ALIEN KIDS - Alien Rap: Songs About Life on the Planet Glumph (2007)

Review by: Roland Bruynesteyn
Album assigned by: Ed Luo

This rap album is targeted at the (small but growing) boyscout segment of the youth market for rap and dance music. This is pretty obvious when you hear the songs:

the lyrics contain all sorts of practical advice and useful information
 the voice is easy to understand, no distracting accent, no interference by sound effects, etc.
 on the whole, there are no explicit lyrics; it’s all very civilised.

The epic “Alien Schools (How Alien Kids Develop Super Brains)” has a great singalong chorus that’s bound to get those kiddies shaking their hips. The 8 and a half minutes are over before you realize it even as the tension slowly builds up to climax around the 8 minute mark. Now that is one song this middle aged man kept on ‘repeat’ for an hour! The Alien Kids sure found their niche and they may be onto something here.

But, alas, there are a few problems. First, although the cd was released in 2008, the music feels, surprisingly, a little outdated. The rhythm box is programmed somewhat simple and the melodies, although repetitive and simple as required, still seem to lack a certain spark. Second, the singer uses a technique that, notwithstanding the spectacular virtuosity and general musicality, just ever so slightly starts to grate a little after a while.

Now obviously, this is my strictly personal observation. At children's’ parties this is bound to be very successful. Also, I have to remind you that this is party music, to be used to get people on the dancefloor, whereas I listened concentratedly to the whole cd twice in a row, only to finish with the epic “Alien Schools” on ‘repeat’ for an hour. There is a slight chance that that’s asking a little too much.

Not knowing the rest, if anything, of their work, I can only urge you to listen and find out if this particular album is something for you. I know it changed my life...

STARSHIP - No Protection (1987)

Review by: Alex Alex
Album assigned by: Julien Mansencal

Most surely, people do not like the 80s music for the same reasons they do not usually like abstract art – they do not understand what to make out of it or, simpler, being egotistic and self-centered as people are, they do not understand how to enjoy.

When Genesis boldly, if somewhat idiotically (both attitudes are courtesy of the Gabriel legacy), put some not-so-good abstract art on their album covers (“Genesis”, “Abacab”, even “Duke” as an early-period painting of the same master) then people somewhat realize the connection and, if not really start appreciating the albums, at least start the endless discussions about “eras” as if none of the Tarantino movies have ever happened.

When the album cover is executed in a most realistic manner, as is the case with Starship’s No Protection then people start judging the songs according to the laws of the reality they currently experience which is the same as to say Mondrian could not paint anything but squares in three colors.

Mondrian could, however, same as could Starship when it still was Airplane. Indeed, comparing Mondrian early period with his golden one is much the same as comparing Airplane to Starship or, more importantly, comparing airplanes and starships in general.

Airplanes are killed by stewardesses. Starships are erotic by themselves, the Cosmos demand females to be either fully naked or dressed ridiculously. This is so in order not to distract people from the beauty of the Starship itself.

The beauty and the freedom of Starship as opposed to all the bankrupt private airlines is immense. When people say the 80s music is dead, those people are often the same ones who say “when I die I fly to God, I fly to the center of the Universe, I fly among the brightest stars”. And how do you fly there, dear sirs? By way of the Starship of the Dead for there are no airplanes that can do this long flight.

And why is it you can travel to God who sits in the center of the Universe, listening to Shpongle, by Starship with a big big generator? This is because of the beauty of the engine. The engine is not visible and yet it is the engine, not fancy dressed stewardesses, who provides the power and guarantees you to be taken to God in the blinking of an eye.

And if your starship is broken, it’s not the same as with a new Nick Cave album. There will always be problems with any new Nick Cave album because it’s new for no reasons. The only problem with Starship engine is it has become obsolete, other engines have replaced it but it still, theoretically, can fly, if in our nostalgic dreams only.

There are strict regulations on board. There is a beat of the machine and the patrol to keep the beat. There is a world going on underground as we have been informed by Mr. Waits in strict confidence. The error of the auteurs, however, is that there is nothing confidential about that anymore.

Confidential are the pieces of broken glass and the diaries you bury under the tree in your childhood garden. If, however, you keep your Walkman in secret then there is no chance it will evolve into an Ipod. And if it does not happen soon, then you are going to be deeply sorry about that.

Most Alas! As a stubborn teenager you are still insisting there is a menace in you being welcomed to the machine and so you are rejecting your journey to the center of the Earth on the inverted airplane, the inmost starship of the Cthulhian business, shining brightly.

CHARLES MANSON - Lie: The Love and Terror Cult (1970)

Review by: Roland Bruynesteyn
Album assigned by: Jonathan Birch

Well, I hear you say, “this only goes to show that a tormented soul not a good singer songwriter maketh!” Apparently, Charles Manson was well aware of this, as he gained more notoriety as a motivational speaker. He even diversified into religion, where he became more of a guru than he thought he could become in folk rock.

So what does it sound like? The production style is somewhat primitive, putting it firmly in indie territory. Instrumentation is simple: acoustic guitar, some light percussion and some female backing vocals. Some songs seem unfinished: “Garbage Dump” for example seems stuck in the “Scrambled eggs” phase of The Beatles’ “Yesterday”: he’s toying with some ideas but chooses not to follow his muse, leaving the song in demo stage.

“Look At Your Game Girl”, however, is a pretty nice song, that could have fit on Self Portrait by Dylan (or the corresponding Bootleg Series Vol. 10). On some tracks he tries to emulate Captain Beefheart. On others he sounds somewhat like Tyrannosaurus Rex (the early acoustic outfit, consisting of Marc Bolan and Peregrine Took). “I Once Knew A Man” sounds suspiciously like the beginning of “Woman and Man” by Ween. Also, if you allow for his somewhat snarling voice, there is some Nick Drake deep inside, as interpreted by Roger Waters or Lou Reed.

“Cease To Exist” was covered by the Beach Boys around the time, almost unrecognizable so, with a different title (“Never Learn Not To Love”, a line that’s included in “Cease To Exist”’s lyrics). This might have been his big break through, but unfortunately the Beach Boys at the time were quite irrelevant.

On the whole I’d say this is certainly not extremely bad: it’s shows promise and is possibly one of his greatest accomplishments. It is my opinion that he should have pursued this direction some more. Unfortunately, he chose to focus on his other talents.

РАНЕТКИ (RANETKI) - Ранетки (Ranetki) (2008)

Review by: Charly Saenz
Album assigned by: Dinar Khayrutdinov

Funny how commercial music can be totally impervious to their original country's culture. Or anything else for the matter. This music could have been made in Buenos Aires, Madrid or in Seattle, but well, the girls come from Russia (except Lena, the bass player who's from Poland: enough with the trivia).

They are bold enough to play a total “Satisfaction” ripoff in "Naslazhdajsja". Girls don't sing bad when they don't sing like a Powerpuff Army (chorus in "Mal'chishki - Kadety") and they don't scream (first track); in that case they are sound like my neighbour's wife when he doesn't cut the grass on sundays. These are efficient bubble-pop-fake-rockers, I guess. "Ej Ne Do Sna" stands out a little, with some interesting riff (only heard half of it but it was good). There are some ballads as expected. Not sure why "Serdce Ne Spit" has a slightly Brazilian vibe: does not work. 

"Alisa" is .. Rock and roll. It made me laugh out loud. Almost to the brink of tears. 

God this is a bit painful (I don't recommend to buy the album on vinyl) but Cheyenne is still way worse! By now the girls are older, let's hope they're moving to singer-songwriter stuff, we still need a new Joni Mitchell. Or Four!

MASSIVE ATTACK - Mezzanine (1998)

Review by: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Album assigned by: Christian Sußner

If you grew up as a music fan under the dominant sway of the music press during its three-four decade long heyday then you most likely know the desperate feeling that came from constantly reading about some hugely important influential record that, having been name dropped once too often, you were eventually forced to save up enough money to buy (yes, you read that right, you used to have to pay for music, which tended to really limit your options) and listen to over and over again - and that, after countless vain attempts to ‘get it’, to understand what all the fuss was about, you were forced to give up on and chalk up as a failure of imagination or music appreciation on your part. Actually it quite often turns out that years later, when you eventually return to such half digested masterpieces, that rather amazingly the pieces just seem to fall into place of their own accord without any additional effort on the part of the listener, maturity or a deeper appreciation of music in general having taken up the previous slack. For other records that never happens at all, ever, and you’re forced to conclude that either there’s some musical blind spot in your brain (and that maybe, possibly there’s a chance you just might get it in the end, on your deathbed maybe), or that the music press had in fact been actually selling you a massive pup all along. Ladies and gentlemen, Blue Lines by Massive Attack just happened to be exactly one of those personal bugbear records of mine. I mean I admired the album, and parts of it I really loved, but in the end and in spite of all that initial goodwill on my part, Blue Lines left me lukewarm. 

You see I get how the record might have won over the critics in the early 90s, its relentless privileging of style and hip over soul and substance and its achingly sussed on point musical allusions/borrowings served as a potent weapon against the earnest rockism that was still characteristic of the alternative music scene back in the days. But the fact is that no amount of studied cool could make up for the essentially pedestrian quality of the music. Indeed, trip hop taken as a genre - and aside from a handful of notable exceptions like Portishead or DJ Krush - tends to sounds much less impressive than it did in the mid-90s. Because it really had an untouchable, hazy green aura, of mystique surrounding it back then. Albums like Dummy or Entroducing felt epochal, significant, like a promise of much more to come. But in the end it all proved to be one big anti climax - and all those cruel jibes about trip hop being a safe, sanitised version of rap/hip hop without all that stuff about thugs and guns and violence and bitches that you could play at nice dinner parties without offending your guests seemed not to have been so wide off the mark after all. I listen to those old trip hop records again now 20 years on and after having, rather critically, had the chance to hear many of the original dub, soul and reggae records that were formative influences on the genre and I can’t help but notice just how cumbersome and actually dated trip hop sounds in comparison.

All of which egotistical rambling finally brings us round to Mezzanine, Massive Attack’s third album: the one where the band started to expand on their sound, developing an earthier, more rock-oriented style, and softening some of the hard, blunt edges of their first two albums. I mean in theory it should appeal a lot more to my rather more organic sensibilities, but to me it just sounds a lot like probably the best beer commercial soundtrack music ever. I still find an immense depthlessness to their music, a horrible anodyne quality that lurks behind the immediate surface allure, of which admittedly there is plenty. Angel and Teardrop, the two that everyone knows from the album, are completely worn out from over familiarity, like a frazzled imitation persian rug -- and really I can’t even begin to separate out the music from its role as the incidental music or as the inspiration for the incidental music in a thousand different adverts or television productions. The images and visual symbols, the products, and the music all bleed into one another, one great trite miasma. Worse still whenever I listen to Mezzanine and start to really get into it, I reflexively think of where I’ve heard the same thing done better or where it’s felt far more genuine. There are, as always with Massive Attack, exceptions: moments when they triumph over their musical limitations, Risingson being one obvious highlight, although there are fewer of these than on Blue Lines. But (to my most alas) I still don’t get it; I just can’t overcome my by now decades long resistance to the group (6/10).

GREEN DAY - American Idiot (2004)

Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez
Album assigned by: Graham Warnken

My only memories of Green Day were when they were on the radio a lot around the release of “Dookie”, so for me they were always this young pop-punk band, so when I read in the press that they were doing a conceptual rock opera thing I was thinking “Huh? Are they the right band to do this? Wouldn’t it be boring? Pop punk only has so much diversity and when you go for a concept album you need musical diversity”.

Or course I was not being aware that 10 years had passed since “Dookie”, and another 12 have passed since they released “American Idiot” to the day in which I’m listening to it for the first time.

First of all, I will not comment on the plot and the concept, for one simple reason: I would need to pay attention to the lyrics, and that would be something for a time when I can focus enough on them.

I don’t know if in the time span between Dookie and American Idiot they had already transcended their old sound, but in this record they sound quite more diverse than simply punky pop (although “St. Jimmy” – actually the second half of “Are We The Waiting / St. Jimmy”; a lot of tracks come in pairs – is totally classic punk). But the energy is there, oh boy is it there. The guitars jump at you with classic rock abandon, the drums are precise yet lively and the bass holds the ground as it’s supposed to do. Check the title track for an example – it’s exhilarating.

Green Day asserted that they had done their homework and studied classic rock operas and it shows. They said their main inspiration was “Quadrophenia” and I can agree – but if anything, it sounds like Quad if Quad had been done by the Who of 1965 rather than the Who of 1973. But that’s not the only discernible influence; take the second track and arguably the tour de force of the album, “Jesus of Suburbia”, a nine minute monster in several parts. Not only there are very strong hints of Ziggy Stardust here and there, but the third section (“I don’t care”) is so much in the same rhythm as the “I have to know” part of “Gethsemane” from Jesus Christ Superstar – and it’s so totally appropriate in a meta level – that it cannot be accidental.

Diversity is also a mark of the “paired” tracks: the “Are we the waiting” section of that track I mentioned above has nothing to do with the “St. Jimmy” section; “Give me Novocaine / She’s a rebel” repeats the trick: the first part is funky and acoustic, the second is punk pop at its most direct; “Holiday / Boulevard of Broken Dreams” sounds like the reggaeified Clash in its first part (excellent!), and like Oasis in the second (damn!). “Wake me up when September ends” is the expected acoustic/power ballad, and its placement in the album makes it the equivalent of the typical Broadway “11 o’clock song” (clever!). Then “Homecoming” tries to repeat the trick of “Jesus of Suburbia” (it’s even a little longer) but not quite succeeding as much, although having the two guys not named Billie Joe contribute (and sing) a section is a welcome idea (in addition to a possible nod at “Tommy”).

In short, even taking the concept out of the equation, the album is an enjoyable romp and its opening stretch is certainly good; I’d nominate the entire sequence of “American Idiot”, “Jesus of Suburbia” and “Holiday” (a pity about the “Boulevard” part – sorry guys but Oasis????) as the best part of the album. Thumbs totally up.

Roland and Nina's DECADES IN MUSIC - 1971 - EDDIE PALMIERI - Vamonos Pa’l Monte

Review by: Nina A.
Album assigned by: Roland Bruynesteyn

It took me ages to review this record and here is why: I just can’t bear sitting through the whole of it, and the thought of even putting it on for a bit fills me with terror. Stuff like Buena Vista Social Club and jazz music are two musical directions that I can borderline tolerate, you know, when the stars align and my mind is really occupied by something else, but having the two of them together just overloads my senses.

I assume Eddie Palmieri is really good at what he does and this record probably represents some sort of a musical pinnacle, it sure sounds like it does, but please, please, please, don’t make me listen to it ever again.