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Third album for the American trio, an exercise in gazing at its shoes while playing slow, depressive music, building some great atmospheres.
After releasing 3 albums with a sort of easy-tune-ish pop: shiny and happy on the surface but not seldomly with a subtle bitter twist that wasn’t obvious to just everybody, they scored a big hit with Lovefool. The song was used on the very popular movieRomeo & Juliet and the new, very generic, video completely ignored the melancholy of the excellent first version and the song itself. But they were stars now!
The message is is a split CD between a Belgian and a Dutch band. They both play a music that one might link to post-rock. Yeah, that’s right post-rock, the genre that got so many people’s pants wet 5 years ago.
2003 is a busy year for Julien Loquet. A few months ago, he released a superb album, Mani, under his Dorine_muraille alias on no less than Fat Cat Records, and now he is back under the Gel: moniker with Dolce (the second Gel: album).
An up and coming noisician meets a veteran guitarist from the japanese noise rock scene. They record stuff together and release a CD. You buy it. You got yourself a puzzling but excellent album.
Through Isis, Old Man Gloom and Lotus Eaters, Aaron Turner has been the provider of extremely powerful music for the last couple of years. August 2003 sees him releasing the second full-length of his “ambient” project, House of Low Culture.
Funny how thing go… I’ve been living full-time in a city called Liège (Belgium) my entire life until very recently and yet it took a distributor based in Bruges and a label from Brussels for me to discover on of the city’s most interesting “sons”…
Ominous music out of your speakers… Sabers probably won’t physically threaten you, but you’re never going to be sure how you’re gonna get out of this situation safely, at least for your mind...
Short but good. I think it’s a perfect way to introduce this latest release from Cédric Stevens, a Belgian artist who has been active in the electronic music world for 10 years already.
Avant-rock, art-rock ? Whatever… 4th studio album for the austrian band, and what an excellent collection of songs !
A pop-artist with aspirations for way more than just pop, that can be a tough situation. I think former Japan vocalist David Sylvian has been in this situation for the last 15 years.
Rock music from 'the land of eagles'. Tuva, an unlikely place for a rockband: a country in the centre of Asia, surrounded by mountains and temperatures ranging from –50° C in winter to 45° C in summer. The country is spectacularly beautiful with its wild nature, vast forests, the desolate steppe and icy cold rivers flowing into the ‘Ulug Khem’ (main river).
“This is the music to a story yet ‘untold’ – told by the music.” Instrumental music that tells a story. Some people might think that it is impossible to pull that off without lyrics. Former Estradasphere-drummer thinks different, his first release The Deserts Of Träun, part 3 of a trilogy, tells a story by using any kind of music to ‘describe’ various happenings.
There is a heatwave going on and I'm listening to a Merzbow remix album: Frog Remixed And Revisited. Hah! Not really your ideal summer music, but it has it's advantages. The noise will expell the heat from my little room. My speakers puff and yell, and because of the air movement it's like I'm having my own airco system installed.
I had never heard of Jóhann Jóhannsson before this album. When surfing the net finding some background info on the Icelandic musician I found that I probably saw him perform live with Apparat Organ Quartet. The music on his first solo-album music can’t be compared to that loud and energetic combo though.
The Italian Ephel Duath started out as a duo, Davide Tiso and Giuliano Mogicato, playing melodic black-metal. After the release of debut Phormula Giuliano left and Davide signed Ephel Duath to the Earache sublabel Elitist Records. The restored enthusiasm starts the search for a new line-up, as he wants Ephel Duath to become a proper band.
I've always been a huge fan of Devin Townsend. City from Strapping Young Lad is the album I play when I'm really pissed. Infinity is his masterpiece follewed by the always excellent Ocean Machine: Biomech and Terria.
Kaizers Orchestra is another popular Norwegian band starting to do business in the rest of Europe. They are a six-strong band, and formed in Bergen nearly five years ago. Kaizers Orchestra play bluesy rock, with a major Eastern European flavour.
This is starting to look like an ongoing serie of reviews that have written “Nature” all over them. And once more, this is top-notch material...
After I bought this album I was informed that apparently We've Come For You All is "the album to buy for people who disliked the new Metallica album". Which is good on the one side, as I for sure despise their latest effort. But it also is disappointing because Anthrax, despite being a thrash contemporary to Metallica, once stood for so much more then "just an alternative to Metallica".
These days Mtv and other media try to push a host of female singer songwriters on us. Each one is supposed to be even more revolutionary than the previous one. Every time we however are confronted with music that goes in the one ear and right out the other.
Mixing raw and primitive sludge with Captain Beefheart’s tricks sounds like a cool idea. But from the idea to the great CD, there is a long way to... So how far did Samus go?
The Dropkick Murphys are truly something special in the entire punk/hardcore scene. If you are already familiar with them I don't need to tell you that. But if you're not familiar with them or even have a dislike of punk music I would still like to ask you to stick with me for a few more lines.
It’s the kind of album that makes you want to say: this is the best guitar album I’ve heard in 2003. Too bad there is no guitar... Gonna hit you hard and leave you awe-struck all the same anyway...