Reviews by kuvien

Everything I love about Zappa: unrestrained creativity, wonderful unpredictability, and a crafted precision that might sound sloppy to those who don't appreciate Zappa's sense of satire. After all, the Mothers yodel to a rutabaga. Another thing I love about this album is how there are no breaks between the songs. There are already such careening left turns within each song that it's not really necessary to delineate tracks with moments of silence anyway, is it? "Invocation & Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin" is basically a psychedelic jam-band track, and it's glorious. Because Side A is all about vegetables. Except it's...not. Zany, cartoonish music greets us for "The M.O.I. American Pageant" as we hop in our cars and drive back to all the humiliation of American high school. Plasticity is inescapable. I've heard people describe "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" as torture, and it kind of is, but the good, brilliant kind. Everything Zappa is is rolled up into this one song. Can someone expand this track into a full musical? I'm sure it'd be considered genius in France!

Zappa out fusion-ing the best fusion-ers, at least as far as the wheelchair-bound Zappa style goes. I guess he couldn’t tour for a while after being thrown off the stage by a crazy man, so he went with something that didn’t have to be fodder for a touring band.

TV is blatant mind control, and nobody cares. Music videos are slime, and everyone’s happy to be covered up in it. Daddy’s hiding porn in his bottom drawer, and the filthy guitar playing on this album will open your ears to a new world, the same way those magazines will open your eyes. Throw in an electric violin, too, while you’re at it. This is a fascinating experimental, progressive zombie voyage that’s weirder than a $40 bill.

For a pop band, eight members is a lot, but mòs ensemble is just that: an ensemble, not a pop band, which means they approach the whole process of creating and playing music differently. Fresh, playful, unpredictable. These are the words that come to mind when listening to this little gem. And, of course, mellow. The vocal harmonies are gorgeous and magical, and the instrumentation is soft, muted drums, saxophones and clarinets not blown too hard upon (until they are!). Skipping and leaping through the tapestry of this highly artistic music. So what's with the album title, you didn't ask? Well, it's to highlight the two sides of their music: the playful, wild side, like pets, and the reflective, inner-journey approach symbolized in therapy.

It's obscure Belgian chamber jazz. Of course it's amazing, and of course you'll never know.

Like an acoustic, jazzier Moulettes, with three female lead vocalists weaving their charming harmonies among the stalking clarinets and saxophones, with some phantastical guitar work by newcomer Denayer. This album is an easy, rewarding listen.

This is a highly atmospheric album, so much so that it has an almost post-rock feel to it. Some people find this music disturbing, but I find it rather relaxing, actually. Maybe the original Italian horror movie soundtracks were creepier, but the way they’re covered here, they’re just soothing and beautiful. At least to me. This is another one of those bands that made only a single album, at least in this incarnation of personnel.

Wow this guy fucking sucks

Saddle up, boys! It's time to go on a gun-slinging adventure. You don't have to have seen the film to know that's exactly what the rousing percussion, the galloping orchestra, and the iconic whistling are telling you to do. However, having seen the film, one can hear the open spaces of the setting in the music, with a sky as high as a hawk's flight. Some quite quirky, unexpected interludes of experimental music peppered throughout. This soundtrack recording returns to the main theme again and again, but the strength of this score is that upon each return, Morricone has arranged it differently, so every time it is fresh. Surprisingly for a Spaghetti Western film score, there are some beautiful and frightening ambient moments here and there, too.

At first I didn't connect to this in any way, neither positively or negatively. It's just forgettable sonic wallpaper, kind of soulless and lacking any real substance. It's not bad, and it's not good. It is the sonic epitome of "meh". The production is lush, the sounds beautiful, but from one song to the next, I could remember nothing of what had come before.

As time went on, though, I became more irked. When the dude comes in for his vocals, everything gets a little worse. The existence of this kind of music makes me angry because it's such a waste of time. Like, there's great music out there (even if it's the horrible kind of great), but this schlock is what people waste their time on?

A one-and-done project where they indulge in meandering meditations on physical desire, which, of course, ultimately means nothing. All those blue eyes, soft bodies, and sun-drenched hair will one day fall into the void. A nihilistic look at beauty.

Love hearing Hancock on piano. He's great on keyboards, of course, but damn this is hot. How his fingers fly! I can see the smiles on all the players' faces here. I've read these compositions are infectious, and I agree. Super accessible, fun jazz with quite a suave wind blowing through the latter half of the album.

This is a special album because it answered a long standing question I've been pondering: do punk rockers know how to spell?

Despite the spoken word bits, the quirky singing, and the beating on random wooden objects, the weirdest thing about this album is that almost all the tracks pause in the middle and then take a different direction. If I didn't check, I'd think they were separate tracks. What starts out as minimal, tribalistic avant-folk unfolds into more string-dominated chamber music by the end.

A lot of random-ass spoken word Japanese on this one. Weird, but not out of the ken of a music wizard like Moondog. There's a frustrating lack of unity on this album, Moondog basically throwing a bunch of music ideas against the wall to see what ones stick. Going from rustic flutes and sparse percussion to fiery, dancing fiddles to found sounds like frogs croaking and the surf crashing against the shore. Highly experimental, in that sense.

The female vocals are here to comfort and not frighten. They are the charming nightsong against the darkness. The wind and the rain are subtle additions to the tracks. This album is a good example in my mind of the line drawn between neofolk and dark folk. Dark folk explores the pagan darkness. Neofolk recognizes it but holds it at bay, comforting and soothing you, taking your mind off it for an evening. Is this as "real" as some of the other pagan folk I've heard? No. But that's okay.

The 60s was about a lot of things, and one of those things was putting humans on the Moon. This is a sonic exploration of that, and even the Apollo 15 astronauts listened to this on cassette in space. I bet our children’s children’s children won’t be listening to this, though.

Maniacal narration is always a good way to start off an album. There’s a strong 60s vocal harmony expressing all the optimism (and naivete) of that decade. Mildly psychedelic explorations of the drug flirtation of the time, too. So what’s this album about? Well, what I get out of it is a sense of consciousness expansion while traveling at the speed of thought, thoughts filled with music, leading you back to yourself and to one single chord. A secret chord. At what tone do you resonate?

What's so impressive about this album is what others might find fault with: the musicians are as equally happy to be playful and carefree as they are mysterious and introspective. When Monti's playful, she sounds a bit like from, and when she transports herself to another realm, the synth-driven lo-fi music reminds me of, except that Monti's Italian sun melts any barren frost.

This might be the first non-jazz-fusion jazz album I've heard featuring the guitar. Hence the title, I guess. Smooth, groovy, easy to listen to. Especially the standards. This a rather polite album.