The Doghouse v.II

Bulldog · 12-13-2010, 04:58 PM

Just so you guys know, whenever I feel like updating this thing and can't be bothered typing up some claptrap or other about an album, I'll just post something brief about a couple of songs I'm digging like ditches at the minute. Starting with...

Artist: Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters
Tunage: Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive

First of all, if you've never seen the original mini-series, Dennis Potter's the Singing Detective that the above clip's taken from, where've ya been! Seriously though, it's amazing stuff - fantastic musical numbers, brilliant acting, beautifully written and one of the most gloriously surreal story arcs I've ever seen on TV. Good as the Robert Downey Jr remake of is, truthfully it ain't a patch on the good old BBC version.

Anyway, you might think I'm a bit of an old fart when you see a Bing tune popping up here, and you'd probably be right

I've always loved this song ever since I first heard it, which was quite literally longer ago than I can actually remember. I was probably 4 or 5 when I first heard this on one of those cassettes my Dad would make and play on the long car journeys.

Good ol' Bing eh. I swear he's got a voice like a bottle of Bushmill's - a bit of a system shock at first, but goes down real smooth all the same! Musically speaking, not only is this home to one of the best swinging melodies I've ever heard, but skip to about 2 minutes in if you wanna hear probably my favourite vocal duet (well, as far as some bloke and a girl band can be called a duet anyway) ever...at least until I listen to Stranger In the House by Elvis Costello and George Jones or That's All It Took by Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons again anyway...

Artist: K-Klass vs New Order
Tunage: Ruined In a Day [remix]

And talking of duet-type things, there's always the duet in its vaguest possible sense - the dancefloor remix!

Truth be told, I haven't got an awful lot to say about this one, as there aren't really any specific memories I have attached to this apart from its sheer awesomeness. Seeing as that's probably my most overused word on or offline, I'll just leave it there.

Well, I guess I owe a tune of this calibre more than that, so I'll say that this one's definitely in my top 5 remixes of all time. Much as I love New Order's original, this K-Klass remix really improves on it by turning the acid houseness up to 11. Enjoy!

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackhammer

Also have heard Ludovico Einuadi at all? He is a an Italian composer who has done a lot of work for the film director Shane Meadows regarding incidental music, although this is from one of his solo albums.

Yeah, Ashram's vocals are pretty grating, but the soundscapes they create on that album are just mesmerising. I think I'll actually knock half a star off that review with that in mind.

Also, Saltillo and Craig Armstrong are people I've heard a few things by, and actually really loved...especially the latter. That This Love track you've got there isn't one of them, but you're absolutely right - it sounds absolutely beautiful. I'll just have a quick look on filestube for the Space Between Us in a second or two. And that second vid you posted, Una Mattina, sounds literally spot on to the kind of neoclassical I've been looking for lately - which album do you think I should go for?

Neoclassical/new age/whatever on the whole is something I've found to be a bit of a mixed bag. Where you've got your Lisa Gerrards, your Ashrams and your Corde Obliques, which do well to mix up the elements a bit and sound immense at the end of it, you've got your Loreena McKennitts, Enyas and others which are admirable enough, but just plain not my cuppa tea. I guess I'm a bigger fan of the more gothic stuff and less of the Celtic-infused stuff, meditation music and the like.

Bulldog · 12-20-2010, 08:48 AM

Before, in the timeless words of Sir Bobby Gillespie, I get right down to the real nitty gritty, I'm gonna take you on a quick detour...

Artist: David Bowie
Tunage: Never Let Me Down

Just so you're not under any false impressions, let me just say that the album this song's culled from sucks. It sucks so hard that whenever (for whatever weird reason) the notion of one of my favourites releasing a truly shitty album comes about, 1987's Never Let Me Down is always the first one I think of. Wanna hear how badly this album sucks? Knock yourself out, just don't say I didn't warn you

Putting it another way, I don't know how many of us bought the EMI reissues of Bowie's back-catalogue in the late 90s, but they always came with a card featuring little thumbnail pictures of each re-released album, including this one. Both before and after I'd heard this abomination of an album, I knew what its sleeve art looked like, and as such it came to embody all that is evil about crap music to me.

'But wait a minute,' I hear either you or the voices in my head that taunt me relentlessly day and night saying; 'what's a track from that very album doing here?' It's simple - I fucking love this song. I love it so much that it was well worth forking out a tenner on an otherwise worthless piece of crap like the album it shares a title with. I love it so much that it's one of my ten favourite Bowie songs ever. Coming from someone who's made such a big deal out of collecting his music for almost a decade now, that's saying something.

Have a listen to one of my favourite ever lovesongs and, once you've wrapped your laughing gear around it, have a look at the latest album I've dug up from the bowels of my cumbersome, RAM-draining iTunes library...

Hooverphonic
The Magnificent Tree
2000

genre: trip-hop, downtempo, pop
1. Autoharp - 4:21
2. Mad About You - 3:43
3. Waves - 4:01
4. Jacky Cane - 4:20
5. The Magnificent Tree - 3:55
6. Vinegar and Salt - 3:20
7. Frosted Flake Wood - 3:17
8. Everytime We Live Together We Die a Bit More - 3:35
9. Out Of Sight - 3:55
10. Pink Fluffy Dinosaurs - 3:50
11. L'Odeur Animale - 4:31

You know those moments when you finish listening to an album like Ella Fitzgerald's Lullaby Of Birdland for about the 800th time and think to yourself 'gee, wouldn't it be swell if I checked out the RYM charts and looked for more stuff like this?' It was on a flight of fancy not exactly unlike that that I found myself getting hold of this album, except that the artist in question was one I can't quite recall (either Massive Attack or Thievery Corporation) and the genre was call that trip-hop/downtempto hunk of loveliness we've all crossed paths with in one way or another...at least as people like myself who actively seek out new music and don't just sit on what they've already got as if it's a particularly cozy waterbed or something.

Anyway, I digress - that's how I came across this album. I say this album, because I'm sure I'd heard of the Belgian trio Hooverphonic somewhere before. Kinda like how you feel when you see a face on TV and know that something about it rings a bell and you're just not sure what it is. Wherever or whenever I'd heard the name Hooverphonic before, the first time I actively sought them out was on one of those occasions when I choose to consciously diversify into a genre I'd never really bothered with before. That was 2, maybe even 3 years ago, and it must have been a while since I last listened to this as I'd forgotten I even had it, only thinking it'd be a good idea to type something up about it sometime this morning, when I was rubbing my chin over what to fill some more journal space with. I mean, it's a drawback of having all this music at our fingertips, ain't it? There's so much available to jammy sods like us that it's so easy to just get carried away and download something like 30 albums in a week, get distracted before listening to them more than once and then just having them get buried under even newer acquisitions. I won't kid around, I'm no different - off the top of my head, I can think of albums by David McComb, Lyle Lovett, Jarboe and Steve Roach which I've been meaning to listen to for what seems like years but just haven't got round to it.

So, getting sharply back on track, what's this album sounding like? Well, so far as trip-hop and downtempo go, I wouldn't say it sounds anything like either of the artists I mentioned that drove me to getting this album. It's kinda like trip-hop-lite if that makes any sense, and if you wanna compare it to other chick-fronted trip-hop acts, it's a lot more glossy, accessible and therefore nowhere near as experimental as the mighty Lamb. I guess that in the slower, more percussion-driven tracks, while the basslines are nowhere near as off the wall, there's the germ of a Thievery Corporation...well...ish sound, given a new dimension by Geike Arnaert's vocal. It's true that Arnaert here's a perfectly capable vocalist and does a good job on the whole, but there's not really an awful lot that's particularly unqiue to her style, as in you feel like you could just as easily be listening to any other chillout electronica group when you hear her voice.

Such is the major bone I have to pick with this album. For all that it seems to try to be something unqiue, what with the expansion of the group's core trip-hop sound into more melodic and conventional rock music areas, it doesn't really leave much of a lasting impression on me. I do find it interesting how layers of strings kinda glide over one of the songs in the video clips below, which gives off a very quirky vibe, but the flipside of that coin is the incredibly corny Out Of Sight track.

In the interests of keeping this as short as I possibly can, if you're looking for a decent album you can stick on and put your feet on the desk to after a hard day's doing, well, whatever, get hold of this album. Just don't expect anything particularly mindblowing from it though.

Bulldog · 01-01-2011, 07:28 PM

Hey guys, guess what month it is!

...you probably won't because I only just made it up. Anyway, as you'll know by looking in the Last Album You Downloaded thread, I only picked up a copy of David Sylvian's 2010 compilation of collaborations and rarities Sleepwalkers the other day and, to put it mildly, I fucking love it. Owing to work of varying kinds I haven't really listened to much music for about 10 days before yesterday, so I've listened to practically nothing but David Sylvian. Which is why I pronounce January 2011 to be...

David Sylvian Month

...at least as far as this thread's concerned.

All it basically means is that each time I update this thread this month, I'll be indulging in my rampant fanboyism for part of each new update here. This means I'll flag up a cool song he's been involved, type up a paragraph on an album of his, talk about an artist connected with him, or just talk about him in general. When the next month comes around, I'll give another one of my absolute favourites the same kind of attention, and the same after that, and then after that and so on and so forth. As for the rest of each update, normal service (dronings about random albums or songs) shall be resumed

So then, kicking off David Sylvian Month...

A Certain Slant Of Light

I swung by on some old peeps on another message board I used to moderate on. It was one of those once in a blue moon-type deals, as I very rarely go back there these days. Anyway, there happens to be another Sylvian anorak there who flagged up the upcoming release of the aforementioned Sleepwalkers album and in a bid to promote it, this song was released as a free download on Sylvian's website.

I was quite disappointed when I got hold of said Sleepwalkers and this track was nowhere to be seen among the tracklisting (which incidentally was about the only disappointing thing about the album). While it's true that it's nothing spectacular (I can see him recording this one over a bowl of cornflakes), I still love it as a piece of work. For me, it sums up all the progress Sylvian's made over the last 10 years. True, it's much more melodic than anything on either of his solo albums from the 00s, but its got a really great vibe to it, that's at once warming and cold. It's got a lot to do with that voice. I know I've said this somewhere before, but this guy's got easily my joint-favourite voice of the last 50 years of music.

And enough of the randy fanboy act for now, here are a couple of tunes I can never get enough of...

Artist: High Contrast vs the Future Sound OF London
Tuneage: Papua New Guinea [remix]

First of all, a few of you may know that the Future Sound Of London (and all 750 of their other pseudonyms) are also in the top tier of my favourite artists ever, and High Contrast is quite possibly my favourite guy to emerge from under the label of dnb. Put 2 and 2 together and ask yourself 'how can this not be bloody amazing?'

Funnily enough, before I heard this sometime last year, I never really payed much attention to remixes. Despite the odd good 'un, I always saw them aas wastes of space, filler for B-side material and such. Let's not kid ourselves - in the more commercial cases, they are! High Contrast, though, is the king of remixes when all's said and done. It was an old flatmate of mine who was a few rungs higher than me on the ladder to dnb bliss who introduced me to this very tune, which kinda got me started on both looking for good remixes and investigating dnb further myself.

Artist: Natalie Imbruglia
Tuneage: Torn

And fuck you, this song's amazing

Well, maybe amazing's taking it a bit too far. Like a few more songs I'll probably get to in good time, hearing this song basically brings me back to my childhood. I was 9, maybe 10 years old when I started taking a taxi across the county to get to school, and this one was all over the airwaves. One of the first songs outside my parents' music collections that I not only remember really well, but also still really like to this day.

Bulldog · 01-03-2011, 03:53 PM

So, starting with the David Sylvian Month portion...

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Forbidden Colours

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you my favourite song of all time!

Well, that's not quite true, as my favourite song of all time is the version on the Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence soundtrack with David Sylvian's vocal (hence the connection) but, then again, stripped to its bare bones, I guess the reason I put this song above literally any other that I've ever heard is for the melody at its spine, not to mention the intensity of the bridge. Although Sylvian's beautiful vocal and lyrics give it a totally different kind of edge, there's just such a drama to this song that whatever form I find it in, it's always gonna be my favourite piece of music ever. It's at once intense, dramatic, relaxing and just all-round friggin' awesome.

And, since I can't be bothered typing up something about another album just yet, here are a couple more songs I rather quite like...

Artist: Gene Pitney
Tuneage: Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart

Another item from the old fart portion of my music collection over the years, it was actually from a different not-quite-as-much-of-an-old-fart source that I first heard of this song. That was, of course, Nick Cave's cover of it (which I still can't bloody find a copy of), which was fairly decent I thought. Better than the first impression I had of it (really not a good one). What hit me after hearing his version on youtube a couple more times was how Cave's falsetto voice really made this song work.

And then this version hit me. I don't listen to any other Gene Pitney, but I just love this song. When all's said and done, it's probably in my top 10 favourite lovesongs of all time. Sure, it's all such drippy, Love Actually sentimentality, but damn does Gene make it work! Just listen to that "all of my nights - and all of my daaaaaaaaaaays letmetellyounow" bit at around 50 seconds and see if I'm wrong

Artist: The Cribs
Tuneage: Men's Needs

I remember when the Cribs' Men's Needs, Women's Needs Whatever album came out back in '07 or '08, which was in no way assisted by an interview I read in the NME slagging off all the British rock scene of the time (like the Kooks, the Killers and Pigeon Detectives, long may I never hear a fucking note from any of them again). Kinda ironic really, considering this the bloody NME they were talking to - overpriced bogroll really - but hey, the sentiment expressed was hella cool. So I got their album, thinking 'surely this has to be amazing'.

Turns out that barring the two singles, it sucked just as hard and sounded pretty much exacyl the same as the bands they were slamming themselves. Both of these singles though (the other being the awesome Moving Pictures) were a couple of the catchiest singles I heard that year. This tune just has a real fire in its belly that I've always loved. Just a shame I wasted a tenner on that rubbish album of theirs though. Oh well, I'd only have spent it on booze if I hadn't I suppose...

Bulldog · 01-06-2011, 05:15 PM

As well as Sir David Sylvian the Fantastic, I've been falling back on the old favourites quite a lot since I started listening to a lot of music again post-boring uni crap, so here's someone else I listen to in insanely large doses...

Midnight Oil
The Real Thing
2000

genre: rock
1. The Real Thing - 3:32
2. Say Your Prayers - 4:27
3. Spirit Of the Age - 3:11
4. Feeding Frenzy [live] - 6:01
5. Tell Me the Truth [live] - 3:36
6. The Dead Heart [live] - 6:05
7. Tin Legs and Tin Mines [live] - 4:43
8. Short Memory [live] - 4:52
9. In the Valley [live/unplugged] - 3:32
10. Blue Sky Mine [live] - 4:24
11. US Forces [live] - 4:25
12. Warakurna [live/unplugged] - 4:28
13. Truganini [live/unplugged] - 4:38
14. The Last Of the Diggers - 4:19

As a few of you reading this may know already, I'm a huge Midnight Oil fan, to the extent that along with Nick Cave, the Dirty Three and Dead Can Dance, they stand as a prime example to me of how underrated Australian music seems to be by the northern hemisphere of the industry. Don't know why that is exactly. Hell, just because I can string a few sentences together and give it a name like the Doghouse v.II doesn't mean I'm right about this, but the fact that a lot of Australia's musical products are very much overshadowed by whatever's happening with those cats in the UK and US of A certainly seems to me to be the case.

Anyway, I'm rambling (and not in a semi-productive way). No matter what Peter Garrett's doing these days to make a mockery of his legacy as the Oils' lead singer, I'll still always love this band. A lot of it's got to do with the fact that they were (before their breakup in 2002) a band with a message, and not one that were good enough despite making albums that were too damn long (the Clash), not one that uses its own hype as an excuse to release shitty album after shitty album (U2), and not one that just plain annoys me (REM). A lot more of it's the fact that they have this way of really packing a punch with their songs in a weird, subtle (well, as subtle as environmentalism gets anyway

) way. I can never quite put my finger on why that is. Could be that in Rob Hirst and Bones Hillman they have one hell of a rhythm section to make the whole unit work, or the fact that Garrett's one of most charismatic frontmen in rock music that I can think of, that their resident multi-tasker Jim Moginie has quite a good voice himself on top of being a great musician...as I say, I dunno.

For at least the last three or four months, I've been thinking about a way I can just tell you guys to give them a try, but...

a) I can't be bothered to start a discography thread
b) I always get bored if those after tackling the first couple of albums
c) I'm an EP short of the full discography anyway

So instead of all that nonsense that'd, y'know, actually require some sort of effort, I'm just gonna recommend you get hold of this instead. Despite basically being the definitive album you'd knock out to eat up more of the clauses on your contract (ie a three-quarters live album with a few new studio recordings, including a cover), it's actually not half bad. Fairly good even. There are four studio recordings to be found (the title track here being a revision of this golden oldie), the best of which is probably the powerful, menacing figure of Say Your Prayers (written and recorded for the charity album Viva East Timor). That said, all of the studio recordings here aren't really among what I'd call the Oils' best. The four of them do all fall short of their finest, as the live versions of the said finest are right here to be found as well. Mostly culled from a show in October '94 at the Metro Theatre in Sydney and otherwise from a 1993 episode of MTV Unplugged, here's where curious folk such as your good selves can hear just how good the Oils were live. There really are some fantastic performances on this album, the Dead Heart, Tin Legs and Tin Mines, a B-E-A-utiful version of In the Valley and Warakurna being my personal picks of the bunch. Believe me though, they're all immense.

As a starting point, or even as an 'I've got one or two albums and wanna hear more just so I can be as cool as that stallion of a member who calls himself Bulldog' point, trust me - this album's a necessity. As I said before, the studio recordings here aren't among the Oils' best though. Much as I hate to be a bore, I'm gonna dish out another one of these ratings;

And before I forget...

David Sylvian & Holger Czukay - The Spiralling Of Winter Ghosts

A little something for the David Sylvian Month portion. I won't go on too long.

Anyway, in the last two posts you've already seen a couple of works that Sylvian's name is, in however subtle a way, attached to. There is, as the more in-tune of us may already know, a totally different side to Sylvian's discography. This not only covers the moajority of his collaborations down the years, but also his experiments with ambient music, with a dash or two of musique conrete thrown in occasionally.

What you'll hear resonating from the above video is basically an ambient piece that, as with any of them, will either bore you to tears or really cut the mustard with you. It's both a case of being in the mood for it and simply having the stomach for it. The above extract though (the full-length track is around 10 minutes longer), put together with the help of Can's Holger Czukay, basically sums up the more experimental half of Sylvian's discography. Go on, have a listen!

Bulldog · 01-06-2011, 05:22 PM

And as for part deux of this double-whammy of an update...

Bat For Lashes
Two Suns
2009

genre: art-pop, dream-pop
1. Glass - 4:32
2. Sleep Alone - 4:04
3. Moon and Moon - 3:09
4. Daniel - 4:11
5. Peace Of Mind - 3:29
6. Siren Song - 4:58
7. Pearl's Dream - 4:45
8. Good Love - 4:30
9. Two Planets - 3:48
10. Traveling Woman - 3:48
11. The Big Sleep - 2:54

As I was rubbing my chin over what else to update this thread with, it occurred to me that I haven't really given a truly glowing review of an album here since I held my monocle over Time Out Of Mind. Basically, most of the time I'm just picking out albums that have been buried in the bowels of my iTunes library for a while which could be anything from craptacular to immense, but it's mainly because as the index at the front of this thread builds up, I don't want it to come across like I just dish out 5 star ratings to any album that I throw out here for you guys to have a look at. An album's gotta be some really incredible to earn a rating of 4 1/2 or 5 stars (there'll be one or two of the latter coming up in the month) in my books. I kinda want to build up a good base of middling ratings to prop up the better ones anyway, if you know what I mean.

Whatever the case, this one's gonna clear my conscience for the time being

Two Suns here is definitely in my top 5 of albums from the last 5 years, which is all the more strange as my initial reaction to Ms Natasha Khan, aka Bat For Lashes, was a resounding 'meh'. This was for her vastly inferior debut Fur and Gold in case you're wondering. I'm not sure really...it's an ok album I suppose, but it's no more than that, kinda like the Avatar of Bat For Lashes albums. There aren't really any bad songs to be heard on it anyway. They're just, y'know, kinda weak. Plus there's this whole folktronica vibe to the thing which just comes off as gimmicky, serving only the purpose of weakening the songs it tries to enhance. At least from what I remember of it anyway - frankly, it left such a tame impression I can't remember what the whole album sounds like off by heart

Needless to say, its followup in the shape of Two Suns here shakes off that sound like a bad case of fleas and ends up giving us a much more mature sound. Bearing that in mind, the level of maturity Khan had ascended to in the space of the two short years between her two albums is just incredible. You can certainly hear the nucleus of her sound in this album, although admittedly that's only really the lass' magnificent, dreamy kinda voice. Whereas listening to the first album, I felt like it was something that shone in amidst some fairly mediocre instrumental backings, there definitely is a real progression in her sound here, and it's plain as the nose on my face that it's a move in the right direction. Press play on either of the two videos below and tell me that something about that track seems out of kilter at all. Ever facet of the music just moves in unison, guiding you gently towards the kinds of emotions and images that this album succeeds in creating.

In plain English, the overall sound of the album is very dreamy, ethereal and pretty haunting one. It veers very close to being the perfect night-time album, as in one of those ones which goes so well with a long, sober night in, like when you've chosen to opt out of hitting the clubs with some mates, you don't really feel like thinking of a film to watch or a book to read and just want to lose yourself in a really solid body of work. As such, Two Suns here is not only one of my favourite albums of the decade, but it's easily my joint-favourite dream-pop album of all time too.

Why not 5 stars? I can't put my finger on it really. It's definitely very close to being a near-perfect album, but it just lacks that little bit that'd have me put it in amongst the true elite of my music collection. Maybe it will be in with a year or two more of my getting a load of it. I do love this album to bits though, and couldn't recommend it enough to anyone. Also, look out for the Big Sleep, as it's quite simply all kinds of awesome.

Also, in memory of the sadly departed Mick Karn (as of yesterday, I believe)...

Japan - Ghosts

...Mick Karn being Japan's bassist, in case you didn't know.

Here's a sample of the work that David Sylvian happens to be the most famous for, that being this tidy post-glam/new wave outfit. I'll keep this one short too - listen to the above song, love it, get hold of Quiet Life and Tin Drum, and have a nice day...

Gavin B. · 01-07-2011, 07:19 PM

Japan was often derisively compared to Roxy Music in the late Seventies but their six excellent albums have stood the test of time. There was also a reunion of the principal four members of Japan in the late eighties under the name of Rain Tree Crow which resulted in the 1991 release of a self titled Rain Tree Crow album.

Gene Pitney is my favorite of all pre-British invasion vocalist and he had a voice with same remarkable operatic range as Roy Orbison. Gene Pitney was the first American pop star to befriend the Beatles and he played piano for the Beatles on one of their earliest recording sessions. Ironically Gene Pitney's singing career in America declined as a result of the British invasion sound.

In addition to Nick Cave and the Beatles, Elvis Costello is also a keen admirer of Pitney and I can hear Pitney's influence on Costello vocals, especially on Costello's Burt Bacharach collaboration. Pitney was the first vocalist to popularize the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The song below, A Town Without Pity, was from the soundtrack of a 1961 movie of the same name. I love the kitschy big band arrangement by Bacharach on this song.

Bulldog · 01-08-2011, 07:59 AM

Never knew that Costello was a Pitney fan, although seeing as artists he's cited as influences on his career do make for great and essential listening to anyone, I might have known. And now that you mention it, I can definitely see the similarities between their vocal styles too. Painted From Memory with Bacharach's the more obvious place where it shows, but his take on Pitney's style really does shine through on the Juliet Letters with the Brodsky Quartet too. I might get round to talking abouteither one of those albums in this thread yet.

And that Rain Tree Crow album is absolutely phenominal. I must have listened to it about 500 times in the week that I got hold of it. It's easily among my all-time favourites now. I just love how it brings the talents of Mick Karn and Steve Jansen in creating ethereal and thoroughly atmospheric musical backdrops into a new, much more modern-sounding generation of sounds. It's an album I'd recommend to absolutely anyone. I just wish they could have followed it up before Mick Karn died.

And, I suppose I'd better talk about a song or two while I'm here...

Artist: Primal Scream
Tuneage: Free

You know how occasionally you'll come across a song that just completely blows you away, loses you in its awesomeness and makes you pity those who've never heard it before? This is one of those songs, at least with me.

I first came across when, after a few years of owning only a best of and a copy of Screamadelica that I never listened to that much at first, I decided to get hold of Give Out But Don't Give Up. Part of it was out of a hipsterish desire to fill out as many discographies in my music collection as I could, but mostly it was because the singles from it like Rocks and Jailbird just kicked arse all the way, whether or not they were pretty shameless Stones rip-offs.

I won't lie - the singles aside, I hate that album. That is, of course, with the exception of this little ditty. It simply oozes the kind of emotion and soul that so many other albums, let alone the rest of this one, wishes they could. It's another example of how much good a brilliant vocal performance (this one from Primal Scream's then-backing vocalist, Denise Johnson) can do for a song. Just sit back, press to play and enjoy.

As for the other portion of each update, here's another gem from Sylvian and Sakamoto;

World Citizen

Were it not for the fact that Forbidden Colours exists, this would be my favourite song that Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian had written and performed together. If both Forbidden Colours and World Citizen didn't exist, it'd be the Scent Of Magnolia. If Forbidden Colours, World Citizen and the Scent Of Magnolia didn't exist...you get the picture. Each song that Sylvian and Sakamoto have worked on are basically one of my favourites of all time, which is why I'll always hold them in the highest regard when it comes to musical collaborations.

While Forbidden Colours will always be my favourite song of all time no matter which angle I see it from, this one is simply one of the most bleak, tightly-rendered and ethereal songs that I have ever heard. I don't really want to go into it in detail, what I think the lyrics mean and all that, as that'd suck the fun out of the song. Rather, I'm gonna leave it to you to find out

As for me, I'll just say that this song would've been a perfect fit with the soundtrack for Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within.

Bulldog · 01-13-2011, 03:44 AM

Artist: Ray Davies
Tuneage: Quiet Life

Ever heard of that film Absolute Beginners before? I'm sure a lot of us have, but for those of us who only know it as a fantastic song by David Bowie and/or a term to use a lot if you have a bit of a superiority complex about you, it's a 1986 musical directed by Julian 'Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle' Temple, and one that was basically universally slammed by critics upon release.

There was good reason for that too, as I can name literally just three plus-points for this film. Apart from the fact that the soundtrack is simply brilliant...

1) Patsy Kensit is hotter than the sun in this
2) The That's Motivation song-and-dance bit
3) Ray Davies

Along with That's Motivation, not only does it stand up for me as one of the best musical numbers I've ever seen (although you should bear in mind that I hate most musicals, so I'm not exactly an expert on them), but like the rest of the soundtrack before it, stepping back from the film itself, it's just a brilliant song. Listen and enjoy!

Artist: Bat For Lashes
Tuneage: The Big Sleep

And then there's this song that those of you who had the patience and willpower to read the Bat For Lashes review a few posts ago would've noticed being flagged as possibly the highlight. And yes, that is Scott Walker's voice you can hear as well.

It's just the perfect musical foil for Two Suns' concept, let alone the pictures in the video, and simply the perfect end to that album. It's just so moody, haunting and wintry, that the more I think about it the more I'd give anything to hear Natasha Khan do a song with David Sylvian as well.

Speaking of which...

Cafe Europa

Frankly, I feel half-dead from this hangover, which is a big part of why I don't wanna go on for too long here. Also, this is one song I just want you to listen to without having to see me picking it to pieces and writing a bloody dissertation on it.

I will say though that this is probably in my top 5 of David Sylvian songs, and a highlight of the magnificent Dead Bees On a Cake album - an album that I actually overlooked quite horrendously in favour of stuff like Secrets Of the Beehive until a few weeks ago.

Put simply, I fucking love this song, and so should you

Bulldog · 01-19-2011, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bulldog

Put simply, I fucking love this song, and so should you

^ I hope you guys know I'm just kidding about when I type stuff like this by the way.

Anyway, just to let anyone who particularly cares know what's going on with the album reviews, I switched computers a few weeks back, so I've kinda lost all those jazzy star-rating images I made specifically for this thread, which makes getting hold of them again a bit difficult for the new computer when all's said and done. I'll suss it out one of these days, but for now, here are a couple more tunes I'm a-diggin' right about now;

Artist: King Tubby
Tuneage: Dubbing My Baby

Ever wondered how amazing dub reggae can be? Look no further than this tune!

One thing I love about dub is that it can form basically the perfect foil for just about anything you wanna do while you have a good, non-intrusive soundtrack on the go, and it works better than a lot of ambient/avante-electronic as it always has one hell of a groove to it to just make it all that much more enjoyable. I guess you could say ambient electronica took a few of its cues from the dub music of Lee Scratch Perry, King Tubby and Augustus Pablo, not to mention an army of others, in that it creates that same chilled, perfectmusicalfoilfordoingwhatever vibe in the perfect sense, but whereas ambient, for me, focuses on taking that much further away from the constraints of music and you, me and Joe Bloggs may know it and into a new dimension altogether, dub reggae has a way of keeping your feet on the ground when all's said and done.

I've drunk quite a bit of whiskey as I type this, so I might look back at this and wonder what the fuck I was on about when I look back on this, but hopefully you get my point - dub is immense.

Artist: John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John
Tuneage: You're the One That I Want

I got chillllllllls that're multiplayin'
And I'm loosin' controo-ol
'cause the powwwwwww-er
You're supplyin'
It's electrifyin'It's electrifyin'It's electrifyin'It's electrifyin'

^ Just thought that needed saying.

Y'see, the thing I've got against musical theatre is that, like Absolute Beginners is prety much the archetype of, a lot of musicals just come across to me as a bunch of brilliant-to-poor songs that're separated by a flimsy, futile and confused plot, a bit like Grease here is.

But fucking hell, this is just one of the most catchy songs that has ever been written, and I don't care how many Madonna, Katie Perry or whatever-the-bloody-hell fans are reading this stuff there are.

Basically, think of the most crowded place that comes to mind (was it a shopping mall? I thought so. Bloody iPod generation) and think of playing this song - I bet you any amount of money that when that happens, you'll get at least 80% of that crowd singing (and, in some extreme cases, dancing) along to this tune. And you know why that is? 'cos it's bloody amazing!

Anyway, I haven't listened to much David Sylvian lately, so I won't be putting the old Sylvian Month bit into this post. I will be once I'm feeling a bit more sober though

Have yourselves a good night though, and see you soon eh

01-01-2011, 07:28 PM	#33 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	Hey guys, guess what month it is! ...you probably won't because I only just made it up. Anyway, as you'll know by looking in the Last Album You Downloaded thread, I only picked up a copy of David Sylvian's 2010 compilation of collaborations and rarities Sleepwalkers the other day and, to put it mildly, I fucking love it. Owing to work of varying kinds I haven't really listened to much music for about 10 days before yesterday, so I've listened to practically nothing but David Sylvian. Which is why I pronounce January 2011 to be... David Sylvian Month ...at least as far as this thread's concerned. All it basically means is that each time I update this thread this month, I'll be indulging in my rampant fanboyism for part of each new update here. This means I'll flag up a cool song he's been involved, type up a paragraph on an album of his, talk about an artist connected with him, or just talk about him in general. When the next month comes around, I'll give another one of my absolute favourites the same kind of attention, and the same after that, and then after that and so on and so forth. As for the rest of each update, normal service (dronings about random albums or songs) shall be resumed So then, kicking off David Sylvian Month... A Certain Slant Of Light I swung by on some old peeps on another message board I used to moderate on. It was one of those once in a blue moon-type deals, as I very rarely go back there these days. Anyway, there happens to be another Sylvian anorak there who flagged up the upcoming release of the aforementioned Sleepwalkers album and in a bid to promote it, this song was released as a free download on Sylvian's website. I was quite disappointed when I got hold of said Sleepwalkers and this track was nowhere to be seen among the tracklisting (which incidentally was about the only disappointing thing about the album). While it's true that it's nothing spectacular (I can see him recording this one over a bowl of cornflakes), I still love it as a piece of work. For me, it sums up all the progress Sylvian's made over the last 10 years. True, it's much more melodic than anything on either of his solo albums from the 00s, but its got a really great vibe to it, that's at once warming and cold. It's got a lot to do with that voice. I know I've said this somewhere before, but this guy's got easily my joint-favourite voice of the last 50 years of music. And enough of the randy fanboy act for now, here are a couple of tunes I can never get enough of... Artist: High Contrast vs the Future Sound OF London Tuneage: Papua New Guinea [remix] First of all, a few of you may know that the Future Sound Of London (and all 750 of their other pseudonyms) are also in the top tier of my favourite artists ever, and High Contrast is quite possibly my favourite guy to emerge from under the label of dnb. Put 2 and 2 together and ask yourself 'how can this not be bloody amazing?' Funnily enough, before I heard this sometime last year, I never really payed much attention to remixes. Despite the odd good 'un, I always saw them aas wastes of space, filler for B-side material and such. Let's not kid ourselves - in the more commercial cases, they are! High Contrast, though, is the king of remixes when all's said and done. It was an old flatmate of mine who was a few rungs higher than me on the ladder to dnb bliss who introduced me to this very tune, which kinda got me started on both looking for good remixes and investigating dnb further myself. Artist: Natalie Imbruglia Tuneage: Torn And fuck you, this song's amazing Well, maybe amazing's taking it a bit too far. Like a few more songs I'll probably get to in good time, hearing this song basically brings me back to my childhood. I was 9, maybe 10 years old when I started taking a taxi across the county to get to school, and this one was all over the airwaves. One of the first songs outside my parents' music collections that I not only remember really well, but also still really like to this day. Last edited by Bulldog; 01-03-2011 at 03:27 PM.

01-06-2011, 05:15 PM	#35 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	As well as Sir David Sylvian the Fantastic, I've been falling back on the old favourites quite a lot since I started listening to a lot of music again post-boring uni crap, so here's someone else I listen to in insanely large doses... Midnight Oil The Real Thing 2000 genre: rock 1. The Real Thing - 3:32 2. Say Your Prayers - 4:27 3. Spirit Of the Age - 3:11 4. Feeding Frenzy [live] - 6:01 5. Tell Me the Truth [live] - 3:36 6. The Dead Heart [live] - 6:05 7. Tin Legs and Tin Mines [live] - 4:43 8. Short Memory [live] - 4:52 9. In the Valley [live/unplugged] - 3:32 10. Blue Sky Mine [live] - 4:24 11. US Forces [live] - 4:25 12. Warakurna [live/unplugged] - 4:28 13. Truganini [live/unplugged] - 4:38 14. The Last Of the Diggers - 4:19 As a few of you reading this may know already, I'm a huge Midnight Oil fan, to the extent that along with Nick Cave, the Dirty Three and Dead Can Dance, they stand as a prime example to me of how underrated Australian music seems to be by the northern hemisphere of the industry. Don't know why that is exactly. Hell, just because I can string a few sentences together and give it a name like the Doghouse v.II doesn't mean I'm right about this, but the fact that a lot of Australia's musical products are very much overshadowed by whatever's happening with those cats in the UK and US of A certainly seems to me to be the case. Anyway, I'm rambling (and not in a semi-productive way). No matter what Peter Garrett's doing these days to make a mockery of his legacy as the Oils' lead singer, I'll still always love this band. A lot of it's got to do with the fact that they were (before their breakup in 2002) a band with a message, and not one that were good enough despite making albums that were too damn long (the Clash), not one that uses its own hype as an excuse to release shitty album after shitty album (U2), and not one that just plain annoys me (REM). A lot more of it's the fact that they have this way of really packing a punch with their songs in a weird, subtle (well, as subtle as environmentalism gets anyway) way. I can never quite put my finger on why that is. Could be that in Rob Hirst and Bones Hillman they have one hell of a rhythm section to make the whole unit work, or the fact that Garrett's one of most charismatic frontmen in rock music that I can think of, that their resident multi-tasker Jim Moginie has quite a good voice himself on top of being a great musician...as I say, I dunno. For at least the last three or four months, I've been thinking about a way I can just tell you guys to give them a try, but... a) I can't be bothered to start a discography thread b) I always get bored if those after tackling the first couple of albums c) I'm an EP short of the full discography anyway So instead of all that nonsense that'd, y'know, actually require some sort of effort, I'm just gonna recommend you get hold of this instead. Despite basically being the definitive album you'd knock out to eat up more of the clauses on your contract (ie a three-quarters live album with a few new studio recordings, including a cover), it's actually not half bad. Fairly good even. There are four studio recordings to be found (the title track here being a revision of this golden oldie), the best of which is probably the powerful, menacing figure of Say Your Prayers (written and recorded for the charity album Viva East Timor). That said, all of the studio recordings here aren't really among what I'd call the Oils' best. The four of them do all fall short of their finest, as the live versions of the said finest are right here to be found as well. Mostly culled from a show in October '94 at the Metro Theatre in Sydney and otherwise from a 1993 episode of MTV Unplugged, here's where curious folk such as your good selves can hear just how good the Oils were live. There really are some fantastic performances on this album, the Dead Heart, Tin Legs and Tin Mines, a B-E-A-utiful version of In the Valley and Warakurna being my personal picks of the bunch. Believe me though, they're all immense. As a starting point, or even as an 'I've got one or two albums and wanna hear more just so I can be as cool as that stallion of a member who calls himself Bulldog' point, trust me - this album's a necessity. As I said before, the studio recordings here aren't among the Oils' best though. Much as I hate to be a bore, I'm gonna dish out another one of these ratings; And before I forget... David Sylvian & Holger Czukay - The Spiralling Of Winter Ghosts A little something for the David Sylvian Month portion. I won't go on too long. Anyway, in the last two posts you've already seen a couple of works that Sylvian's name is, in however subtle a way, attached to. There is, as the more in-tune of us may already know, a totally different side to Sylvian's discography. This not only covers the moajority of his collaborations down the years, but also his experiments with ambient music, with a dash or two of musique conrete thrown in occasionally. What you'll hear resonating from the above video is basically an ambient piece that, as with any of them, will either bore you to tears or really cut the mustard with you. It's both a case of being in the mood for it and simply having the stomach for it. The above extract though (the full-length track is around 10 minutes longer), put together with the help of Can's Holger Czukay, basically sums up the more experimental half of Sylvian's discography. Go on, have a listen! Last edited by Bulldog; 01-06-2011 at 06:18 PM.

01-06-2011, 05:22 PM	#36 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	And as for part deux of this double-whammy of an update... Bat For Lashes Two Suns 2009 genre: art-pop, dream-pop 1. Glass - 4:32 2. Sleep Alone - 4:04 3. Moon and Moon - 3:09 4. Daniel - 4:11 5. Peace Of Mind - 3:29 6. Siren Song - 4:58 7. Pearl's Dream - 4:45 8. Good Love - 4:30 9. Two Planets - 3:48 10. Traveling Woman - 3:48 11. The Big Sleep - 2:54 As I was rubbing my chin over what else to update this thread with, it occurred to me that I haven't really given a truly glowing review of an album here since I held my monocle over Time Out Of Mind. Basically, most of the time I'm just picking out albums that have been buried in the bowels of my iTunes library for a while which could be anything from craptacular to immense, but it's mainly because as the index at the front of this thread builds up, I don't want it to come across like I just dish out 5 star ratings to any album that I throw out here for you guys to have a look at. An album's gotta be some really incredible to earn a rating of 4 1/2 or 5 stars (there'll be one or two of the latter coming up in the month) in my books. I kinda want to build up a good base of middling ratings to prop up the better ones anyway, if you know what I mean. Whatever the case, this one's gonna clear my conscience for the time being Two Suns here is definitely in my top 5 of albums from the last 5 years, which is all the more strange as my initial reaction to Ms Natasha Khan, aka Bat For Lashes, was a resounding 'meh'. This was for her vastly inferior debut Fur and Gold in case you're wondering. I'm not sure really...it's an ok album I suppose, but it's no more than that, kinda like the Avatar of Bat For Lashes albums. There aren't really any bad songs to be heard on it anyway. They're just, y'know, kinda weak. Plus there's this whole folktronica vibe to the thing which just comes off as gimmicky, serving only the purpose of weakening the songs it tries to enhance. At least from what I remember of it anyway - frankly, it left such a tame impression I can't remember what the whole album sounds like off by heart Needless to say, its followup in the shape of Two Suns here shakes off that sound like a bad case of fleas and ends up giving us a much more mature sound. Bearing that in mind, the level of maturity Khan had ascended to in the space of the two short years between her two albums is just incredible. You can certainly hear the nucleus of her sound in this album, although admittedly that's only really the lass' magnificent, dreamy kinda voice. Whereas listening to the first album, I felt like it was something that shone in amidst some fairly mediocre instrumental backings, there definitely is a real progression in her sound here, and it's plain as the nose on my face that it's a move in the right direction. Press play on either of the two videos below and tell me that something about that track seems out of kilter at all. Ever facet of the music just moves in unison, guiding you gently towards the kinds of emotions and images that this album succeeds in creating. In plain English, the overall sound of the album is very dreamy, ethereal and pretty haunting one. It veers very close to being the perfect night-time album, as in one of those ones which goes so well with a long, sober night in, like when you've chosen to opt out of hitting the clubs with some mates, you don't really feel like thinking of a film to watch or a book to read and just want to lose yourself in a really solid body of work. As such, Two Suns here is not only one of my favourite albums of the decade, but it's easily my joint-favourite dream-pop album of all time too. Why not 5 stars? I can't put my finger on it really. It's definitely very close to being a near-perfect album, but it just lacks that little bit that'd have me put it in amongst the true elite of my music collection. Maybe it will be in with a year or two more of my getting a load of it. I do love this album to bits though, and couldn't recommend it enough to anyone. Also, look out for the Big Sleep, as it's quite simply all kinds of awesome. Also, in memory of the sadly departed Mick Karn (as of yesterday, I believe)... Japan - Ghosts ...Mick Karn being Japan's bassist, in case you didn't know. Here's a sample of the work that David Sylvian happens to be the most famous for, that being this tidy post-glam/new wave outfit. I'll keep this one short too - listen to the above song, love it, get hold of Quiet Life and Tin Drum, and have a nice day... Last edited by Bulldog; 01-06-2011 at 06:07 PM.

01-07-2011, 07:19 PM	#37 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	Japan was often derisively compared to Roxy Music in the late Seventies but their six excellent albums have stood the test of time. There was also a reunion of the principal four members of Japan in the late eighties under the name of Rain Tree Crow which resulted in the 1991 release of a self titled Rain Tree Crow album. Gene Pitney is my favorite of all pre-British invasion vocalist and he had a voice with same remarkable operatic range as Roy Orbison. Gene Pitney was the first American pop star to befriend the Beatles and he played piano for the Beatles on one of their earliest recording sessions. Ironically Gene Pitney's singing career in America declined as a result of the British invasion sound. In addition to Nick Cave and the Beatles, Elvis Costello is also a keen admirer of Pitney and I can hear Pitney's influence on Costello vocals, especially on Costello's Burt Bacharach collaboration. Pitney was the first vocalist to popularize the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The song below, A Town Without Pity, was from the soundtrack of a 1961 movie of the same name. I love the kitschy big band arrangement by Bacharach on this song. __________________ There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt

12-20-2010, 08:48 AM	#32 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	Before, in the timeless words of Sir Bobby Gillespie, I get right down to the real nitty gritty, I'm gonna take you on a quick detour... Artist: David Bowie Tunage: Never Let Me Down Just so you're not under any false impressions, let me just say that the album this song's culled from sucks. It sucks so hard that whenever (for whatever weird reason) the notion of one of my favourites releasing a truly shitty album comes about, 1987's Never Let Me Down is always the first one I think of. Wanna hear how badly this album sucks? Knock yourself out, just don't say I didn't warn you Putting it another way, I don't know how many of us bought the EMI reissues of Bowie's back-catalogue in the late 90s, but they always came with a card featuring little thumbnail pictures of each re-released album, including this one. Both before and after I'd heard this abomination of an album, I knew what its sleeve art looked like, and as such it came to embody all that is evil about crap music to me. 'But wait a minute,' I hear either you or the voices in my head that taunt me relentlessly day and night saying; 'what's a track from that very album doing here?' It's simple - I fucking love this song. I love it so much that it was well worth forking out a tenner on an otherwise worthless piece of crap like the album it shares a title with. I love it so much that it's one of my ten favourite Bowie songs ever. Coming from someone who's made such a big deal out of collecting his music for almost a decade now, that's saying something. Have a listen to one of my favourite ever lovesongs and, once you've wrapped your laughing gear around it, have a look at the latest album I've dug up from the bowels of my cumbersome, RAM-draining iTunes library... Hooverphonic The Magnificent Tree 2000 genre: trip-hop, downtempo, pop 1. Autoharp - 4:21 2. Mad About You - 3:43 3. Waves - 4:01 4. Jacky Cane - 4:20 5. The Magnificent Tree - 3:55 6. Vinegar and Salt - 3:20 7. Frosted Flake Wood - 3:17 8. Everytime We Live Together We Die a Bit More - 3:35 9. Out Of Sight - 3:55 10. Pink Fluffy Dinosaurs - 3:50 11. L'Odeur Animale - 4:31 You know those moments when you finish listening to an album like Ella Fitzgerald's Lullaby Of Birdland for about the 800th time and think to yourself 'gee, wouldn't it be swell if I checked out the RYM charts and looked for more stuff like this?' It was on a flight of fancy not exactly unlike that that I found myself getting hold of this album, except that the artist in question was one I can't quite recall (either Massive Attack or Thievery Corporation) and the genre was call that trip-hop/downtempto hunk of loveliness we've all crossed paths with in one way or another...at least as people like myself who actively seek out new music and don't just sit on what they've already got as if it's a particularly cozy waterbed or something. Anyway, I digress - that's how I came across this album. I say this album, because I'm sure I'd heard of the Belgian trio Hooverphonic somewhere before. Kinda like how you feel when you see a face on TV and know that something about it rings a bell and you're just not sure what it is. Wherever or whenever I'd heard the name Hooverphonic before, the first time I actively sought them out was on one of those occasions when I choose to consciously diversify into a genre I'd never really bothered with before. That was 2, maybe even 3 years ago, and it must have been a while since I last listened to this as I'd forgotten I even had it, only thinking it'd be a good idea to type something up about it sometime this morning, when I was rubbing my chin over what to fill some more journal space with. I mean, it's a drawback of having all this music at our fingertips, ain't it? There's so much available to jammy sods like us that it's so easy to just get carried away and download something like 30 albums in a week, get distracted before listening to them more than once and then just having them get buried under even newer acquisitions. I won't kid around, I'm no different - off the top of my head, I can think of albums by David McComb, Lyle Lovett, Jarboe and Steve Roach which I've been meaning to listen to for what seems like years but just haven't got round to it. So, getting sharply back on track, what's this album sounding like? Well, so far as trip-hop and downtempo go, I wouldn't say it sounds anything like either of the artists I mentioned that drove me to getting this album. It's kinda like trip-hop-lite if that makes any sense, and if you wanna compare it to other chick-fronted trip-hop acts, it's a lot more glossy, accessible and therefore nowhere near as experimental as the mighty Lamb. I guess that in the slower, more percussion-driven tracks, while the basslines are nowhere near as off the wall, there's the germ of a Thievery Corporation...well...ish sound, given a new dimension by Geike Arnaert's vocal. It's true that Arnaert here's a perfectly capable vocalist and does a good job on the whole, but there's not really an awful lot that's particularly unqiue to her style, as in you feel like you could just as easily be listening to any other chillout electronica group when you hear her voice. Such is the major bone I have to pick with this album. For all that it seems to try to be something unqiue, what with the expansion of the group's core trip-hop sound into more melodic and conventional rock music areas, it doesn't really leave much of a lasting impression on me. I do find it interesting how layers of strings kinda glide over one of the songs in the video clips below, which gives off a very quirky vibe, but the flipside of that coin is the incredibly corny Out Of Sight track. In the interests of keeping this as short as I possibly can, if you're looking for a decent album you can stick on and put your feet on the desk to after a hard day's doing, well, whatever, get hold of this album. Just don't expect anything particularly mindblowing from it though.

01-03-2011, 03:53 PM	#34 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	So, starting with the David Sylvian Month portion... Ryuichi Sakamoto - Forbidden Colours Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you my favourite song of all time! Well, that's not quite true, as my favourite song of all time is the version on the Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence soundtrack with David Sylvian's vocal (hence the connection) but, then again, stripped to its bare bones, I guess the reason I put this song above literally any other that I've ever heard is for the melody at its spine, not to mention the intensity of the bridge. Although Sylvian's beautiful vocal and lyrics give it a totally different kind of edge, there's just such a drama to this song that whatever form I find it in, it's always gonna be my favourite piece of music ever. It's at once intense, dramatic, relaxing and just all-round friggin' awesome. And, since I can't be bothered typing up something about another album just yet, here are a couple more songs I rather quite like... Artist: Gene Pitney Tuneage: Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart Another item from the old fart portion of my music collection over the years, it was actually from a different not-quite-as-much-of-an-old-fart source that I first heard of this song. That was, of course, Nick Cave's cover of it (which I still can't bloody find a copy of), which was fairly decent I thought. Better than the first impression I had of it (really not a good one). What hit me after hearing his version on youtube a couple more times was how Cave's falsetto voice really made this song work. And then this version hit me. I don't listen to any other Gene Pitney, but I just love this song. When all's said and done, it's probably in my top 10 favourite lovesongs of all time. Sure, it's all such drippy, Love Actually sentimentality, but damn does Gene make it work! Just listen to that "all of my nights - and all of my daaaaaaaaaaays letmetellyounow" bit at around 50 seconds and see if I'm wrong Artist: The Cribs Tuneage: Men's Needs I remember when the Cribs' Men's Needs, Women's Needs Whatever album came out back in '07 or '08, which was in no way assisted by an interview I read in the NME slagging off all the British rock scene of the time (like the Kooks, the Killers and Pigeon Detectives, long may I never hear a fucking note from any of them again). Kinda ironic really, considering this the bloody NME they were talking to - overpriced bogroll really - but hey, the sentiment expressed was hella cool. So I got their album, thinking 'surely this has to be amazing'. Turns out that barring the two singles, it sucked just as hard and sounded pretty much exacyl the same as the bands they were slamming themselves. Both of these singles though (the other being the awesome Moving Pictures) were a couple of the catchiest singles I heard that year. This tune just has a real fire in its belly that I've always loved. Just a shame I wasted a tenner on that rubbish album of theirs though. Oh well, I'd only have spent it on booze if I hadn't I suppose...

01-08-2011, 07:59 AM	#38 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	Never knew that Costello was a Pitney fan, although seeing as artists he's cited as influences on his career do make for great and essential listening to anyone, I might have known. And now that you mention it, I can definitely see the similarities between their vocal styles too. Painted From Memory with Bacharach's the more obvious place where it shows, but his take on Pitney's style really does shine through on the Juliet Letters with the Brodsky Quartet too. I might get round to talking abouteither one of those albums in this thread yet. And that Rain Tree Crow album is absolutely phenominal. I must have listened to it about 500 times in the week that I got hold of it. It's easily among my all-time favourites now. I just love how it brings the talents of Mick Karn and Steve Jansen in creating ethereal and thoroughly atmospheric musical backdrops into a new, much more modern-sounding generation of sounds. It's an album I'd recommend to absolutely anyone. I just wish they could have followed it up before Mick Karn died. And, I suppose I'd better talk about a song or two while I'm here... Artist: Primal Scream Tuneage: Free You know how occasionally you'll come across a song that just completely blows you away, loses you in its awesomeness and makes you pity those who've never heard it before? This is one of those songs, at least with me. I first came across when, after a few years of owning only a best of and a copy of Screamadelica that I never listened to that much at first, I decided to get hold of Give Out But Don't Give Up. Part of it was out of a hipsterish desire to fill out as many discographies in my music collection as I could, but mostly it was because the singles from it like Rocks and Jailbird just kicked arse all the way, whether or not they were pretty shameless Stones rip-offs. I won't lie - the singles aside, I hate that album. That is, of course, with the exception of this little ditty. It simply oozes the kind of emotion and soul that so many other albums, let alone the rest of this one, wishes they could. It's another example of how much good a brilliant vocal performance (this one from Primal Scream's then-backing vocalist, Denise Johnson) can do for a song. Just sit back, press to play and enjoy. As for the other portion of each update, here's another gem from Sylvian and Sakamoto; World Citizen Were it not for the fact that Forbidden Colours exists, this would be my favourite song that Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian had written and performed together. If both Forbidden Colours and World Citizen didn't exist, it'd be the Scent Of Magnolia. If Forbidden Colours, World Citizen and the Scent Of Magnolia didn't exist...you get the picture. Each song that Sylvian and Sakamoto have worked on are basically one of my favourites of all time, which is why I'll always hold them in the highest regard when it comes to musical collaborations. While Forbidden Colours will always be my favourite song of all time no matter which angle I see it from, this one is simply one of the most bleak, tightly-rendered and ethereal songs that I have ever heard. I don't really want to go into it in detail, what I think the lyrics mean and all that, as that'd suck the fun out of the song. Rather, I'm gonna leave it to you to find out As for me, I'll just say that this song would've been a perfect fit with the soundtrack for Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within.

01-13-2011, 03:44 AM	#39 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	Artist: Ray Davies Tuneage: Quiet Life Ever heard of that film Absolute Beginners before? I'm sure a lot of us have, but for those of us who only know it as a fantastic song by David Bowie and/or a term to use a lot if you have a bit of a superiority complex about you, it's a 1986 musical directed by Julian 'Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle' Temple, and one that was basically universally slammed by critics upon release. There was good reason for that too, as I can name literally just three plus-points for this film. Apart from the fact that the soundtrack is simply brilliant... 1) Patsy Kensit is hotter than the sun in this 2) The That's Motivation song-and-dance bit 3) Ray Davies Along with That's Motivation, not only does it stand up for me as one of the best musical numbers I've ever seen (although you should bear in mind that I hate most musicals, so I'm not exactly an expert on them), but like the rest of the soundtrack before it, stepping back from the film itself, it's just a brilliant song. Listen and enjoy! Artist: Bat For Lashes Tuneage: The Big Sleep And then there's this song that those of you who had the patience and willpower to read the Bat For Lashes review a few posts ago would've noticed being flagged as possibly the highlight. And yes, that is Scott Walker's voice you can hear as well. It's just the perfect musical foil for Two Suns' concept, let alone the pictures in the video, and simply the perfect end to that album. It's just so moody, haunting and wintry, that the more I think about it the more I'd give anything to hear Natasha Khan do a song with David Sylvian as well. Speaking of which... Cafe Europa Frankly, I feel half-dead from this hangover, which is a big part of why I don't wanna go on for too long here. Also, this is one song I just want you to listen to without having to see me picking it to pieces and writing a bloody dissertation on it. I will say though that this is probably in my top 5 of David Sylvian songs, and a highlight of the magnificent Dead Bees On a Cake album - an album that I actually overlooked quite horrendously in favour of stuff like Secrets Of the Beehive until a few weeks ago. Put simply, I fucking love this song, and so should you