Reviews by kuvien

I feel like this album is a collection of prog highlights from the 70s onward, everything from neo-medieval folk to indulgent guitar jamming to quirky RIO. Even throwing in spoken-word recitative interludes. Also this being a one-and-done band is appealing to me on meta grounds. And I enjoy the struggle between technical control and wild abandon. They tread the line between the two with the skill of a mountain goat. It's clear the band is doing what they want to do, not necessarily playing what people want to hear, since most people enjoy consistency of style.

When you stand in the middle of a field, and all the tall crop around you is folk, and the vocals are scythes, the instruments the tools of discovery, as they all harvest in unpredictable paths to get to the center of the field where you stand. To lay at your feet the fruit of their labors.

The band leader and vocalist, Lucie Páchová, likes to travel and collect field recordings and folk traditions, and for this album, she drew upon her experiences in East Africa, singing not only in Slovak and Czech but also working in, to a limited degree, of course, vocabulary from the Tonga, Acholi, Lobi, and Bayake tribal languages. Musically this album doesn't know what it wants to do, and though some might find this frustrating, I think it's refreshing. Mashing together electronic and acoustic instruments, one moment following the sheet music, the next going off script and letting the players explore their own ideas.

Wonderful explorations on the bass, tip-toeing, slapping, leaving a delightfully unpredictable path behind it. Fiery, half-drunk violin screeching and stuttering. And then there's frontwoman Lucie Páchová's voice, a moaning, angular, half-jazz half-folk amalgamation of far-reaching influences. She even sings about lambs in the Yaghnobi language. This music was made in Prague but is not bound by the cultural influences of Czechia.

Cat-and-mouse vocal jazz, except the mouse is chasing the cat through an obstacle course on a rollercoaster treadmill to everywhere.

The kind of music playing at that hip local restaurant you and your poser friends like to go to. This music is playing, reinforcing how cool you and your friends are. Except everyone just talks over this music and ignores it as everyone feels vaguely good about himself and other people. The restaurant guy chose this comp because he knew you and your friends were coming. He can smell his own.

"The past is dead. We hardly let it live." The agony of losing someone young, of life being cut off before one is able to live and form a personal history. Everyone deals with losing a loved one in different ways. Some curl up into a ball, some go into seclusion, some lash out, some deny... we all know the stages of grief, right? And then some get their musician friends together, huddle around the memory of a shared friend, and make an album that is both elegiac and healing. Both by working out in the studio how they feel--hence the sudden tone shifts, not only among the tracks but sometimes right smack in the middle of a song. Ethereal, progressive, beautiful. Excellent synth and string work. Vocals full of pathos. Bursts of joy, moments of heartbreak so delicate you need but brush it and it bleeds.

A very well put-together psych exploration, not for a moment growing sloppy or lazy or, you know, man, like, just chilled out. It's on point throughout, the playing precise and conscious. An excellent marriage of prog and psych, an impressive balance. "Morning" is my favorite of the four tracks, but I have a thing for flipping a vinyl over and having Side B just be one long song. Side A is the prelude.

This is what it's all about: finding not only the obscure gems but the mysterious ones. Here's a perfect jazz fusion album by a genius pianist, and then he disappears. This is the excitement archaeologists must feel when they unearth and share with others some significant artifact. Creative, funky virtuosity on display here. A lot of piano exploration, serious in its playfulness. This dude wrote and created one amazing jazz album when he was 18 and then disappeared. He was last seen in Israel, where he thought he was Jesus.

Pretty amazing stuff on the guitar here, a kind of curious exploration of what a skilled gypsy can do when he sits down and plays. The guitar is the centerpiece, but the music builds around it with evocative violin playing.

Another one of those marvelous examples of folk music informing jazz to create something new and unexpected by imaginative musicians who are just as influenced by American jazz greats as by their own non-American culture. In this case, one cannot escape the name Béla Bartók.

A beautiful, out-of-the-way album of kantele music performed by a sextet, but more importantly, performed in the near-extinct Saarijärvi style, which is plucking the strings with a wooden plectrum instead of using the fingers. A lovely mix of instrumentals, vocals, original compositions, and traditionals.

This is the album that introduced musique concrète to my 7-year-old son. I just happened to press play on this when my boy was in the room, and he asked me if something was wrong with the music. I explained to him what musique concrète is, and he started listening intently, trying to identify the sounds. "It's a train station.... it's a tank... it's the military... it's an explosion!" Then comes Side B. "Water!" Yes, indeed, a rather obvious juxtaposition of artificial and natural found sounds.

Slowly (I mean really slowly) walking up and down long, empty corridors, searching for the source of that quiet hum. And then, throwing open a door, you find the Machine and cry out in terror--but your cries are swallowed by the Noise of the Machine.

This in no way induces me to drink wine or engage in any form of revelry.

Those are some long-lasting Rice Krispies! Listen to 'em snap, crackle, and pop until the milk is rancid. As people applaud, eat and get sick. But don't worry! They've got opera on the radio--drat! Nothing but static.

My recent re-listen of Adriana Mater got me thinking more about spectralism, and that led me to Haas, with this being an excellent example of all the raw emotion possible in modern classical if you're willing to redefine your expectations of the genre, let your soul burst, then heal, then bleed. Vetter's piano is as hauntingly lovely as the string quartet is unsettling.

The most courageous day I ever had was when I de-curated King Crimson's and curated Taylor Swift's Red.

She repeatedly drops the F-bomb because it's 3 AM, and I'm here for it. For the bravado, the insecurity, the confessions. I love this album to tiny, glittering bits.

Music like this is insidious; it reprograms the brain so that, in time and with enough exposure, the listener loses the capacity to recognize good music. The temptation to stick to formula is strong, but it robs the human spirit of all imagination, to say nothing of originality. Instead of believing the hype, grab a Q-tip and clean your ears out.