Reviews by kuvien

The Devil isn't in Purgatory, you dumbass.

This is one of the worst albums of all time, as bad as Dopethroat, but in a different way.

An American-Canadian raised in Mexico and the USA and also lived a significant time in France, Lhasa is an artist without borders, and it is immediately evident in her music, especially since she sings in Spanish, English, and French and seems at home with all three tongues. I love the slow dark waltz of the cabaret music that underpins a lot of these tracks. Lovely violins and beautiful Mexican-style trumpeting on this album.

Charming female-led folk sprinkled with spice and garnished with jazz manouche coziness.

This is simply a beautiful album, quite straightforward and satisfying in its neo-Medieval instrumentation, including the txapela, dulcimer, and cromorno. The first track is a 20-minute eight-stanza epic about the Battle of Orreaga in 778 AD, told from the perspective of the Basque people. For all the bloody imagery in the lyrics, this music is quite calming.

Lennon is a concept by which we measure douchebaggery.

Stop recommending me boring music, Francisco!

I'm sure she's a nice lady, but her songwriting is boring. I do think the format for this "live album" redefines what it could mean to make a live album. More live albums should be made in this manner. And now, kids, go listen to Dick Gaughan's "Now Westlin Winds".

I had no idea a rose could be the terror of terrors and the horror of horrors. Battery low. Battery low.

Fearless, imaginative improv that's easy on the ear, unlike so much of the more challenging free improvisational music out there. This one's chock-full of rare acoustic instruments, and rumor has it Halvorson is playing these particular instruments for the first time. A bold move that pays off! This is the magic of what folk and jazz can do together.

Modern classical for the discriminating online griefer.

Like most people, I discover music in reverse. I've loved Matana Roberts for years and have grown to love avant-garde vocal jazz more and more, so exploring these strains would eventually lead me back in time to Jeanne Lee. And I'm in love. I've never heard a woman sing her hiccups before. Lee is a master of the smooth, soothing spoken word as well as chaotic, frenzied vocal storytelling. This is a fearless vocal masterpiece that speaks, moans, sighs, warbles, stutters, and broken-laughs its way to some place halfway between expression and meaning.

So I put this on the record player that night, sit back and watch the record spin as I’m listening, and then I look across the table and see my teenage daughter sitting there with a sketch pad and pen, inking out this intricate piece of abstract art. I ask her what she’s doing, and she smiles, “I’m drawing my response to the music.” Then she flips back and shows me all her other art-responses, to albums like The Sunlandic Twins and Exile on Coldharbour Lane. Oh my goodness I was so happy and proud in that moment.

More of what we hear in volume one of this wonderful folk music, the vocals passionate and wild, but only within the context of these folk tunes. Acoustic strumming and drumming galore, and it’s all just lovely.

Yeah, I, too, assumed they were British.

🤣

I had no idea Dr. House was a blues musician and collaborator.

Exactly what it says on the tin: music for sleeping. Or maybe... music made by sleepers. Delicate, breezy, lo-fi female folk. Actually this is music made by the artist while her baby boy was sleeping, basically carving out whatever time she could whenever she had a chance.

A largely amorphous collection of sounds that swell only within a limited space, but every corner of that space is filled. This is a dream journey from plucked kantele through meditative drum to droning violin. Everything is a bit off kilter, no screw fitted quite tightly enough.

Sleepytime electronic music for baby cribs. You could do worse.