Reviews by kuvien

A set of three highly-experimental, theatrical, spoken-word tracks wherein Bowie, thriving within the production bounds of Eno's lush, nocturnal sonic-garden, shows that his artistic spirit soars above mere music and into the roleplaying we've all come to love. Oh the magic of the "internet" back in 1994, brought to you with all Bowie's coolest histrionics.

A classic I've heard so many times I don't know what to say about tunes as familiar as my most intimate surroundings. Every guitar lick, every word sung with equal parts nasal and gravel, every sexcapade with a gay devil, every desire to escape the inescapable sadness of a cruel world, every spoken, whispered word, every comic, haunting recorder phrase, every secret ball where subverted old songs are played for the painted revelers, every step taken in the mad parade, every reminder of the horrors of war, every dystopian vision of ease, every face-to-face confrontation with the part of yourself that has no idea what it's doing.

I’ve gotta tip my hat to one of my internet friends for this one. I’m a huge Bowie fan, but I prefer his stuff from 1969 through 1977 best. After that, I kind of lose interest in the sound, probably because I have some kind of mental block against 80s music (even though the 80s were my formative years). I don’t know. Anyway, I’m glad I gave this album a chance. “Ashes to Ashes” is such a raw song, so deliciously referential.

This album opens with a standard rocker but then descends into a mad tune of avant, chaotic, minor keys and angular sounds, undermining everything you felt in the first track. The piano has a total breakdown, but then the album proceeds onto smoothness, further confusing the listener with its schizophrenia. An easy rock groove permeates the whole document, though, with no skimping on the use of the saxophone.

I don’t fear a post-apocalyptic world if it also comes with glitter and glam. Bowie started recording this album mere months after the retirement of the Ziggy Stardust character, and yet the soul of glam lives on. Maybe Ziggy just went undercover for this album before disappearing completely. A kind of elegant exit, right between sides A and B. Or maybe he snorted the mountain of cocaine in front of him and flew away, explaining in a more narrative way the internal inconsistencies of this album.

Like a squall, this music is localized, blowing in bits and pieces from the traditional tunes of the Auvergne region. Banjo, flute, violin, and female vocals express the rich diversity of local traditions that go back further than anyone can remember... except through the music itself. Therein lies all the memory we need!

As written in parentheses, this is a famous rendition of Swan Lake performed by the BSO, but it’s important to note that Mr. Ozawa was director of the orchestra and had been for 12 years, and in retrospect the quality of some of his work with the BSO was later criticized. I have not the ear to hear any deficiency in this recording.

This unexpected, experimental album is exactly what you get when you put a Spanish avant-folk artist who, though steeped in the traditional, has a penchant for exploring in strange, unsettling yet fascinating directions together with an open and expressive Italian actress from the neorealism movement of the late forties.

Tik tok thirst trap core.

Get rid of the useless spoken-word snippets and it'd be perfect.

More Anaïs, less those two randoms.

The title track opens the album with the rich, mournful beauty of an ode to love lying slain on one of Naopleon's battlefields. The dudes singing on this one are all right, but for me this album's all about Anaïs Mitchell. Her folk renderings evoke a real sense of history, making the past immediate and personal. Lush folk rock follows to some extent, and one of these dudes sounds a bit like the Fleet Foxes' singer. Dreamy nostalgia. Love the heavenly "Jane Jane". Anaïs always has this inner joy that comes out when she sings traditional folk tunes.

Though not as delicate as Emma, this album still has all the feeling of that earlier release. Another great album to relax and have a drink to.

Winter melts into spring and spring warms to summer, across three short tracks. So he retreats to the woods to build a still to help slow down the time. Drink yourself into slo-mo, but in a wholesome way?

Beautiful, expressive solo guitar music that soothingly excites, and at 25 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Were this as long as an overindulgent American Primitivism album, I’d probably have lost interest halfway through. The strength of these recordings, therefore, lies in their brevity.

Alien opera adopted by other aliens, beamed back in for our listening pleasure(?). Not afraid to jam on their hard rock guitars, blow their whistles, and let the melodious vocals sweep over you like a distant wind blowing in from another planet. Like a lot of Japanese music, this band is best at its most playful. The touch of the shakuhachi completes this.

He rocked into the late 80s as the genre rolled over in its grave.

This album is very much Sámi in its scope, with all the good and the bad of that experience, ranging from the recognition of Earth as mother to a celebration of indigenous culture, from tales of repression and hate to an enumeration of wrongs done against the Sámi people. Sung using the joik voice and employing a representation of instruments from indigenous cultures beyond the Sámi.

Most of this music is written by Boine herself; there's one traditional and a couple of other tracks written by other songwriters, so this album, though traditional Sami singing (along with her djembe drumming), is very much Boine's unique expression. This is a super chill album, the percussion and the bass loosely holding things together. Boine's protracted vocals floating around your head like smoke, only to sink and settle on you like frost. Music that believes there is expectation beneath the open frozen sky, that what you long for can become reality, if you only have the patience to stand still and wait for the magic to come.

The musical equivalent of a lounge with padded velvet walls. Populate yours how you will, but mine is peopled with silent and strange Twin Peaks characters all staring at the fixtures and wondering why things aren't as weird as they could have been.