Reviews by applaud01

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Give it a 5 and straight on to the next one.

This started out as two solo albums and then got released as a double CD under the Outkast name.

To be honest, it outstays its welcome. It's not short of ideas, but I don't think all of the ideas are strong enough to sustain a 2¼ hr runtime. What with "interludes" and silent tracks, and recordings of babies and spoken word sections, theres quite a bit of self indulgent faffing about.

Probably would have been stronger if someone had said, "Give me your best 30 minutes of material and we'll make a single CD."

When it's good, it's excellent, but editing is always a good thing.

Let's be clear. If you're not moving while this plays then have your doctor check that you are alive.

The sort of hot salsa music that is made for swinging hips, or ballads that lovers slow dance to while the waiters put chairs up and lean on brooms.

Puerto Rico shows up and shows us how.

Immediate 5.

The fact is that without Low there'd be no Post-Punk - no Joy Division, no Smiths, no Cure - and no electropop - no Human League, no Gary Numan, no Ultravox, no OMD.

This album of brief songs and instrumentals was greeted by the Record Company, who were looking for another Young Americans - with dismay. The story goes that they thought it was unfinished. Where were the vocal? Where was the second verse?

The critics were divided, calling it either "pretentious shit" or "the ONLY contemporary record".

In the years since its reputation has grown to have it regarded as one of Bowie's very best. "Ziggy.Stardust", "Low" and "Blackstar" are the three where he amazed the world.

Iconic, influential, ahead of its time, and still as fresh as it was when it was released.

If you told the kids these days that the biggest selling album of the 1970s was by a folk duo they wouldn't believe you!

Of course this is bullet proof and anything anyone says at this point is hardly going to change its classic (mythic) status.

Fortunately it manages to live up to hype. One amazing song after another. Superb.

The Only Living Boy in New York is gorgeous

Guys who just wanted to play loud.

They were loud, rough, drugged and nasty. And in 67 they went to the Monterey Festival. They say they saw Hendrix so they probably also would have seen rhe bands playing on the same day: The Who and Big Brother and The Holding Company. The fact that those bands could play them into the ground without raising a sweat didn't matter. Blue Cheer wanted to outdo them.

Their sound was louder, dirtier and more chemically enhanced. It was like a kick in the head. Forget the Summer of Love. This was challenging, vicious music. Is it the start of heavy metal? Well, no-one had played this hard before, so why not?

The trouble was that this came out in 68. In 69 another band that could play them into the ground came along. Led Zeppelin. Blue Cheer faded into memory. But you can't imagine Grand Funk Railroad or Black Sabbath or MC5 or The Stooges without them clearing the path.

What a box of treasures.

Perhaps not an album to play from start to finish. Better to dip into it and see what comes up.

But as a library of Americana greatness its irreplaceable.

One of the pinnacles of Miles Davis's career (and therefore, of 20th century music) this was both the birth and the peak of fusion music.

The idea that it was "experimental" or that it came out of nowhere is wrong.

The process of Miles giving the players a few chords or scales, saying what he wanted and then letting them improvise goes back 10 years to "Kind of Blue".

He'd been increasingly electrifying his band over his previous two or three albums and the editing together of several takes first appears on the studio album before this, "In a Silent Way".

The word "experimental" suggests that he was just putting things together to see what he got. The band recorded hours of material over three days and then this was edited down to form the final 90 minutes of music. Tapes were looped, effects were applied, takes were cut and spliced. "Pharaohs Dance" has 19 edits in its 20 minute run time, which cause quite the backlash amongst the jazz crowd. Only one track ("Miles Runs the Voodoo Down") appears on the album as it was played in the studio. Far from being improvised accidents, these things were meant to sound - were built to sound - exactly that way.

When the album appeared it received mixed reviews. It topped some Record of the Year polls and was sneered at by jazz purists. "Too jazz for rock, too rock for jazz."

Really, it's best to think of it as neither, but rather as a thing all to itself: expansive and twisting on the first two, long form, tracks and becoming tighter and more rhythmically focussed in the second half.

Expansive, explosive, one of the albums that changed music. Give it ALL the 5s.

Time was when Dylan was a prophet, writing songs that immediately became part of the language.

By the time this album came about it was 20 years since Desire - the last gasp of greatness. Then came a long string of mediocre albums that were notable more for how divisive they were.

But from the first notes of this you know you're back in the hands of a master.

Is it another Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 Revisited? Well, no. But albums like that are few and far between

Here, a crack band slithers through blues riffs while Dylan sings about lost love. Highlights are Love Sick, Standing in the Doorway and Cold Irons Bound, but everything is good.

The last track - Highlands - is 16 minutes of certified Dylan oddness, but it's kind of magnificent.

It would be another 20 years until he produced an album anywhere near this good - Rough and Rowdy Ways.

Yesterday I was assigned Dizzee Rascal's Boy in the Corner to listen to and its invention and originality make this a hard listen.

The production on this is of the "More is more" variety. No kitchen sink could have been safe within a 5km radius of the studio, so many were thrown in. At times it sounds like a MOR sixties album there's so many strings and choirs happening. It's the Bert Kaempfert of rap.

And then the lyrics. Sincere, but awkward, hearing them is like finding a sensitive16 year old's secret diary under his mattress and when you read it it's full of serious thoughts about the world and all if it expressed in a self-important naivity that lands with a thud.

Lust, sometimes can override trust

So death might not let me live.

You're the starry skies above me
Won't you please come down and hug me

Are examples of the sort of thing.

Put it on while you're ironing your shirt and it'll be a fair background.

Listen to it as I think it was intended - as an important statement about the world - and its just ... not...

Okay then. Once more out of my comfort zone.

Skittering beats that seem to be on the verge of falling apart under a UK rapper.

Held my interest.

Even if you don't know these songs, you know these songs.

Having said that, Ubiquity isn't Excellence.

The songs are fine, even if the backing is overblown, but in the pantheon of male singer songwriters you'd have to put Paul Simon, Randy Newman, Stevie Wonder, and Elton John (particularly the early Elton) well ahead of him.

And the songs that remind you of other, better songs (She's Always a Woman and Dylan's Just Like a Woman or Don't Go Changing and Stevie Wonder's All in Love is Fair) just show up his limitations.

You'll have a good time, but whether you'll be totally satisfied is up for debate.

The very definition of "Cult album"

Intense ragged, noisy with a Gome made aesthetic.

An acquired taste.

Like The Slits meet Tom Tom Club. In a good way.

I had no knowledge of this band, but read Riot Grrl and was expecting harsh guitars and angry screaming.

Instead this is unexpectedly sprightly and lively.

Actually, if the Slits and Tom Tom Club partied with DEVO and B52s. That's what it's like.

Let's get this out the way first. This might call itself punk, but do yourself a favour and listen to

Wire: Pink Flag

The Clash: Live at Shea Stadium

Gang of Four: Entertainment

and see what punk can really be.

This is polished, slick and commercial. The political message is a bit obvious and tries to be angry, but doesn't bear comparison with Jello Biafra singing "Kill the Poor"

And then it decides to be "Rock Opera" and, boys, this is no Quadrophenia.

It's solid, well played, enjoyable rock posing as something that other people did better. Perfectly fine on its own terms, but with aspirations beyond its grasp.

Well, no-one pops fragile on so thry can specially listen to Tin Cans and Brahms or Five Percent for Nothing.

The album really consists of four songs - Roundabout, South Side of the Sky, Long Distance Runaround, and Heart of the Sunrise - with the solo bits and bobs thrown in as, well, not padding, but bonuses.

So then; the bonuses.

Tin Cans and Brahms is a surprisingly accurate transcription for keyboards of the third movement of Brahms 4th Symphony and, to be honest, is the sort of thing Wendy Carlos did better.

We Have Heaven is Jon Anderson being all hippy and cosmic, if you like that sort of thing. The slamming door and footsteps seem a bit Atom Heart Mother to be honest.

Five Percent for Nothing is a Bill Bruford drum solo that the band play along with: all tricky time changes and rhythm tricks.

The Fish is Chris Squire overdubbing unfeasible numbers of bass riffs.

Mood for a Day is a sort of folk flamenco guitar piece.by Steve Howe.

They're all short, they're all palatable and they're apparently there to save money on studio time.

The other tracks are group songs. This was Wakeman's first outing and he brings a level of virtuosity and classically trained skills that push the band into a new level of playing. Bruford and Squire have two of the most distinctive sounds in rock music, Anderson has a voice like no other (you may think this good or bad) and Howe is a guitar dynamo.

Of course the band songs are over the top and the lyrics are pretty dopey and it goes on too long and has pretensions to symphonic grandeur. But these songs rock like Grandma's chair.

I put down my hard earned pocket money when i was 14 to buy the vinyl and never regretted it. 4 stars, but only because you need somewhere to go when you get to Close to the Edge.

Like the best night you ever had at a pub. There's rowdy dance music, a song that'll break your heart, some politics, someone is reciting poetry and everyone is as happy and full of the joys of life as is possible.

And then, when things can't get better, someone puts on Fairytale of New York and it DOES get better.

And maybe it does outstay its welcome and maybe Shane McGowan's voice makes Joe Strummer sound like Doris Day, but this is obviously a master work.

Minimalist Avant folk pop not quite ambient music from another world.

Utterly charming and never quite heading in the direction you expect, this is full of beautiful surprises.

Makes you appreciate how important Kurt Cobain was to Nirvana as a creative force.

This is perfectly servicable, if fairly generic, 90s grunge. But it seem to be to Nevermind or In Utero what one of Ringo or George's solo albums was to Revolver.

There was a time when Madonna was of universal significance, where everyone knew her, listened to her, bought her records. Even your Nanna knew "Material Girl"

In more recent years, everyone still knows her, but less as an artist and more as a punchline.

This album comes about half way between these two extremes. She was still selling records, still getting critical praise, but the days when a new Madonna Video was an event were long behind her.

She was coming off the success of "Ray of Light" and seemingly could do no wrong.

But Music is nowhere near as strong as that album. Ray of Light had similar studio production antics, but had them applied to actual songs, with Verses, Choruses and Bridges.

The tracks on Music don't seem like songs. They're more like beats with words over the top.

I imagine that Music is quite the influential album. If Ray of Light was a bit like Madonna catching up with what was happening at the time. Bjork had released Homogenic, Kylie Minogue had released Impossible Princess, Missy Elliot had released Super Duper Fly, all highly produced electronica.

But Music was Madonna pushing the things she tried on Ray of Light further into the future.

It's not as strong as Ray of Light, but it's probably more significant.