Music Banter - View Single Post - The Playlist of Life --- Trollheart's resurrected Journal

Trollheart · 11-06-2011, 10:50 AM

In the days before itunes, the Interweb and ipods and playlists, we bought albums when we wanted to hear them, and because we had bought a physical product, be it CD or vinyl LP (ask your parents) we felt the need to listen to it right away. So generally, the cycle would go thus: into record shop, see album(s) we want, buy, bring home, take out of bag, stick on stereo, listen. And listen all the way through too, no such thing as playlists in my day, cough cough wheeze where's me zimmer?

But in recent years, this behaviour has changed, and I too have fallen victim to it. With the advent of torrents, free music sites like the sadly-missed Napster and Audiogalaxy, not to mention those websites selling music which are based in certain, shall we say, ex-Iron Curtain countries (ahem!) music has become so much easier not only to buy, but to amass. The result is that it is now possible, indeed even preferable, to download a band's full discography almost in one mouse click. But as we do that, and the music mounts up and takes up ever more space on our straining hard drives, the days still have the same amount of hours, and it becomes nigh-on impossible to listen to everything in our collection.

The result of that situation is, of course, that we end up with hundreds, perhaps even thousands of albums on our PCs that we always mean to listen to, but never get the time somehow. There's always something else to do. From time to time, we note as we pass down the directory, “Oh yes, I must go through the Dio catalogue”, or “I really should find out what that band Helloween are like”, or similar, but then we just move on. There is, quite literally, not enough time in our day to listen to everything we would like to. But we will, we promise ourselves faithfully. Some day. Just not today.

Well, today is that day. Or at least, today is the day I'm going to try making some sort of inroads on my as yet unlistened to collection. I'd like to say I'm going to try to listen to an album a day, but of course there's no way I believe I can keep that sort of promise. Maybe an album a week. Let's start with that. And review it here.

So, the only real criteria I have is that the album I listen to must be either a) by an artiste whose work I haven't heard yet or b) one of their catalogue I have yet to hear. I could end up hating it, or loving it, or being singularly unimpressed by it. It may make me want to devour the rest of their discography, or cause me to never listen to anything they record again. Who knows? But at least I'll be chipping away at the sizeable mountain I've created.

So, how to choose what to listen to? Well, there's a real plethora of progressive rock bands on my disk waiting to be discovered, so let's give one of them a go....

Juggling 9 or dropping 10 --- Enchant --- 2000 (InsideOut)

These guys will do. I like the name of the band, and I'm intrigued by the title of this one. I've never heard anything at all from Enchant prior to this, not even a Random Track of the Day, so this is a total punt, as they say in “Dragons' Den”. Let's see if it pays off.

Opener “Paint the picture” doesn't disappoint, with its warbly keyboard intro backed by powerful guitars, a long track to start the album at just over seven minutes, and when the singing starts I'm put very much in mind of Jadis, who feature in today's RTOTD. Vocalist Ted Leonard does sound a lot like their mainman, and looking at the lineup on the album it's clear why there's right away such a lush, luxuriant and full sound, as Enchant employ up to four keyboard players, two of which seem to be multi-instrumentalists: Paul Creddick also plays acoustic guitar, bass, strings, drums, percussion, guitar, piano, harpsichord and mellotron, while Doug A. Ott plays close to the same: acoustic and electric guitar, bass, piano, mellotron as well as keys. Ted Leonard plays the bass in addition to singing, and there's another bass player plus two more dedicated keysmen, so no passengers here!

“Rough draft” is a heavier, more dramatic piece, almost as long as the opener, with nice picked guitar and driving bass and some great keyboard flourishes, while “Bite my tongue” is more guitar led than previous tracks, rocky and with a good hook. Leonard certainly has a strong vocal range, and as no backing vocalists are credited I must assume the harmonies I hear on the songs are his own voice multi-tracked, and it works very effectively.

“Colours fade” starts off slowly, as if we've arrived at the first ballad on the album, but then it picks up pace a little, becoming a mid-paced rocker, with some quite heavy guitar from, well, one of the four candidates! Hard to know who's playing what, which would be the only small criticism I can level at Enchant's lineup: some of the playing is so good you really want to credit the guy doing it, but as so many of them play more than one instrument, it's next to impossible to know who to praise. Even the bass playing is shared by up to four people! Never heard of that level of instrumentation before.

Nice little acoustic ending to “Colours fade” before “Juggling knives” comes in, a similar sort of song with some very nice guitar and some powerful vocals from Leonard. The song puts me in mind at times of the best of It Bites. This song actually serves as the title track, as during the lyric Leonard sings ”Now my choice is / Juggling nine or dropping ten”. Great keyboard work here too, very seventies or even eighties Genesis, though again I couldn't tell you who's behind the keyswork.

I really like this album on first listen, although I would admit that in essence there's very little new or innovative here, save the abovementioned multi-instrumentation. A lot of Genesis, Jadis, Marillion influences, sort of leaning rather hard into the Jadis area of the spectrum for me, but none the worse for that. I would like to see a little more individuality from this band though, an identity of their own.

“Shell of a man” has a strange sort of distant vocal, almost as if Ted Leonard is standing away from the mike, at least at first. Great intermeshing of the sound, no doubt about that: each member is a craftsman on his own chosen instruments, and it's quite an achievement. I can't even play the piano! To be able to master so many different instruments is something to be applauded, and it certainly does create a deep and varied soundscape for Leonard to sing against. Nevertheless, the more this album goes on the more astounded I am how similar to Jadis they sound.

“Traces” is a real tour-de-force, with just about everything put into the song by all band members, and in total contrast the closer, “Know that”, less than a minute and a half long, is a fragile, gentle acoustic treat which takes you completely by surprise but ends up being about the strongest last track to an album I've heard in quite a while.

So, what are my impressions, both of this band and of the album? Well, I have to be completely honest and say I'm not blown away, but neither am I sorry I listened to “Juggling 9 or dropping 10”. I'll be listening to more of their material in due course to see is there any real identity to the band, but at the moment I see them, as I've said more than once now, as a sort of poor man's Jadis. Whether that's a compliment or insult depends, I guess, on what you think of Jadis, but the similarities are too close to the bone for me to see Enchant any other way.

Not a bad start then. One down, only about fifteen hundred to go!

TRACKLISTING

1. Paint the picture
2. Rough draft
3. What to say
4. Bite my tongue
5. Colours fade
6. Juggling knives
7. Black eyes and broken glass
8. Elyse
9. Shell of a man
10. Broken wave
11. Traces
12. Know that

11-06-2011, 10:50 AM	#457 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	In the days before itunes, the Interweb and ipods and playlists, we bought albums when we wanted to hear them, and because we had bought a physical product, be it CD or vinyl LP (ask your parents) we felt the need to listen to it right away. So generally, the cycle would go thus: into record shop, see album(s) we want, buy, bring home, take out of bag, stick on stereo, listen. And listen all the way through too, no such thing as playlists in my day, cough cough wheeze where's me zimmer? But in recent years, this behaviour has changed, and I too have fallen victim to it. With the advent of torrents, free music sites like the sadly-missed Napster and Audiogalaxy, not to mention those websites selling music which are based in certain, shall we say, ex-Iron Curtain countries (ahem!) music has become so much easier not only to buy, but to amass. The result is that it is now possible, indeed even preferable, to download a band's full discography almost in one mouse click. But as we do that, and the music mounts up and takes up ever more space on our straining hard drives, the days still have the same amount of hours, and it becomes nigh-on impossible to listen to everything in our collection. The result of that situation is, of course, that we end up with hundreds, perhaps even thousands of albums on our PCs that we always mean to listen to, but never get the time somehow. There's always something else to do. From time to time, we note as we pass down the directory, “Oh yes, I must go through the Dio catalogue”, or “I really should find out what that band Helloween are like”, or similar, but then we just move on. There is, quite literally, not enough time in our day to listen to everything we would like to. But we will, we promise ourselves faithfully. Some day. Just not today. Well, today is that day. Or at least, today is the day I'm going to try making some sort of inroads on my as yet unlistened to collection. I'd like to say I'm going to try to listen to an album a day, but of course there's no way I believe I can keep that sort of promise. Maybe an album a week. Let's start with that. And review it here. So, the only real criteria I have is that the album I listen to must be either a) by an artiste whose work I haven't heard yet or b) one of their catalogue I have yet to hear. I could end up hating it, or loving it, or being singularly unimpressed by it. It may make me want to devour the rest of their discography, or cause me to never listen to anything they record again. Who knows? But at least I'll be chipping away at the sizeable mountain I've created. So, how to choose what to listen to? Well, there's a real plethora of progressive rock bands on my disk waiting to be discovered, so let's give one of them a go.... Juggling 9 or dropping 10 --- Enchant --- 2000 (InsideOut) These guys will do. I like the name of the band, and I'm intrigued by the title of this one. I've never heard anything at all from Enchant prior to this, not even a Random Track of the Day, so this is a total punt, as they say in “Dragons' Den”. Let's see if it pays off. Opener “Paint the picture” doesn't disappoint, with its warbly keyboard intro backed by powerful guitars, a long track to start the album at just over seven minutes, and when the singing starts I'm put very much in mind of Jadis, who feature in today's RTOTD. Vocalist Ted Leonard does sound a lot like their mainman, and looking at the lineup on the album it's clear why there's right away such a lush, luxuriant and full sound, as Enchant employ up to four keyboard players, two of which seem to be multi-instrumentalists: Paul Creddick also plays acoustic guitar, bass, strings, drums, percussion, guitar, piano, harpsichord and mellotron, while Doug A. Ott plays close to the same: acoustic and electric guitar, bass, piano, mellotron as well as keys. Ted Leonard plays the bass in addition to singing, and there's another bass player plus two more dedicated keysmen, so no passengers here! “Rough draft” is a heavier, more dramatic piece, almost as long as the opener, with nice picked guitar and driving bass and some great keyboard flourishes, while “Bite my tongue” is more guitar led than previous tracks, rocky and with a good hook. Leonard certainly has a strong vocal range, and as no backing vocalists are credited I must assume the harmonies I hear on the songs are his own voice multi-tracked, and it works very effectively. “Colours fade” starts off slowly, as if we've arrived at the first ballad on the album, but then it picks up pace a little, becoming a mid-paced rocker, with some quite heavy guitar from, well, one of the four candidates! Hard to know who's playing what, which would be the only small criticism I can level at Enchant's lineup: some of the playing is so good you really want to credit the guy doing it, but as so many of them play more than one instrument, it's next to impossible to know who to praise. Even the bass playing is shared by up to four people! Never heard of that level of instrumentation before. Nice little acoustic ending to “Colours fade” before “Juggling knives” comes in, a similar sort of song with some very nice guitar and some powerful vocals from Leonard. The song puts me in mind at times of the best of It Bites. This song actually serves as the title track, as during the lyric Leonard sings ”Now my choice is / Juggling nine or dropping ten”. Great keyboard work here too, very seventies or even eighties Genesis, though again I couldn't tell you who's behind the keyswork. I really like this album on first listen, although I would admit that in essence there's very little new or innovative here, save the abovementioned multi-instrumentation. A lot of Genesis, Jadis, Marillion influences, sort of leaning rather hard into the Jadis area of the spectrum for me, but none the worse for that. I would like to see a little more individuality from this band though, an identity of their own. “Shell of a man” has a strange sort of distant vocal, almost as if Ted Leonard is standing away from the mike, at least at first. Great intermeshing of the sound, no doubt about that: each member is a craftsman on his own chosen instruments, and it's quite an achievement. I can't even play the piano! To be able to master so many different instruments is something to be applauded, and it certainly does create a deep and varied soundscape for Leonard to sing against. Nevertheless, the more this album goes on the more astounded I am how similar to Jadis they sound. “Traces” is a real tour-de-force, with just about everything put into the song by all band members, and in total contrast the closer, “Know that”, less than a minute and a half long, is a fragile, gentle acoustic treat which takes you completely by surprise but ends up being about the strongest last track to an album I've heard in quite a while. So, what are my impressions, both of this band and of the album? Well, I have to be completely honest and say I'm not blown away, but neither am I sorry I listened to “Juggling 9 or dropping 10”. I'll be listening to more of their material in due course to see is there any real identity to the band, but at the moment I see them, as I've said more than once now, as a sort of poor man's Jadis. Whether that's a compliment or insult depends, I guess, on what you think of Jadis, but the similarities are too close to the bone for me to see Enchant any other way. Not a bad start then. One down, only about fifteen hundred to go! TRACKLISTING 1. Paint the picture 2. Rough draft 3. What to say 4. Bite my tongue 5. Colours fade 6. Juggling knives 7. Black eyes and broken glass 8. Elyse 9. Shell of a man 10. Broken wave 11. Traces 12. Know that __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018 Last edited by Trollheart; 11-12-2011 at 01:14 PM.