Reviews by kuvien

If there was ever an unnecessary album, this is it.

This is a soothing, lush exploration. Basically a Ukrainian prog folk version of Mike Oldfield. It's no surprise that this hour-long composition soars.

The famous and most beautiful, ethereal re-imagining of Debussy's works as heard through the Moog synthesizer, blasting this music off into a space realm that is not cold and void but full of light and warmth. Though this is an aside with nothing to do with the music on this recording, I just find it a little bit chilling that the cover art features something connected to Tomita's death: he died many many years after this album's release, and he just so happened to die on a Japanese holiday that features the flying of carp kites, which are depicted in this album's art. Surreal.

Brilliant stuff here, especially the epic second track, a jazz fusion masterpiece. And then followed up by something so mellow as "Mountains". Really helps you decompress from those heights. Oh look...the magic year of 1971 again.

Super lo-fi percussion, like you're hearing revelry through several meters of murky water. You might have enjoyed the party, but you're too busy drowning yourself. Maybe next time!

I am untouched by this one both positively and negatively. There's just not enough here to form an opinion. I guess the spoken words parts have a kind of quiet desperation to them, and that fits the Js to a tee. This is what you're stuck with when you miss last train.

Toh Kay is a pseudonym for the lead singer and guitarist of the ska band Streetlight Manifesto. The story goes that he had a dramatic fallout with his label just before the release of this album. The label cancelled the album and, apparently, burned all the prints. Talk about an over-reaction! So this album never got released, but it showed up as a bootleg on the internet almost immediately. This is the music of a navel-gazing, atheistic Jack Johnson, and I'm sure this album will be a huge hit with the average online music nerd who is confused about everything in life, thinks he's smarter than he actually is, is proud to call himself a seeker but searches in the dark, and considers medication taking as part of his identity.

This one made me feel so bad. It's got no genre tags, but I'd call it Musique concrète, because it sounds like a couple plumbers who failed to fix my garbage disposal, and having realized they'd failed, decide to make a racket and feign work in order to charge me more. Quite a distasteful trip down the noise toilet.

Before you sit down to this album, go down into the cellar and pick out a good wine. It doesn't matter what, as long as it's good. Because the next time you can choose a different label and vintage, because next time you'll dine on something different this album has to offer. The metaphor of "recipe" is not a secret here: it's right there in the title. Now, I'm no chef, but I think everyone knows that a chef does not rely merely on traditional recipes, nor is he so arrogant that the only thing he cooks is his own dishes. Everything comes from somewhere, and that axiom is displayed beautifully here. Tisnèr, with a little help from his friends, delves into traditional Occitan folk music but is not afraid to add improvisation and original ideas. He--to appropriate the lingo of the youth these days--cooks.

A perfectly named album, this recording uses cello, double bass, and piano to accompany in the simplest way a charming female vocalist who sings stories from the life of a person who's just barely hanging on in love or holding her head above water. She's slowly failing, but she's reconciled herself to her situation. She's satisfied with close enough.

More gentle, charming folk from our favorite toy piano-playing Breton, and as always, he favors the harpsichord, violin, accordion, and mandolin. Tiersen alternates between heartstring-pulling violin and joyful piano work. Some of the songs in [Film632] are first heard here.

At some points introspective, with dashes of festivity, and at other points joy tinged with darkness. This is an excellent sample of 1880s throwback French folk (musette), heavy on the strings and accordion. Most of the album is instrumental with pleasant little vocal tracks at each end.

A fun, comfortable little chamber folk debut, full of charming instrumentals played mostly on accordion and violins, but with the toy piano and harpsichord making their voices heard. Nothing at all challenging about this album, but it's got theatrical charm to it. Actually, the first ten songs were originally written for a stage adaptation of a 30s American horror flick, so there are some monsters waltzing at the edges of those tracks.

I'm not a metal aficionado, so I can't speak to influences and styles and what came before and what they're building on here. All I know is I like the melodic speed of this recording. I like how they're not afraid to use keyboards and bold symphonic elements. Bringing in echoing, ethereal female vocals is always a big plus in my book, too. The black metal vocals are used sparingly, more like as garnish, and thus having pity on my poor nerves.

I cannot help myself: I just really like chant-like female vocals. And then it moves on to the kind of metal you’d beam out into space, to tell aliens we’re here. There’s some pretty unconventional metal instrumentation at work here, including violins and the shameless use of the saxophone. I guess a lot of these strange sounds comes from the Hungarian folk influence. Wow, there’s even a touch of electronic here.

These guys definitely heard.

One for me, and one for my suburban homies who have to observe many, many moments of silence when enjoying this album.

Trying to be charming, just comes across as annoying. Trying to be quirky, but it's just dumb.

Take a deep breath and lay aside your expectations. This isn’t some calm album of wholesome cheese… that’s just the veneer. Draw back the curtain, and step into a den of yodeling vocals, conjuring percussion, expansive flutes, and incendiary saxophones... that is, until you realize that, even amid the rising passion of the music, things have always been as chill as you first thought. Queue this one up for your next Sunday morning.

The first track was so underwhelming that I decided to get some oral pleasure during the second track, hoping that as I lay in a post-orgasmic haze, the music would improve in my hearing. It didn't.