Reviews by kuvien

More jazzy than I'd have expected from a Fela album, with a heavy emphasis on bold brass. Still, the groove dominates. I'm also surprised how the chanting vocals start in right away.

Strong jazz and funk elements threatening to overwhelm the afrobeat. This is a good thing, because hearing Fela try different things is great. It's like I'm at a music smorgasbord. A testament to Fela's skill that he kept the reins on this one... just enough.

Everything you expect from Fela, that hypnotic groove, those swaggering vocals, the call and response of his wives (?), the jazz instrumentation, and, of course, the political commentary, in this case a scathing takedown of the corrupt, violent Nigerian police. If you've got 28 minutes and have never experienced this world of music, now's the time!

Soooo much saxophone soloing on the first track. Love it... but I know someone who would hate it. I'll never forgive the soldiers for killing Fela's mother, but damn how Fela takes that pain and suffering and translates it into living art!

Although this recording lacks some of the effortless, endless groove of Fela's earlier releases and has a couple awkward vocal moments, it's still a great album.

Way too short. You don't start a party like this and stop before even half an hour has passed. I feel like I should just link Fela Kuti's albums together and let them go. Rarely have I heard an artist whose first notes make me go "oh yes, this is gonna be good". And then he exceeds my expectation.

This isn't a record, it's a torch, and I want to believe it's bright enough to provide illumination to those who cannot see. The horns are crazily complex on this one. The back and forth, the riffing. Lordy, the riffing.

Again, this is one of those albums in my collection that just thrills my soul: a solitary release. These musicians came together in this incarnation of a band and made only one album, a beautiful, complex piece with touches of Zeuhl and Canterbury Scene elements. This is one of the best Swedish prog albums I’ve ever heard. It’s creative and fun and not to be taken too seriously.

90s lo-fi download core for non-rockists.

This is the kind of music you get when you get a group of witches together in a cave. Some haunting piano work, discordant violins lead the way in some spellbinding music. When the wild, feminine laughter at last rises in the quiet storm, the listener shouldn’t be surprised. There are instrumental pieces scattered throughout, for unrelenting vocals would be overwhelming. This whole act is performed when the moon is full, from its rising to its setting, the yelps continuing until the last sliver of its luminous disc vanishes.

The first album of the artist in exile, Cancer is as dark and honest as the title suggests. The songs are basically about the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968, and though this album is merely the voice and acoustic guitar of the songwriter, the lyrics paint with the blood of his people ghastly scenes. Murders, executions, chaos, where Death stalks the street in flower crown and wielding a lute without strings. Not sure what that means, but I love the stark poetry of it! This album was smuggled into Czechoslovakia with a fake album cover to make it look like innocuous classical music.

Just a man, armed with his voice and his guitar, singing with passion his protest against the communists who ran his native home of Czechoslovakia. Recorded in Germany where the artist lived in exile, this album had only 1000 copies pressed, 300 of which were smuggled into Czechoslovakia, a powerful, artistic symbol of resistance.

Translated as “Close the Gate, Little Brother”, this album is completely sung in Czech, so it goes without saying that I understand nothing of what’s actually being said. The litany of Salome’s name is intoxicating, and perhaps he’s trying to invoke the beauty of her fatal dance. The slight echo of the microphone on some of the tracks evokes the feeling of a man playing intimate songs to an empty room, adding gravitas.

All these tracks were composed by the Finnish composers but commissioned and performed in part by the American quartet. Recorded between 2007 and 2010, these pieces were originally played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's festivals in 2004 and 2007, and after the recording at an international music festival in the Czech Republic in 2012. Interesting little sidenote: Ben Frost did the programming for these recordings. This is a beautiful blending of electronic sampling and the sounds of classical instruments, such as the string ensemble, and folk instruments, such as the accordion. A courageous strain of melancholic energy runs through this album, vivifying what might otherwise grow cold and grey.

I have this coworker who has a huge mole on the side of her neck. Often, when she's left alone with her thoughts, she touches that mole, caresses it, pinches it lightly, gently rolls it between thumb and forefinger. I think it's become such a habit for her that it's not even a conscious act anymore. She's just locked into this microscopic monomaniacal act that I watch in mild annoyance. You know, lady, you could get that mole burned off, right? That is Steve Reich's music. A mole he won't stop messing with, hyper-focused on the same small act over and over again. Mildly irritating to listen to.

Some of the greatest moments in music are when the artist is not afraid to do what she wants and doesn't care what the fans expect. Especially when she lures them in with expectations and then pulls the rug out from under them, so that they all fall on their collective hoity-toity asses.

Nine different people play strings on this album, opening with a saloon-jumping theme of the Jekyll and Hyde story. Or, rather, the first and second song together fit this theme: the first he's a devil, the second he's the gentle, faithful lover. Like all great country albums, this one doesn't shy away from stories about freeloving women, alcoholism, rambling, and drug abuse. All sung and spoken in Kristofferson's simple yet rich storytelling voice. All pointing toward a life thrown away, a life of loneliness with nothing but memories of the "good times" to torture you. Just an aside: Kristofferson seems to have had a beef with Chads.

It would be easy to call this outlaw music about drinking, but it’s really more than that. It’s outcast music. It’s about the people on the fringes, not only the drunks but, more importantly, the people who, for whatever reason, refuse to play the game. And what’s the game? Everything societies are built on, like laws that only protect property, not people. This album masterfully destroys all hypocrites who expect everyone to live a certain way to build a society a certain way but do not themselves live in that way. And of course there’s the drinking, stories of which just break your heart.

Now imagine this never ever ever letting up. Ever. This is the antithesis of everything.

This journey starts with the sound of balloons being blown up—preparing us for our floating travels far above our atmosphere. We take off, and then float above the radioactivity to find quasi-psychedelic sounds, getting spacier before the happy descent that returns us to terra firma.