Reviews by kuvien

Such a beautifully poetic and psychedelically melodic album, delightfully frightening at times. “Happy Family” made the Fab Four’s collective face melt off, showing them just what it means to make complex, avant-garde music. This here’s a mystery tour worth going on. It all starts with a farewell to your lady of the dancing water. The last track, a suite, is downright medieval in its scope.

A lovely, warm, intimate album wrapped mysterious soft tones. The saxophone figures large in this album. Something about this work creates a kind of cozy atmosphere, like you can snuggle up in it. As the fourth studio album, this document represents the end of King Crimson’s first stage as a band, for it’s the last album to use founding member Peter Sinfield’s lyrics. After this, the band moves on to its unassailable trilogy.

"Merman" and "mermaid" seem like such innocuous words. First of all, they're not maids. They know what a bed of seaweed feels like, and they know the salty taste of human blood. A merday morn isn't some holiday to the seaside or a bit of sea bathing--or if it is, it's your last. For this morn it's a raid, an attack of the bloodthirsty seafolk from the deep, in that grey hour before the dawn, when tired mothers whisper lullabies to their stirring babies to try to keep them asleep for an hour longer.

One of the few new wave albums I love. I also chuckle at how the album starts off bemoaning / celebrating how everything and everyone talks about everything all the time and then proceeds to go on to some pretty amazing spoken-word parts. The off-kilter, drawn-out vocals are fantastic!

The kind of artsy violin-driven chamber folk that would make many people's eyes roll but makes me jump for joy. Or, rather, give myself a warm hug. This album doesn't give itself into an embrace, though. It eludes you; it invites you to chase it down and wrestle with it, the styles shifting quickly enough to make it all slippery.

Who else is here because of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0allwd60wS4,Hot Ones]?

You motherfuckers just had to make those first three tracks, didn't you?

Ghastly scales, accessible only to the weird.

You'd have to be some kind of impercipient not to realize, halfway through the first track, that this is protest music made by musicians who are familiar with the activity and comfortable with expressing their discontent. When Kidambi starts in with her litany of sarcastic "you don't belong here" type commentary, it's clear that she is not only criticizing bigotry and xenophobia but is also asking questions about belonging. About identity. About the spaces we inhabit and how we claim them through understanding ourselves, our communities, and our histories.

What follows is the creation of improvisational spaces analogous to the expression of community voices free from the strictures of hierarchy. What starts as protest descends (ascends?) into noise, but the noise has meaning, purpose. It is the sound of old monuments being demolished, and what follows, quite jarringly, are several minutes of a rising harmony led by the cello. A time of calm. A new beginning.

Kidambi's vocals, never following any melody the mind can hold onto, demands attention from the listener. Something weird is happening. She's singing in her weird way again, you might think. I should probably actually listen to what she's singing/saying. Or maybe this kind of jazz is just pretentious twaddle to you. I know plenty of people who'd roll their eyes at what unfolds here. And that's okay. Dislike it. Feel uncomfortable or annoyed. That's the whole point.

"Eat the rich" is a common sentiment these days, and this album makes its politics clear from the very first notes. Most of the time, my love of freaky, female vocals is a folk thing, but sometimes this fascination bleeds over into jazz, like in the case of this album or Matana Roberts. The avant-garde improvisations on this album are cathartic escapes from modern oppression.

EDM landfill

Throat singing albums can become monotonous really quick, but this one maintains a fresh balance of variety not only in the indigenous instrumentation but the vocals, sometimes grunting, sometimes whistling through the nose, something growling. At a couple points even some female vocals pop up, which almost never happens when Mongolian men get together to exercise their throats. Beautiful Mongolian fiddles, flutes, and mouth harps abound. This music is masterful, and the more people who hear it, the better.

Whereas Jewish music spins, Islamic music snakes, and on this recording, that snaking is a hypnotic, passionate pursuit of melodic vocal runs.

One of my online music friends knows I'm into solitary albums (bands who release only one album and it happens to be great), so he turned me on to this one. It's pretty great, guitars and vocals soaring like a spaceship blasting off, taking you on a journey of song. The music will slow down at points but still have a feeling of speed, conveying the understanding that just because you're floating in space doesn't mean you're not moving at an incredible speed.

Shatner > Kerouac

Accordion disco cabaret rock'n'roll party in a barn. This corny album is a hoot!

This album comes at the end of prog's heyday, but it's still a worthy addition to the genre. You can tell which decade this one fits into, though, because of the moments of strong 80s synths. 空に光る is generally considered to be the strongest track, but I think I prefer 麻酔パート1 and 麻酔パート2 together.

A guitar concerto and a string quartet piece played by a Hungarian jazz guitarist and a Hungarian string quartet, exploring not only Hungarian works but those of Russians, British, and Americans, as well. The album starts off with the concerto, and it's full of leaping sparks and fire, but the moment the string quartet starts, you can tell the difference without even looking at your player to see where you are. The mood shifts to one of melancholy, and you feel the harsh, slumbering snows of Russia blow in on pensive strains, giving way quickly to defiance.

Kebnekaise is the highest mountain in Sweden and the name of this Swedish prog/folk outfit. It's like a Japanese band naming itself Mount Fuji. I cannot help but wonder why. The third track is a wonderful prog rock rendering of clear folk phrasings. Quite catchy! Everything kind of sounds like a slow yet festive march through grass, snatching the chance during the short summer. To us humans it seems that spring comes on gently, but I wonder how the ground feels, how chaotic everything must become when every crawling thing comes out of its hole and shell. It is a massacre of new life and turned soil. Death begetting life begetting death. I can imagine the last track of this album being the soundtrack of a short nature video showing the onslaught of spring sped up.

These three tracks, recorded between 1973 and 1975, is a collection from the artist's vault of personal music and is one of the earliest if not the earliest example of Turkish synthesizer music. This truly sounds like a journey through the caves of Hell, with high winds howling all around your head, and the distant wails of the damned disturbing your mind.