesome solo from Karoli. A pretty psych and catchy song!

Mushroom

Paperhouse ends and Mushroom immediately starts. Drums lead this song, it sounds distant but so trashy and precise. This is probably Can’s most strange/eerie song since Monster Movie’s Father Cannot Yell, but nothing compared to what is to come.

Oh Yeah

The song starts with what sounds like an atomic explosion! Then another amazing tight groove kicks in, with keyboard chords floating behind it all. This one is different from Paperhouse as it sounds so mysterious, out of this world, and hypnotic.

Halleluwah

In my opinion the best Krautrock song ever made. A nice long jam led by Czukay’s bass and Liebezeit’s drums. Interesting how the drummer uses silence to lock the beat (just after he hits the hi-hat). Everything goes crazy in the last 3 minutes or so with sounds reminding me of a mental breakdown!

Aumgn

Aumgn starts with what sounds like guitar paired with tape echo, then some weird chords (violin I think), until a strange voice starts mumbling "augmn". It goes on for several minutes with some electronic effects and a bit of percussion. Around half way the drums enter slowly until the climax where again the track goes wild and fast until the end.

Peking O

The beginning and end of the song is very nice, but the middle section is plain psych/random speaking and jamming, it’s a bit hard to listen to. It's the weakest title of the album because of that, but you can see that the band set no limits when they recorded this album.

Bring Me Coffee Or Tea

The album closes with a nice, warm ballad with (finally) a bit of acoustic guitar that reminds me of the song I’m Too Leise. Everyone is jamming on their own in this song but they complete themselves so well! Past half way the song accelerates and Karoli brings out the electric guitar, with the song closing in a wave of cymbals.

Every Krautrock initiate should start with this album; it’s more conventional than Faust, less electronic than Tangerine Dream and so different from the US/British rock/prog of that era. Tago Mago is definitely in my top 3 Krautrock albums along with Popol Vuh - In Den Garten Pharaos and Tangerine Dream - Zeit.

Raphael Gouin Loubert


More album reviews from Raphael >>
Radiohead's Amnesiac

Eddy's full rundown of Can albums >>
Can Albums Ranked From Worst To Best

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Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian

Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian is album number five for Prefuse 73, aka Guillermo Scott Herren. With 28 tracks lasting a total of 48 minutes, it sounds like the future on fast forward. Picture a mixtape mash up of psychedelic hip hop with only the briefest of pauses for breath.

After three short switchback tracks, NoNo is a restful patch of crooned breathing. However, it's only 14 seconds long and over before you know it. Straight after Herren serves up an intense slice of stop start beats – appropriately titled Punish - that ends with violin wails and multi-tracked voices.

There's a scene in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell To Earth in which David Bowie's lost alien sits surrounded by a huge bank of televisions, all tuned to different channels. The cacophonous result isn't that dissimilar to first impressions of this album. It feels like it’s necessary to focus on individual moments to get a sense of what's happening, but those moments are succeeded by so many other shard-like sounds that it can feel like a challenge to keep up. Surrender is probably the best strategy. The only alternative otherwise is flight.

The other 70s reference is Dan McPharlin's cover - a Roger Dean homage mixed with just a dash of Studio Ghibli. The otherworldliness of the image further underlines the sense of a world gone mad from sensory overload.

It wouldn't be a Prefuse 73 album without some lovely beats under the ever-changing soundscapes: the fleeting Get Em High, the clockwork skronk of No Lights Still Rock and the stoned Regato are high points. Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian may be a challenge, but it's one well worth facing.

Thank you guest reviewer Colin Buttimer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/zhvr/

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Dark and Scary - Morte Macabre Go Giallo

After discovering King Crimson many years ago and absorbing all their first phase albums - In The Court Of The Crimson King (1968) through to Red (1974), I then spent some months looking for equivalents. As I described in log #73 the search wasn't fruitful, King Crimson were pretty unique, both in their original prog form, and then in their reinvention in the 80s, but I did discover some new bands along the way.

Fast forward 40 years: Original prog behemoths King Crimson and Yes are still touring in some form or another, and Steve Hackett plays pre 1977 Genesis exclusively at his concerts.  There are also a  number of new bands still keeping the prog and mellotron sound alive, like local boys Servants Of Science or the recently reviewed HOGIA. And not a million miles away from prog came the "post rock" movement, and in particular the instrumental power band like Explosions In The Sky, Mogwai or GY!BE.

But exclusive instrumental music in the rock format is not something I've ever been able to get into (it's fine with ambient music as it's the whole point) but in rock music I do miss the singing. It wasn't the main thing with a band like King Crimson where there were obviously lengthy prog instrumentals and unconventional song structures but Greg Lake's and John Wetton's vocals added to the atmosphere.

Enter the forbiddingly named Morte Macabre - a collaboration of Swedish musicians from prog rock bands Anekdoten and Landberk, playing instrumentals, and not just any old instrumentals, but soundtracks from 1970s Italian movies known as Giallo.

I've never heard of Giallo before but sort of recognised it after reading about it. The term refers to a particular Italian thriller-horror genre of film (or literature) that has mystery, crime or psychological thriller elements. In particular the films can sometimes be described as slasher movies and often exploit young attractive female actresses who are the victims of brutal murders (but are sometimes the perps too).

The archetypal giallo plot involves a mysterious, black-gloved psychopathic killer who stalks and butchers a series of beautiful women.

Anne Billson

Giallo in Italian literally means yellow based on the colour of the genre's paperback books.

The thing is I first played the album having no idea about this. Only after I learned the band were covering themes from vintage horror movies did the music make sense. For instance on hearing Lullaby (and not consciously recognising it) it did remind me of a 60s French movie. Hats off to the band who engendered that response in me before I even knew this track was in fact a version of the theme from Rosemary's Baby.  Furthermore my daughter on overhearing the track commented that it was very scary (and could I turn it off?). It was one of the few 18 rated films I allowed her to view underage (it's that good).

Rosemary's Baby is indeed a fantastically tense film of paranoia which, like much of the music, builds to a terrifying conclusion. However, although not from the Giallo stable, the imagery of this album (including the cover) takes me again to Kurt Russell's The Devils (not the first time a piece of music on this blog has led me there).

Ironically, after my comments about instrumental rock music, in fact the least likeable aspect of this album for me is the choral female singing which begins the album subtly in the prog heavy King Crimsonesque Apoteosi Del Mistero but is used liberally on several other tracks reaching it's zenith on Lullaby. The singing sounds peculiarly similar to the mellotron itself famous for it's slightly off key tape mechanism.

It's not just the mellotron though. The album, with it's heavy guitar, doom laden bass and Bill Bruford style rim taps and damped cymbals, reminds me most of the late period of the first incarnation of Crimson - like an entirely instrumental Red. In particular the monumental last track which builds like Starless, the Crimson's greatest piece.

There are moments to enjoy before this finale. Tracks two and three merge. There is a slow build up into a powerful guitar and bass riff, again overlaid with mellotron. There is also a psychedelic middle section which sounds just like the violin sawings of Larks Tongue era Crimson or the sort of music Pink Floyd were coming out with at the turn of the 60s/70s.

There are a couple of quiet guitar led pieces which are almost classical in their construction: the very gentle Quiet Drops and a jazzy The Photosessions. The latter in particular is a fabulous piece with a beautiful jazzy guitar melody over the sound of waves crashing ashore. There's a similar track by the long time forgotten Brit/German prog band Nektar called Desolation Valley.

Lovely stuff, but nothing could prepare me for the final monster title track Symphonic Holocaust. Like the album as a whole, there is less of the pyrotechnics of an ELP or Yes, but huge dollops of brooding menacing dark atmosphere.

HEAR THE WHOLE THING ON SPOTIFY

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Is This John Marytn's Greatest Album?

Aren't we lucky those of us who have discovered John Martyn? One World is my favourite album of his and a perfect bridge between the more jazz folky Solid Air and the harrowing Grace and Danger.

All the tracks are gems including the acoustic declaration of unconditional love Couldn't Love You More and the catchy pop of Certain Surpise to the echoplex driven rhythms of Big Muff and Dealer.

Best of all is Small Hours; the ultimate 3 am track. I remember playing this album incessantly one summer and it took me a while to realise the background chattering geese sounds on this evocative final track were coming from the record and not from outside my student digs window! Oh, the nostalgia!

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