Reviews by kuvien

What a strange way to consider the mystery of baptism! A ship capsizing in the water, destroyed, only to rise again. Now let me add my own thoughts to this brief imagery: only to rise again, crowned in fire, transformed by Love, able to understand and speak all tongues, unified, Babel reversed. Are we communicating?

Canterbury scene in 2018? From Italy? This is going to be weird...nope boring. Well, wait. The first track is standard old dusty Canterbury scene, but with the second track we start hearing a distinctive Italian twist on it. The album's highlight is "Se la Mente mentisse", the only track that suddenly and randomly has female vocals, not something common in this genre, whose tubular propensity is rivaled only by metal.

When I was a kid, I would go sailing on the Mississippi with my "dad". He wasn't my biological father, actually, but the man my mother ran off with when I was a baby. Actually, my father, being the kindhearted, generous man was, let his army buddy live with him and his new wife because the buddy was down on his luck. Well, it didn't take long until my mom was fucking my father's friend while my father was at work. I was already born, though, so there's no question of my parentage. Besides, I'm like a carbon copy of my father. Anyway, my mom packed me and my older sister up one day while my father was at work and ran off with her lover. So for the first few years of my childhood, I thought the man I called "dad" was my actual father. Turns out he wasn't. But for years I live in ignorant bliss, and I have such fond memories of sailing with my dad on his sailboat on the Mississippi. One year, however, I got a horrible sunburn. I'm talking blisters all over my back, and so many blisters that they all just bled together into one huge blister. That's when I learned that the sun is The Sun That Burns.

This is the musical equivalent of the journey of two friends, both knowing that soon one of them will be leaving Earth forever. Though the younger of the two friends is asked three times to stay behind, the younger will not leave the elder and so travels with him until a fiery chariot pulled by fiery steeds swings low between them and takes the elder away in a whirlwind, leaving the younger only a double portion of his spirit.

Lures the listener in with the mild, keeps him here for the wild, with the final track, "Soul Brother", being the culmination of everything Hannibal wants to say about Malcolm X with his trumpet. My goodness... talk about using an instrument as a second voice! This cat's got it. I also find it strange and exciting how Hannibal put down the trumpet for a little while, picked up the koto, and used that instrument to express his interpretation of the transatlantic slave trade.

As you draw closer to someone, you become more able to freely express yourself. This mystery of private exposure is true not only of relationships but of music. It's all in the comfort level of conversation, knowing when to bend and when to break.

A lo-fi take on medieval folk. Never thought those two things would ever be put together, so hats off to Grim for trying something new.

Do not DM me for a listening party.

The noise equivalent of this masturbating loser's crusty sock.

The album starts off with a kind of Sgt. Pepper’s vibe with the whole “I want to introduce you to…” followed by the crowd cheering. Except they’re singing about darkness, and the next song about destruction, or rather the lack thereof? Just remember these words of wisdom: there’s no need to be an asshole, you’re not in Brooklyn anymore. Feel those warm California vibes, man. Feel the groovy boredom and know how good it is.

Tearing down philosophical conceptions of art one violin-string scrape at a time. I recommend doing something highly constructive while listening to this droning meditation on deconstructed Appalachian folk performed by one of its mountain creatures.

I was like, wait, does this sound strongly like Pink Floyd in spots? (not throughout, just very strongly in parts). Then I read several responses claiming the same thing and realized I wasn't just hearing things. For the most part this album is its own spaced-out rock thing, but yeah, there are moments in the soaring guitar solos where it sounds like Floyd. A beautiful use of flutes answering the distant, elevated vocals.

Shit my mother-in-law would have on in the background in her perfectly-decorated Thomas Kinkade house.

This album doesn’t blaze any new trails in the genre, but it’s still a good sample of what zeuhl can do when it’s got a healthy dose of jazz fusion mixed in. There’s a lot of energy packed into this one.

In 1908, a Czech composer by the name of Leoš Janáček, dedicated to preserving indigenous folk songs in as pure a form as he could manage, collected 53 Moravian folk songs for voice and piano. A generation before but contemporary with Béla Bartók, Janáček's ethnomusicology-adjacent work continues to inspire musicians over a century later. Minulo both reinterprets and preserves the soul of this music, expanding the palette with improvisation and ConTRIOlogy's own compositional idiosyncrasies. Add in Vtípil's electronics, and you've got a recipe for repackaged folk for the 21st-century listener who's heard it all before and wants something new and unexpected.

The warbling electronic beeping serves as a beacon, drawing you through the grinds and the clashes of the metal machinery. But there's more than one signal, so you have to choose which way to go. Blind. If only you could make out what they're saying over the static-filled speakers.

The donkeys go crazy when Jandek comes around.

Just like it says in the name of the band, we’ve got three instruments here, giving us a stripped-down, relaxing sound that’s perfect to enjoy over classy drinks: a tripping, traipsing piano, airy percussion, and a subdued bass.

The lyrics of this wonderful album are from the poem of the same name by Pablo Neruda, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. I'm not familiar with Neruda's works, but I've read that the music for this album was composed not only with the themes of the poetry in mind but also taking into account the meter, to make sure that the very cadence of the poetry is reflected in the music. The blending of the dominant sensibilities of progressive rock with other musical forms such as cuecas (traditional handkerchief dance) is superb. You can feel the spin this way and that in the music, like flowers strewn across your spirit. The opening of the album with the use of the quena, a bevel wind instrument of the Andes, sets the indigenous mood of the album at once.

Who else up eating Reese's Pieces and listening to MJ narrate the E.T, story?