Reviews by kuvien

The band continues its excellence with this offering. It's a bit more engaging than. Maybe what I mean is it sacrifices some of the delicacy of their debut for warmer tones.

From what I've read, this is Slovenia's first singer/songwriter album. Pengov is playing original songs here, thus putting him in the ranks of artists like Drake and Cohen. And he sounds just as pastoral and introspective as they can. Again, reading up on the scant material I can find regarding lyrics, it seems Pengov deals a lot with themes of travel, not only literally but metaphorically, both physical and inner journeys, perhaps highlighting the bittersweetness of departure and leaving friends behind. The 12-string guitar and lute invite the listener into something warm and mellow. The Slovenian wiki says that Pengov recorded at least part of this album in the toilet in his apartment. Since he was a student at the time, I'm assuming he was doing it to save costs and use a place with decent acoustics, not that he was actually sitting on the crapper singing about girls smiling in the wind.

This is a live performance of two sides, Side A the very definition of living, breathing music, alive in the moment, making the air heavy with its suspirations, turning what must have been before a barren festival into a lush garden dripping with beautiful madness. Take a moment. Pause and reflect. Don't rush on to Side B quite yet. Wander in the deafening silence before proceeding. Keep in mind that this album is not a collaboration; it's more like a split, since Cherry and Penderecki don't actually come into contact with each other. An uneasy night falls after the fecund day, and Side B lets the listener know right away that this avant-garde classical piece has little to do with what preceded it. Everything that skitters on chitinous legs makes its way out of its hole and joins a grotesque yet fascinating dance of smashing, whirling genres squaring off and not sure what to do about each other. (By the way, It thrills me to see Tomasz Stańko listed in the credits.)

I love the heavy horns contrasting the light vocals of the first track, something a lot of people do in 2010s indie pop but done well here. Then I start hearing string phrasing reminding me of Owen Pallett's stuff. Pelgag's vocals are simultaneously delicate and bold. It must be the lush production.

Without naturally understanding the lyrics, I find this music dreamy and tinged with innocence, and I love how the piano skips and hops like a little girl who's really good at skipping and hopping--only to morph into strong chords that elevate the spirit and raise the music to an angelic level. And flutes are sparing enough to remain charming.

The thing about this music is that you know exactly where you are at all times in your conceptual journey even if you don't have the coordinates because the compositions themselves are the map, a guide more reliable than star charts. A word of warning, however, dear traveler: be sure to appease Poseidon before setting forth, for Cassiopeia doesn't get many visitors.

Quite an interesting, out-of-the-way, little psychedelic album with some the kind of don’t-give-a-damn flat vocals. She’s clearly not trying to impress anybody—unless that’s the point. Impress by not impressing? Anyway, she’s just doing her own thing and doesn’t care about making this record a hit...which suits me perfectly. Maybe part of her vocal charm comes from the fact that her voice was run through a Moog as part of the overall experimental motif of this live, single-take album. My only gripe with this album is the rendition of “Love Me Tender”. Oh man. Somebody lost a bet!

One of the most shining of the hidden gems in my collection, this archival release covers pretty much all the ground prog could, from raunchy blues male vocals to melodious symphonic strings. Even a bit of synths underpinning playing flute phrasings. The eclecticism on display here is astounding. Sometimes playful, sometimes serious, this music isn't afraid to explore through the wind chimes of imagination. The band also wasn't afraid to poke fun of their times with lines like "masturbation is the only good vibration, it'll get you higher than a joint".

There is no destination, so whatever path you take through this world of blended folk and jazz is the right one. The motif of directionlessness runs explicitly through this album, as if the past is no map of the future. Perhaps follow the river? And let its gentle babbling blend yet another layer into this delicate, introspective music.

I want to rip his vocal chords out.

This particular recording of this eight-movement chamber piece was recorded in 1956, but its history goes back the the Second World War, when the composer (and pianist on this recording) wrote the music while detained in Germany as a prisoner of war. The prison camp was where Messiaen first performed this piece, too, along with three other fellow prisoners. Translated as "Quartet for the End of Time", this haunting piece of meditative music maintains a somber tone throughout.

A lot of people talk about track A4, "Suíte paulistana", and for good reason: it's a wild, glorious mess of a track, with no herald of its coming on the preceding tracks. This guy is nuts. Those honking horns, that ramshackle percussion, that... sound like someone is torturing squeaky toys. Nothing after A4 sounds like that, either. Pascoal's approach to song structure is... loose, to put it mildly. He'll have a groove just flowing along, and then--fuck it!--let's throw in some bells and whistles and old women talking and the sound of children playing. Not over the groove, by the way. No, that stopped dead some time ago. Good stuff, if you like jarring experimentation in your music. Good stuff, if you like to just bop along to something easy listening. Yes, it's both. Pray to St. Anthony that you find interesting music like this.

OK the way they play with Stravinsky's dinosaur music is fun.

For me, this album is very much a case of Dolly calling me darlin' and inviting me to listen to a couple of her songs. She knows I'll love them, as everyone does, and based on the strength of those two tracks, the joy will carry me through the rest of the album, which probably isn't as good as I think it is...but are there any albums out there that have better starts to their Sides A and B?

1946. Incredible.

Despite the cheese (or maybe because of it), this album works for me. I enjoy the concepts of loneliness and paranoia in a crowded world, where you feel like everyone is against you, and then suddenly everyone is gone. As a robot, you've outlived everyone, and then in a blatant *2001: A Space Odyssey* moment, there's an eclipse that heralds the end of everything, putting to rest at last not only the robot but his lonely memories.

Tedious beyond conception.

So much mystery and beauty packed into this one, hypnotizing the listener. Parrenin went around and collected songs from rural France, and the producer arranged experimental renditions of the songs in the recording of the album.

I feel like Parra is part of the soil from which revolutionary folk in Latin America grew. She is undeniably one of the greatest songstresses in modern history, and here she graces us poor listeners with her effortless passion and poetry.

The opening track, “Gracias a la vida”, is a song listing off all the things in her life that Parra valued and gave thanks for, and how chilling a song it is knowing that she was going to kill herself! Less than a year later, she shot herself in the head over a love affair gone wrong. She knew this album would be her last, her suicide an inevitability in her mind. As the title of the album says, these are the final compositions of Violeta Parra.