GOLDEN EARRING - Moontan (1973)

Review by: Tom Hadrian Kovalevsky
Assigned by: Roland Bruynesteyn 

This is an album for depressed, balding middle aged men who stagnate in their rumpus rooms behind a disused pool table, swimming with flies and their own filth, as they shoot back more beers in a desperate attempt to forget the traumas of ageing and their ageing wives.

This is an album for beige-and-tan diners on the motorways of flyover states with tattered PVC seats in need of replacement, where the cigarette ash of the underpaid and angry women who work there (some are single mothers, all are jilted lovers) falls with an angered and dissatisfied plop into the coffee percolator as they strain to wipe the thick and browned layer of fry-grease of the table tops.

This is an album for horny teenaged boys with dirty mussed hair and thin, sad lines of hair on their upper lips who see women as sex objects and have semen-encrusted girlie mags stuffed, haphazardly and rather off center under their beds.

This is an album for failures. Only the everyday ones, though.

STEFAN VALDOBREV (СТЕФАН ВЪЛДОБРЕВ) - ...to (...към) (1998)

Review by: Mark Maria Ahsmann
Album assigned by: Nina A.

…към features fairly decent but not outstanding and somewhat generic 90's pop rock. The songs are all well arranged – in particular I like the sound of the lead guitar which seems influenced by Reeves Gabrels' work with Bowie on Hours. And the singing is competent. The overall sound is upbeat, accessible, melodic, mostly based on drums, bass, (alternating acoustic and electric) rhythm guitar and lead guitar. On some places horns and female vocals are added. There are a few excursions to other genres, like light hiphop on “Da”. It all sounds a little derivative though I can't really pinpoint it to any artist that would be an obvious example. Though sometimes U2 comes to mind – I don't mean that in a bad way.

Apart from the language in which it is sung and some minor details in the arrangements (like the start of the first song “Nov”) the sound is very Western – you wouldn't know it was a Bulgarian album apart from that.

All in all it was a mildly pleasant listening experiment though I found the refrains of some songs quite cheesy. Especially on the first song, I found that really so off putting that at first it coloured my view of the whole album.

THE PASTELS - Up for a Bit with the Pastels (1987)

Review by: Nina A.
Album assigned by: Jonathan Moss

The formula of gorgeous jangly music + random dissatisfied lyrics sung in a mostly unfeeling voice has been mined to death by the Smiths, of course (only at least Morrissey knows modulation and expressiveness), and if you add a bit of baroque pop extravaganza in the general spirit of “Golden Brown”, you get the opener “Ride”. In other words, something right at home in the 80s. In fact, the next track deviates only a bit by being a blues shuffle in jangly pop disguise. And then there are more songs. And they are all nice and inoffensive, perfect for college kids, I imagine, lyrically too, probably, but I wouldn't know that because really the lyrical content fits the melancholic 80s kids aesthetic best when it is perceived as the generic teenage mumbling it is.

You see, if you're over the age of 20, I doubt that you'd play any of these songs over and over and say, man, this song has so much meaning!!!! No, I imagine “old guns” only using this album as a mood music or the soundtrack to reminiscing of better times — the time when you're under 20 and a record like this could blow your mind. And with 10 songs clocking at more or less 3 minutes each, it doesn't overstay its welcome either, so in what I’d say in conclusion is Up For A Bit With the Pastels, “I am alright with you”.

RUSH - Moving Pictures (1981)

Review by: Michael Strait
Album assigned by: Eric Pember

 

Aight, there’s a whole shitton of things I’d rather be doing right now than reviewing a fucking Rush album, so let’s get this out of the way.

Rush, as far as I’m concerned, are a corny AOR band pretending to be a corny hard rock band pretending to be a corny prog rock band. I didn’t like them when I was 16, I don’t like them now, and unless something changes drastically in my biochemistry I’m not about to start liking them anytime soon. Geddy Lee’s vocals annoy me, not because they’re too high-pitched or womanly but because they’re way too over-the-top, like Bruce Dickinson or some garbage power metal vocalist; he tries so hard to fill every syllable with emotion that I end up feeling nothing whatsoever except the occasional spike of mild irritation. He’s a skilled bassist, and he’s got a good tone, but he rarely comes up with any actual memorable basslines – most of the time he’s just showing off. Same goes for their drummer, mostly – he certainly knows how to play, but he really doesn’t contribute much; most of the time he’s a forgettable background presence, like most rock drummers. Say – why does everyone worship that guy again?

Their guitarist is good, though, and he’s responsible for some of the best moments on this album. I recall his solos on Signals being strings of horrendous pseudo-metal clichés, which means he must have fallen a long way in one year because his solos on this album are actually mostly great. They’re weird and experimental without being inaccessible, and they have gravitas without being too “epic” or “awesome”; it’s almost like he’s playing in the wrong band, actually, ‘cos these things really wouldn’t sound out of place in actual prog rock songs. His riffs are pretty good, too, especially on “Tom Sawyer” – an overrated song, but still probably the second-best song on the album. If it were a little less complex it’d almost sound like it belongs on Who’s Next, ‘cos its intelligently reserved chorus and meaty guitar tones would fit right in. Alas, the singing is still insufferable, but this is Rush – that comes with the package. “Red Barchetta” is good, too, if you can get past how earnestly corny it is; the melody’s good, the riff’s good, and the unusual structure feels unforced and natural. I’ll even grant that it has some emotional resonance, ‘cos earnestly corny is still earnest, and well-applied earnestness can touch the heartstrings on occasion.

Elsewhere? Well, we’ve got “YYZ”, which is a fun little romp through a bunch of riffs, basslines and silly boogies, and that’s where the good stuff ends. The remaining four tracks – which, together, take up over half the album’s length – are all varying degrees of boring and pointless, and I can scarcely remember anything about any of them. My notes tell me that “Limelight” has a similar riff to the one Paul McCartney used in one of the segments on “Band On The Run”, but I can’t for the life of me remember which one, and the melody is barely there at all. It’s four minutes of unremarkable wallpaper, and the next three are the same, except that one of them goes on for ten minutes instead of four. That’d be “The Camera Eye”, which tries hard to be big and epic and ends up sounding perfectly pleasant and dull, like a walk by an English river on a grey and slightly drizzly day; not bad, but near-enough impossible to focus on and certainly impossible to remember when it’s finished. The next two, meanwhile, are so lacking in musical ideas that my notes become useless. I mean, take a look at what I wrote while listening to the last song: “This song has a bassline. It also has guitar stabs. It has vocals. The vocals have effects!” Fuck’s sake, this music exists only in the most technical sense. It’s dull, it’s boring, it’s bland, and I don’t want to spend any more time on it when I could be exploring so much music that’s so much more worthwhile. I’m out.

P.S. The synths are all bloody godawful too. Did I mention that?

REGINALDO ROSSI - Mon Amour, Meu Bem, Ma Femme (2012)

Review by: Ed Luo
Album assigned by: Victor Guimarães  

 

 

So as this record showcased here is a little outside my boundaries, this review's going a be a tad short. Reginaldo Rossi was known in Brazil as the "king of Brega" - a style of Brazilian popular music characterized by a sense of melodramatic flair in the singing and its particular appeal to the lower-class population. This compilation album, which presumably covers Rossi's most well-known songs (most of them released in the 1980s), is a nice collection of assorted three-to-four minute mini-dramas, mostly of the romantic nature guessing by some of the song titles. Musically speaking the songs vaguely remind me of early-to-mid 1960s European mainstream pop, with rock-style instrumentation, occasional orchestration and a singer in the forefront giving their all. I don't feel I'm exactly qualified to choose any highlights, but the title track (coincidentally the earliest song in this album, released in 1972) seems like a prime example of this sort of music.

XIU XIU - Fabulous Muscles (2004)

Review by: Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan
Album assigned by: Ed Luo 

 

Fabulous Muscles might start off innocuously enough, with a bumbling 8-bit circus rhythm and a vague, softly spoken intro, but it doesn’t take long for things to ratchet up a gear and  the listener to find him or herself subject to the first opening barrage of histrionics and to experience the album’s prevailing mood of uncompromising psychic honesty. FM is a paen to emotional incontinence and tormented self-expression, a sort of musical approximation to the effects of primal scream therapy -- or else you could also quite easily just dismiss it as one massive grown up tantrum set to precarious, ugly music. It’s supposed to sound prickly and erratic, and you’re supposed to feel like a voyeur for listening into something that sounds so vulnerable, so intimate: all of it pouring out straight from the Xiu Xiu dude’s tortured little soul, pure and unmediated; and uncompromising too, refusing to make concessions to the  more conventional listener’s conventional musical expectations. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to buy into all that.

Xiu Xiu have been called noise, except that I always feel that with a noise artist like Merzbow the idea is to effect a kind of pure self effacement, to privilege sound above everything, whereas FM, is about employing harsh, dissonant music and awkward, distressed vocals, as a means primarily of manifesting an overwhelming inner turmoil. Interestingly enough Xiu Xiu seem to be at their most effective when they write actual songs. A case in point is ‘I love the valley OH’, which is by far my highlight of the album. It’s a song which I found myself returning to over and over again, both because it has a great hook and because of its emotional resonance. In the end though the problem with FM is that unless you have one of two extreme reactions to FM -- either that of rejecting it straight off the bat because it makes you feel too queasy, or that of feeling yourself completely in tune with Xiu Xiu, a kindred at the level of your twitchy jangling nerves -- then it makes you feel as if you’re missing out on something. Nevertheless it’s a worthy enough attempt. (7/10)

SIR HARRY LAUDER - Roaming in the Gloaming (2013)

Review by: Schuyler L.
Album assigned by: Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan

Sir Harry Lauder is a really happy sorta guy. He's good at drinking whiskey and loves to wax nostalgic about Scotch lassies and purple heather (“more like ‘PUURRPLLEe HAAAAZZZZzzzee,’ am I right now, dads?”) and has a really exquisite talent for rolling his "r's"... I do wonder, how did he earn his knightship? ? ? (insert more suggestive question marks here).

Regardless of this totally needless query posited to occupy typespace, I must say that to his credit, Lauder only tends to be at the very forefront of the record's sound about 80% of the time, with another 10% consisting of somewhat forced, explosive laughter... which is all right, really, because that reminds me a bit of the musical accompaniment... somewhat forced!

I am not going to review this one track-by-track, nor even mention a single track at all. And there's really no point to it, with something as self-apparent as this record, which is one of a slowly growing pool of centenarians. 

You see, the problem is that Sir Harry Lauder is to subtle abstraction as marble is to concrete. 

And by that, I do also mean that he's really white.

...

This is the kind of music you play after your luck has taken a bad turn. Perhaps you’ve lost your job, or your wife has left you because of your fantasy sports addiction, or maybe you lost one of your brand new running sneakers in the escalator at work, because you just happened put your foot on the side of it, though you damn well know you shouldn't do that, fucking asshole.

...

Because no matter what happens, you can still listen to Roaming in the Gloaming and say “Wow, how awesome it is that possibly on this very day, a hundred-and-something years ago, Sir Harry Lauder was totally getting off in Scotland!” 

DE KIFT - Vlaskoorts (1999)

Review by: Syd Spence
Album assigned by: Mark Maria Ahsmann

De Kift is a band that plays a modern reconstruction of early 19th century cabaret music. All of these tunes seemed born from working class music halls during the turn of the 20th century, and then given a slight discordant modern touch with the odd arrangement or spoken word bit. It’s not too discordant to off shoot the old fashioned songs, but it’s enough to know that the musicians probably own a few Einsturzende Neubauten records. The question though is it any good? And that’s where we have a problem. 

I came to this record with multiple prejudices and inadequacies that hinder my enjoyment. One, It has taken me lots of repeated listenings to jazz, soul, and reggae records to not hate brass instruments. I come from America and the tradition of big brass bands playing in our sports is an endemic anachronism, and I find those old war marches a combination of quaint and shrill. Cabaret brass comes from a similar heritage and despite a bit of a jazz influence on this record, it still has that frumpy uptight feel. 

Two, I really hate accordions. I don’t know why exactly i’m turned off by them. Where i’m from, the accordion is super popular with Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants, and perhaps some hidden racism or classism is afoot. It’s the main instrument in tejano music which is a combination of Mexican folk and German polka music. I’ve always loathed it, as well as polka music. Something about the rhythms just seem so sexless, and uptight. And polka is a hop skip and a jump from cabaret, or is literally a subgenre of it. I really don’t know much about European folk brass dance music. In my mind, Europe’s best musical invention was combining synthesizers and disco rhythms, and well, this is a long way from Giorgio Moroder. 

And last, I’m American. I speak one language. It’s ridiculous and limiting, I know, so the parts where spoken word poetry is happening, I tune out. It’s not melodic and I don’t understand what’s being spoken. I have hunch it’s political in some regard but i don’t know. The cleverness or beauty of the poetry is completely absent in my loathsome ignorance.

So I did not like this album, but I feel i have no real way to adequately critique it due to my prejudices. I will say that they didn’t go far enough beyond cabaret cliches to make me question my prejudices. I have heard some gypsy punk and dark cabaret groups that make me second guess my hatred of old European dance music. This just made me want to delete it from hard drive as soon as possible.

RED KRAYOLA - The Parable of Arable Land (1967)

Review by: Roland Bruynesteyn
Album assigned by: Kunal Somaiya

This is one album I heard a lot about, but I actually never listened to it. Now I did, and I can inform you, dear reader, about the results.

A one line review would possibly read like this: “Psychedelic like The 13th Floor Elevators, but without the jug, and linking individual pieces by Free Form Freak-Outs, interludes that sound almost exactly like what they suggest”.

A four word review would read; “Garage rock in 1967”.

It is a challenging listen for several reasons:

·          The Free Form Freak-Outs, are not really composed, and not really music either. They remind me of parts of Lumpy Gravy or early Can

·         The actual songs, such as they are, are all of the droney persuasion and there is not a lot of variation in the 40+ minutes

·         Recording quality is pretty bad, even for 1967 standards, making it difficult to discern any (possible) subtleties.

For me as a dead head, the best way to approach it is like a 40 minute Dark Star: some recurring themes, some collective improvisation in the instrumental passages, sometimes moving into rather abstract territory, leaving the language of music (as if parts of What’s Become Of The Baby are inserted randomly).

"Pink Stainless Tail" is the most normal song, somewhat sounding like The Small Faces, with a more fuzzy bass. By the same token, the title song, "Parable Of Arable Land", is the weirdest song, sounding somewhat like "Several Species Of Small Furry Animals" (off Ummagumma), working frantically in Brian’s "Smile Workshop". "Former Reflections Enduring Doubt" is the best song, and a nice one to finish the album with.

Most likely this will not be anybody’s favorite 1967 record (and if it is, that’s quite worrying!), but on the other hand, this is really one of those records that make up the myth of 1967, even after all those years. It only belongs in a VERY comprehensive collection, I’d say.

EARTH AND FIRE - Song of the Marching Children (1971)

Review by: B.B. Fultz
Album assigned by: Roland Bruynesteyn

This is an album by a prog(gish) Netherlands band called Earth and Fire. I say proggish because they are unusual for a prog band. Their sound, at least on this album, is more folkish and antiquated than the common definition of prog rock. They're more like Jethro Tull than anything, and Tull was always sort of a white crow among the British and American prog bands of the time. Earth and Fire with its female vocalist (rare for any prog band) is maybe even more of a white crow.

The opening song is called “Carnival of the Animals.” It is about animals in the forest doing various animal things. My first impression was Jefferson Airplane. Lilting female vocals and a vaguely martial drumbeat. Both the words and the music set the theme for the rest of the album. Storybook lyrics, crisp drum rhythms, and prominent synthesizers dominate the songs. It is very much an album of its time. The synthesizers especially have that early 70s synth sound that was to change in a few years as synths became more advanced. The overall mood, to me, seems more 60s than 70s. There's a sense of lost innocence and a yearning for a simpler and more natural world.

"Ebbtide" is an idyllic song about tides and gulls. It's an interesting combination of watery synths, flute solos, random guitar licks, and an almost jazz-like rhythm background. It reminds me of another song, or a few other songs, that I can't name at the moment. 

"Storm and Thunder" is reminiscent of early ELP, but with more baroque elements. The keyboards are more dominant here than on the other songs.

"In The Mountains" ventures into Pink Floyd territory. The lead guitar is slow and lilting, very much in the Gilmour style. The keyboard as well is more the art-rock of Rick Wright than anything by Emerson or Wakeman.

The closing multi-part suite "Song of the Marching Children" is an interesting piece. I'm not sure I get it, lyrically, but it seems to be about the endless legacy of war, which the human race seems like it will never entirely escape. It sounds like a lament for all the future generations that will have to send their youth off to fight. The very end confirms this idea ... all the other instruments fade and there is only the relentless martial drumbeat, the endless march.

Overall impression -- a mostly soothing and pleasant album, pretty on the ear, and with interesting moments here and there, but rarely rising above the level of basic prog-folk. Then again, maybe a little basic prog-folk is just what you're in need of. Worth a listen or two, at any rate. 

The version I located on YouTube had bonus tracks. "Invitation" is the first of them, notable because it rocks a lot more than the original album tracks, so it's an abrupt change of pace after the solemnity of the album. It's different, and it's quite good.  "Lost Forever" is another rocker among the bonus tracks, and it's also quite good -- slow and heavy and brutal, unlike the album. There's some surprising guitarwork in it too, striking little arpeggio-moments that wouldn't be out of place in an Iron Maiden song (!) although Iron Butterfly comes closer to describing the song in general (either way it's a very metallic song). For me the highlights of this band are when they rock. They have a nice heavy sound when they rock, not unlike early Budgie, a band that I like a lot. There's another new track called "Memories," not quite as good as the other two, but worth a listen. There are also single versions of "Song For The Marching Children" (not "OF the Marching Children" for some reason) and "Storm and Thunder." If you seek this album out, I'd recommend finding the version with the bonus tracks. To me Earth and Fire is at their most interesting when they rock.

THE THELONIOUS MONK QUARTET - Misterioso (1959)

Review by: Francelino Prazeres de Azevedo Filho
Album assigned by: Schuyler L. 

When Schuyler assigned me a Thelonious Monk album, out of all NYC records he could have assigned me, I got the uncomfortable feeling I was going to disappoint him. I’m not the biggest fan of jazz, you see, and I specifically dislike noodling. Still, there was some hope, as I had previously listened to and enjoyed some well-regarded albums, like A Love Supreme and The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. Maybe I would enjoy this too, and even enlighten myself more on this much-celebrated genre of music.

Well, it saddens me to say that even among the little jazz I’ve seriously listened to, Misterioso is particularly boring. Thelonious is a pianist, and I generally prefer the piano to wind instruments in jazz, so I thought it would be a strong point. But, to my alas, it’s one of the weakest, shiest pianos I’ve seen in the genre. Not that the other instruments are that much prominent. Somehow, it feels like every single instrument takes a secondary role in this record.

Jazz tracks generally start with a pattern that gets repeated or built up for a minute or more, before the improvisation part starts and goes for a while, until the pattern comes back for the end of the song. In the case of the jazz I’ve enjoyed, those initial patterns are usually very catchy, and they linger on my mind, easing in the noodling parts, that I don’t appreciate that much. Misterioso doesn’t even try to hook me, however. The initial patterns are all weak and uninteresting, except perhaps the one in “In Walked Bud”. Too bad this track has the worst solo of all in the disk, starting by the 3-minute mark, which ruins the previously built goodwill. It’s also the longest one, and god, what a chore it is to finish it!

The improv parts feel so dull and lifeless to my not-a-fan ears. I think part of the blame goes to the weakness of the initial themes, but that surely wasn’t the sole factor. None of the instruments seem like they were trying to reach a strong emotion here. It feels like the players were too content in making a sophisticated atmosphere and nothing more. I bet none of them even sweated. If I were to list moments that stood out, I would have to handpick stuff like drum solos, which is a testament to how much I disliked the overall sound. “Blues Five Spot” has a line that sounds like the “Popeye” tune for some seconds before disassembling itself, starting around 3:40. The title track has a growing melody of horns (or other brass instrument, I’m not good at picking them apart) around the 6-7 minute mark, but instead of climbing to a climax it fizzles out and opens the way for more meaningless piano.

I think Misterioso might have been the non-João-Gilberto jazz album I disliked the most. It is a dull long-winded 46 minutes of noise that neither excited the surface of my mind, nor sank comfortably to the bottom as background music. Instead, it made its presence felt all the time, but as an annoyance. It was a bad experience that I don’t wish to repeat.

THE FLAMING LIPS - Clouds Taste Metallic (1995)

Review by: Victor Guimarães
Album assigned by: Syd Spence

“So, it was a warm spring evening when I arrived at Oklahoma City to see its most famous band: The Flaming Lips. And in this hometown-comeback concert, they’re playing Clouds Taste Metallic in full! Wow, can’t wait for that!”

Gods, I surely wanted to have said that sentence just above. And to have lived it as well - you know what they say about the amazing experience that is a Lips concert? Something like 50 bands to see before you (or they) die. But, unfortunately, all that I got was the pleasure of restraining myself to online streaming players. Damn! 

Ok, everyone knows the band, right? Americans, heavily inspired by psychedelic culture and known for their sound experimentations from the 80s to this day. Cool, huh? Clouds Taste Metallic is their seventh album, the last to feature guitarist Ronald Jones, and the last guitar-oriented, traditional rock based album. So, expect lots of good rock songs, all of them as short as 4 minutes, and all sporting great spirit. Expect well-thought melodies, those whose drum tempos, bass lines, guitar solos were precisely orchestrated to fit in together with the smart free-verse singing and bring specific emotions to the listener. Now, add the spaced, poetic, metaphorical lyrics and you’ve got the recipe for a great album.

Well, no one is expected to be spared from criticism, right? I could say the songs are too short, that they could’ve been done in a better, most complex way. Or that the lyrics are, in its majority, too metaphorical, too indirect, in such a way that a full comprehension will require some mindwork from the average listener. No, it’d all be wimpy criticism. One could also say the album is too simple. Come on! They are the 'good simple', with discrete touches of geniality all over the album. For me, those small, discontinuous, but ever-present displays of great ideas is exactly what (and one of the many ways that) distinguishes a great composition from a good one. But even with all that praise, I still got the feeling that there was something amiss in Clouds Taste Metallic. As I write those final lines of this review, after listening to the album a couple of times, I still hadn’t figured out what I think they missed. 

At last, don’t fool yourself with doubts or second thoughts: great album from a great band. What more could I say? I wished I’d seen ‘em live!

NEKO CASE - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (2006)

Review by: Eric Pember
Album assigned by: Jonathan Hopkins

I’m sorry, but I don’t really know how to handle this one. I think it sounds nice, and better than a lot of other alt-country I’ve heard (let’s not even get started on mainstream country), but I can’t exactly detail why I think that at this time. Part of me thinks that there’s a subliminal effect from really liking Neko Case’s contributions to the New Pornographers, but I also like what I’ve heard from Calexico (who apparently play on this album), so that’s likely not it.

Trying to compare this to another alt-countryish artist I like (Woven Hand) perhaps provides a hint at why I like this. Like Woven Hand, it tries for a distinct atmosphere, unlike seemingly a lot of country music, both mainstream and alternative. Also like Woven Hand, it is a bit samey-sounding, but ultimately most songs in every genre are samey-sounding if you don’t have much of an aptitude for it.

I’ll get back to this album at some point (along with the subsequent ones from her and albums from Calexico) and see if I can figure out why I like this where most alt-country music kinda doesn’t work for me. 

FLOW DAN - Original Dan (2009)

Review by: Alex Alex
Album assigned by: Michael Strait

Yo! Fuck you! Review! Brought to you by Alex Alex who is cooler than T-Rex knows much about sex posted the photos of his ex all over the Internet I've hacked her fucking personal cabinet with my supercool botnet all hand-written in dot net (fucking smart) now all her pics are in the Darknet studied by the CCRU fuck you (mothefuckers) now listen to the review.

How do we deconstruct rap? For things like the prog the method is easy – take a typical Peter Hammill-esque melody, put the lyrics that describe the habits of Russian grey bears as well as the climate of the areas where the bears usually live, take care that the lyrics contain just enough exact quotations from some academical thesis, sing the thing in the typical Peter Hammill manner and you are guaranteed to entertain the more sophisticated part of the audience while not abandoning the less sophisticated part who will definitely like the nice melody as it's nothing they have ever heard before.

No such luck with rap. I have to be serious with the review then.

Song 1. That's the opening song. The purpose of the opening song is such: recording companies show the artists their place. For an artist to record an opening song for his/her album is the same as for an ordinary man to be raped then paid for the trauma by the decision of the court. I DONT GIVE A FUCK! I'M JUST ME! YOU! NEVER SEEN ME IN THE DUMP! Typical opening song, the only goal is to convince the buyers that this is indeed the record they are buying and not some out-of-order shit. Like, when they sell you a car they open the doors, they flash the lights, they turn on the radio whatever there is in the car they show you by making it to produce NOISE. Which usually has very little to do with the car itself. That's what opening songs do. Should be ignored for any album in any review. Ignored then.

Song 2. That's cool they sampled loading and then firing the gun. Oh my, that's cool! Oh my, I should apply to our this here arts college so they teach me the same. Oh my! You see, it's the music and at the same time it's BOOM-reload-BOOM-reload-BOOM. Oh my, oh my they are natural born musicians! That's like Fleurs du fucking Mal! Seriously cool, no way this here dumb policeman ever guess what I'm listening to on my headphones otherwise he would've quickly arrested me!

Song 3. Reggae! This artist he very much reminds me of those Jamaican guys in the “Airplane!” movie. In any case, the effect he produces on me is exactly the same: Americans find that part of the movie hilarious and the countless generations of this here translators try in vain to produce anything even remotely sensible out of those Jamaican dialogs. Ah! And he says “Flowdan” for the first time (I think) on the album. As a rapper he has to voice his own name at least once per an album. The rappers they are like pokemons in that respect.

Song 4. That one has to do something with Barack Obama! The lyrics are absolutely unintelligible (for me) and I'm inclined to think they are deliberately done in that way. I've seen the same done on TV once! At Nelson Mandela funerals! There was that crazy sign language interpreter at Mandela's funerals (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StEFnh18zRk). Everybody back then said his translation did not make any sense. This song should make us, at least, start thinking otherwise. It's happening all over the world, you see. In all areas. There is a hidden message in this song – same as the message in that interpreter's translation. Same message. To the same addressee. Which is yet to appear.

Song 5. Oh! Mine is only JLPT N4 with a very low score, so no way I can understand this. Shall review again in twenty years or so. Anything Japanese is cool. Why? Because Japanese. Japan is cool. It used to be not that cool some time ago, with that Hiroshima thing, very uncool, but then suddenly everything illuminated and is now cool. That's the same as with human life, one day my life will be cool, too. And the meaningless noise and the pitiful sobs I now emit they will all turn into the new Japanese language and you will have to study for years to understand the magnificence of it.

Song 6. This is a noticeable song. It begins with a very loud LOOK! Now I understand how my grandfather felt when I bought a new laptop for him to learn about the new things. Back in those days, I came and I said LOOK! And then, I remember, I was closing the notebook lid and my grandfather kept staring into the void.

Song 9. This song has violins or something like in the orchestra they have. Strings! We here also have that - we here have some rappers doing shows with the symphonic orchestra. That way capitalism tells you to finally forget about anything not related to the process of buying tickets and finding your seats. This song is also has ‘Remix’ in its title, never knew what that word means, must be some Jamaican slang word.

Yo! I'm running out of inspiration. This album has some nice Jamaican quotations! Sometimes it has some industrial tunes and the cool Japanese words as if the artist listens to Death in June! Yo! It’s full of a cool Jamaican reggae it ain't no Bob Dylan with his motherfucking Maggie. Though to me all songs they sound like one. Big one! I wish I was black I would've been looking like SATAN!!!! SATAN!!!!

Oh, finally I can do that

SATAN!!!!! SATAN!!!!! SATAN!!!!! SATAN!!!!! SATAN!!!!! SATAN!!!!! SATAN!!!!! SATAN!!!!!

BENT KNEE - Shiny Eyed Babies (2014)

Review by: Charly Saenz
Album assigned by: Avery Campbell

I was a little perplexed on first listen of this album, which genre is it? Were they drunk? Did they call a surrogate band in some tracks to meet deadlines? But well, this is the very nature of the band. They are an art rock band.

It's way nice that an artist can touch upon many genres, only, I think if they can really integrate them into a solid final product. Whether no frills metal ("Way Too Long") or more elaborate affairs ("Dry") they do their business well. They can do more commercial stuff, almost in the Coldplay field ("In God We Trust"). 

They can present unexpected twists within the same songs, which is fresh, but also a little tiring on repeated listens. "I'm Still Here" gets into Kate Bush territory, and they do it quite well, a really beautiful song.

In fact the second part of the album is a more subtle affair, Celtic touches and violins in "Sunshine" (and some crazy guitar in the crescendo just to assert the power). Some .. industrial? Rock traces in the second part of "Skin", to finish it off with a soft piano, once more.

A good album overall it suffers from the CD era trauma: too long; a little trimming would work wonders. Or just make up your playlist, that's The Modern World that I've learnt about!

JOHN DUNCAN - Pleasure Escape (1985)

Review by: Jonathan Moss
Album assigned by: Tristan Peterson

It was a cold day and Billy set off to his work at the graveyard. He had been working there for several years now, and, contrary to what pop-psychology would tell you, it had had no ill effect on him. He still was of a generally cheery inclination, had a small group of close friends and a larger group of trustworthy associates. He was happy with his job, the graveyard had a stereotypically gothic beauty and it gave him time to think. The cold weather on this particular day was annoying him somewhat, and obviously like any job it was still for the most part tedious, he wasn't feeling particularly negative. This, of course, was about to change. 

He stumbled across a man, how shall we put it, having relations with a corpse. 

“What the hell are you doing?”, screamed Billy, who was vaguely aware of such goings on but generally preferred not to think about them, let alone be confronted by them. 

“Goddamnit! I was almost finished” shouted the necrophiliac. 

“Oh well” he said, removing himself and getting dressed, “I suppose I can always do this another time” 

“Hey man, I'm a libertarian” replied Billy, “I don't care what you do, just do it in another graveyard” 

“Fair enough” replied the necrophiliac “I guess I do owe you an explanation. My name is John Duncan and I'm a field recorder and experimental artist. I was defiling this corpse sexually to make a comment on nihilism in modern society, probably”

“Ah”, thought Billy. So he was one of those crazy avant-gardists. Billy had heard about these fellows, doing obscene and immoral activities to prove a point about the decadence of society, maybe. Poor John Duncan probably didn't even enjoy screwing that corpse, he was doing it out of some higher calling, in his own way he was a God. Of course, Billy wasn't sure why John couldn't have made his point in writing, as people like Schopenhauer, Comte de Lautreamont, Thomas Ligotti, and of course, Marquis De Sade had.

Well, Billy didn't actually think that, he didn't know who any of those people were. He did however contemplate calling the police, but decided to be true to his word and let John Duncan go, where he would record a film soundtrack, or something.

НОМ (NOM) - Во имя разума (1996)

Review by: Roland Bruynesteyn
Album assigned by: Alex Alex

"Интеркосмос" - After a gushing wind we get a Peter Gunn inspired vamp, then we get some synthetic vibes and some synthesizer notes. Then a robotic voice, presumably in Russian. Not really singing, but it sounds like he’s recounting his days’ events, with a strong, warning, undertone. The Peter Gunn theme ties it together nicely. Some guitar is added, with some chord based jamming and an almost Gilmourian tone. When the Peter Gunn theme stops it becomes quieter, with some (acoustic?) guitar and some kind of synthesized flute. A female joins in some kind of dialogue, some panic, some bees being slaughtered, song over. Not bad!

 

I think "Баллада О Межпланетной Любви" starts close to the 5.30 mark, nicely acoustic before the band joins in. This song is a strange mix of the Nirvana esthetic (loud and quiet passages) with some Metallica-style Cossack singing. The instrumental passages are nice, but meander a bit. Guitar solo is good, but the music during the solo sounds a bit sluggish.

 

Presumably, "Предупреждение Посланца Вселенского Разума" starts around 11.55 with some drunk yelling and a glass breaking. A synthesizer loop, innocent of course, but also a bit simple. The drums join in and some rap style singing, again strongy urging you to do something, or so it seems. Other voices join in, sounding somewhat processed (or it’s just the local dialect and tone of voice in Alex Alex’ hometown). The repetitive melodies recall some Krautrock. The synthesizer figure returns, with some jazzy drumming, the calling voice and a guitar being dismembered. A hint of Talking Heads in an aggressive mood, perhaps.

 

At 15.50 "Лягва" starts with dialogue again. This could very well be a storytelling concept album, a la The Wall. Some frantic drumming and some call and response “singing”. The song, and especially the guitar work, sound strangely new wavish, apart from the drumming. The title is repeated over and over again.

 

Around 18.54 some more dialogue, as a prelude to "Студенческая Межзвездная". Start is almost rednecky ZZ Top, but the singing definitely is not, sounding more like a (good) Clash song off London calling.

 

21.45, new song, "Любовь Инженера" starts with a simple bass figure. Rather like the Talking Heads again (think Naive Melody), apart from the mock Gothic singing. Sounds like a real organ, nice!

 

Around 26.30 "Jurassic Park" starts, Western lettering for a change. The song DOES indeed sound like it could appear in a weird Western.

 

27.36 "Укрблюз", a modest epic, with some real saxophone playing around the 31 minute mark (or 2,5 minute mark, actually).

 

"Чрезвычайное Происшествие" starts around 32.10. Totally different voice, Miss Piggy, not very pleasing to the ears. Other people start protesting as well, by the sound of it. Very annoying piece of theatrical music that does not work for me AT ALL.

 

Around 35.50 "Марш Косморазведчиков" starts, and it better be a 12 minute epic, or I will have completely misconstrued the different song lengths. Another ZZ Top style riff to start with. Not original, but it works. Singing again new wavish, and during the singing parts the music is dramatically different as well. The ZZ Top riff does return a few times however.

 

Around 39.25 the song seems to finish, so I consider the rest a hidden bonus track. Acoustic guitars with some cymbal heavy drumming, sounding turning into a sitar sometimes. The serious singing, intoning a warning again, sort of detracts from the quiet parts of the music. Electric guitars join in, closely following the bass lines. Next verse, some background vocals are added, yelling the same lyrics. It sounds a bit more balanced. Third verse they disappear again, but a guitar replaces the backing vocals. Final guitar figure is repeated ad infinitum, when it slows down a bit.

 

What to make of it? I could not get used to the low vocals, that sounded too much like a solo Gregorian chanter for my taste. Not understanding the lyrics does not help either. The music however is quite varied, played professionally and somehow strangely appealing. The artists I compared it with in my mind (Clash, Krautrock, Nirvana, Metallica, Talking Heads, ZZ Top) are all a lot older, so originality is not really a factor here, apart from the singing (that fails to my ears).

 

But then I think giving a very weird voice to the classics nicely summarizes Alex Alex’ life (or at least the role he plays in this group)!