I really love the music on Bish Bosch but most of his vocals on it are too overly dramatic and monotonic for me to really get into it. I have been listening to Scott 3 and Scott 4 a lot recently though.

Have you seen the documentary about him? It's brilliant. Vocally I was a bit iffy about it when I first listened to it but upon my second time listening to it I really began to enjoy them. Scott 3+4 are wonderful though as well. I'm not a fan of the walker brothers though.

I found Bish Bosch to be unbelievably pretentious. There wasn't anything subversive or political in it that you couldn't find in the Christopher Nolan/Wachowskis/David Fincher Philosophy 101 textbook, and it's an aesthetic nightmare in the worst ways. Also, the Tiny Mix Tapes blurb for it in their Top Albums list was the only thing more self-indulgent than the album itself to come out in 2012.

Love his other stuff, though.

I didn't care for the album myself, but I feel you're being a little harsh. The albums whole point is to be subversive by being an aesthetic nightmare. While no doubt it's more than a little self-indulgent, i wouldn't go as far as calling it pretentious, there is a well thought-out, very real purpose and design to it. Really what I'm trying to say is that as music to be listened to it's not very good, but as thought-provoking art that is designed to provoke a reaction-and succeeds, it is probably one of the greatest albums ever.

Lol, Nothing new there, I'm surprised that entire site hasn't disappeared up it's own ass yet. Most everyone who writes for them is VERY deserving of the title pretentious.

I thought it was an incredibly personal album. I don't particularly care what he was talking about but I grew into the artistic direction he took.

I have no illusions that it wasn't the point, but there are far better examples of subversive art that, for one, subvert something (really, nihilism in 2012? not really the most cutting-edge political/artistic/philosophical statement). That's where I'm getting the pretentious label: it's so awfully executed and has been done to death in more sonically challenging ways (noise and early industrial, anyone?). The one concession I will make that I wasn't making before comes from a friend of mine who listened to the album on my insistence so I could know if it was just me. She found it pretty deplorable as well, but her opinion was softened by the fact that he used to be a pop artist in the most essentialist application of the term, so his use of his baroque pop stylings to create a more "serious" avant-rock piece now that's centered on decay is interesting in a, to use her words, "final installation" way. I can concur with that to an extent but stand by that it's probably never going to get another spin from me.

Well he (Scott Walker) really has got one of those singing voices that's worth a fortune.

There was a feature on his new album on BBC6 : sounds to me - sonically & philosophically - kind of like eg. an old Harrison Birtwistle opera with some drums & electric guitar bunged in, sung by a nightclub crooner. And / or something that's been more densely recorded and then parts have been subtracted away.

I quite like it, it 's really pretty good but feel a lot of it's not massively innovative if that's what he or critics try to put across (ie. it borrows a lot from BBC Radio 3 modern classical sort of stuff innit) .


excuse me now : this is my first post I just want to play with some of these thingees :

:shycouch: :wave: :band:

Listed to The Drift for the first time on earphones at work ... realised three quarters through that I'd been sat there doing nothing for over half an hour, just transfixed.

I love the early Scott albums but his more recent stuff I have a hard time with. The meat slapping and daffy duck voices are a bit heavy for me. I've not heard Bish Bosch yet though.

I've had Bish Bosch since the day of release and still haven't listened to it once :o:

This needs to change soon...