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When I first heard about this project I was sceptical: especially the name of Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater worried me, despite my fondness for Jim Matheos' and Kevin Moore's respective works in Fates Warning and Chroma Key. Portnoy seems to be on about every Magna Carta 'superband' release full of symphonic progrock virtuosity which made me fear the same on this release...
Nick Cave is a survivor. From Sidney to Berlin to Sao Paulo to London, he has lived all around the world. With the Birthday Party, the Bad Seeds or solo, he has been an essential artist in the punk, industrial, gothic, folk and rock scenes. He has survived a drug addiction and a consuming relationship with PJ Harvey. Now he settled down, in London, living with his wife and kids, going to his “office” from 9 to 5, writing songs. Sometimes, such a life leaves marks.
Legend and pillar of the country genre, Johnny Cash has cemented a legendary reputation and aura of a diety, in a sense, for himself over the course of more than 50 years. He IS the original man in black, and he could make a grown man cry -- moving mountains and decimating all that's in his path with his stripped-down and raw vocal delivery.
Four years ago Massive Attack released Mezzanine, a masterpiece of trip-hop music. The band was standing at the peak in their career and Mezzanine was, and still is, a huge success.
HiM is seen as a groundbreaking project for the also groundbreaking drummer Doug Scharin. His experiments with jazz & dub are widely acclaimed, and as the title of this release claims, Japan is no exception.
Illproductionz is a fairly young hip-hop trio from The Netherlands, who some time ago released this CD which is actually some kind of demo by themselves. The release recently won a local prize for best artwork for this disc, but it is not the design I'm impressed with. It's the content.
Head-honcho Trey Spruance (Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3) is a self-professed fan of folkmusic from the Balkans. The signing of the traditional Californian Balkan-orchestra Danubius for his own label surprised me a bit though.
Mono was formed in 2000 in Japan. This information matters a lot as when you listen to One step more and you die, their third release and second full-length, you can only be impressed by the tightness of the band and the quality of the compositions: so many bands won’t ever achieve this, even if they keep on trying for twenty years...
Kim Hiorthoy. Does that sound Norwegian or what? The Norsemen have an excellent reputation considering music, and the last couple of years show a movement towards (nu-)jazz and electronic music. Melke belongs to the latter category, but the suspect is raised that he's just one among the many. We'll see...
My sweet innocent childHow can I explainHow I hear the nature cryfor mercy
Chances are that you’ve never heard of this record. But if you did, chances are even higher that you know more about the circumstances surrounding the recording of Rever than about the music itself. I’m not going to blame you on this as the story is quite peculiar. If you know it already, just skip the next paragraph...
Black Dice's Beaches And Canyons has been released already some months ago in the U.S. by DFA Records and if I just followed the enormous press response there, this album is bound to receive a high score. But I don't intend to follow Rolling Stone, The Wire, Pitchfork or the New York Times without an in-depth analysis of this disc.
What's this? A new super-group consisting of lumanaries from the long-since departed "grunge" scene? Well, since I consider the project between Chris Cornell and the remaining members of Rage Against the Machine to be rather atrocious, I guess something good had to come out of one of his musical contemporaries.
Listening to A Moment of Clarity's new album back to back with their previous one, Night Will Fall, made something very obvious: Everything has improved!
When I was a child, Hawaii meant Hawaii Five-0, Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett and James MacArthur as Danny, what I thought was one of the best things on telly (after the A-Team of course). It was also a great TV theme in my book. I guess I wasn’t totally wrong on this as John Zorn himself felt the need to cover it with his Naked City buddies.
Remember when people told you Rock was dead ? Remember when those very people told you five years later that Rock was alive and kickin’ (yeah, just listen to The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Vines...)? Well you have to understand that those people are pricks... Rock never died in the first place and is epitomised not by the aforementioned clean-shaven, clear-sounding tossers but by dirty and raw acts such as High on Fire or The Melvins. In that category, you’re not likely to get much better than Boris...
The dawn of the new millennium beckoned a return-to-forum and an embrace by the mainstream, once again, for emotionally charged, multi-talented performer, Tori Amos. In 2001, she released an album consisting of covers entitled Strange Little Girls, but instead of just merely paying homage to the original artists and keeping the songs in their original format, she gave each song her own personal touch and ultimately made them her own personal creation.
After reading the bio that came with these CD’s I prepared myself for endless drones, without rhythm, built from layers of guitarfeedback. Unfamiliar with Robert Poss’ main band Band Of Susans, of which only the name rang a bell, I was in for a surprise.
Yes, the Funkster is back again for another bombing assault George Bush would be proud of, and that at a time we've almost lost count of the amount of releases this year. Winter In The Belly Of A Snake is originally scheduled for a late January 2003 release, but some U.S. online shops already got it, and as an addictive fan boy I just couldn't wait.
Luck is the debut album of Masha Qrella, also active on guitar & bass in Contriva and on keyboard with Mina. Both bands didn't use any vocals in their music (only seldom) and that's probably why Qrella has decided to record a solo album.
Mimi Secue is a fairly new (and probably young aged) band from Austria. By reading the biography it becomes clear that this band is a great admirer of the Constellation artist-roster, also considering the attitude towards the music business and industries like that.
"I’m composing the soundtrack to my life, putting myself out there for you", so begins Alias first solo album, The other side of the looking glass.
Some bands exist to create music that is fundamentally accessiable, and it's focal nature is to appeal to a wide audience and try not to alienate as many potential record-buyers as possible.
Supporting your local artists is a tempting thing to do, but there's always the danger that the objectiveness disappears completely in the reviewer's enthusiasm. The 110 Volt Lovers are from the same area as I am, and they are really good. So far for objectiveness; but I'll try to explain further why I'm struck by Allopurinol's quality.