Bob Dylan
Time Out Of Mind
1997
http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/i...time-out_l.jpg
genre: folk-rock, blues-rock
1. Love Sick - 5:21
2. Dirt Road Blues - 3:36
3. Standing In the Doorway - 7:43
4. Million Miles - 5:52
5. Tryin' To Get To Heaven - 5:21
6. 'til I Fell In Love With You - 5:17
7. Not Dark Yet - 6:29
8. Cold Irons Bound - 7:15
9. Make You Feel My Love - 3:32
10. Can't Wait - 5:47
11. Highlands - 16:31

Passé as may be to think so, I'm not ashamed in the slightest to call Bob Dylan here one of my absolute favourite artists of all time. Two or three years ago, I'd sooner start eating peanut butter on toast again than get caught saying that. Back in the day I used to think this man was just about the most overrated artist in rock music history, rambling as he often did in the few songs of his I knew by name with a voice that sounded like a vacuum cleaner. In other words, it's quite strange that I like Dylan enough to call him one of my favourites, especially considering there are still areas of his discography that bore me a little. It was only early on this year as well that I started to properly explore it too and deciding that all that irritates me about him is how hard it is to find any of his material on youtube without stumbling through dozens of god-awful, misleadingly-titled covers by random hacks on the internet (even the videos I found below need to be double-clicked if you wanna watch them).

What happened? It's a not-too-interesting story I'm sure I've bored you all with somewhere here before, but among other things it was hearing this album - Dylan's big comeback of the '90s and first album of original material for some 7 years - that brought me round to the dark side. It was just a while after I wrote 1976's Desire into my album list of yesteryear that I first got hold of this and, oddly enough, I hated it. I think I only got through 3 or 4 of the songs before I decided this album was more overrated than New Labour was that very same year before ditching it in favour of something or other. Dylan's voice sounded really scratchy, aged and totally incapable of reeling me in, as did what first seemed to me like a sparse, lazy bunch of instrumental arrangements.

Somewhere along the line though, something clicked with me, and to say that this album unravelled would be quite the understatement. I'd taken a liking to a handful of other, older Dylan albums (such as Blood On the Tracks, Nashville Skyline and Street Legal and Infidels) before I could bring myself to listen to the opening bars of Love Sick again. 10-15 seconds in, the mood and feel of the album has a light shone on it for the first time, with Bobby D's opening lines of 'I'm walking through streets that are dead - walking with you in my head', backed up only by a sharp, staccato guitar riff before the gentle rhythm and ghostly electric piano kinda fade into the mix from the distance.

While the pace of the album may vary here and there, from faster footstompers like Dirt Road Blues to slower, more contemplative and lyric-centric numbers like Tryin' To Get To Heaven, overall you can get a handle of the feel of this marvelous album just by looking at the sleeve art above - put simply, as you listen to this it's very easy to imagine Dylan and his backing band playing this album to you in that same bleak, dimly-lit studio. Listening to this album on a long night in on your own is, then, quite an experience, as this album gives off a very ethereal, grim kinda vibe. As such, Time Out Of Mind here is quite possibly my favourite night-listening album.

It was as that dark, bleakly morbid and grainy atmosphere began to unravel in front of me that songs like the drumbeat-driven Tryin' To Get To Heaven began to hit home with me that much more, as it became obvious to me that this was an effortlessly awesome side of Bob Dylan's songwriting that was previously totally alien to me. The credit for this ghostly, despairing vibe, focusing on sharp, stop-start guitar riffs, ethereal organ flourishes and simplistic rhythms rests on the shoulders of not only Dylan himself but his co-producer for the album sessions, Daniel Lanois. They cultivate a sound that's something between folk, blues, garage and even country-rock absolutely superbly here, which creates a simply gorgeous ballad sound on numbers like the simply beautiful Not Dark Yet and Make You Feel My Love, and a racous, frenetic vibe on the harder-rocking Cold Irons Bound - another of my favourite Dylan songs.

Before I go on too long (as if I haven't already), this album presented me with a side Dylan's sound that I (and a lot of other similarly-casual listeners) quite simply never would've associated with him before. There is, after all, absolutely no acoustic guitar or harmonica to be heard, as a much darker and more image-rich sound is created. As I've probably said quite a few times already, it all seemed like lo-fi (well...ish), overlong drivel to me at first, but really came off as the wonderful, beautifully atmospheric album that it is after about 3 listens.

In a sentence, this is my favourite Dylan album, and Highlands is my favourite Dylan song.

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Originally Posted by James (Post 910654) :( I liked that thread.

Sidsel Endresen & Bugge Wesseltoft
Out Here, In There
2002
http://img11.nnm.ru/d/2/6/1/6/2c6a35...314d72ca25.jpg
genre: vocal jazz, new jazz
1. Truth - 5:26
2. Out Here, In There - 5:47
3. Survival Techniques 1+2 - 5:04
4. Survival Techniques 3 - 2:14
5. Names Numbers - 5:30
6. Hav - 3:31
7. Birds - 3:56
8. Voices - 2:39
9. Heartbeat - 4:25
10. I Do - 3:59
11. Try - 4:00

As cool and hipster-ish I'd seem by saying 'yeah, I've known these two, like, all my life', I can tell you now that that just ain't gonna happen. This'd be more because of the fact that it's only been about a month since I've even known that Bugge can be a Christian name. That's kinda how this journal's going to work over time - some of these albums (like the Dylan one above) will be old favourites, others will be ones I've only gotten hold of fairly recently. As such, I probably won't end up going on so long about this album as others, but I'll do my best :p: Plus, there's a lot about these two that remains a mystery to me, so the whole background info portion of this particular review won't be all that juicy and/or meaty. What I know and you definitely need to know if you're cool enough to be reading this is that vocalist Sidsel Endresen and keyboardist/pianist Bugge Wesseltoft are both Norweigan, and as such hail from what I've been discovering to be a very rich and pulsating Scandinavian new-jazz scene. I imagine that there'll be more from this scene coming this thread's way in future, as it's an uber-awesome area of music that I've only just been starting to explore.

This is all very thin-end-of-the-wedge stuff then, which is all very exciting for me as far as additions to the old musical library go but, enough about me - I suppose I'd better tell you what this is all about eh. Sung in English by Endresen, this is nevertheless a completely new kind of music to the me who first signed up to MB almost 2 years ago, that me being, of course, a me whose only dabblings in jazz amounted to (if my memory's all that great) Herbie Hancock's River, John Coltrane's Blue Train and a few words in my ear about how I should really think about getting hold of Kind Of Blue. I think I actually first found out about this pair via LastFM's 'similar artists' links - I forget who I was looking up on it exactly.

Anyway, on to the album itself...one which, for me, goes to show that every now and then, if you take music a bit more seriously than others, you really can do a lot worse than have a look around outside of your comfort zone every now and then. It's a bleak, minimalist affair on the whole - a bare-bones approach to composition and studio production that shows off the spine of the album's entire sound for all to see, this being the frankly brilliant vocals from Endresen and the subtle touches of Wesseltoft behind his keyboard. The whole thing in a nutshell is there for all to see in the soft, almost whispery opener Truth - the light touches from Wesseltoft on the electric piano and Endresen's soaring, sweet vocal fitting together in the sonic picture wonderfully, as both musicians kinda play off one another to create a fairly remarkable whole.

That said 'remarkable whole' being a very evocative, cold and wintry vibe, and one that brings to mind sitting around in the middle of a misty snowstorm, endlessly sipping cups of tea to warm up next to one of those little plug-in heaters from the supermarket you can never seem to find enough of when you actually need them. So, yeah...pretty warming, relaxing stuff in other words, at least in the main. If it's a comparison you're after, I guess you could say Endresen's vocal style puts her somewhere between a jazzier Joni Mitchell and a (much) more low-key Lisa Gerrard (in fact, Voices is basically Lisa Gerrard by numbers). Particularly on the less smooth, more left-of-centre and sinister moments like Heartbeat her silky vocal style and its capacity to do something unexpected is there for all to see.

To sum the album up in a sentence, it's a cold, bleak sonic picture which either mucks about with your head or eases you along on the ride. To sum that up in two songs, listen to both the Survival Techniques songs back-to-back and you've more or less got the picture. Definitely something I'd recommend, but it's certainly not for everyone, and it's not exactly for all moods and times either (but, then again, how many albums are anything like that anyway). It's a beautiful, graceful little album that veers from a soothing, reined-in jazz style to a more avante-garde, sometimes even slightly disturbing one. It's a grower, that's for sure.

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Originally Posted by NumberNineDream (Post 910958) I think I never looked into his 70s albums, for fear of being disappointed. Your points about this period definitely encourages me to give these albums a spin once and for all. Will keep you updated :p: .

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream (Post 910988) ^ I usually move chronologically, giving every album more of a month of spins.

Originally Posted by storymilo (Post 910996) 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 :)

Originally Posted by storymilo (Post 912109) Now I have so much free time... perfect for mb.

Frou Frou
Details
2002
http://polleslexeis.files.wordpress....b000069hgv.jpg
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 :p: 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.

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David Sylvian
Approaching Silence
1999
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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.

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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...

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Nocturama
2003
http://www.albumoftheyear.org/album/.../nocturama.jpg
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...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_VRIHR_HTy7...ofNickCave.jpg

...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.

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David Bowie - We'll Creep Together

Goldie - Mother

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream (Post 913997) ^And that post, so you won't stop posting those "wall of text" album reviews. :thumb:

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream (Post 913997) 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.

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream (Post 913997) 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.

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream (Post 913997) 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).

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream (Post 913997) 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).

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream (Post 913997) Is that Goldie album from Saturnz Return? Just to see which to get.

Originally Posted by jtwilliams (Post 916892) I must say I really dug that track! This weeks music post really got me thinking about jazz and instrumental music. I think it is time for me to venture in fully.

Johnny Cash - Sam Hall

Originally Posted by Bulldog (Post 917293) Isn't exactly the worst idea ;) It took me years to properly get into any kind of jazz, no matter how much respect I'd had for it. Try getting Round About Midnight by Miles Davis - it's basically the album that sparked me off properly in that direction. It shouldn't be too hard to suss out where to go from there.

Originally Posted by jtwilliams (Post 917391) It has taken me a while too but I think I am finally there. And I will grab that album thanks. I was also told to check out Kind of Blue. And John Coltrane's Giant Steps. Any good Sonny Rollins albums out? Or is it mostly covers of his standards?

Originally Posted by Bulldog (Post 917988) Coltrane's Blue Train makes for a good laugh as well. As for Rollins, check out Saxophone Colossus - check a few pages back in the weekly trade thread if you want a second opinion ;)

A Random Bunch Of Oldies You May Or May Not Like As Much As I Do Myself
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1. Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat
2. The Hollies - Look Through Any Window
3. Hoodoo Gurus - Tojo
4. Nick Cave - Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart
5. Sam Cooke - Twisting the Night Away
6. The Pogus - Haunted
7. The Style Council - Have You Ever Had It Blue?
8. The Rolling Stones - Hide Your Love
9. The Temptations - I Could Never Love Another After Loving You
10. The Saints - See You In Paradise

Ashram
Silver Shining Skies
2006
http://img1.nnm.ru/3/0/c/2/5/30c2512...e6f44_full.jpg
genre: new age, gothic
1. 5 Steps - 3:07
2. Maria and the Violin's String - 2:58
3. Sweet Autumn (Part II) - 2:53
4. Lullaby - 2:19
5. Il Mostro - 3:26
6. All'imbrunire - 2:27
7. Last Kiss - 3:35
8. Elizabeth - 2:32
9. For Each and Every Child - 4:24
10. Tango Para Mi Padre Y Marialuna - 3:32
11. Lady - 3:11
12. Shining Silver Skies - 3:35
13. Rose and Air - 2:32
14. Ultimo Carillon - 3:50

I know you're pretty much wherever you are as you're reading this and, hey, I'm basically on the other side of cyberspace from you as well. Nevertheless, I can just see that blank expression of yours as you look at that lovely white sleeve art wondering what the bloody hell I'm rambling about this time. Hell, I might as well not even know myself half the time. By the way, if all that doesn't apply to you and you do in fact know who these guys are, congratulations - you're alright ;) Un-knowing and curious to get rid of that 'un' part? Here we go...

I don't know if you're familiar with Hinduism at all, but if I'm gonna quickly sum up what all this stuff sounds like, it's worth me telling you that an ashram is a remote, isolated place where Hindus go for spiritual instruction and/or meditation. Combine that with the words 'neoclassical', 'gothic' and 'ethereal' and I'm sure you can hear this album chiming through your noggin already. To go into it a bit deeper, this album is a 50/50 split between songs with a vocal track slapped over the top of them and instrumentals, each song of either kind being fleshed out by a violin/cello/piano combo, with the odd augmentation of an acoustic guitar.

Meditation music? Possibly...although simply dismissing it as that and therefore any boring, knockoff new age tripe would be doing this album a real disservice. I won't deny that if you like to dabble in such things as I do then, yes, this music is pretty useful for that purpose, although I'd be telling you a big nasty fib I told you that that was the sole reason I got this album about a month ago. It was actually through RateYourMusic that I found out about this album as one of the most highly-rated neoclassical albums ever (I think it's top 10, 20 or something similar), and upon listening to Dead Can Dance's Spiritchaser for the umpteenth time, I was on the lookout for similar things. True, this album lacks the tribal, world-wise percussive elements that help make Dead Can Dance one of the most grossly overlooked artists of all time, but I loved it all the same on the first listen, to the extent that it's among my most listened to albums of recent weeks.

First off, this album was quite the educational insight for me as to how varied the neoclassical/new age moniker can be. I won't go into much more detail than I already have about that, but if you want to find out for yourself I've got an assignment for ya - get youtube up in a seperate tab and find Nierika by the aforementioned Dead Can Dance, and ye shall be enlightened! Secondly, to me this album sounds infinitely for dark and wintry than fucking Enya. Just a quick look out of the window on my immediate right gives me a beautiful view of the centre of Bolton in a now-fairly thin mist, snow on the ground and tiny white icicles on the limbs of the tree some five metres away from me and, with this album on the go, it's quite an atmosphere.

Thirdly and finally, I couldn't really recommend it enough to anyone who, like me, feels the need to have more of a look around the classical music that the modern world has to offer. Although the vocals can grate and perhaps come off as a little cliche at times, this Ashram's second (and, to date, last album) is certainly a lot better than their nevertheless ok self-titled debut, and well worth your time. It just unravels with repeated listens quite majestically too, which is always cool. I wouldn't quite put it up there with my absolute favourites in the 4.5+ bracket, so the following rating's pretty fair in my eyes. Very filmic music.

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Originally Posted by jackhammer (Post 968996) Also have heard Ludovico Einuadi at all? He is a an Italian composer who has done a lot of work for the film director Shane Meadows regarding incidental music, although this is from one of his solo albums.

Hooverphonic
The Magnificent Tree
2000
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_kw8Z30USwD...icent-tree.jpg
genre: trip-hop, downtempo, pop
1. Autoharp - 4:21
2. Mad About You - 3:43
3. Waves - 4:01
4. Jacky Cane - 4:20
5. The Magnificent Tree - 3:55
6. Vinegar and Salt - 3:20
7. Frosted Flake Wood - 3:17
8. Everytime We Live Together We Die a Bit More - 3:35
9. Out Of Sight - 3:55
10. Pink Fluffy Dinosaurs - 3:50
11. L'Odeur Animale - 4:31

You know those moments when you finish listening to an album like Ella Fitzgerald's Lullaby Of Birdland for about the 800th time and think to yourself 'gee, wouldn't it be swell if I checked out the RYM charts and looked for more stuff like this?' It was on a flight of fancy not exactly unlike that that I found myself getting hold of this album, except that the artist in question was one I can't quite recall (either Massive Attack or Thievery Corporation) and the genre was call that trip-hop/downtempto hunk of loveliness we've all crossed paths with in one way or another...at least as people like myself who actively seek out new music and don't just sit on what they've already got as if it's a particularly cozy waterbed or something.

Anyway, I digress - that's how I came across this album. I say this album, because I'm sure I'd heard of the Belgian trio Hooverphonic somewhere before. Kinda like how you feel when you see a face on TV and know that something about it rings a bell and you're just not sure what it is. Wherever or whenever I'd heard the name Hooverphonic before, the first time I actively sought them out was on one of those occasions when I choose to consciously diversify into a genre I'd never really bothered with before. That was 2, maybe even 3 years ago, and it must have been a while since I last listened to this as I'd forgotten I even had it, only thinking it'd be a good idea to type something up about it sometime this morning, when I was rubbing my chin over what to fill some more journal space with. I mean, it's a drawback of having all this music at our fingertips, ain't it? There's so much available to jammy sods like us that it's so easy to just get carried away and download something like 30 albums in a week, get distracted before listening to them more than once and then just having them get buried under even newer acquisitions. I won't kid around, I'm no different - off the top of my head, I can think of albums by David McComb, Lyle Lovett, Jarboe and Steve Roach which I've been meaning to listen to for what seems like years but just haven't got round to it.

So, getting sharply back on track, what's this album sounding like? Well, so far as trip-hop and downtempo go, I wouldn't say it sounds anything like either of the artists I mentioned that drove me to getting this album. It's kinda like trip-hop-lite if that makes any sense, and if you wanna compare it to other chick-fronted trip-hop acts, it's a lot more glossy, accessible and therefore nowhere near as experimental as the mighty Lamb. I guess that in the slower, more percussion-driven tracks, while the basslines are nowhere near as off the wall, there's the germ of a Thievery Corporation...well...ish sound, given a new dimension by Geike Arnaert's vocal. It's true that Arnaert here's a perfectly capable vocalist and does a good job on the whole, but there's not really an awful lot that's particularly unqiue to her style, as in you feel like you could just as easily be listening to any other chillout electronica group when you hear her voice.

Such is the major bone I have to pick with this album. For all that it seems to try to be something unqiue, what with the expansion of the group's core trip-hop sound into more melodic and conventional rock music areas, it doesn't really leave much of a lasting impression on me. I do find it interesting how layers of strings kinda glide over one of the songs in the video clips below, which gives off a very quirky vibe, but the flipside of that coin is the incredibly corny Out Of Sight track.

In the interests of keeping this as short as I possibly can, if you're looking for a decent album you can stick on and put your feet on the desk to after a hard day's doing, well, whatever, get hold of this album. Just don't expect anything particularly mindblowing from it though.

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A Certain Slant Of Light

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Forbidden Colours

Midnight Oil
The Real Thing
2000
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genre: rock
1. The Real Thing - 3:32
2. Say Your Prayers - 4:27
3. Spirit Of the Age - 3:11
4. Feeding Frenzy [live] - 6:01
5. Tell Me the Truth [live] - 3:36
6. The Dead Heart [live] - 6:05
7. Tin Legs and Tin Mines [live] - 4:43
8. Short Memory [live] - 4:52
9. In the Valley [live/unplugged] - 3:32
10. Blue Sky Mine [live] - 4:24
11. US Forces [live] - 4:25
12. Warakurna [live/unplugged] - 4:28
13. Truganini [live/unplugged] - 4:38
14. The Last Of the Diggers - 4:19

As a few of you reading this may know already, I'm a huge Midnight Oil fan, to the extent that along with Nick Cave, the Dirty Three and Dead Can Dance, they stand as a prime example to me of how underrated Australian music seems to be by the northern hemisphere of the industry. Don't know why that is exactly. Hell, just because I can string a few sentences together and give it a name like the Doghouse v.II doesn't mean I'm right about this, but the fact that a lot of Australia's musical products are very much overshadowed by whatever's happening with those cats in the UK and US of A certainly seems to me to be the case.

Anyway, I'm rambling (and not in a semi-productive way). No matter what Peter Garrett's doing these days to make a mockery of his legacy as the Oils' lead singer, I'll still always love this band. A lot of it's got to do with the fact that they were (before their breakup in 2002) a band with a message, and not one that were good enough despite making albums that were too damn long (the Clash), not one that uses its own hype as an excuse to release shitty album after shitty album (U2), and not one that just plain annoys me (REM). A lot more of it's the fact that they have this way of really packing a punch with their songs in a weird, subtle (well, as subtle as environmentalism gets anyway:p:) way. I can never quite put my finger on why that is. Could be that in Rob Hirst and Bones Hillman they have one hell of a rhythm section to make the whole unit work, or the fact that Garrett's one of most charismatic frontmen in rock music that I can think of, that their resident multi-tasker Jim Moginie has quite a good voice himself on top of being a great musician...as I say, I dunno.

For at least the last three or four months, I've been thinking about a way I can just tell you guys to give them a try, but...

a) I can't be bothered to start a discography thread
b) I always get bored if those after tackling the first couple of albums
c) I'm an EP short of the full discography anyway

So instead of all that nonsense that'd, y'know, actually require some sort of effort, I'm just gonna recommend you get hold of this instead. Despite basically being the definitive album you'd knock out to eat up more of the clauses on your contract (ie a three-quarters live album with a few new studio recordings, including a cover), it's actually not half bad. Fairly good even. There are four studio recordings to be found (the title track here being a revision of this golden oldie), the best of which is probably the powerful, menacing figure of Say Your Prayers (written and recorded for the charity album Viva East Timor). That said, all of the studio recordings here aren't really among what I'd call the Oils' best. The four of them do all fall short of their finest, as the live versions of the said finest are right here to be found as well. Mostly culled from a show in October '94 at the Metro Theatre in Sydney and otherwise from a 1993 episode of MTV Unplugged, here's where curious folk such as your good selves can hear just how good the Oils were live. There really are some fantastic performances on this album, the Dead Heart, Tin Legs and Tin Mines, a B-E-A-utiful version of In the Valley and Warakurna being my personal picks of the bunch. Believe me though, they're all immense.

As a starting point, or even as an 'I've got one or two albums and wanna hear more just so I can be as cool as that stallion of a member who calls himself Bulldog' point, trust me - this album's a necessity. As I said before, the studio recordings here aren't among the Oils' best though. Much as I hate to be a bore, I'm gonna dish out another one of these ratings;

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David Sylvian & Holger Czukay - The Spiralling Of Winter Ghosts

Bat For Lashes
Two Suns
2009
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genre: art-pop, dream-pop
1. Glass - 4:32
2. Sleep Alone - 4:04
3. Moon and Moon - 3:09
4. Daniel - 4:11
5. Peace Of Mind - 3:29
6. Siren Song - 4:58
7. Pearl's Dream - 4:45
8. Good Love - 4:30
9. Two Planets - 3:48
10. Traveling Woman - 3:48
11. The Big Sleep - 2:54

As I was rubbing my chin over what else to update this thread with, it occurred to me that I haven't really given a truly glowing review of an album here since I held my monocle over Time Out Of Mind. Basically, most of the time I'm just picking out albums that have been buried in the bowels of my iTunes library for a while which could be anything from craptacular to immense, but it's mainly because as the index at the front of this thread builds up, I don't want it to come across like I just dish out 5 star ratings to any album that I throw out here for you guys to have a look at. An album's gotta be some really incredible to earn a rating of 4 1/2 or 5 stars (there'll be one or two of the latter coming up in the month) in my books. I kinda want to build up a good base of middling ratings to prop up the better ones anyway, if you know what I mean.

Whatever the case, this one's gonna clear my conscience for the time being :p: Two Suns here is definitely in my top 5 of albums from the last 5 years, which is all the more strange as my initial reaction to Ms Natasha Khan, aka Bat For Lashes, was a resounding 'meh'. This was for her vastly inferior debut Fur and Gold in case you're wondering. I'm not sure really...it's an ok album I suppose, but it's no more than that, kinda like the Avatar of Bat For Lashes albums. There aren't really any bad songs to be heard on it anyway. They're just, y'know, kinda weak. Plus there's this whole folktronica vibe to the thing which just comes off as gimmicky, serving only the purpose of weakening the songs it tries to enhance. At least from what I remember of it anyway - frankly, it left such a tame impression I can't remember what the whole album sounds like off by heart :p:

Needless to say, its followup in the shape of Two Suns here shakes off that sound like a bad case of fleas and ends up giving us a much more mature sound. Bearing that in mind, the level of maturity Khan had ascended to in the space of the two short years between her two albums is just incredible. You can certainly hear the nucleus of her sound in this album, although admittedly that's only really the lass' magnificent, dreamy kinda voice. Whereas listening to the first album, I felt like it was something that shone in amidst some fairly mediocre instrumental backings, there definitely is a real progression in her sound here, and it's plain as the nose on my face that it's a move in the right direction. Press play on either of the two videos below and tell me that something about that track seems out of kilter at all. Ever facet of the music just moves in unison, guiding you gently towards the kinds of emotions and images that this album succeeds in creating.

In plain English, the overall sound of the album is very dreamy, ethereal and pretty haunting one. It veers very close to being the perfect night-time album, as in one of those ones which goes so well with a long, sober night in, like when you've chosen to opt out of hitting the clubs with some mates, you don't really feel like thinking of a film to watch or a book to read and just want to lose yourself in a really solid body of work. As such, Two Suns here is not only one of my favourite albums of the decade, but it's easily my joint-favourite dream-pop album of all time too.

Why not 5 stars? I can't put my finger on it really. It's definitely very close to being a near-perfect album, but it just lacks that little bit that'd have me put it in amongst the true elite of my music collection. Maybe it will be in with a year or two more of my getting a load of it. I do love this album to bits though, and couldn't recommend it enough to anyone. Also, look out for the Big Sleep, as it's quite simply all kinds of awesome.

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Japan - Ghosts

World Citizen

Cafe Europa

Originally Posted by Bulldog (Post 984976) Put simply, I fucking love this song, and so should you :p: