Reviews by kuvien

I love the structure of this album, how side A is four shorter tracks, like preludes or previews of what's to come, and then side B, the titular track, is one long sprawling work, as only the bloated pet genre of the 70s can deliver. Flutes and keyboards throughout.

Sexy, jazzy pop, and those female vocals singing English in that sweet yet saucy Italian accent are just to die for. So, about the film: it's about a journalist who turns the tables on the wealthy sadist who kidnapped her for his sick games.

When your friends invite you over to hang out and fuck around in the bedroom, whip out some found sounds and say let's make some lo-fi minimal wave shit, but then you find out your friends are pretty good at it.

Five tracks, just under 30 minutes in total. Beautiful, mysterious, haunting minimal music. Despite its brevity, I feel like the music really takes its time, and thus I take my time with it. A meandering stroll through sound and silence. By the way, this is the only album he ever released.

This is one of those folk albums recorded outside a studio, in this case in an old wooden house in the Suwałki region of Poland, no doubt the artists wanting to feel "closer" to the music they were performing. It goes without saying that this recording features a lot of traditional folk instruments, heavy on multiple fiddles, but also employing accordion, bells, rattles, and, of course, soft, deep percussion. Karolina Cicha takes the vocal lead with her high, evocative Slavic voice, Bart Pałyga instead indulging in a bit of throat singing, coming forward only at certain moments of playful gruffness. This album celebrates the historical minority Tatar language.

Wow. These punks actually have some production and composition standards.

utter trash

This is an archival album, actually recorded in the early 70s but not released until 2006, about the time people started wanted rare, forgotten recordings. That fringe interest continues on the internet with places like r/vintageobscura. Anyway, I make no apologies for also liking these kinds of artifacts. Christie is an interesting gal, though. After the label rejected this album as being un-commercial, she threw up her arms and said fuck it, became a mother, and while raising her children helped earned a living by singing commercial jingles. How ironic! None of these songs are going to change the world, but they’re interesting renditions of other people’s songs.

Not painful enough! UGH

All right. There are those big 80s drums. This is the most accessible thing I've heard so far in this listening project, and "accessible" isn't always a compliment. In this case, it's a code-word for "kinda boring". However, the freaky female yelling in spots redeems it a bit. A lot of repetition on this record. The dark cabaret moments are the best.

My rating system doesn't drop below 3.0, but this album almost broke it and almost made me give my first 0.5. DNF

It took me a long time and some serious detective work to track this squirrely album down, but I finally found it, stripped it of its hide, and cooked it. Yum. I used to be all into the avant-prog and didn't mind so much the utter chaos and total breakdown of everything as the performers just "expressed" themselves, but the strength of this album, for me, is in its nuanced handling of Gascon folk. Interesting variety, and not afraid to explore the old-world harmonies of folk while they simultaneously indulge their desire to lose their shit. The prog builds on the folk, and not vice versa.

Peak leprechaun shit.

Music for hardcore LARPers whose characters get married between adventures. Bonus points if anyone in the party is playing a bard in possession of a traditional Celtic folk songbook.

-0.5 stars for being a stepdaughter.

Former Coleman-quartet trumpeter moves to Sweden and basically becomes a hippie (at least around the time of this album), creating with whomever he can an uplifting, directionless hippie-jazz double album. Ancient Indian and African instruments, both stringed and percussive, abound, creating the longform meditative atmosphere.

This pan-ethnic jazz-folk fusion be-in was recorded about eight years into the Tågarp experiment, a situation that, as far as I can tell, eschewed all the hippie bullshit about free love and free drugs, instead focusing on expanding one’s knowledge of visual art, fashion, music, and philosophy beyond one’s own native experience. Moki and Don were a power couple, a superorganism, unstoppable in their quest to find spiritual enlightenment through aesthetic experience and creativity. This archival album, finally released 44 years after its recording, is, like Cherry’s other creations, direct evidence of the efficacy of the Organic Music Society, where art was born organically out of meditation, family, and a freedom to create. And living.

The opening track "Brown Rice" might be the most famous on this album, but for me, the real meat is in the middle, tracks A2 and B1, long-form spiritual jazz masterpieces that excel at mantra and meditation. "Shamanistic" is the one word I'd use to describe this album if I were limited to a one-word response.

I've heard about this album for years. Holy shit this is so fucking boring.

Yeah, there's no doubt this guy's a genius, but it's not in his covers, no matter how shmaltzy they are.