Album Club 2019: Magdalith - Magdalith
 

Magdalith - Magdalith
https://img.discogs.com/r5uZ5kilhC2P...485200.gif.jpg

Never heard this one before. On your marks...get set...goooooo!

Current Rating: 5.92 out of 10

Thoughts: Magdalith has an amazing, unique voice, perfectly suited for avant-folk, for it equally frightens and excites. This is as freaky as the kind of vocals I like gets, and I cannot help but think that we are getting only the slightest peek into the soul of a Jewish woman scarred by the Holocaust and enamored of the Eucharist. The vocals set the piano on fire. This whole album feels like one big vocal experiment, pushing her voice to the limits of its perspicacity. Her voice is at once strong yet brittle, an endlessly fascinating feat. Tracks 1 and 6 (the beginnings of Sides A and B) are sister tracks, songs that have only one instrument accompanying the vocals, the former a piano, the latter some kind of hand drum (sounds Middle Eastern – apologies for my untrained ear). All but two of the tracks are written by Magdalith. She works in quite a bit of ritualistic liturgical chanting of religious texts, creating a distinctly Hebrew atmosphere to the album.

Rating: 10/10

Pretty hard to sit through this one, honestly. Was waiting for some actually good musical ideas to materialize, but it never happened. The outré vocal performances often felt quite on the gimmicky side of things. Impressive technique, sure, but mostly, her high-velocity blubbering just sounds silly.
A few alright passages here and there, but nothing worth specifically calling attention to. I just didn't like this one at all. Not even close. What's more, I've heard it before, so there was a real feeling of "oh no not you again *groan*" - but one must suffer for the album club, so I did.

2/10? I guess so. Can't find a reason why not, except that I don't want to be yelled at.

Not sure if I would describe this experience as "enjoyable" in a comprehensive sense, but there were some numbers like '...et pour les enfants' that had a distinctive charm to them. Xylophone features prominently, as well as frequent use of the whistle register and some yodeling here n' there. There's also a certain stark beauty to the Middle Eastern melodic meanderings of 'Pop' a' Gregor' that I found rather compelling. Kinda haunting.

Have skimmed a bit of critical opinion from elsewhere about this self-titled, it seems like the goal was to provide a canvas of sorts to showcase experimental vocalizations and test the "limits" of it as an instrument. Certainly an ambitious goal, but there's a nice psychedelic underpinning to everything that I enjoy as well.

Going with a 6.5 out of 10 here methinks.

****ing Philistine...

^Grown man not able to cope with the existence of perspectives and experiences that don't match his own.

I can cope. You're a Philistine. There. I've coped.

It's ok, I'm used to MB snobbery. Naturally, I don't respect it.
It's as familiar as that particular shade of blue that defines the look of this site.
I have no respect for the musical opinions of snobs. I mainly get my recs from sites with wiser people.

**** outta here then.

No. I like this place despite some of the bad attitudes and your presence.

MB really is toxic. I'm thick skinned, so that's why I'm still around.
Newbies leave because MB has **** culture. Fact.

I'll have to wait to figure out who you even are before I form a more nuanced opinion.

Let me know when you're there.

Zhanteimi, it's normal to disagree, but I don't want this kinda bickering to dominate. I'll blow the Judgement Horn and call this forum's arbiters of justice from beyond the heights of Mt. Olympus to my aid if need be. :)

You summoned me.

Shut up, Mord.

Unsummon, unsummon!

bye

I suppose what this can be best classified as is high-speed "cantillation", aka Jewish liturgical chanting accompanying texts like the Torah and the Tanakh/Mikra (usually performed at services). Of course, Madeleine Lipszyc's completely improvisational so I'm almost certain that little literary reference is being made here but it's not like it really matters anyway.

Magdalith mainly consists of Lipszyc warbling over at most a single sparse instrument (electric organ, miscellaneous percussion, etc.), varying simply between a lower and higher register often very quickly. Her diction is, for the most part, extremely fast, unintelligible and manic in the most uncomfortable way possible. Kind of like this. But I mean that is the point of avant-garde music, right? To disorient. Sure, but if you ask me this feels like one of those performances that you're told is super serious beforehand, and you end up sitting through a 39 minute performance of a woman running around on stage cooing like a bird. You laugh inwardly despite prior warnings, but after 15 minutes of it you just get annoyed and have the urge to walk out. Granted I did have the ability to shut this one off at that time but out of respect for my peers in the a̶u̶d̶i̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ album club I sat through the whole thing.

Absurdity aside there's just little meat on these bones to bite onto. I admire Lipszyc's objective vocal talents, but how she uses them does little to impress me.

3

:laughing:

Because of my cultural connection to more "mystical" religious tradition (radical Christian sects of a hyper-Charismatic variety), I am actually quite fond of music that feels ritualistic. "Spiritual" sounds of any genre usually sit well with me, and this album is no exception, though the religion informing it has never been my own.

The primitive, ecstatic vocal inflections that the singer (whatever their name is) used across the record were fascinating and not unlikable. The way they flew around and across the repetitive instruments like a swarm of bees was amazing.

All that said, there was a certain "something" that was missing for me, and I'm not sure what that was. It could be that the ritual dragged on too long, or maybe it was just my state of mind- after all, one has to be actively participating in a ritual in order to accept its demands- either way, by the time it ended, I just wasn't feeling it any more.

This was not, by any means, a bad album. Magdalith was worth listening to. I don't know if I would listen to it again any time soon, but I'm glad I did at least once.

6/10

I got the vinyl off eBay the other day. So exciting! :)

I liked it. I was pretty excited about it around 5mins in, but I was disappointed when I looked and saw there was another 25mins to get through. I like that it exists, I like how weird it is for how old it is, I think small doses may have been better, but I won't be revisiting this one. 5/10

Reminds me of Arvo Part. Sometimes it really seems to be tapping into a tradition and then it warps out like Eastern Europe religious music that’s been left out in the elements for too long and went crazy. I feel burdened to have create my own context but that speaks to the outsider nature of this composition

9/10

You just nailed it. It's the outside element that makes this so good and so incomprehensible to the plebs.

Stroke that ego! Stroke it moar!

^Who is this person? Did it change its username recently?

Yeah, my personality completely changed overnight or something.
Must have been some bad food.

It's ****in' lame, dude. I expected way more especially from a Jew.

That explains things.

An Egyptian pigeon gets high on crack, hits "record", and away she goes...

Overall, didn't like it very much. I did enjoy how it strings you along just long enough to think you know where it's going, and then tears it away from you and starts running down another path. It creates a sense of immateriality, which I think lends some backbone to the religious or spiritual aspects. A world always in your view, but just beyond your reach. Neato... After about 10 min, that shtick lost its edge and it just become grating. Her vocal skills are, without a doubt, impressive. The instrumentation was very good, as well. But, the underlying vision of the album doesn't do much for me.

Like others have said, I appreciate having listened to it, but it won't be getting a replay on my end.

Total average is about 5.92 out of 10. Pretty good considering how polarizing more experimental albums can be.

Also, people shouldn't take reviews too personally. I made that mistake when my first album that got reviewed in the last album club, Devin Townsend's Ocean Machine: Biomech got slammed by nearly everyone. Were a lot of the criticisms petty and/or outright idiotic? Hell yeah, but they were still entitled to it.

Sounds like a club thread I should read. But I can't find it.

That's surprising, I guess there aren't many Devin Townsend fans here. That's one of his most well-loved albums from what I've seen.

The Great Milenko is ICP's most well-loved album too but that ain't saying much.

There are some. I'm not really into his music myself though. Not Strapping Young Lad either. But this song is pretty neat:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DKs0qfdEk

I really like some of his solo stuff, particularly Ziltoid. I'm more of a Strapping Young Lad fan though, and I also love the Front Line Assembly albums he played guitar on.

Speaking of ridiculous vocals that this album club pick apparently has:

Good.

Big X on that. It's a brilliant record. Not perfect, but brilliant.

Extended vocal techniques over dark, sparse, somewhat tribal instrumentation. Her voice is the focal point of the album and she carries it fairly well but not without fault (et pour le enfants could've been cut). Mord recommended this to me a while back and while I enjoyed it last time, I liked it a lot more on this go around. Very dynamic record that ranges from dizzying to beautiful to playful to overpowering. It's a great album y'all. Her use of the microphone on this is pretty interesting too. 8/10

Favourite tracks: La naissance, Jubilate du deuxième dimanche après l'épiphanie, La femme au désert