AMBIENT/TRANCE/TECHNO, etc:
CONJURE ONE: Extraordinary Ways CD
Two years on from the astounding debut album, ex-FLA/Delerium musician Rhys Fulber comes up with the second of this, his current project - and it's every bit as jaw-droppingly amazing as the first. The concept remains the same - a set of ten tracks in assorted chilled-out and chunky ambient settings, most of which also have female vocals -either as real songs or the wordless variety - and the combination of the two makes for a complete album of spectacularly good music and singing. Using a couple of the vocalists from before as well as a few new female singers, every song on the album is a gem, a masterpiece of multi-layered, synths and electro-percussive dominated musical backings and leads, while the songs themselves are absolutely spellbinding. The whole ambience of chunky downtempo rhythms, stirring strings, high-flying, richly textured melodies and heart-warming female vocals, is nothing short of invigorating and uplifting, as song after song captures your head, heart and feet, the result being one of the very best albums a "Heavenly Voices" album could hope to offer, a triumph for the artist and collaborators, and an album that has a longevity as wide as the ocean of delights it provides.
PETE NAMLOOK/NEW COMPOSERS: Russian Spring CD
I was tempted here to reproduce a review I did for an album by French TV but rather than recycle, I do try to be original. So……….
You have to admire a guy like Namlook. He simply doesn't care anymore - about how well his CD's sell, that is. Namlook is gonna do what Namlook wants, and no arguing. Which is why this album with the Russian mob is such an experience. In many ways, taking the third part as an excellent example, it's pretty chilled out stuff, with nature samples next to languid piano, stretched out synth chords and other worldly electronic effects, all of which lead into the fourth part where a gorgeous lead synth fills the space as a deeply and slowly throbbing bass enters the scene, and the sound wells up to quite breathtaking and ultimately relaxed heights. All this leads into part five, again more full-sounding layers of synths, samples and electronics, drifting, floating and echoing, amid the ever present sounds of the sea or other nature bits and pieces, and it's all very eerie while at the same time having a true sense of depth and layering, nothing remaining static and sounds ever changing like musical cloud formations on a bright spring day. Utilising electric guitar, chilled-out voices, organ, piano and more samples along the way to enhance the assorted synths and electronics, the "band" produces a truly blissful and chilled-out work of music but one that's quite challenging in some ways, with plenty on which to focus every time you play it.
SPIRITS BURNING: Found In Nature CD
The third in the series, this time featuring players from Gong, University Of Errors, Spacehead, Melting Euphoria, Bionaut, Spaceship Eyes, Quiet Celebration, , King Black Acid, Goddess T, Cartoon, Mushroom. ICU, Quarkspace, Acid Mothers Temple & Netherworld. So, you have sixteen tracks across 66 minutes, each one different, each one with a different line-up, the glue that binds the project being the ever-present musician, co-composer, assembler and arranger, Don Falcone. This time round Gong's Daevid Allen plays some spectacular lead (and glissando) guitar work on seven of the album's tracks, while cohort in a previous line-up, Graham Clark, contributes his violin skills to 5 tracks, one with Allen. Tracks range from the surging guitar-driven dynamics of 'Dolmen', past the soaring violin-led 'Variable Shades Of Friendship', the solid but calming acoustic ethno-fusion resonance that is 'Oak, Elm and Spruce', with guitar, synth and flugel to the fore, the dizzy heights that is 'Ingredients, Pink Lady Lemonade, Liftoff' with an initial drums-driven intro leading to high-flying wordless vocals, synths, djembe, bass and guitars combination that is just superb and the longest track on the album at nine minutes, through 'Chiaro', a short slice of space and abstract from three keys/synth players plus guitar, bass and drums, four minutes of 'Rakasha-Loka' that manages to be five completely different styles within one remarkably cohesive track, from calm to attack, the mix of ethnic fusion and Tim Blake style synths that is five minutes of 'Blue Wings', to growling calm, King Crimson-like attack and rumbling multi-layered strangeness, all mostly led by guitars, keyboards, synths, bass, drums, percussion and effects, but always cohesive, adventurous, atmospheric, layered and overflowing with interest. The most varied of the trio to date, and in many ways quite deep, it's the sort of thing that someone with a flair for cohesive musical statements and brilliant musicianship/arranging will really sink their teeth into and find hugely rewarding.
THESSALONIANS: Solaristics CD
With three guys on synths and samples, one guy on tablas and hand percussion, a track record from four musicians that includes PGR, Heavenly Music Corporation, Spaceship Eyes, Spirits Burning & Melting Euphoria, you won't be the least bit surprised to find that this is one of THE finest ambient albums of early classic Orb/hints of early T.Dream - influenced magic to come out in years. Right from the opening eight minute title track, you'll hear chunky electro-percussive beats and rhythms, swirling synths, electronic backdrops, a huge depth to the sound, plenty of layers and a constantly shifting, solid yet wholly atmospheric soundscape that just transports you to another dimension. The album as a whole consists of 8 core tracks with 7 short link tracks that glues it all together, so that the result is one epic sounding classic ambient/chill-out album. On the eight and a half minute 'E-Space', the introduction is all multi-layered space music with some of the swirls and atmospheres having a distinctly '74-era Fripp/Crimso feel to them and you almost expect to hear a searing guitar coming through, but instead the combination of synths and layers are joined by an exotic solid tabla rhythm as more synths swirl around in the mix and assorted textures and melodies, rhythms and beats all join the musical depth creating a fantastic slice of ambience that takes you "out there" and then some, ending in a well of throbbing bass depths and the stunning percussive presence. The near seven minute 'Dust' is altogether different again, this time with a sea of slowly clattering and crunchy drums of acoustic and electronic natures, with a hollow-sounding sea of samples on top as the piece goes from crunchy to ethereal and then fills out with miles of synths to provide a cosmic climax to the previously solid rest of the track. The seven minute 'Drowning Weather' is much more of a huge-sounding, expansive cosmic electronic affair, with deep rumbling, rolling bass and percussives above which a sliding organ-like tone and all manner of early seventies-sounding space and lead synths drift, drive and drone, while distant samples and rumbles make it all sound like '74-era Tangerine Dream in a parallel universe. Superb!! At five minutes the delightfully titled 'Mining Came' opens spicily enough before introducing a solid, skull-crunching bass line and equally strong, crunchy percussive rhythms and elctro-percussive beats as the space synths, swoop, soar and float while allsorts of electronics and echoed melody lines fill the mix with so much going on, that it's almost a crime that this track doesn't go on for a lot longer, as good as, if not better than, anything turned out by early Orb, for sure. Five more fantastic pieces between one and three minutes then take you to the final, six and a half minute '360', opening with jazzy sampled bass as the chunky percussion enters and what sounds like an echoed guitar lead (but isn't) adds melodic character before it, too, dies away, to leave a lead synth that flows in echoed fashion, before the guitar-like figure returns and the track carries on its gloriously downtempo drive through ambient heaven, sounding the most like a slice of classic mid-period Pete Namlook on the album so far. Overall, highly recommended.
CANTERBURY/FUSION:
CARLO MEZZANOTTE & SYNTAXIS: Cieli Diversi CD
Italian jazz-rock with a decidedly "Canterbury" feel, mostly in the rhythm section and guitar work, while the keyboard player tends to be the more "Italian" side of the fence, stylistically speaking. The instrumental compositions exhibit energy and vitality, as a set of intricately composed and well played compositions comes to life. As you might expect, the music twists and turns but always with the eye on what makes this sort of fusion the sort that you genuinely want to play. The whole point about the "Canterbury" fusion outfits was the way they mixed musical dexterity with compositions that flowed and held your attention, as opposed to much of the American eighties output and, to a degree, most of the Euro mainland output, that put playing before composing. This manages to walk that line with success, so that, while it does stray into occasional soloing blind alleys on the odd occasion, it is kept tight and driving, the guitar work in particular recalling a mix of John Goodsall & Phil Miller, while the rhythm section is firm and chunky, more Brand X than Hatfields. The piano and keyboards/synth work is the only area where, again on the odd occasion, the "cheese" factor comes into play, but overall, 95% of this works a treat and you can't argue with that.
OM TRIO: Globalpositioningrecord CD
Instrumental from bass, drums and keyboards/synths, with a guest electric guitarist on 3 of the 14 tracks. For those of you at this point who are thinking 'Nice-yawn-ELP-yawn", let me tell you that you are completely on the wrong track. It's actually incredibly non-progressive sounding. The drummer sounds like he should be in Can while the keys/synths player could have been off any number of seventies albums that utilized this style of and sound of keys/electronics. The whole thing swings and has a real groove about it, preferring to have you swaying and dancing rather than sitting there in wrapt attention - although you can do that as well. It's actually one of the most addictive albums of its kind that I've come across in ages - the rhythms get you for a start, but as to its musical identity - it straddles a line between Krautrock, fusion, prog-rock and all done with a seventies flavour for sure, so that bands such as Suntreader, Keith Tippett and a guitar-free Isotope come to mind, not to mention the Canterbury stalwarts such as Hatfields & Mole (without guitars of course). But then, on a track like the six minute 'Tor S' they'll suddenly introduce a delicious Hammond organ lead that'll tthrow you completely as to where this album's really at. I've not heard its like in years and years - and this is a feast of keyboards and rhythms in what is more melodic fusion than anything but will have an appeal to a wide cross section of music fans.
SPIRITS BURNING: Found In Nature CD
The third in the series, this time featuring players from Gong, University Of Errors, Spacehead, Melting Euphoria, Bionaut, Spaceship Eyes, Quiet Celebration, , King Black Acid, Goddess T, Cartoon, Mushroom. ICU, Quarkspace, Acid Mothers Temple & Netherworld. So, you have sixteen tracks across 66 minutes, each one different, each one with a different line-up, the glue that binds the project being the ever-present musician, co-composer, assembler and arranger, Don Falcone. This time round Gong's Daevid Allen plays some spectacular lead (and glissando) guitar work on seven of the album's tracks, while cohort in a previous line-up, Graham Clark, contributes his violin skills to 5 tracks, one with Allen. Tracks range from the surging guitar-driven dynamics of 'Dolmen', past the soaring violin-led 'Variable Shades Of Friendship', the solid but calming acoustic ethno-fusion resonance that is 'Oak, Elm and Spruce', with guitar, synth and flugel to the fore, the dizzy heights that is 'Ingredients, Pink Lady Lemonade, Liftoff' with an initial drums-driven intro leading to high-flying wordless vocals, synths, djembe, bass and guitars combination that is just superb and the longest track on the album at nine minutes, through 'Chiaro', a short slice of space and abstract from three keys/synth players plus guitar, bass and drums, four minutes of 'Rakasha-Loka' that manages to be five completely different styles within one remarkably cohesive track, from calm to attack, the mix of ethnic fusion and Tim Blake style synths that is five minutes of 'Blue Wings', to growling calm, King Crimson-like attack and rumbling multi-layered strangeness, all mostly led by guitars, keyboards, synths, bass, drums, percussion and effects, but always cohesive, adventurous, atmospheric, layered and overflowing with interest. The most varied of the trio to date, and in many ways quite deep, it's the sort of thing that someone with a flair for cohesive musical statements and brilliant musicianship/arranging will really sink their teeth into and find hugely rewarding.
EURO-ROCK/CONTEMPORARY:
CAN: Future Days / Soon Over Babbaluma / Landed / Unlimited Edition - Remasters - Each CD
The process of remastering seventies classic albums can be a minefield - but every so often, something will come your way that makes your jaw drop to the ground in amazement - and this is one!
With the previous four remastered Can albums, I used the original CD releases as comparisons when doing the review - here, you simply don't need them - in fact, you might as well just throw them away, because you'll never be playing them again after you've heard these!!
In the case of the earliest of the four albums here, 'Future Days', you only have to listen to the summery air, the languid rhythms and chilled-out feel that is the title track to witness this - right from the start, you're hearing the album for the first time as it was always meant to sound - a remaster performed in such copious detail that you hear tons of things that before, you simply were not aware of existing, and this fact allied to the tranquil but solid and insistent nature of the music, makes it to die for. When the more highly charged second track, another near nine minute piece called 'Spray' comes along, the effect is even more dramatic as the drums and percussion are right upfront, more solid and crucial than ever, while Czukay's bass rumbles from below as the keyboards and guitar also rumble, drive, stab, solo and duel, all the time you, the listener, absolutely stunned as to the sheer quality of sound - it's like hearing the album for the first time. If all that hasn't amazed you, the three minutes of 'Moonshake' will settle the issue - what was previously a tasty, neatly rhythmic and delightfully typical slice of Can magic, now positively thunders in, the bass making the floorboards shake as the drums and percussion sound just incredible, and all sorts of things appearing in the mix that weren't there before - simply stunning. Finally, the twenty minute 'Bel Air' which, you probably don't need me to tell you, now sounds streets ahead of what came before, Karoli's guitar soaring away over the strings and keys of Schmidt, while the rhythmic fire and insistent beats of Czukay & Liebezeit propel the track like never before and the few but effective lite vocals from Suzuki, complete a truly incredible picture.
The most instrumental and most accessible Can album around, this is the one for those that have never dipped their toes in the water before, while still being an absolutely essential purchase for ALL Can fans who already own the original album in any form whatsoever.
'Soon Over Babbaluma' followed and, despite the departure of vocalist Suzuki actually saw the band go up a notch when it came to the mix of creativity, commercialism and cohesion, the always toe-tapping rhythms of the driving 'Dizzy Dizzy' now, thanks to yet another jaw-dropping remaster job, now defying you not to be leaping around the room as the whole thing almost erupts from the speakers and more detail, more rhythm, more texture - all come soaring out into the airwaves as the almost (deliberately) buried hushed vocal flies overhead. The remaster has even made a previously rather insipid track like 'Come Sta La Luna' now sound positively menacing as well as bringing the rhythmic content right upfront and revealing a track that you never believed could have sounded this good. Out of the other three tracks here, all are superb sounding and you simply won't believe just how incredible the eleven minutes of 'Chain Rection' now sounds, those rhythms and searing guitar flying a red-hot path to your head and feet.
'Landed', the latest of the three main studio albums here, has had a makeover that has turned it from a previously interesting but arguably mixed results album, musically, into something that has had thirty thousand volts put through it and has come alive to such a degree it's become unstoppable. I've never played this album much in the past, but this remaster has changed it to such a degree that you can't imagine NOT playing it as the band fire through a set of tracks ranging from the full-on thunder of 'Full Moon On The Highway', the searing guitar heat of 'Vernal Equinox' to the seriously mind-bending thirteen minutes of 'Unfinished'. Essential.
Now, you wouldn't have thought, perhaps, that a remaster of the whole 'Limited Edition' album - all sevent seven minutes of it - could have the same wide-eyed effect as it's had on the previous thre albums reviewed here - but it has - with a vengeance. 19 tracks, from one minute to over seventeen, reveal practically all the facets that have made this band the true legends that many claim them to be and the true pioneers without whom many bands that followed, simply couldn't have existed, and is, with the other three albums, a remaster that pales the previous version into insignificance.
Sadly, all Can fans out there - time to shell up - for once, buying the albums all over again will be something to be treasured and not despaired.
MYTHOS: Mythos CD
I first bought this back in '72 (or was it '71?) as part of the first ever consignment of "Krautrock" brought into the country by Virgin at the time. 32 years on and it is still a classic of psychedelic Krautrock. From atmospheric flutes, percussion and electronics through mellotron-soaked passages to electrifying breaks where fuzz guitars, drums and pounding electric bass take to the skies, this is an album to be treasured. The first "half" consists of three tracks, the first two more atmospheric on waves of flutes, bass, chiming guitars, percussion, brief sitar and even briefer vocal, but still capable of breaking into a psychedelic roar at a moment's notice, while the third opens with space-travel electronics, chiming guitars and cymbal splashes, before a throbbing bass guitar and drums join the fray as a wickedly echoed, psych electric guitar enters, the fuzz guitar and bass power up, taking the song that appears out into orbit - just stunning! A mid-song break of the electric guitars and rhythm section, subsides into a gorgeous sea of mellotrons and guitars, before the bass riff and scything guitar from before, emerge once more, the spaceship thunders into life and the instrumental break becomes positively stellar one minute, more psychedelic the next. The second "half" consists of a single seventeen minute track in two parts, with a slow build-up of cymbals, bass, Floyd-esque guitar sustains and slowly marching drums, as the instrumental unfolds and the sheer emotion of the piece is just sensational, so solid yet so atmospheric and full of imagery as the music depicts the history of the earth in just ten minutes (seriously - you just listen!!!!), the eventual emergence of some seriously electrifying guitar work, merely the icing on the cake above the solid rhythmic foundations, pure seventies through and through. The final part of 'Encyclopaedia Terrae' starts with church bells, bird song and a distant moog-like refrain as the bass and drums come in slowly, mellotrons are spread over the background, the moog-like melody weaves in and out and the bass becomes the main melodic lead. The whole thing slowly builds as the guitar lead enters and takes things, in combination with a new foregoround mellotron phrase, to greater heights, as it all subsides to leave a layer of spooky electronics over which the lead vocalist narrates a short, sad little tale to end the proceedings to perfection. Wreaking of seventies, pure cliché but just great - probably even better on drugs!!!
OM TRIO: Globalpositioningrecord CD
Instrumental from bass, drums and keyboards/synths, with a guest electric guitarist on 3 of the 14 tracks. For those of you at this point who are thinking 'Nice-yawn-ELP-yawn", let me tell you that you are completely on the wrong track. It's actually incredibly non-progressive sounding. The drummer sounds like he should be in Can while the keys/synths player could have been off any number of seventies albums that utilized this style of and sound of keys/electronics. The whole thing swings and has a real groove about it, preferring to have you swaying and dancing rather than sitting there in wrapt attention - although you can do that as well. It's actually one of the most addictive albums of its kind that I've come across in ages - the rhythms get you for a start, but as to its musical identity - it straddles a line between Krautrock, fusion, prog-rock and all done with a seventies flavour for sure, so that bands such as Suntreader, Keith Tippett and a guitar-free Isotope come to mind, not to mention the Canterbury stalwarts such as Hatfields & Mole (without guitars of course). But then, on a track like the six minute 'Tor S' they'll suddenly introduce a delicious Hammond organ lead that'll tthrow you completely as to where this album's really at. I've not heard its like in years and years - and this is a feast of keyboards and rhythms in what is more meodic fusion than anything but will have an appeal to a wide cross section of music fans.
SPIRITS BURNING: Found In Nature CD
The third in the series, this time featuring players from Gong, University Of Errors, Spacehead, Melting Euphoria, Bionaut, Spaceship Eyes, Quiet Celebration, , King Black Acid, Goddess T, Cartoon, Mushroom. ICU, Quarkspace, Acid Mothers Temple & Netherworld. So, you have sixteen tracks across 66 minutes, each one different, each one with a different line-up, the glue that binds the project being the ever-present musician, co-composer, assembler and arranger, Don Falcone. This time round Gong's Daevid Allen plays some spectacular lead (and glissando) guitar work on seven of the album's tracks, while cohort in a previous line-up, Graham Clark, contributes his violin skills to 5 tracks, one with Allen. Tracks range from the surging guitar-driven dynamics of 'Dolmen', past the soaring violin-led 'Variable Shades Of Friendship', the solid but calming acoustic ethno-fusion resonance that is 'Oak, Elm and Spruce', with guitar, synth and flugel to the fore, the dizzy heights that is 'Ingredients, Pink Lady Lemonade, Liftoff' with an initial drums-driven intro leading to high-flying wordless vocals, synths, djembe, bass and guitars combination that is just superb and the longest track on the album at nine minutes, through 'Chiaro', a short slice of space and abstract from three keys/synth players plus guitar, bass and drums, four minutes of 'Rakasha-Loka' that manages to be five completely different styles within one remarkably cohesive track, from calm to attack, the mix of ethnic fusion and Tim Blake style synths that is five minutes of 'Blue Wings', to growling calm, King Crimson-like attack and rumbling multi-layered strangeness, all mostly led by guitars, keyboards, synths, bass, drums, percussion and effects, but always cohesive, adventurous, atmospheric, layered and overflowing with interest. The most varied of the trio to date, and in many ways quite deep, it's the sort of thing that someone with a flair for cohesive musical statements and brilliant musicianship/arranging will really sink their teeth into and find hugely rewarding.
DAMO SUZUKI: Hollyaris DBL CD
In that trademark "tall book" style packaging, here's the latest live offerings from the most floating group line-up in the history of music. The ex-Can vocalist's exercise in playing world-wide with any sympathetic bunch of musicians, now gives us a concert from August 2002 with a bunch of primarily American musicians that includes Len Del Rio & Tommy Grenas, while CD2 presents a concert in France a year later with all French musicians. Over the two CD's, this has to be one of the most bizarre albums he's yet to release. The 7 tracks on CD1 were recorded at the Knitting Factory in Los Angeles and the result is a set of compositions from seven to over thirteen minutes long that stay largely true to what you'd expect out of something that has more in common with classic Can than anything. The paces range from slow and solid to chunky and electrifying as the rhythmic groove breaths the life of familiarity to the music, all the time the three guitarists sharing most of the lead limelight, At many points along the way, you are taken back to the heady days of vintage Can, but with its own identity stamped through.
Now the concert from Paris is an altogether different affair and possibly one of the hardest Suzuki CD's to get into that I've ever come across - I mean to say, even for a guy like this, what you will hear is just plain BIZARRE!!! Here is a band who seem to be going headlong to make life as difficult for the singer as possible - in the kindest possible way - almost testing him to his limits of improvisational dexterity, and the result is that, for the first time I can remember, they both lose. The band seem so hell bent to produce something that's more like Can in a twilight zone that they end up in a plethora of musical blind alleys and all Suzuki can do is see what happens if he goes this way and that. It's mind-bending stuff, sometimes not easy to sit through, but that's the danger factor about how he does what he does, coming into play.
Overall, this is pretty extreme even for Suzuki so, approach with caution.
