The Doghouse v.II

storymilo · 08-01-2010, 06:55 PM

Nice, I'm actually really excited to read this. Your album reviews are some of the finest on the site. And I already read most of the other thread.... this is freshening

Bulldog · 08-02-2010, 07:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream

^ I usually move chronologically, giving every album more of a month of spins.

Probably the best way to go about it. I got them all based on reputation at first (which, given how you'll find a lot of his 60s and 70s albums rated, amounted to a lot of effort to say the least) and just filled in the gaps from there. Not the best way to do things, as it definitely leaves you with what seems like a lot more albums than you have time for, which can be pretty daunting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by storymilo

Nice, I'm actually really excited to read this. Your album reviews are some of the finest on the site. And I already read most of the other thread.... this is freshening

I'll try not to disappoint

Good to see you back by the way - certainly seems liek it's been a while anyway.

storymilo · 08-03-2010, 12:45 PM

Thank ya. There were a couple months there where was barely on, so I guess it has a been a while. Now I have so much free time... perfect for mb.

Bulldog · 08-03-2010, 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by storymilo

Now I have so much free time... perfect for mb.

Yeah, I know that feeling - it basically sums up how things have been for me this last 2 months. Summer holidays are so overrated it's not funny!

Anyway, two more updates here. I'm just gonna ditch the whole two-per-week thing and update as and when I feel like it. So then, a couple I did earlier this afternoon - again, read or don't...

Frou Frou
Details
2002

genre: electronica, pop
1. Let Go - 4:13
2. Breathe In - 4:37
3. It's Good To Be In Love - 4:39
4. Must Be Dreaming - 4:01
5. Psychobabble - 5:33
6. Only Got One - 4:09
7. Shh - 5:34
8. Hear Me Out - 4:19
9. Maddening Sound - 3:37
10. Flicks - 3:58
11. The Dumbing Down Of Love - 4:44

And so I was sitting there listening to this for the second or third time, twiddling my thumbs and wrapping my head around the episode of Lost I'd watched about an hour earlier, when I thought how much not only Frou Frou's vocalist sounded like Imogen Heap, but also how much just about every other aspect of the music did. Being a bit of a fan of her's, I'd found my way to this album using LastFM's 'similar artists' links (which, let's face it, are just about the coolest things on the planet) as well. It was after thinking how I should get this one, Frou Frou's only album prior to their breaking up, in line for the old journal here that I found out that this was basically an Imogen Heap album.

Take note the word 'basically' though, as this album consists of 11 tracks with her glorious voice over the top of them, while the songs themselves were co-written, composed and recorded with some guy I'd never heard of before called Guy Sigsworth. After quickly consulting my old friend Wikipedia, it immediately became obvious that here's a man I should definitely have heard of before, given some of the acts he's written for or with as well as remixed. He's a behind-the-scenes kinda bloke then, and one who's worked with the likes of Seal, Bjork, Madonna, Bebel Gilberto, Talvin Singh, Lester Bowie and this bloke who's next in line for a review in this thread. And, of course, Ms Imogen Heap here, forming the male half of an electro-pop duo. After all, Sigsworth here must have had more than enough time on his hands seeing as Frou Frou's life as a group with an eye for the mainstream audience was a very brief one, Heap and Sigsworth's career as a duo lasting barely a year. As such, all they had time to do was record this one album, release one UK top 50 single from it, two more that failed to chart and record something for the Shrek 2 soundtrack.

There are two similar-ish electro-pop albums that I'll always compare one such very feminine-sounding, commercially-appealing yet ambitiously-arranged album such as this to - Welsh songwriter Jem's 2007 album Down To Earth and Imogen Heap's own 2009 effort Ellipse. Ellipse is certainly my favourite album of this ilk, and one that shows all the strengths of the unique characteristics of this style off for all to see. Down To Earth on the other hand is passable, actually quite good in places, but somehow fails somewhere along the line, be it in trying too hard to incorporate a diverse range of styles into the album's sound or just being plain crap in places. This album falls at a snug half-way mark somwhere between the two.

Let me just translate that into simple English - Frou Frou's Details is a very, very girly-sounding album. This is what I get from it anyway, in the sense that the soft electronic sound that dominates the album kinda plays off Heap's vocal swoops...if that makes any more sense

That's not a drawback in the slightest before anyone misconstrues what I'm saying here, but a huge plus-point considering that a) it gives the direction this album goes for a real sense of character and an edge of its own (which is all I ask for in an album), and b) the way this transforms this richly-layered approach incorporating various ambient soundscapes, trip-hop beats and distant, heavily-treated rock guitar riffs really helps towards this.

When it's done well, such as on the opening two tracks (Let Go and Breathe In), the Cat Power-styled neo-soul ballad the Dumbing Down Of Love and the soaring melodies of Only Got One, it sounds absolutely beautiful - soothing and lively at once. This album fails where Ellipse succeeds though, inasmuch as there's a bit too much of a stylistic blend between each song for many of the other weaker numbers to stand out with a character of their own. Personally, my interest in this album wavers a bit here and there. Still a very tidy piece of work all the same in my eyes, but not quite up to the standard of the best of this little corner of pop music.

Bulldog · 08-03-2010, 06:06 PM

And here's another...

David Sylvian
Approaching Silence
1999

genre: ambient, minimalist, experimental
1. The Beekeeper's Apprentice - 32:56
2. Epiphany - 2:52
3. Approaching Silence - 38:17

David Sylvian, the former lead singer of new wave/post-glam maestros Japan has been on my radar for a long time. Quite some time, in fact, before I decided that I even liked him. Back on this old forum I used to to moderate on, before anyone really knew how to make and upload mixtapes as I do pretty much everyday now, the admin organised a CD swap for all the moderators. The admin fella himself ended up sending me a whole bunch of stuff I'd never heard before, including a David Sylvian song I can't remember the title of. I hated it. This would've been something like 3 or 4 years ago. About a year later, I got round to watching the Old Grey Whistle Test DVDs, one of which featured Japan's performance of Ghosts. I hated that too. To say that it seemed like me and Mr. Sylvian would simply never hit it off is quite the understatement. Even further down the line, I somehow got round to downloading Sylvian's Secrets Of the Beehive and forgetting about it for almost a year. This is pretty much the definition of how an artist can simply slip through the cracks with anyone.

I forget when it was exactly. Sometime around January's my guess, but I thought I'd post the final scene of Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence in that favourite movie scenes thread that's gathering dust somewhere in the Media forum. Hearing that end with the instrumental version of Ryuichi Sakamoto's Forbidden Colours led me to look it up on youtube again, which led me on to Sylvian's vocal version of it. I fucking loved it, to the point that I'd happily call it my favourite song of all time. I then remembered Secrets Of the Beehive, listened to it about 50 times in the space of a week, and the rest of his discography (or at least as much of it as I could find) just kinda floated my way so to speak.

I had a few albums under my belt then, but what loomed large and pretty ominously was the flipside to the beautiful manipulations and cross-breedings of jazz, free improv, folk-rock, new wave and ambient electronica, that being a wealth of collaborations, LPs and EPs that made little to no use of what to me is the joint-best vocal talent in rock/pop history (keep an eye on this thread to find out who the other one belongs to

). This flipside of the coin was the huge portion of Sylvian's discography dedicated to epic Eno-esque experiments with ambient music.

What you see here, and what it's taken a good three paragraph's worth of self-indulgent rambling to mention, is the finest representation of Sylvian's work in this field. Approaching Silence here is not only a hot contestant for my favourite cover art of all time, but a compilation of his ambient work. The first two of these tracks, the epic, Tangerine Dream-echoing the Beekeeper's Apprentice, and the comparitively bitesize exercise in tape loops and heavily treated voice samples, Epiphany, both derive from a different album, this being Ember Glance: the Permanence Of Memory, recorded and released some 8 years earlier. Both pieces were composed with visual artist Russell Mills as musical accompaniments to an installation of sculpture at the Temporary Museum in Tokyo. It shows too, as the Beekeeper's Apprentice in particular seems designed to truly test the patience of anyone who doesn't have a stomach for ambient music, a lot like Eno's Music For Airports. It's very much time and place music, but both piece are gorgeously visual works of ambience if you can hack them. What makes this album into something truly extraordinary is the following Approaching Silence title track, composed by Sylvian with King Crimson's Robert Fripp for the Redemption installation at the P3 Gallery in Tokyo, some 5 years prior to this album's release. It's a 40 minute, despairingly ethereal monolith of ambient electronica, with a hugely fascinating motif of ghostly synth flourishes, growing more intense as the gong strikes. Like the opening track, it's a minimalist piece, but one with a completely different intent and with a lot more hooks to reel you in.

As with anything of its ilk though, you'll either find it intensely fascinating or incredibly boring. It definitely does stand as one of my favourite records to be credited to David Sylvian, and definitely one for anyone curious enough to try and spread themselves into a very demanding area of electronic music.

There's not a lot of this to be found on youtube, but below's the closest I could find to a clip of the title track in case you're curious...

Bulldog · 08-04-2010, 01:25 PM

I hate posting three of these things in a row - it makes me look insane.

Oh well, whatever...

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Nocturama
2003

genre: rock, folk
1. It's a Wonderful Life - 6:49
2. He Wants You - 3:30
3. Right Out Of Your Hand - 5:15
4. Bring It On [ft Chris Bailey]- 5:22
5. Dead Man In My Bed - 4:40
6. Still In Love - 4:44
7. There Is a Town - 4:58
8. Rock Of Gibraltar - 3:00
9. She Passed By My Window - 3:20
10. Babe, I'm On Fire - 14:45

For another one of the much less obscure folks you'll find in this thread, I'm gonna go with Nick Cave, and an album that for reasons that will soon become obvious just bothers me. So far as me and Sir Nicholas Edward Cave go, I'm not so sure if I've told you how it all began before. Basically, I wasn't so impressed when I'd first heard him, being the clueless, socially-awkward teenager I was when I heard my first Nick Cave song; the Ship Song. I thought it was corny beyond belief, especially the creepy-arse video that I saw with it. I forget what it was that brought me round, but I have a funny feeling it was this...

...which came my way via my brother. Anyway, long story short, down the years the man's been indirectly responsible for the direction my life's taken since. I practically worhsip the guy then.

As I've already said in another thread of mine, 2001's No More Shall We Part has always and forever will be my favourite Nick Cave album. I spent a lot of time doing a write-up for that, so I thought it'd be kinda neat to take down a word or two on its follow-up.

Nocturama's certainly a very different album from the two that came before it in two ways. For a start, there are a few moments which are lot livelier than a good 90% of what you'd find on either of them, pointing the way forward to the upcoming Abattoir Blues/Lyre Of Orpheus double-album. In terms of quantity though, the overall sound is fairly mellow and introspective again. Secondly, this album was written and recorded a lot more spontaneously than those before it. Months of planning, rehearsing, demoing and writing lyrics went into the Boatman's Call and No More Shall We Part, whereas Nocturama was pretty much all done on the spot, making for a red-raw sound and very laid-back approach to the production.

The results make for one of the definitive 'meh' albums. Well, that's not quite true, as some of these songs are among Cave's best, namely the passionate Bring It On (enjoy the video fellas

) and He Wants You - a gorgeously syrupy romantic ballad that's enough to make the most IDM-hardened heart melt. Rock Of Gibraltar's another sweet lovesong, Still In Love's another very nice ballad and Dead Man In My Bed's a beautifully noisy band-wide freakout, although it must be said that none of them really stand up with the man's better works. Other than that, there's just a whole lot of mediocrity, with She Passed By My Window and There Is a Town being quite possibly the most boring songs Nick Cave's ever recorded. Where the songs aren't just plain uninteresting, they're definitely too bloody long, the worst offender of this probably being the closing Babe, I'm On Fire, which could have been one of the man's finest had it been trimmed down to about 2 or 3 minutes.

Basically, here's how the album would look had I been in charge of post-production;

1) Bring It On
2) He Wants You
3) Rock Of Gibraltar
4) Everything Must Converge
5) Still In Love
6) Swing Low
7) Nocturama
8) Dead Man In My Bed

^ The titles you don't recognise from the original listing being, of course, nerdily-namedropped leftovers from the sessions that really should've made the album.

In other words, find a way of getting those songs and don't bother with the rest if you're mulling over getting this. Definitely Nick Cave's weakest album by a long shot.

Bulldog · 08-06-2010, 11:13 AM

Time to break up a few walls of text with...another wall of text! I'm in the middle of some hardcore procrastination at the minute, so this'll do to keep it going a bit longer. Can't be bothered to flag up an album just yet, so I'm gonna deviate from the format a bit.

So then, a tune or two that have been on my mind lately...

David Bowie - We'll Creep Together

I was actually thinking of doing some huge write-up on the man's 1.Outside album, but then Friends came on so I kinda forgot about it. This way's less time-consuming anyway. Basically, the story here is that the aforementioned was initially meant to be released in a triple-disc format before Bowie's label told him to trim the thing down to one, which led to over 24 hours' worth of material recorded during the album sessions remaining unused and unreleased.

A few years after the album's release, half an hour of those outtakes were leaked onto the bootleg circuit and, as you can probably hear, to say that's it's a shame so much of this material's never seen the light of day, be it in official or unofficial format, would be quite the understatement. In a sentence, I think some of the guy's best material is on that bootleg, or at least the most avante-garde. The above's not necessarily as zany as it gets, but it's among my 5 favourite Bowie songs and, if it weren't for my keeping my ear to ground so to speak, I'd never have heard it. And, as I say, this is about as tip-of-the-iceberg as things get, and it's more than likely that I'll never see or hear much of the rest of the outtakes. For me at least, it's got that sense of morbid curiosity that the missing half-hour from Event Horizon does.

Every song on it is unofficially-titled, We'll Creep Together being the title I (as opposed to the video's uploader) was given. Anyway, I really couldn't recommend looking for this bootleg enough. Skip to about 2:30 on it if you wanna hear one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music that I ever have and you're feeling a bit impatient for all the improv stuff at the start.

Goldie - Mother

To think that there was a time when this was actually commercial!

I was actually looking forward to going over Goldie's Saturnz Return album in here, a little because any sort of electronica is fairly overlooked around here, nevermind dnb, but mostly because it's an absolutely immense album. But, four albums in a row in a thread like this is a bit much, so I'll pass for now

Little do the un-Goldie-initiated know that this tune's actually been edited down from the first disc of Saturnz Return, which accounts for another 57 minutes of major tuneage. Put simply, the radio edit you're hearing above comes in between two mammoth neo-cassical movements - the part where it just all breaks down into what I hope you're sitting through as you read this.

I dunno about you, but I just love when you can stick a tune on, it's guaranteed that it's gonna just keep going for well over the usual 3-5 minute timescale and that it doesn't devolve into random wankery or whatever.

NumberNineDream · 08-06-2010, 12:05 PM

I like all write ups for now.
Frou Frou's Details seems like a fun album to listen to. And I don't know most of the artists you mentioned in there, so I think I have a list of electro-pop Artists to check out in the near future.

I still haven't checked the David Sylvian albums you sent me, I think I'll be checking them today. I can't procrastinate any longer -What was the Espacios para la muerte video from btw? That seems pretty intriguing.

As for Nick Cave's Nocturama, it made me remember No more shall we part. Haven't listened to that album since the trade (listening to it right now -it's still sounding very good).

I'm downloading those David Bowie Outtakes now... I'll see in an hour or so if those are the right ones (that if the folder downloads fully).

Is that Goldie album from Saturnz Return? Just to see which to get.

^And that post, so you won't stop posting those "wall of text" album reviews.

Bulldog · 08-06-2010, 05:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream

^And that post, so you won't stop posting those "wall of text" album reviews.

...is the go-ahead I was looking for

Seriously though, I just thought the thread could do with a bit of breaking up. All those reviews in a row looks like a bit much, even from where I'm sitting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream

I like all write ups for now.
Frou Frou's Details seems like a fun album to listen to. And I don't know most of the artists you mentioned in there, so I think I have a list of electro-pop Artists to check out in the near future.

As I said in the post itself, Imogen Heap's Ellipse is a fantastic album. It's not so much electro-pop as an album with the genre at its core while it takes in mish-mash of a whole bunch of different styles. Very smooth album - it's kinda like a pop album with an experimental edge, and might be one I'll get round to later.

Talvin Singh, Bebel Gilberto and Lester Bowie (the closest he gets to being related to David is that he played trumpet on his Black Tie White Noise album) are all well-worth investigating too, but very wide of the electro-pop mark.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream

I still haven't checked the David Sylvian albums you sent me, I think I'll be checking them today. I can't procrastinate any longer -What was the Espacios para la muerte video from btw? That seems pretty intriguing.

No idea where the video's from or where it was filmed but, I agree, it's fascinating stuff. Goes so well with the music as well.

As for Sylvian himself, if you have any of these albums, you're on the non-stop road to musical awesomeness...

Secrets Of the Beehive
Flux & Mutability
World Citizen
Blemish
Approaching Silence (of course)

Quote:

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream

As for Nick Cave's Nocturama, it made me remember No more shall we part. Haven't listened to that album since the trade (listening to it right now -it's still sounding very good).

I can quite simply never get tired of that album - I loved it from the first time I ever heard the opening bars of As I Sat Sadly By Her Side and I still do to this day. I've listened to it so many times I practically know it note-for-note.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream

I'm downloading those David Bowie Outtakes now... I'll see in an hour or so if those are the right ones (that if the folder downloads fully).

If it's not, just say and I'll upload my copy for you. The thing with the Outside outtakes is that all the said 24 hours of unused material were never edited down in to smaller songs,which is why different bootleggers pare the half hour of recordings down according to their preferences, not to mention song titles as such too.

It's a task Bowie himself was going to do to follow Outside up, but just never got round to it due to the sheer enormity of it all.

Fun Bowie fact of the day - the '1' in 1.Outside's title is there because Outside was the first of what was initially meant to be a series of 5 concept albums to be released in the run-up to the year 2000. There've been some fairly consistent rumours of 2.Contamination and 3.Afrikaan being released over the last 15 years, and allegedly it's something Bowie's working on as I type this. Needless to say, nothing's come to light though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream

Is that Goldie album from Saturnz Return? Just to see which to get.

Yup. Best to get Timeless first though - while it's still pretty epic, it's not quite as long and therefore difficult as Saturnz Return. All depends if you like your dnb too.

NumberNineDream · 08-06-2010, 06:09 PM

I only have one dnb album, got it from one of the trades, but I realised I'm loving that sound. Shall get the two then.

I listened to Secrets of the Beehive after I wrote that post. It's definitely up my alley (that sounds like "Up your viva!"). It will need some repeated spins, but I have to say, I found myself liking it from first listen.

Noted all those Electro-Pop (that's what I'm gonna call them for now) names. Cheers!

08-03-2010, 06:06 PM	#15 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	And here's another... David Sylvian Approaching Silence 1999 genre: ambient, minimalist, experimental 1. The Beekeeper's Apprentice - 32:56 2. Epiphany - 2:52 3. Approaching Silence - 38:17 David Sylvian, the former lead singer of new wave/post-glam maestros Japan has been on my radar for a long time. Quite some time, in fact, before I decided that I even liked him. Back on this old forum I used to to moderate on, before anyone really knew how to make and upload mixtapes as I do pretty much everyday now, the admin organised a CD swap for all the moderators. The admin fella himself ended up sending me a whole bunch of stuff I'd never heard before, including a David Sylvian song I can't remember the title of. I hated it. This would've been something like 3 or 4 years ago. About a year later, I got round to watching the Old Grey Whistle Test DVDs, one of which featured Japan's performance of Ghosts. I hated that too. To say that it seemed like me and Mr. Sylvian would simply never hit it off is quite the understatement. Even further down the line, I somehow got round to downloading Sylvian's Secrets Of the Beehive and forgetting about it for almost a year. This is pretty much the definition of how an artist can simply slip through the cracks with anyone. I forget when it was exactly. Sometime around January's my guess, but I thought I'd post the final scene of Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence in that favourite movie scenes thread that's gathering dust somewhere in the Media forum. Hearing that end with the instrumental version of Ryuichi Sakamoto's Forbidden Colours led me to look it up on youtube again, which led me on to Sylvian's vocal version of it. I fucking loved it, to the point that I'd happily call it my favourite song of all time. I then remembered Secrets Of the Beehive, listened to it about 50 times in the space of a week, and the rest of his discography (or at least as much of it as I could find) just kinda floated my way so to speak. I had a few albums under my belt then, but what loomed large and pretty ominously was the flipside to the beautiful manipulations and cross-breedings of jazz, free improv, folk-rock, new wave and ambient electronica, that being a wealth of collaborations, LPs and EPs that made little to no use of what to me is the joint-best vocal talent in rock/pop history (keep an eye on this thread to find out who the other one belongs to). This flipside of the coin was the huge portion of Sylvian's discography dedicated to epic Eno-esque experiments with ambient music. What you see here, and what it's taken a good three paragraph's worth of self-indulgent rambling to mention, is the finest representation of Sylvian's work in this field. Approaching Silence here is not only a hot contestant for my favourite cover art of all time, but a compilation of his ambient work. The first two of these tracks, the epic, Tangerine Dream-echoing the Beekeeper's Apprentice, and the comparitively bitesize exercise in tape loops and heavily treated voice samples, Epiphany, both derive from a different album, this being Ember Glance: the Permanence Of Memory, recorded and released some 8 years earlier. Both pieces were composed with visual artist Russell Mills as musical accompaniments to an installation of sculpture at the Temporary Museum in Tokyo. It shows too, as the Beekeeper's Apprentice in particular seems designed to truly test the patience of anyone who doesn't have a stomach for ambient music, a lot like Eno's Music For Airports. It's very much time and place music, but both piece are gorgeously visual works of ambience if you can hack them. What makes this album into something truly extraordinary is the following *Approaching Silence* title track, composed by Sylvian with King Crimson's Robert Fripp for the Redemption installation at the P3 Gallery in Tokyo, some 5 years prior to this album's release. It's a 40 minute, despairingly ethereal monolith of ambient electronica, with a hugely fascinating motif of ghostly synth flourishes, growing more intense as the gong strikes. Like the opening track, it's a minimalist piece, but one with a completely different intent and with a lot more hooks to reel you in. As with anything of its ilk though, you'll either find it intensely fascinating or incredibly boring. It definitely does stand as one of my favourite records to be credited to David Sylvian, and definitely one for anyone curious enough to try and spread themselves into a very demanding area of electronic music. There's not a lot of this to be found on youtube, but below's the closest I could find to a clip of the title track in case you're curious...

08-04-2010, 01:25 PM	#16 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	I hate posting three of these things in a row - it makes me look insane. Oh well, whatever... Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Nocturama 2003 genre: rock, folk 1. It's a Wonderful Life - 6:49 2. He Wants You - 3:30 3. Right Out Of Your Hand - 5:15 4. Bring It On [ft Chris Bailey]- 5:22 5. Dead Man In My Bed - 4:40 6. Still In Love - 4:44 7. There Is a Town - 4:58 8. Rock Of Gibraltar - 3:00 9. She Passed By My Window - 3:20 10. Babe, I'm On Fire - 14:45 For another one of the much less obscure folks you'll find in this thread, I'm gonna go with Nick Cave, and an album that for reasons that will soon become obvious just bothers me. So far as me and Sir Nicholas Edward Cave go, I'm not so sure if I've told you how it all began before. Basically, I wasn't so impressed when I'd first heard him, being the clueless, socially-awkward teenager I was when I heard my first Nick Cave song; the Ship Song. I thought it was corny beyond belief, especially the creepy-arse video that I saw with it. I forget what it was that brought me round, but I have a funny feeling it was this... ...which came my way via my brother. Anyway, long story short, down the years the man's been indirectly responsible for the direction my life's taken since. I practically worhsip the guy then. As I've already said in another thread of mine, 2001's No More Shall We Part has always and forever will be my favourite Nick Cave album. I spent a lot of time doing a write-up for that, so I thought it'd be kinda neat to take down a word or two on its follow-up. Nocturama's certainly a very different album from the two that came before it in two ways. For a start, there are a few moments which are lot livelier than a good 90% of what you'd find on either of them, pointing the way forward to the upcoming Abattoir Blues/Lyre Of Orpheus double-album. In terms of quantity though, the overall sound is fairly mellow and introspective again. Secondly, this album was written and recorded a lot more spontaneously than those before it. Months of planning, rehearsing, demoing and writing lyrics went into the Boatman's Call and No More Shall We Part, whereas Nocturama was pretty much all done on the spot, making for a red-raw sound and very laid-back approach to the production. The results make for one of the definitive 'meh' albums. Well, that's not quite true, as some of these songs are among Cave's best, namely the passionate Bring It On (enjoy the video fellas) and He Wants You - a gorgeously syrupy romantic ballad that's enough to make the most IDM-hardened heart melt. Rock Of Gibraltar's another sweet lovesong, Still In Love's another very nice ballad and Dead Man In My Bed's a beautifully noisy band-wide freakout, although it must be said that none of them really stand up with the man's better works. Other than that, there's just a whole lot of mediocrity, with *She Passed By My Window* and There Is a Town being quite possibly the most boring songs Nick Cave's ever recorded. Where the songs aren't just plain uninteresting, they're definitely too bloody long, the worst offender of this probably being the closing Babe, I'm On Fire, which could have been one of the man's finest had it been trimmed down to about 2 or 3 minutes. Basically, here's how the album would look had I been in charge of post-production; 1) Bring It On 2) He Wants You 3) Rock Of Gibraltar 4) Everything Must Converge 5) Still In Love 6) Swing Low 7) Nocturama 8) Dead Man In My Bed ^ The titles you don't recognise from the original listing being, of course, nerdily-namedropped leftovers from the sessions that really should've made the album. In other words, find a way of getting those songs and don't bother with the rest if you're mulling over getting this. Definitely Nick Cave's weakest album by a long shot.

08-06-2010, 12:05 PM	#18 (permalink)
NumberNineDream Blue Bleezin' Blind Drunk Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: The land of the largest wine glass (aka Lebanon) Posts: 2,200	I like all write ups for now. Frou Frou's Details seems like a fun album to listen to. And I don't know most of the artists you mentioned in there, so I think I have a list of electro-pop Artists to check out in the near future. I still haven't checked the David Sylvian albums you sent me, I think I'll be checking them today. I can't procrastinate any longer -What was the Espacios para la muerte video from btw? That seems pretty intriguing. As for Nick Cave's Nocturama, it made me remember No more shall we part. Haven't listened to that album since the trade (listening to it right now -it's still sounding very good). I'm downloading those David Bowie Outtakes now... I'll see in an hour or so if those are the right ones (that if the folder downloads fully). Is that Goldie album from Saturnz Return? Just to see which to get. ^And that post, so you won't stop posting those "wall of text" album reviews. __________________ Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats?Do bats eat cats?Do bats eat cats?Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats?Do bats eat cats?Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Welcome to the Black Lodge

08-06-2010, 06:09 PM	#20 (permalink)
NumberNineDream Blue Bleezin' Blind Drunk Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: The land of the largest wine glass (aka Lebanon) Posts: 2,200	I only have one dnb album, got it from one of the trades, but I realised I'm loving that sound. Shall get the two then. I listened to Secrets of the Beehive after I wrote that post. It's definitely up my alley (that sounds like "Up your viva!"). It will need some repeated spins, but I have to say, I found myself liking it from first listen. Noted all those Electro-Pop (that's what I'm gonna call them for now) names. Cheers! __________________ Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats?Do bats eat cats?Do bats eat cats?Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats?Do bats eat cats?Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Do bats eat cats? Welcome to the Black Lodge

08-01-2010, 06:55 PM	#11 (permalink)
storymilo Music Addict Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 1,845	Nice, I'm actually really excited to read this. Your album reviews are some of the finest on the site. And I already read most of the other thread.... this is freshening

08-03-2010, 12:45 PM	#13 (permalink)
storymilo Music Addict Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 1,845	Thank ya. There were a couple months there where was barely on, so I guess it has a been a while. Now I have so much free time... perfect for mb.

08-06-2010, 11:13 AM	#17 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	Time to break up a few walls of text with...another wall of text! I'm in the middle of some hardcore procrastination at the minute, so this'll do to keep it going a bit longer. Can't be bothered to flag up an album just yet, so I'm gonna deviate from the format a bit. So then, a tune or two that have been on my mind lately... David Bowie - We'll Creep Together I was actually thinking of doing some huge write-up on the man's 1.Outside album, but then Friends came on so I kinda forgot about it. This way's less time-consuming anyway. Basically, the story here is that the aforementioned was initially meant to be released in a triple-disc format before Bowie's label told him to trim the thing down to one, which led to over 24 hours' worth of material recorded during the album sessions remaining unused and unreleased. A few years after the album's release, half an hour of those outtakes were leaked onto the bootleg circuit and, as you can probably hear, to say that's it's a shame so much of this material's never seen the light of day, be it in official or unofficial format, would be quite the understatement. In a sentence, I think some of the guy's best material is on that bootleg, or at least the most avante-garde. The above's not necessarily as zany as it gets, but it's among my 5 favourite Bowie songs and, if it weren't for my keeping my ear to ground so to speak, I'd never have heard it. And, as I say, this is about as tip-of-the-iceberg as things get, and it's more than likely that I'll never see or hear much of the rest of the outtakes. For me at least, it's got that sense of morbid curiosity that the missing half-hour from Event Horizon does. Every song on it is unofficially-titled, We'll Creep Together being the title I (as opposed to the video's uploader) was given. Anyway, I really couldn't recommend looking for this bootleg enough. Skip to about 2:30 on it if you wanna hear one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music that I ever have and you're feeling a bit impatient for all the improv stuff at the start. Goldie - Mother To think that there was a time when this was actually commercial! I was actually looking forward to going over Goldie's Saturnz Return album in here, a little because any sort of electronica is fairly overlooked around here, nevermind dnb, but mostly because it's an absolutely immense album. But, four albums in a row in a thread like this is a bit much, so I'll pass for now Little do the un-Goldie-initiated know that this tune's actually been edited down from the first disc of Saturnz Return, which accounts for another 57 minutes of major tuneage. Put simply, the radio edit you're hearing above comes in between two mammoth neo-cassical movements - the part where it just all breaks down into what I hope you're sitting through as you read this. I dunno about you, but I just love when you can stick a tune on, it's guaranteed that it's gonna just keep going for well over the usual 3-5 minute timescale and that it doesn't devolve into random wankery or whatever.